Featurette: Drop Dead Gorgeous (with Ruined)

‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ was supposed to be a big break for first time feature writer Lona Williams and first time feature director Michael Patrick Jann… except they couldn’t agree on anything. Difficulties with the film’s biggest star, Kirstie Alley, and a lawsuit from Dairy Queen didn’t help. In this bonus Featurette, Halle Kiefer from the Ruined podcast joins Chris and Lizzie to break down this 1999 box office bomb that somehow became a cult classic. Discover why Lona wasn’t allowed to play the role she’d written for herself, how Kirsten Dunst got cast, and why we have this movie to thank for Amy Adams’ career! 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.

• 0:00Lizzie Bassett?

  12 celebrities, one dawn and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus on October 26th. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a dawn. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out, who makes money and who walks away with nothing. In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency, will the most powerful

• 0:45Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new dawn? Let the games begin. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:05Chris Winterbauer?

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• 1:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another bonus episode of your favorite podcast, Full Stop. That's right, What Went Wrong, 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 great one, let alone a movie that calls into question whether or not America's a meritocracy at all, or if it's just better to be lucky. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined here by Lizzie Bassett, who's going to be guiding us through today's fantastically funny film. Lizzie, who do we have with us for this journey?

• 2:16Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm very excited. We have Halle Kiefer from Ruined here with us today. Hi.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Hi, thank you for having me.

• 2:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Thank you so much for being here. Before we dive into the movie that we're all, I think, very excited to talk about today, although I don't want to presume.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  No, no, go ahead, presume. Love this movie.

• 2:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Can you tell us a little bit about your show and what the format is?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So I host Ruined with my dear friend and colleague, Alison Libby. We've been doing it, it's almost six years now. We worked on it for a couple of years before it came out. And it's built on a friendship where Alison cannot watch horror movies at all. She gets horrific vivid nightmares. And I, at this point, almost exclusively watch horror movies, which is its own issue. But what's nice is I'm never going to spoil it for her. So I, each episode of Ruined is me recapping a horror movie. And at this point, I've, I've trained Alison, this has been a psychological experiment where now we have her sort of try to guess what's happening. And I feel like her guesses have surpassed where we're at with horror right now, where I'm like, oh, like you've now, you know enough that like now we, we have genuinely new great ideas.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  So yeah, I feel like it's for people who can't watch horror and also people who like to re-listen to the plot of horror movies, which I do as well. So a little something for everybody.

• 3:29Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really fun. It's a great show. You all should check it out if you have not already. As a horror fan, I definitely enjoy it. And just a little fun fact, I made the mistake of thinking that, you know, maybe it was like a little bit of a bit for the show that she was unable to watch these movies. I was wrong. I chose a movie that was wholly inappropriate for this initially. And then I was like, I've made a horrible mistake. I'm so sorry. We're going to do Drop Dead Gorgeous.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting. And I think like the secret of mine and Alison's success, it is that she's not really not a horror person. So I feel like if she was, it's a different dynamic. She can't, she can't watch it. She can't, like even some of the trailers, because it really is like the imagery and then it disrupts her sleep, which I think is so like, now that I've done this podcast, I've met so many people like that, or it is genuinely like the images replay. I could watch Human Sent to Be Three and go to sleep and it wouldn't bother me at all.

• 4:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Sleep like a baby.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's good we have that dynamic.

• 4:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing. So everyone go listen to that show. It's really, really fun. And again, that's ruined. All right, well, I think we should get into what we're talking about today, which of course is not a horror movie. So you're getting a little bit of a break, although it does feature some horrors, I would argue.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  There's a moment now, and I think like I obviously saw this when it came out in 1999, but now I'm in my 40s and there is a moment towards the end where I'm like genuinely like, this is sad. You know what I mean? Just like, you know, when you think about, and also the America of it all, like, wow, really got us dead to rights. You know what I mean?

• 4:54Lizzie Bassett?

  They really did.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:56Lizzie Bassett?

  We are of course talking about Drop Dead Gorgeous. And before we get into the story behind Drop Dead Gorgeous, which is actually really interesting, I'll start with you, Hallie. What was your experience with this movie prior to re-watching it for the podcast? And then what did you feel re-watching it for today's episode?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I love this movie. This to me is one of my top comfort rewatches. I will say I then, I think during the pandemic, showed it to some people and they didn't like it. And I think I, it really made me pause and be like, wow, if I, is this like maybe like a time capsule? You know what I mean? Like maybe it doesn't really hold up. But now I'm seeing it again, I'm like, nah, this is, you know?

• 5:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's both. It's both a time capsule, as you mentioned. And I think in other ways, it does hold up extremely well and is prescient in certain ways. I mean, Will Sasso's performance in this movie is part of kind of a run of movies that used disabled characters to comedic ends. And, and the use of, the incessant use of the R word in this movie by today's standards, I think feels very shocking, although it was very consistent, at least with my experience growing up and coming of age in the 90s and 2000s.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Also, it just like so funny, as we enter woke 2.0, hopefully, it is so funny. It was like, no, it is good. We stopped saying that or using gay as like an insult because we were doing it every other word. Like, it's so crazy, but love this movie. A murderer's row of a cast. The fact that Amy Adams is just like one of the other girls in the pageant is so funny. They're all excellent at it. Kirstie Alley is so funny. Like she, this is a, her and Denise Richards, incredible. So loved it when I saw it, had a moment of uncertainty seeing it again. Nothing doesn't have its flaws, but I'm like, this is, it's great. It's great as a mockumentary. Like it's just hitting, other than some moments which are, we'll talk about, I'm sure. I think really hitting this on all cylinders.

• 6:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, what about you?

• 6:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I generally agree. I, I always liked this movie. The first time I ever saw, I even seen from it, because I was 10 in 99. I believe our mutual friend, Andy Shepherd, I was at his house and his older sister, he had sisters who were like a few years older than us. They were watching it and it was a scene where John Doe is, has, is-

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Also hilarious that his last name didn't remember that.

• 7:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, is watching them do their like-

• 7:12Lizzie Bassett?

  The ladder dance.

• 7:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Ladder dance. And he's got the camera that he keeps in his car for car accidents and documentaries.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And he keeps saying the young girls. And I didn't really understand it, you know what I mean? At age 10.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And good you shouldn't, you know what I mean?

• 7:28Chris Winterbauer?

  But I did appreciate when one of them lands on their crotch. And it was actually the first, it was actually an important moment. It was, I had seen so many times men being hit in the nuts in movies and I had not seen a woman get hit in the groin. And I thought, oh, that's great. That's funny. I didn't know that was a thing too. It's also very funny.

• 7:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it also hurts.

• 7:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm sure it does. And then I saw it at some point, and I think in college, and I couldn't believe how dark it was. And then re-watching it again, it's very funny. As you mentioned, the cast is incredible. Kirsten Dunst as Amber Atkins, you mentioned Denise Richards, she should have gotten 25 with these roles.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Also bring her back.

• 8:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  I just watched Wild Things at Los Feliz 3 last weekend. She's so good.

• 8:14Chris Winterbauer?

  She was always good as the villain.

• 8:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yes, like she knows exactly what she's doing. She's great in this movie. And she and Kirstie Alley are like such a duo, like they are so good together.

• 8:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Kirstie Alley is fantastic. She's overqualified, you know what I mean, for this. She's so devilish and her eyebrows are so amazing. Ellen Barkin is really great. Allison Janney, of course, this was my introduction to Allison Janney, who looks the same now as she did then.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Doesn't she? Yeah, you're absolutely right.

• 8:45Chris Winterbauer?

  But even like Brittany Murphy, you know, is really fun in this. And we talked about her in Clueless. And then Amy Adams, as you mentioned, is the horniest character in the whole thing. It's so funny. They won't let you perform naked, I asked. Like there's so many little throwaway lines from her that are very funny.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Well, we'll talk about it because there's a line, I think, right before that where Brittany Murphy says, but it's like, just reveals her whole character backstory.

• 9:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, they only had me because Peter needed a kidney.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Like, that's so good. And also just, it made me so mad being like, I want more comedies. And also like a comedy in which the, not that every character's fully fleshed out. We'll talk about the girl adopted by her Japanese parents.

• 9:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the only one.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  I'm like, huh. Right, because even like girl whose whole personality is dog, that was a girl in high school.

• 9:31Chris Winterbauer?

  The German Shepherd girl.

• 9:32Lizzie Bassett?

  That's accurate.

• 9:33Chris Winterbauer?

  It's my fault. I did have the beef jerking in my pocket.

• 9:37Chris Winterbauer?

  That would be David, by the way. We have the male version of that on our podcast is David. If his cue could rip his arm off and be like, I had it coming.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  That's a dog person for you.

• 9:46Chris Winterbauer?

  And sorry, the last thing I'll say, I do think it's actually kind of a searing indictment of the myths we tell ourselves about America. It's a great vicarist story. It does.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  And about success.

• 9:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And about success. It's, it's, it's better to be lucky, you know? And I think that it's, it's a movie about how you cannot control fate ultimately, because no matter all, no matter what the machinations of ultimately revealed Kirstie Alley or Amber Atkins are, the company goes bankrupt and nobody could have done anything about it anyway. And it was all pointless. It's like a darkly funny inverted Forrest Gump in certain ways.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. Yeah, because much like in Forrest Gump, Kirsten Dunst's character, she, she is our proof that like you can remain the same person and that you can achieve your dreams. Not so pretty much everybody else.

• 10:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Everybody else is either killed or maimed or yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Missing in the Philippines. Like I'm just like, Jesus Christ.

• 10:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, you get one.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  But also that is America too, where it's just like, there are people who can like, and I hate to bring up Donald Trump, but like, there are some people who are like force of will are able to get to where they want to go. It's just like, for many people where they shouldn't want to go there. And when they get there, what they're going to do is not good.

• 10:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, that's why she is such a great protagonist is like, she is like, has this hope beyond like what all of reality is showing her is true.

• 11:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Chris Winterbauer?

  But broadly speaking, I think sometimes the, the tone and whether or not that's the director, who I'm sure we'll talk about with his background with the state and stuff, or if it's the writing, I don't know, Lizzy will tell us. Sometimes it feels like the movie skews too broad for the, for me, or like for the tone that it seems to want to sit in, but the cast is so good that they always pull it back down to earth for me. So I really loved it.

• 11:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. The dynamic between the director, Michael Patrick, Jan, and the writer, I believe Lana Williams or Lona Williams, I think Lana, is very interesting. And we're going to talk about that quite a bit over the course of the episode. She is in it. And I did know that when watching, but I didn't know the backstory of it, which is interesting and also a bit sad. My experience with this movie is, I think, similar to what all three of us have said, which is that I saw this when I was probably 10, 11 years old, like too young to really get it. And then we just watched it over and over and over and over again with my friends, with my mom. Like, we loved this movie. We owned it on DVD. I could, I could, and honestly, probably still can recite most of this movie from memory.

• 12:16Lizzie Bassett?

  And then Chris, I think it was your birthday trip to Joshua Tree several years ago. And we, I was like, we have to watch this movie because one of our friends had a DVD copy of it. And we put it on and I hadn't seen it in probably 10 years at that point. And we put it on. And as it started, I was, I was like, oh no, is this movie like horrifically offensive? And are none of these people ever going to speak to me again?

• 12:42Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, it is pretty offensive.

• 12:44Lizzie Bassett?

  That we watched this.

• 12:45Chris Winterbauer?

  By today's standards, but that's, that's okay.

• 12:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So I remember that being a somewhat uncomfortable viewing because I started questioning myself and being like, God, am I a horrible person that I've found drop dead gorgeous funny for all these years? And you have come back around and I've decided, no, I'm fine.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Well, it's kind of like strangers with candy where it's like, it's offensive, but like it's by design. And also I think most topics, it's like, you can joke about it if it's funny enough to pull it off. But like, this movie does require your buy-in, you know?

• 13:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I will say there's one, you know, there's many elements of this that would never happen today that are obviously very offensive, but that I kind of will still stand by in the context of this movie. I'm not saying that they're good, but they don't bother me necessarily. The one that upon this re-watch, I was just like, this was completely unnecessary and honestly not funny is the American girl who is adopted by the Japanese family. I was just like, what is the point of this?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Where it's not funny enough to like, it's just not funny.

• 13:44Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  And so you're just like, is this like a specific person? Like, it's almost like, we don't have even a reference to that. Like every, everything else that's kind of offensive, it's like, we're referencing something for reality. That's an example of like, what do you think is funny about this? Because this is not like a thing.

• 13:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, just straight up racism.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I do think there is a certain type of white woman that has like a specific blind spot around Asian racism. That was, that's why I take them like, you're very smart and very observant. The fact that you thought this was funny on its face seems like a blind spot that like, we now don't have in exactly the same way.

• 14:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Clearly I had it when I watched it over and over again, when I was, you know, 15, 16 years old.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  But you were 15.

• 14:21Lizzie Bassett?

  It never bugged me. I know. But it definitely, that is the one thing where I'm like, you know, this does, this, this takes a notch out of this movie for me, unfortunately. I still really love this movie. I think that there's so many things about it that I think are really remarkable, including the fact that popular girls don't win. The popular girl gets blown up. Like, this isn't even Heathers, because in Heathers, she kind of manages to, it's the mean girls thing. She manages to become a popular girl. And then it's kind of like, everybody's on the same level. That's not what this is at all. This is just total chaos. And it's very dark. And I feel like that's unusual, particularly for movies about teenagers and teenage girls. And I very much enjoy it. I also just love

• 15:02Lizzie Bassett?

  the way that it depicts a small town, because small towns are so weird and wonderful. And this movie does an excellent job of it.

• 15:14Chris Winterbauer?

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• 16:17Lizzie Bassett?

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• 17:01Lizzie Bassett?

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• 17:23Chris Winterbauer?

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• 18:36Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, well, let's get into the details. So Drop Dead Gorgeous was released in 1999, quite a year for movies, as we have discussed. It was directed by Michael Patrick Jan, written by Lana Williams. It had a budget of around $15 million and it starred Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Alison Janney, Brittany Murphy, Mindy Sterling, Amy Adams, and so, so, so many more. I do have to shout out Will Sasso. That's one of the things where I'm like, I know we can't do this anymore, but.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  See, that's the part of the movie that I was like, over it.

• 19:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  But also, like, it was funny because he's a great performer versus like, the anti-Asian racism is just boring.

• 19:17Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  That's like, where I'm like, we never have to do this again, in my opinion.

• 19:20Lizzie Bassett?

  We shouldn't ever do it again. He is a very funny performer, but yes, I agree. And I understand people are going to be like, you're a horrible person for saying that that it's funny, but.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  And let me just say this, as again, I've been thinking a lot about this as someone who just has to write political comedy all day. These are time capsules. Like, so it's like, it's not like we can't look back on it, but like, I'm looking back on it like, yeah, it's good we don't do this anymore. You know what I mean?

• 19:42Lizzie Bassett?

  100%.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Versus feeling bad about like, laughing at it now. I almost feel like there's no point to it. You know what I mean?

• 19:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Thank you. I feel validated. All right, our IMDb log line, as always, is "A small-town beauty pageant turns deadly as it becomes clear that someone will go to any lengths to win." All right, our main sources for today were Lewis Pitzman's 15-year oral history for BuzzFeed, and the 20th anniversary interview with IndieWire, and then also a great interview with Mindy Sterling for Women in Comedy. Okay, let's dive in.

• 20:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Our story today begins in Rosemont, Minnesota, where a nice young lady named Lana Williams was doing what any nice young lady in Rosemont, Minnesota does. She was competing in a pageant. She said, "There was a pageant that everybody did as a junior in high school. It literally was that everybody does it, except for a few fry girls didn't do it. When you look back on it, it was wacky. There were crazy talents that everybody did, but you didn't really think much of it." The year was 1985, and Lana Williams did well enough to become Minnesota's Junior Miss. She went on to the Nationals, where she finished as runner-up and won a $10,000 scholarship, but she was not in it for the love of the game.

• 20:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Just like Amber Atkins, she viewed pageants as a way to escape her small Midwestern town. And when she won the scholarship, that is what she did. She goes off to University of Minnesota, she took a screenwriting course there, and one of her professors encouraged her, of course, to move to California. She decides to give it a shot and seriously pursue screenwriting. And very quickly, she landed a job in LA as a writer's assistant on The Tracy Ullman Show. Now, here's where it gets interesting. She met a writer-producer named Jerry Belson. He got her in as a writer's assistant at The Simpsons, which of course began as shorts on The Tracy Ullman Show.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 21:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So, I don't know if you guys are familiar with this. I wasn't prior to researching for this episode, but Jerry Belson wrote a movie called Smile, which came out in 1975. There is actually a lot of discourse online about the idea that Williams ripped off Smile for Drop Dead Gorgeous. It is a movie about a teen beauty pageant in Santa Rosa, California. You actually can't rent it. I was able to kind of piece together most chunks of it online through being able to watch it in pieces. It's very good. I don't know that I agree with how many of the reviews and comments have said that this is a total rip of this movie. It does not feel like that.

• 22:14Lizzie Bassett?

  It definitely feels possible that, or likely, that she saw this and was like, wait a minute, I lived that, and I could do this from the teenage girl's perspective, which is what I think she does with Drop Dead Gorgeous, and in some ways, does it a bit better, I think. Smile has almost like a Robert Altman quality to it. It's funny, but it's not slapstick. And also, it's mostly focused on the like, middle-aged men who are judging the pageant, and not in a creepy way. They're just like, more the characters that it's following than the girls. So, all that being said, it's an interesting crossing of streams there between her and Jerry Belson. I do not buy into the ideology that she stole the idea for Drop Dead Gorgeous.

• 22:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Having watched it, that does not add up.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  To me, it feels like, what, sometimes people rush to say certain horror movies are too similar, and it's like, it's horror. There are tropes to it. So it's like, it's not like we could only have X number of movies about a beauty pageant.

• 23:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  It's almost like wrestling or something, where it's like, there's a lot of different situations where a great movie would be made out of this. So, again, I guess I'd have to see Smile.

• 23:22Lizzie Bassett?

  It's good.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  But it doesn't, it's a variation on an existing theme. That seems interesting.

• 23:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm with you 100%. So we'll leave that there. Williams said that when she was on The Simpsons, she basically just felt like the typist. Like, that was her job. But even if she was just transcribing, she was still absorbing so much about screenwriting. And she also wrote a ton of spec scripts while she was there. She voiced a few Simpsons characters, including Amber Dempsey in the pageant episode, Lisa the Beauty Queen. And then she went off to work as a staff writer on Someone Like Me, which was short-lived, and then eventually The Drew Carey Show, where she worked as a writer and producer for quite a long time, from 95 to 2004. And during this time, she wrote a spec script called Dairy Queens, based heavily on her own experiences in the small-town pageant world. And Chris, just in case anybody is not familiar, are you able to explain sort of what a spec

• 24:12Lizzie Bassett?

  script is, or at least was? Because I know that it's sort of different now.

• 24:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so a spec script is literally just a script that you write speculatively. You're doing all of the work yourself, you haven't been commissioned to do this, you're not being paid to do it upfront. For the most part, they're used as samples as reference material to try to get other jobs. Spec scripts, you know, statistically rarely sell. They do, obviously, sometimes. And even if you do get on something like The Blacklist nowadays, again, most of the time, that's a signaling event. Most of those movies don't get made. There used to be more of a phenomenon where you would write specs of existing television shows to try to get staffed on those shows. My understanding is that's not done as frequently now. I've not seen requests for that, although Katie Dippold, who did Widows Bay, I believe

• 24:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Widows Bay kind of started as a Parks and Rec spec script originally, but that might not be 100% correct.

• 25:03Lizzie Bassett?

  That's funny. Oh, interesting.

• 25:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so typically, the spec script is a, you're trying to show your voice, and it's very personal in many instances.

• 25:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that makes a lot of sense, because what she wrote was based on so many things that she herself experienced when doing the pageant circuit. By the way, that ladder dance, she said that was real. She said, "We use little ladders in our dance at Nationals, which is just a fucking nightmare. That's the worst thing to ever use onstage to all around and dance with."

• 25:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, rickety little ladders. The fact that they never break, they just keep going with the paint the whole time.

• 25:38Lizzie Bassett?

  That's amazing.

• 25:39Chris Winterbauer?

  And then they're just using legit turpentine on their skin afterwards is also hilarious.

• 25:44Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so funny. That might be one of my favorite numbers in the entire thing, is when they're just more and more covered in paint as they keep going. During this time, she also took classes at The Groundlings, which is where she met Mindy Sterling, who of course, she plays Iris Clarke in this movie. And then, in the same year, she played Frau Farbisena in Austin Powers. It's a pretty banger of a year for Mindy.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  So good. She's so funny.

• 26:09Lizzie Bassett?

  She really is. And this script, called Dairy Queens, caught the eye of Michael Patrick Jan, who was a young comedy director looking for his first feature. Now, he'd come out of NYU as part of a comedy group, The New Group, which was full of other students, including Thomas Lennon, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter, Carrie Kenny Silver, David Wayne, and more. After graduation, the troupe continued performing, including an off-Broadway show that, of course, caught the attention of some talent agents who encouraged them to change their name to The State. Chris, you brought this up. Do you remember The State when it was on MTV? Can you explain this?

• 26:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't remember The State. My first experience with them was Wet Hot American Summer.

• 26:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, do you remember, Hallie?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I didn't watch them. I don't know why, because I was obsessed with comedy at the time, that like, I would have been watching them. I don't know what, like, they are my comedy blind spot, I feel like. I know them now. I know they're individual members, like, since then, but the actual initial thing.

• 27:03Chris Winterbauer?

  There was like Mad TV and them, and Living Color and SNL, and it was like, there was a lot, you know what I mean, going on at the time.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, way more sketch comedy, yeah.

• 27:10Lizzie Bassett?

  So I watched Mad TV quite a bit, growing up, and then I also watched Reno 911, which, as we'll learn, morphs out of this group. But I also didn't see The State, which makes sense. We were too young to have watched it, and also, it didn't do very well. So, what happened is, their sketch group, The State, was picked up by MTV. And even though MTV had bought the pilot, as is often the case, they maybe didn't really want what they had actually bought. So they started asking for a ton of changes to the material to make it more appealing to younger audiences, and basically kind of dumb it down. And Jan is not happy about this. So the show received pretty mixed, to, in some cases, kind of bad reviews, and only ran from January of 94 to August of 95.

• 27:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, as I mentioned, many of his co-stars went off to create Reno 911, which I loved.

• 27:58Chris Winterbauer?

  The cops references in this are pretty good, too. And the payoff when cops shows up and they all know each other is also.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Excellent. What a funny moment.

• 28:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Very funny.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  That's so good.

• 28:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Made us laugh so hard when they're shaking hands with all the cops cameramen. Of course, also, you mentioned Wet Hot American Summer. That's also born out of this group. But Jan went on to Drop Dead Gorgeous. Now, he loved the script, especially how unconventional it was. He said, "I felt like it just wouldn't be like anything else, and that was really attractive to me. Deliberately or not, it undoes the idea of a story. It refuses to be the story that it sets out to be." I agree. It's pitched sort of, or set up rather, as this like girl versus girl competition, and it ends up being about the emptiness of success and the American dream. So when he took it to New Line, Chris, you'll like this, his pitch was, this is for everybody who saw Clueless and was like, fuck them.

• 28:53Chris Winterbauer?

  What, what do they have against Clueless?

• 28:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know.

• 28:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Clueless is great. I feel like Clueless was everybody who saw, she saw that and said, fuck them, although Clueless came out first. So whatever. Don't be a smirch in Clueless.

• 29:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Because I also feel like it does have like what Clueless also have, which is like depictions of relationships between women and girls that is actually like very like thoughtful and tender.

• 29:16Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  And it's like, they are rich. And so it is more about that. But also, that's kind of what Clueless is about. Like, that's an important element of the movie. But other than that, it's like, listen, as someone who was 14, 15 when Drop Dead Gorgeous came out, and of course, slightly younger when Clueless came out, still some of the best movies we got.

• 29:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Love them so much. As a girl who was like, a little younger or around that age, I'm like, not that this is my life, but like, it speaks to something that is true. And like, the nice part about being a girl versus the idea that like, there's some sort of animosity between, I don't know.

• 29:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree. So he was very conscious that the mockumentary format had, up to this point, been pretty dominated by Christopher Guest. So he didn't want to have the same kind of loose environment to this movie that you have with something like Waiting for Guffman or Best in Show. And according to him, he achieved that by really meticulously framing Drop Dead Gorgeous. And also, there's not a lot of improv that's on camera, apparently. There's some that may have happened in rehearsal, but really, everything is heavily scripted, which I think you can tell.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  And I love, I like it. I like, not everyone needs to be Christopher Guest.

• 30:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, he could do it. And then when other people try to do it, it's like, rein them in, you know?

• 30:28Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. So the movie went into production with a screenwriter who, as we discussed, had never written a feature before, a director who had never directed a feature before, and also a producer named Gavin Pallone, apologies if I've mispronounced your name, who had never produced a feature before. So let's talk briefly about him. He'd worked his way up the ranks at ICM to become a literary agent, which does not mean books, it means you represent writers. And he actually, at one point, had applied for a job at the CIA, but he decided to stick to being an agent. And ICM got suspicious that he was planning to defect. They fired him. He moves on to another agency that merged with UTA, where he again rises to new heights. And again, they fire him, this time for alleged inappropriate

• 31:10Lizzie Bassett?

  conduct, which he denies, they deny. It's a mess. He countersues, UTA settles. Now, I literally don't have time to go through how many times this man has continued to be sued and countersued by UTA, but it is a wild amount. It is wild, with both sides claiming unsavory behavior. And this was a crazy time to be an agent, I'm sure.

• 31:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Do you know what his production company is apparently called?

• 31:32Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 31:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Pariah.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 31:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I kind of like him for that. All right. So in the midst of all these lawsuits, though, he decided to pivot from being an agent to a producing career, perhaps because he was tired of being sued by the agents. So he kicked off his new career pivot with Drop Dead Gorgeous. Since Drop Dead Gorgeous, he has produced quite a lot of well-known projects, including Zombie Land, Curb Your Enthusiasm, many more. But here's the real fun fact, and the reason we're diving into him a little bit, is that according to Pallone himself, he became really fascinated on this movie by the complicated mother-daughter relationships shown in Drop Dead Gorgeous. And he starts ruminating on an idea for a TV series, one that would explore a very close mother-daughter relationship that was messy, but maybe less of a-

• 32:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Gilmore Girls?

• 32:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Gilmore Girls.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Oh, how funny.

• 32:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Carmella's favorite show.

• 32:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  I've never seen it.

• 32:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, it's cute.

• 32:27Chris Winterbauer?

  It's good.

• 32:28Lizzie Bassett?

  He pitched the concept to Amy Sherman-Palladino, and he has said, Gilmore Girls wouldn't exist if I had not produced that movie, referring to Drop Dead Gorgeous.

• 32:36Chris Winterbauer?

  That's interesting.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 32:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Amy Sherman-Palladino also could write a Drop Dead Gorgeous.

• 32:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 32:42Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like she could do that tone very well.

• 32:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 32:45Chris Winterbauer?

  She's very good at that.

• 32:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It would have had 500,000 more words in it, though, because everyone would have been talking at 100 miles per hour.

• 32:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. Quick sidebar. I read the pilot script for Bunheads, which was short-lived, but it was good show.

• 32:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I remember.

• 32:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Because one of my producing professors in film school was the line producer on it. Anyway, we get the script. This is gonna be wrong. It was like 65 to 70 pages. And I thought, was this an hour-long show? And he goes, no, it's a half hour.

• 33:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 33:10Chris Winterbauer?

  And I was like, and no other writer, they would never accept a script that long from any other writer, but because it was Amy Sherman-Palladino, they knew the dialogue was going to be delivered so quickly that that would translate to 30 seconds a page, which is crazy.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  I also want to shout out to Amy Sherman-Palladino, her commitment to wearing a wacky hat.

• 33:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. Every day is the Kentucky Derby for Amy Sherman-Palladino.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  She's not wearing a full, it's like, she's wearing like a fairly normal outfit below the neck, and then a top hat. And it's like, no one's doing it like that.

• 33:39Lizzie Bassett?

  I never can. I never will.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Never would. Couldn't, wouldn't try.

• 33:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Wouldn't try, but good for her. All right. Well, right away, though, these three newbies, our writer, producer, and director, were at odds. Particularly, Lana Williams was at odds with both of the men. She later told BuzzFeed of Jan, I just found him to be a bit of an asshole. I remember going out in the rain, crying, going to my rental car, like, having a full-body cry, because I felt like, oh, my God, this could get away and not turn out the way I see it. There were a couple of things like that, and then I pulled myself together, but I really didn't favor him. He'd also told BuzzFeed, it was hard for Williams, because she was really new to the whole thing. Sir, it sounds like you were too. Anyway, and there was a lot going on. There was a lot going on that I don't think she was entirely plugged into, and reasons for things to happen, I think

• 34:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I probably could have been nicer. As a 26-year-old, I was probably a little more like, no, we're fucking doing it this way. What are you talking about? I was maybe a tiny bit insensitive at that time in my life. Which, like, I appreciate that he can recognize that that's, you know, he was, he was doing the thing of like, you don't understand versus explaining to her what was actually going on, which is just never gonna get you anywhere. But they really did not see eye to eye on anything. And in fact, Williams had written a part for herself in the film. It was the candy striper in the hospital.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 34:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Get the fuck out. What did she say? Like, unless you come back here with my smokes or whatever?

• 35:01Lizzie Bassett?

  What a nice, cool, mint help if I shoved it up your ass.

• 35:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 35:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. You have a blessed day. But Gavin Pallone was the one who told her she was too old for the part. And she said, are you fucking kidding me? I wrote that for me. I can do a couple of lines. She was 32 years old. She, of course, instead, ended up playing who, Hallie?

• 35:23Speaker 02

  The, our judge, whose name escapes me.

• 35:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Gene Kangas.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Gene Kangas, who does not have one line and is sexually harassed by her boss in the workplace, and is the saddest woman in this town, which, and that all adds up, now that you're telling this story.

• 35:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And also, you mentioned she has no lines in the film. That was also by design, because she was then considered a featured extra and was not paid.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I'm against this Gavin Pallone guy. He should be a pariah.

• 35:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I mean, I don't love that. I also, I just don't love that they, you know, push her into this part, and then the part itself is such a, like, subjugation. Unfortunately for me, knowing this, it makes that less funny, when initially, I thought it was so funny that that was the writer of the movie.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Oh, 100%. I love whenever either the writer or director is in a movie. I think that's so, like, such a funny thing. And to have that be your character, I'm like, that's hilarious.

• 36:17Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also interesting that she probably overlapped with Charlie Kaufman on The Drew Carey Show. And Charlie Kaufman, in adaptation, which comes out two years after this, has written himself into the behind-the-scenes footage of being John Malkovich, being ignored by everybody on set, in much the same way as her in this movie.

• 36:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Was that 99, too?

• 36:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Being John Malkovich was 99. Yeah.

• 36:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, wow. What a year. All right. So Williams also really had wanted no name actors for all the roles, because she wanted this to be a true documentary, which everybody was like, that's stupid. You know, like, we don't want people to think this is real. The Blair Witch Project did, of course, come out that year. So, you know, there was potentially a world where they could have done it. But obviously, New Line Cinema did need big names to sell it. So New Line, Jan, and Lana Williams reached a happy medium. Aside from the main cast, the rest of the girls competing for the American team princess pageant were local hires from the Minneapolis area, which apparently made it easier to nail

• 37:16Lizzie Bassett?

  the authentic Midwestern look, which started with the eyebrows. Jan basically was like, listen, all these Hollywood girls are gonna have these 90s, you know, super plucked thin-

• 37:28Chris Winterbauer?

  No eyebrows, period.

• 37:29Lizzie Bassett?

  And you can tell, because Kirsten Dunst has that, Denise Richards has it to a certain extent, and then you see the ones that are definitely from Minnesota, and it's like, hell, yeah.

• 37:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, it's like, what were we doing? Give me a good, I want huge eyebrows.

• 37:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  It was a weird time for eyebrows.

• 37:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I'll take a unibrow over no eyebrows, happily. Give me a Frida. Give me a Frida Callahan.

• 37:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Absolutely. But you know what's weird is that the ones who have the super plucked thin eyebrows in this actually look so much more dated than the ones who are just like girls that went to the casting call.

• 37:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Full brow has come back in a big way. Yeah.

• 38:02Lizzie Bassett?

  But this is my favorite fun fact about this entire movie. One of those local hires, local girls for the pageant, was Amy Adams.

• 38:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Amy Adams, yeah.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 38:13Chris Winterbauer?

  You can tell, you can tell.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  She's so good. Like, it's just really, it's wonderful.

• 38:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, I don't want to say this in a leering way. She's like jacked. She looks athletic as hell in this movie.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Well, perfect for like, a cheerleader.

• 38:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. She looks like a legit cheer, like a very strong cheerleader.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Lizzie Bassett?

  So this was obviously her debut film. And she had begun her career as a dancer in a dinner theater in Colorado, before she landed a job at the Chan-Hayson Dinner Theaters in Minneapolis, a restaurant that showed musical theater and cabaret performances while dining. And she also, on the side, was picking up extra shifts working at Hooters.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 38:52Lizzie Bassett?

  She said, quote, "It was a really good job, because at the time, minimum wage was $3.85, and they were willing to pay $7 to the hostesses. And that, for me, saving up for a car and being a dancer, I ran around in tights and a leotard all day long. Anyway, I learned that there was a difference between dance class and Hooters, though, very quickly."

• 39:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Shout out to Hooters waitresses, especially the ones who, there was an article written by a gentleman who was gay and his dad maybe could sense that and would repeatedly take him to Hooters.

• 39:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 39:20Chris Winterbauer?

  But then all the women there who worked there like

• 39:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Could tell.

• 39:22Chris Winterbauer?

  knew he was gay and just like treated him wonderfully and he

• 39:26Lizzie Bassett?

  That's so sweet.

• 39:26Chris Winterbauer?

  very much appreciated them. Also shout out Amy Adams in Junebug. She's so good in that movie.

• 39:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, she's amazing. Also shout out Hooters, the wings are pretty good.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  I don't think I've ever been, but I've heard that about the wings.

• 39:38Lizzie Bassett?

  They're kind of good. I like, listen, I'm not against Hooters. I know several people who have worked for Hooters and it was like a pretty decent job in some ways. In some ways it was horrible, obviously, and I'm not standing behind the idea that you should have a restaurant that is focused entirely on ogling women's breasts and legs.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Well, and also just the name Hooters is very funny.

• 39:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It's funny.

• 39:58Chris Winterbauer?

  They had an airline for a while.

• 40:00Lizzie Bassett?

  What?

• 40:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you can look it up.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  But I think this ties into like, America is such a strange place.

• 40:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It's weird. We're weird.

• 40:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, have you seen the bikini coffee stands in Seattle?

• 40:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh my god.

• 40:11Chris Winterbauer?

  So that was one of our odd things growing up. We had these bikini coffee stands, like there was just a coffee stand, a little kiosk in the middle of nowhere and there were just like young women in bikinis running them.

• 40:21Lizzie Bassett?

  It's like a tent. It's like a glorified shed.

• 40:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's a yurt, basically. Yeah. It's really odd.

• 40:25Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really weird.

• 40:26Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like cold in Seattle. It doesn't make sense.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, I think I didn't end up going, but there's one like outside Fresno that we were in the area. I'm like, I guess we could go, but you know, next time.

• 40:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Next time. A must see. So Amy Adams, of course, saw the casting call for Dairy Queens, still the title of this movie, ace her audition and was cast immediately. Now, as for the names, Kirsten Dunst, at this point, was obviously already a huge star. Interview with the Vampire, Little Women, Jumanji.

• 40:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Virgin suicides right around this time, maybe?

• 40:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Had filmed, but hadn't come out. But Jan actually cast her based on her performance on Celebrity Jeopardy. Fun fact, she got the Anne Rice question wrong.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so funny.

• 41:06Lizzie Bassett?

  But he still cast her. He just, he said she seemed very sweet and normal and he said, quote, "That's the girl who can grab the microphone out of the dead reporter's hand and joyfully keep reporting with no guile." Just true. She's so good. She's very young when they film this. I believe she's actually 16 or 17 years old. Now Denise Richards was not 16 years old. She was 28 and she looks it.

• 41:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Lizzie Bassett?

  She was riding high from Wild Things, of course, and I genuinely think she has been underserved by Hollywood her entire career.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Absolute, couldn't agree more. Having just watched Wild Things recently than this movie, she's so good, so funny.

• 41:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, she's not a bad actor. Like the idea that Denise Richards is bad is she's been miscast her entire career.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, if you cast her as Dr. Christmas Jones, nuclear scientist in, what is it, Die Another Day or which one is that one?

• 41:56Chris Winterbauer?

  The World Is Not Enough, I think.

• 41:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 41:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Again, it's like that, you're pigeonholing her. She could do a lot more.

• 42:02Chris Winterbauer?

  No, but could she have been the Bond villain?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 42:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Could she have been in Austin Powers? Yes.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  She would have been perfect. Yes.

• 42:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Absolutely.

• 42:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 42:14Chris Winterbauer?

  A lot of vagina.

• 42:15Lizzie Bassett?

  A lot of vagina. She would have crushed.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I mean, and again, I like Heather Graham, but I always thought Heather Graham, we need a different energy. Like this is just not meshing with.

• 42:22Chris Winterbauer?

  She was too innocent.

• 42:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Chris Winterbauer?

  She's, Heather Graham is guileless in the way that Kirsten Dunst is.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  And then Beyonce, because she's 18 in the, they have to make it so clear they're not fucking, that it's like, when you see them interact, it's like, oh yeah, no, that would be insane. You know what I mean?

• 42:40Lizzie Bassett?

  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&M's, 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 night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispy treats and peanut butter M&M's 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.

• 43:23Lizzie Bassett?

  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.

• 43:49Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. So Allison Janney actually got the role following a recommendation from Brittany Murphy, who had already been cast.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 43:56Lizzie Bassett?

  They had starred together on Broadway in A View From the Bridge, great play, and Murphy said, "You gotta cast this woman."

• 44:02Chris Winterbauer?

  She's fantastic.

• 44:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I mean, amazing. Murphy, of course, was a much bigger star. She's coming off of Clueless. She also had Girl Interrupted come out this same year. This was peak Brittany Murphy. I just, she was so good. She's another one, we've talked about this when we did Clueless, but like she, she ends up taking a turn shortly after this where she just gets miscast for the rest of her, unfortunately, very short career, but she was so funny and she's so funny in this. That laugh that she does? Here's Peter as Liza.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  My, probably my favorite, where they're doing the interview montage and they just let play her laugh for like 20 seconds is so good. And it's just, she's just so naturally charming. Like she is a star, like obviously.

• 44:45Lizzie Bassett?

  She's so great. Allison Janney, though, was not a big enough actress at the time to be invited to the premiere in 99, which I guess also meant that she wasn't even on the poster.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 44:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, of course, The West Wing, which broke her out big time, premiered in September of 1999, shortly following Drop Dead Gorgeous, so that would all change. And she has said that of Drop Dead Gorgeous, "It's the thing that people come out of the blue to me and say, oh my god, I absolutely loved you in," and I'm thinking they're gonna say Mom or The West Wing, but instead it's Drop Dead Gorgeous.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  She's so funny.

• 45:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Are we on Cops again?

• 45:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Hi. I think she has some of the only actually improvised lines in the movie. I believe when she looks at the camera and says, "I got some," I think that that was off the cuff, which is so funny. So they actually wanted Goldie Hawn for Ellen Barkin's role as Amber's mom. I'm not sure why that didn't happen, but they ended up with Ellen Barkin, who is wonderful.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 45:37Lizzie Bassett?

  She was only on set for about two weeks and actually never filmed with Kirstie Alley, which may have been a good thing because unfortunately, it sounds like Kirstie Alley was a bit of a pain in the ass on this movie.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Doesn't surprise me, but that is too bad.

• 45:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. They originally wanted Sigourney Weaver, which is interesting.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Kirstie's perfect for this role.

• 45:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I think so too.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 45:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Because, and this, the way that Jan described it is spot on, it's that she's trying so hard to appear as poised as someone like Sigourney Weaver, but she can't keep her shit together and that's so much more Kirstie Alley and she's very good at it.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Constantly slipping through her fingers. It's like, and also like that is a Paula Pell, I can't remember the exact phrase, she's like, describe a Midwestern woman, a polite liar or something, or like a charming liar. And there was something where it's like, this is such a performance, but she has such total control and then to see her lose it, I'm like, it's such a good character.

• 46:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 46:32Chris Winterbauer?

  And I believe that she would get on the roof of a supermarket with a high powered rifle at the end of the movie.

• 46:39Lizzie Bassett?

  For sure.

• 46:39Chris Winterbauer?

  When it totally makes sense.

• 46:41Lizzie Bassett?

  So filming began in July of 1998 on location in and around Minneapolis-St. Paul. Now, by most accounts, the cast had a great time and really got along, of course, with one exception, and that exception is Kirstie Alley.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  That's too bad.

• 46:54Lizzie Bassett?

  She filmed for about two weeks. She kept to herself and on the first day of set, she reportedly announced to the cast that she's just quit smoking, she's on a diet, and she's got her period, and she's not fucking kidding. You know what? I appreciate that. At least give them a warning.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:10Lizzie Bassett?

  She also refused to wear many of the costumes chosen for her and wouldn't show up for fittings. She actually had her clothes sent to the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood and she would try them on there.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 47:21Lizzie Bassett?

  She refused to work with the onset dialect coach, which when I watched it again, knowing that, her accent is not as good as the other ones. You can tell a difference. In case anybody doesn't know, she was a Scientologist for over 40 years. She did attribute Scientology counseling to getting her off of drugs, specifically cocaine. Now, according to Mindy Sterling's recall, Kirstie Alley wasn't really very sure of herself and of the character and at one point she actually turned to Mindy Sterling and said, "Well, maybe I should actually read the script."

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:55Lizzie Bassett?

  And Lana Williams was particularly not impressed by her, telling BuzzFeed, "I didn't think she was funny. That, to me, was the biggest crime, regardless of her attitude or her, I will or won't do this. If you're really great, I don't think any of that matters in the end, but I just didn't find her funny." I don't agree.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  She crushed it. I'm sorry.

• 48:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I know.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Wrong. I'm so sorry. Destroyed that role.

• 48:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Sounds like she just was method.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. That's a great point.

• 48:19Chris Winterbauer?

  She was just kind of acting like the character.

• 48:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Jan was more sympathetic. He basically was just like, you know, she was the biggest star on set and big stars are, you know, uncooperative, but he felt that she did do a great job. I agree, but it sounds like she was not the most fun to work with.

• 48:33Chris Winterbauer?

  I would have to imagine, I don't want to excuse everything, but Kirstie Alley was a great beauty who struggled with dealing with like her weight, you know, because of Hollywood's expectations for many years. She'd had a drug problem. And then here are these, all these up and coming young actresses that you're acting around to. It's such a meta-commentary on the movie itself too, in, from that perspective, I think. You know, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, you know, they'll all go on to achieve more than, you know, maybe arguably she did in her career. And she's also like probably 15 years older than the producer of the movie and 10 years older than the writer and 15 years older than the director. I don't know. I could just see it being a tough environment, you know?

• 49:15Lizzie Bassett?

  A couple other fun facts about filming. During Denise Richards's iconic dance number with the puppet Jesus.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  So good.

• 49:23Chris Winterbauer?

  The best part. She bears his cross.

• 49:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Guys, 110%. They filled that auditorium with locals from the area and they walked out because they were so offended by the puppet Jesus number.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 49:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Ba-da, ba-da, ba-da, ba-da. It's amazing. And on September 11th, Drop Dead Gorgeous wrapped. Now, at this point, the movie was still called Dairy Queens, but guess who wasn't stoked about that, if you had to guess?

• 49:52Chris Winterbauer?

  New line?

• 49:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Or?

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Kirstie Alley?

• 49:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Dairy Queen?

• 49:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Dairy Queen.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Dairy Queen.

• 49:58Lizzie Bassett?

  The correct answer is Dairy Queen. Yes. They actually sued the movie in order to force a title change and they wrote in their lawsuit, "ADQ," American Dairy Queen, "is particularly concerned that the title Dairy Queens will cause the public to associate its trademarked name with the unwholesome content of the film."

• 50:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, maybe Dairy Queen would be doing better now if they had.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  They'd be a lot edgier. I mean, they could have used the.

• 50:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 50:22Lizzie Bassett?

  David loves Dairy Queen.

• 50:23Chris Winterbauer?

  He does.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  I love Dairy Queen. I don't know if there is one in LA, but I, I, the dominance of Baskin Robbins in certain areas, I'm like, I don't need this. I do need a Dairy Queen.

• 50:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It's true. It is delicious. Uh, one other little fun fact about a legal issue they ran into on this movie was that basically every single combination of teen princess such and such had been used for a pageant, which I believe is why they added the Sarah Rose cosmetics, American teen princess.

• 50:48Chris Winterbauer?

  But that's the best.

• 50:50Lizzie Bassett?

  It's perfect.

• 50:51Chris Winterbauer?

  And I just, I guaranteed it's a network marketing MLM. It has to be, right? It's like Mary Kay, something like that. And I love, it just makes it so much better that it's gone bust at the end.

• 51:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, yes.

• 51:04Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also empty. I loved it.

• 51:05Lizzie Bassett?

  It's incredible. All right. So Drop Dead Gorgeous was always supposed to be dark. I mean, it was from the script. My understanding is that the script did not really change from when it was bought to when it was made. But as is often the case, New Line had buyer's remorse when they saw the test screening numbers start to come back. And it probably didn't help that the original ending was way darker. In the original ending, Gladys, Kirstie Alley's character, actually died by suicide in prison.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 51:35Lizzie Bassett?

  And then in the next scene, you see her feet swinging in the jail cell and it pans down to an ashtray with a still lit cigarette. Then the shooting spree still happens, but it's at the hands of Hildebrand, the older woman who had to give up her damned tiara during World War II.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Ooh, okay.

• 51:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So it's also like confusing because she like snapped as a result of the pageant kind of going bust. But anyway, I do like that, but that is very dark.

• 52:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. The ending is better, I think now, even though, if it was a novel, go with that version. You know what I mean?

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Well, though, I will say the other movie that I kept thinking about, um, as a teen girl, which I of course hated when it came out, was American Beauty. And there is something, like this was a very dark time. And I feel like, like, yeah, like the ending we have now is like the appropriate one for a comedy. But I don't know. I feel like we were, there's a lot more suicide or like, yeah, like.

• 52:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Jawbreakers?

• 52:30Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, Heathers. Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  I love, I love Jawbreaker. So it's like, I guess it was also of the time, but I could see how.

• 52:38Lizzie Bassett?

  No, this was, this is a bridge too far.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 52:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So not only were the test scores bad, the movie was tracking very poorly. No one had heard of it or seemed to have any interest in seeing it. So New Line started pushing for a bunch of edits to make it fall in line with something more like Clueless, something more lighthearted, more sympathetic to the cool girls, which is like hard to do with this movie. Jan felt very burned because everybody had been so positive on this all the way up until the test screenings and now they're second guessing everything. Also because these edits cost them their original release date. It moved the film back to a July drop, which now pitted it against this bonkers lineup. Big Daddy, American Pie, The Blair Witch Project, and Runaway Bride, all released in July of 1999. So Drop Dead

• 53:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Gorgeous dropped on July 23rd and it was a certified big time flopper.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Oh, too bad.

• 53:34Lizzie Bassett?

  On a budget of around $15 million, it debuted at number 12 and took in only $3.9 million its opening weekend. It earned only about $10 million during its entire theatrical run. And it does sound like New Line kind of just dumped it. They'd had a massive success with Austin Powers just one month before. They kind of buried Drop Dead Gorgeous probably because it was tracking so poorly, especially when compared to something like Austin Powers. And to top it all off, the reviews were bad. People compared it endlessly to Smile. Most seemed genuinely upset at how cruel the film was. According to Janet Maslin at the New York Times, quote, "In the guise of sending up beauty pageants, now there's

• 54:16Lizzie Bassett?

  a new one. Drop Dead Gorgeous manages to load up on stereotypes, sneer smugly at Minnesota, stage a scene in which beauty contestants vomit en masse and make its audience wince through what may be a record number of miserably unfunny jokes. I do not agree that this is sneering at Minnesota."

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Well, also it's like, the reason that you can do all these dark things is because it is laugh out loud funny. Like, yes, if there were no laughs, this would be a hard watch. I mean, if we're playing it that, with that tone, I guess so much of comedy is subjective that it is, as someone who truly loves it.

• 54:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I think also that like we were, we were still, this is 99, right? We're 10 years from the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're in American exceptionalism. We believe.

• 54:57Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true.

• 54:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, this movie is saying, no, all of that is wrong. You know, we are a hollow empire. We are a Scythian falling empire of consumerism and nothingness. And, you know, that's the joke, the cosmic joke of it is like, it actually, I think portrays Minnesotans very sympathetically in the sense that they actually all continue to get on and remain optimistic with the exception of Kirstie Alley.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  And that's the American way.

• 55:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Ellen Barkin has lost her hand at the end and she's still cheering for her daughter.

• 55:27Lizzie Bassett?

  When she tries to break the beer can open and then use your hand.

• 55:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, anyway. But it's weird to me too that they're comparing it to Smile because that movie was 24 years prior.

• 55:40Lizzie Bassett?

  That's very weird.

• 55:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Even if it was a remake, you know, or a loose retelling, I, you know, I just find that so odd.

• 55:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. And it's not a remake. It's not even really a loose retelling. It's, it exists in the same world. And yes, there are some, some tonal similarities, but I wouldn't even argue that they're that strong, that this movie is much darker.

• 56:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Even if it were beat for beat, my point is it's been 25 years. Who cares?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I completely agree.

• 56:09Lizzie Bassett?

  It just goes to show you that they don't feel like there's space for two movies to exist in this world over the course of 25 years, which, you know.

• 56:15Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's funny because Smile, from your point, or I haven't seen it, but Lizzie, you were saying, it seems like it's very focused on the male perspective. And obviously, this movie, Lana Williams, she was, she wanted it to be from the female perspective, you know, which is very different.

• 56:28Lizzie Bassett?

  That's my guess. It's completely editorialized, but I have to imagine she did watch that movie considering she worked with Jerry Belson. And I, the movie is great. And I actually do think it, it does a lot for teenage girls that was less common back then in particular. But it does focus quite a bit on the middle aged men. And I wonder if she watched it and thought, this would be so funny if I really took it, you know, all the way. It came from the teenage girl perspective and made it about a mass murderer. And she was right. So the reviews really devastated Lana Williams. She said, "It was so hurtful on a deep level because there was so much of myself in this. Just thinking back to my script, I thought it was all so funny and I thought everyone would find it funny. And then when people didn't, I was completely caught off guard."

• 57:12Lizzie Bassett?

  As for Jan, he was really frustrated that so many reviews seemed to be comparing it unfavorably to other mockumentaries, which had seemed like an emerging genre. So he said, "It just felt like, well, fuck." But of course, Drop Dead Gorgeous would get a second life thanks to at home rentals. As Gia Tolentino wrote for The New Yorker, quote, "The transformation of Drop Dead Gorgeous from a flop to a venerated artifact of Y2K era camp began with bored teenagers, most of them female and/or queer, who flocked to blockbusters around the country and rented the movie over and over."

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 57:45Lizzie Bassett?

  This was me.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  I remember getting the DVD probably for either a birthday or Christmas, but I remember being like, I need to own this movie.

• 57:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  And that was, that was part of some celebration. Cause I don't think I saw it in theaters. Like I, it honestly might not have even opened near me. Like, I feel like I was like kind of far out. But as soon as I was able to like know about it, I love this movie.

• 58:05Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's been hard to find on streaming for a long time.

• 58:07Lizzie Bassett?

  So that's the other part of it. And that I think that actually helped the cult status a bit was that for many, many years, this was almost impossible to find. You actually couldn't stream it. And then the DVD, I think, was out of production for a long period where you couldn't, it was kind of a prized possession. In 2019, it finally hit streaming. It was eventually picked up by Revry, which is an LGBTQI plus streaming service who reported it was their top title.

• 58:32Chris Winterbauer?

  But now it's on Tubi, I think.

• 58:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. And this is, by the way, an argument though, to get physical media. If you love a movie, if you are watching it over and over, there is no guarantee it will always be available. I bought this on Blu-ray.

• 58:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Can I make an appeal? If anybody from Warner Brothers is listening, which I think there are a couple of people that are, Warner Brothers has a new independent distribution label called Clockwork that is doing some interesting stuff. And I think they should do a Blu-ray remaster, re-release of Drop Dead Gorgeous.

• 59:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 59:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Warner Brothers owns New Line now, so I would make an appeal to them. I think that would do very well. And it would be great. And you could reach out to us and we could help with the, uh, behind the scenes interviews or anything like that.

• 59:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Happy to. So 15 years later, in 2014, BuzzFeed contacted Lana Williams for the oral history that we drew from for this episode. And she revealed that she had been so hurt after the movie's release that she had not watched it since it came out.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so sad.

• 59:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Following Drop Dead Gorgeous, she wrote an original script originally titled Sugar and Spice and Semi-Automatics about pregnant cheerleader bank robbers. However, after the 1999 Columbine shooting, the script was, of course, heavily altered. She ended up removing her name from the film, taking on a pseudonym. The film did become Sugar and Spice. Later, she wrote some dialogue for Shark Tale and Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, but she has not written another feature. And I wish she would. I really wish she would.

• 59:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. But, but, but another feature written by her has not been

• 1:00:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Produced, yes.

• 1:00:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Because I, I just want to emphasize for our audience, some, sometimes I'll see articles that say, like, this screenwriter was hired and they've never written a feature before. No, they've probably written a dozen. They just may not have been produced yet. You know what I mean? And they may have sold a dozen. It's very hard to get a movie made.

• 1:00:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's not even necessarily an indictment or a suggestion of quality.

• 1:00:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:00:21Chris Winterbauer?

  It could be these, it could be they've written great scripts, but for whatever reason, it's been hard to find a place in the market.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  But, but I do think, to your point, that now's the time. I feel like

• 1:00:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  There is a, I also think like, as, hopefully, we have more queer, like, film. I feel like this is so, because it is camp, you know, like, it is, or I mean, you could argue whether it's not, but it's just like, it's so good, it's so funny, it's so what I think people want. It's obviously dated, but it's like, what is the, the 2026 version of that? I think people really want it. And like, we have so few options, mostly because we're not making as many comedies. The late 90s was also so different in terms of like, how, the number of comedies that were coming out.

• 1:01:02Chris Winterbauer?

  The movie that came to mind recently for me that this made me think of was Bottoms.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I have not seen, but I did immediately associate that, just in terms of like, what they're trying to do with it.

• 1:01:13Chris Winterbauer?

  And then when you mentioned Sugar and Spice, because I had looked up Lana Williams' credits, I thought, oh, like, Harmony Corinne must have seen that before he did Spring Breakers.

• 1:01:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:01:22Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like, and then put James Franco in.

• 1:01:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I kind of liked Spring Breakers, though.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Oh, I loved it. I thought it's just like, absolutely.

• 1:01:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Spring Breakers is nuts. It's so fun. It's so wild.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  And again, something, getting something about America, like, the Americanness of it, where it's like, well, what if, huh? And then like, when they're just driving away at the end, it's like, yeah, what if, you know, like, I, yeah.

• 1:01:44Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a weird fairy tale. It's so, just such a weird movie.

• 1:01:47Lizzie Bassett?

  It is. All right. Well, at the end of the show, we always like to ask, what went right? And that can be anything. It can be an actor, it can be an element of the production, an element of the story. You can go first, or we can have Chris go first, whatever you want.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Chris, will you go first and I will think on it for a moment?

• 1:02:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure. You mentioned how this movie does a good job of showing the camaraderie of some female relationships, because we tend to have, look at like, look at the other options on the landscape. Look at the teen movie that broke out in 1999.

• 1:02:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:02:19Chris Winterbauer?

  American Pie, right? Not a lot of great

• 1:02:20Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:02:21Chris Winterbauer?

  female roles in that movie. Not a movie I go back to often, although in 1999, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  I was, I think I was deep into my teen girl angst that I was just, I, I think I saw it eventually, but I was just like, anything that anyone liked also was very, I was like, I can't, I can't. But yeah, it was a different time.

• 1:02:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Chris Winterbauer?

  But what I will say is, I appreciate that, but I also, though, wish we would get more great villain roles for some of these actresses, because I do think Denise Richards and Kirstie Alley are so good in this movie. And in, especially also in how they can, they just allow them to play the circumstances of the scenes. Like, you know, they're, like you said, the polite bitchy, when she gets on the goddamn swan, and Kirstie Alley says, tells her to smile, and then she just flashes that, like, angry smile immediately.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 1:03:15Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so funny. They're so good. I wish we got more of those types of roles, you know what I mean, for them?

• 1:03:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:03:21Chris Winterbauer?

  And for folks in general. So, I'll give it to those two.

• 1:03:23Lizzie Bassett?

  I, I am happy about that. One of my favorite Denise Richards moments in the entire movie is when she's in the, like, beautiful chiffon mini dress, reloading her rifle, and they tell her that Brett's just been killed hunting, and she goes, really? Well.

• 1:03:36Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a dangerous sport.

• 1:03:37Lizzie Bassett?

  So, anyway, my mom got me this rifle.

• 1:03:39Chris Winterbauer?

  This 30-06 for her birthday, yeah.

• 1:03:41Lizzie Bassett?

  So good. Yeah, she doesn't overplay anything.

• 1:03:44Chris Winterbauer?

  She got the nine mil when she was 13. She's shooting in heels. It's great.

• 1:03:48Lizzie Bassett?

  The Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club, yeah.

• 1:03:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, Hallie, how about you?

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  I think for me, and we talked about this earlier, but it really is the specificity of the location.

• 1:03:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  And how, like, because it's a time capsule is also like, why the characters are so fully flesh, feel fully fleshed out, for the most part. And I just like, there are so many, I think it's a sort of comedy, just because I feel like, any kind of LA set comedy, for example, you really have to make it about your experience in LA. It'd be like, I feel like, if you go too generic, it's like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, it's just, versus like this, it's like, I grew up in a small town in Ohio. I know exactly who these people are. I knew women like that at my church. My favorite moment is when they're complaining about the sign, like, the world's oldest lizard has already died, like, years before. And he's like, every year, I tell these goddamn striders to take it down. It's like, that guy, like, his day is consumed with trying to get the striders to take that shit down, but he's like, I'm not going to do it. And it's like, that is

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  what makes a small town great, is like, you know, you know that guy, you know Kirstie Alley, you know all these girls, and it's so sweet. I don't know. And again, not like I don't like a New Yorker and LA set comedy, but it just makes it special. And I think, like, that's what continues to make this feel special now.

• 1:04:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:04:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the New York LA stuff is always fish out of water, and these are fish in water.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  This is the water, and some of the fish are like, I gotta get out of here.

• 1:05:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  The smallest pond.

• 1:05:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Take down the goddamn free to sign, you lazy sons of bitches.

• 1:05:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Incredible. I, I have to give it to Lana Williams. I hope I haven't been mispronouncing your whole name, your name this whole episode, in case it's Lana Williams, but I just think that this screenplay is still so funny. And obviously, like, as we discussed, there are some elements that don't work. There's, you know, the, the Asian characters are really pretty rough. We didn't discuss this, but the former beauty queen with anorexia, I do think that that teeters and eventually falls over the line into being at her expense versus being a commentary on the prevalence of eating disorders in, you know, the pageant world, which it could have been, maybe, but it

• 1:05:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I could have seen it working more on the page, but it goes so broad in the execution.

• 1:05:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree with you.

• 1:05:54Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a little, it's tough.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  But I will say, when she performs

• 1:05:57Chris Winterbauer?

  When she performs, it's very funny.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  There is like, I'm like, this is funny.

• 1:06:00Lizzie Bassett?

  You guys, when the nurse starts speeding up for the, for when, you know, to the choreography as she's dancing, that's the thing, is like, it, this is such a funny script. This, I mean, so endlessly quotable, so many sharp lines, and the fact that, like, this was scripted. This is not heavily improvised. This is really what she put on the page. So, Lana, if you're, if you're listening, I fucking love this movie. I always have, I always will, and I would so love to see more from you, because it's very clear that you have such a skill, and particularly a skill for writing women, and that is something that we need. So, come back.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  We should hunt her down and send her this episode, and encourage her to, you know she's got some features kicking around her drawer. Like, I'm sure

• 1:06:49Lizzie Bassett?

  I hope so.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  There's just, but probably stuff that also, after it bombs, if you, if your first feature bombs, I don't know if it's as true now, but like, it also probably depends on, like, what genre or whatever, but it was at a time where it's like, if your first movie bombs, that's it. Like, you might have other work, but like, they penalized you in a way that, like, I guess now it's too chaotic to do that.

• 1:07:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I do think that because of streaming, there just are more outlets, and it maybe as a writer, like, the work can still kind of speak for itself. It makes it harder, for sure, because it's just harder to package. It's harder to get people attached, because, you know, they might think, well, the material's good, but the material was good the last time, and it didn't quite work. So, I don't think that's as punitive, but it, you know, it's, it's not easy.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Chris Winterbauer?

  I think.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  Well, I want to encourage her to, to give it another go. Please, we need it.

• 1:07:38Lizzie Bassett?

  We do.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Like, I, I want another movie like this.

• 1:07:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I do, too. All right. Well, Hallie, thank you so much for joining us. Tell the people where they can find you one more time.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Of course, thank you for having me. You can find me at the Ruined Podcast with Alison Libby, and all our socia's are at Ruined Podcast. If you like horror movies, if you can't watch them, if you're anywhere in between, please come listen. And thank you so much for having me on.

• 1:08:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Perfect. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. This was an absolute blast. Thank you for watching this movie and for discussing it with us. And we will be back on Monday with

• 1:08:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Thelma and Louise.

• 1:08:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Appropriately, Thelma and Louise. All right. I can't wait. Thanks again, Hallie.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you. Bye.

• 1:08:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Bye.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  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 H. Conley.