EP. 364.5 — Last Looks: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

 

[00:00:00] Jason Mantzoukas: DISCONNECT THE DISCORD!

[00:00:02] Music: [Last Looks Intro Song] [00:00:06] Paul Scheer: Hello, my freaky darlings. I’m your host, Paul Scheer. And this week, we have Jason along with us for the entire episode of How Did This Get Made Last Looks where you, the listener, get to voice your issues on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a movie that Discord user Johnny Unusual thinks should have had the tagline, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Menace in Venice. Thank you, Johnny Unusual for that alt tagline. Remember if you have an alt movie tagline or title submit it to us on our discord and we might just read it on the show.

[00:00:34] Jason, I needed to bring you in today because, you know, very rarely do you and I talk about the show after the show is over.

[00:00:41] And we were in Telluride and we both took a moment to talk about our experiences watching League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It shook us.

[00:00:50] Jason Mantzoukas: Right. Yes. It was such a bad move. It was so bad and it left such as bad taste in my mouth that I had to, because we had talked about Alan Quartermain and all of that adventure kind of serialized adventure storytelling.

[00:01:04] I had to watch Raiders just to get the taste of that movie out of my mouth. I watched Raiders and then I will, this is a plug, I will shut out the Blank Check podcast with our friend Brian Michael Bendis, incredible comics, comics writer, is the guest. It’s over three hours long. It’s incredible. It’s really a great episode of Blank Check talking about Raiders.

[00:01:28] Paul Scheer: It’s really, really good. And I did the opposite, which is I just listened to the episode because I know Raiders so well, but now I want to watch it again. But I did what you did, uh, before you recorded the episode, which is I went back to the comic books and I was like, the comic books are great.

[00:01:43] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh yeah.

[00:01:44] Paul Scheer: This is, um, man, we gotta, we’re going to get into it. Cause the discord is very upset that we’re upset with them, but I, I know.

[00:01:51] Jason Mantzoukas: I don’t care. I don’t, I don’t even want to hear about discord.

[00:01:56] Paul Scheer: You’re going to hear about it. But first a big shout out to Dan from Rochester who gave us that amazing theme song.

[00:02:03] We love these songs. Send it to us at HowDidThisGetMade@Earwolf.Com. Keep it short. 15, 20 seconds is best. All right. I mean, let’s talk about this, by the way, big announcement. Um, We are making a little bit of a change on our, uh, our spring tour. Our spring tour has. Spring tour. What? What? What?

[00:02:23] Jason Mantzoukas: Spring tour!

[00:02:25] Paul Scheer: That’s right.

[00:02:25] Jason Mantzoukas: We’re coming to your town.

[00:02:28] Paul Scheer: Boise, Denver, Portland, Austin.

[00:02:32] Jason Mantzoukas: Seattle, San Francisco.

[00:02:35] Paul Scheer: We are going to be there and also in LA. Tickets are available at HDTGM. com. Now, here’s the thing.

[00:02:40] Jason Mantzoukas: Here’s the thing. If you’re in Texas and you want to come to the show, but you think you or someone in your family might have measles, please don’t come.

[00:02:48] Paul Scheer: Don’t come.

[00:02:49] Jason Mantzoukas: Because the last time I came to Texas, you motherfuckers gave me covid. And what I don’t want right now is either bird flu or the measles. So Texas, get it together.

[00:02:59] Paul Scheer: And by the way, I wanna shout out, uh, Idaho. Idaho. Figure yourself out.

[00:03:04] Jason Mantzoukas: Yeah.

[00:03:04] Paul Scheer: This is the only venue so far that I’m like. Wait, this is how many people are coming out?

[00:03:09] How Did This Get Made the first time I’ve ever been shocked, aghast at the audience number. So come on out, Boise.

[00:03:16] Jason Mantzoukas: Idaho apparently hates the podcast.

[00:03:19] Paul Scheer: I don’t understand.

[00:03:20] Jason Mantzoukas: Not interested in the podcast. Prove us wrong, Idaho.

[00:03:23] Paul Scheer: You tell us, you say, come out, come out. All right, we’re coming out. You come out now too. But now.

[00:03:28] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, how come you never come to Idaho? How come you never come to us? Guess what? We are.

[00:03:32] Paul Scheer: Now, meanwhile, Denver says come to our town. The minute we put that on sale, like almost sold out immediately.

[00:03:39] Jason Mantzoukas: Fuck yeah, Denver, mile high, absolutely blazed.

[00:03:43] Paul Scheer: They got it. They under stand.

[00:03:46] Jason Mantzoukas: They’re ready to rock. Have we announced movies yet?

[00:03:49] Paul Scheer: We have not announced movies, uh, except for the LA shows because they’re rescheduled. But I will say we are burying the lead a little bit because, uh, June will be with us in Los Angeles, but. She will not be with us for the rest of the tour. She got a very, very cool part in something that I can’t announce yet, but we will be able to announce it soon, but we have a replacement. We have opened up the safe, the vault.

[00:04:15] Jason Mantzoukas: We broke the glass in case of emergency.

[00:04:18] Paul Scheer: And we got her, we got Jessica St. Claire to join us the entire tour.

[00:04:24] Jason Mantzoukas: The entire tour, and we’ve, uh, we’ve got, we’ve managed to talk to every venue and she will be given a mic that cannot exceed a certain volume.

[00:04:33] Paul Scheer: It is going to be, it’s going to be interesting for me because it’s the first time we’ll have gone on the road together where I don’t have, uh, children or my wife with me, not that that’s gonna just will allow me to eat later and, uh, and and do stuff like that. Um, but, uh, I’m excited for this. I think it’s gonna be absolutely fantastic to have Jess with us.

[00:04:55] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh my God, i, I, as part of our, uh, agreement with every city and every venue, uh, all the venues will be encircled by trash cans on fire. Um, so both to give everybody a chance to warm up, but also to really make St. Clair feel welcome.

[00:05:12] Paul Scheer: You know what? We got to tell, we got to tell Avaryll when she picks movies, not the discord, uh, about how we can kind of cater some movies to Jess.

[00:05:20] Jason Mantzoukas: We, yes, absolutely. This, this, this, without telling St. Clair. The podcast tour should every step of the way, increasingly get more and more into dystopian, uh, trash can fires for like, I, I want Jess feeling like she’s lost her mind by the end of it.

[00:05:37] Paul Scheer: We are gonna break her by the end of this tour. , by the time she gets to San Fran, she getting.

[00:05:43] Jason Mantzoukas: She’s arriving broken.

[00:05:45] Paul Scheer: Alright, um, let’s take a quick break. We’re gonna jump into corrections and omissions and get ready. People had a lot to say about The League.

[00:05:54] Jason Mantzoukas: I assume all they had to say was, I’m sorry we voted for this.

[00:05:58] Paul Scheer: I hope they did.

[00:05:58] Jason Mantzoukas: We’ll find out in a second.

[00:05:59] Paul Scheer: Okay, last week we talked at length about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

[00:06:03] We had questions, and we might have even missed a few things. I don’t think we missed that much.

[00:06:07] Jason Mantzoukas: I don’t think we missed anything. It was a fucking snooze.

[00:06:10] Paul Scheer: A slog. Uh, but, a lot of you called in, and you wrote on the Discord, so let’s get into it. Uh.

[00:06:16] Jason Mantzoukas: Guys, guys, you know what? Value your time. Value your time.

[00:06:21] Paul Scheer: We do love the discord. I don’t like all this.

[00:06:23] Jason Mantzoukas: Don’t don’t include me in that.

[00:06:24] Paul Scheer: I love the discord. I don’t love the discord around the discord being upset that we’re upset with their pick. But anyway.

[00:06:31] Jason Mantzoukas: My god, give it a rest. I’m not interested in hearing from anybody.

[00:06:35] Paul Scheer: Young William, take us in with a corrections and omissions theme.

[00:06:40] Music: [Corrections and Omissions Theme] [00:06:42] Paul Scheer: All right. Thank you, young William. All right. This is first up in the discord from John Not Connor. Now he writes,

[00:06:51] “I won’t vouch for the movie’s complete historical accuracy, but I think it is meant to be real turn of the century world that we learned about in history class melded with many of the books that we were supposed to read in English class in the late 19th century, technology was advancing much faster than it had been before making new weapons and modes of transportation possible. Also, the European powers were dividing up the world and forming secret treaties requiring to go to war if any ally was attacked, these were the conditions that led to a worldwide war. But that would have been 15 years after the time of this movie. So this movie posits that world war one could have happened in 1899, if not for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”

[00:07:37] Well, that’s just a factual, I mean, yeah, sure.

[00:07:40] Jason Mantzoukas: Uh, honestly. John Not Connor, who cares, who cares? And I mean that with all due respect, because yes, anybody here can say there’s interesting, there’s an interesting, uh, confluence of characters and, and actual history and, and, and fantasy characters melding together at a, at a particularly, uh, uh, interesting time in history and blah, blah, blah.

[00:08:08] You can even say Jonathan Not Connors that. That the books, the Alan Moore comics are themselves a fascinating, uh, dip into this period and these characters and what is itself super interesting. A faithful adaptation of these comics could have been a fascinating movie. What we got, what we covered was boring, was bland, and I don’t value a movie that could have been great.

[00:08:36] I spent two hours watching a movie that was slow, boring, and ineffective.

[00:08:41] Paul Scheer: So, the league of Extraordinary gentlemen, they only postponed World War I. That’s, at the end of the day, it’s like, cool. I guess I don’t know. I mean, I guess.

[00:08:51] Jason Mantzoukas: What did you do? What did they do? They got us to like the war starts in 1914. Okay.

[00:08:56] Paul Scheer: All right.

[00:08:57] Jason Mantzoukas: Thanks. Thanks, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. This movie is a failure and everybody texting or write whatever they’re writing to us on should be just saying, you know what our bad. We liked it because it’s bad or a lot.

[00:09:12] Paul Scheer: And these aren’t even the complaints that these are just people that are yeah.

[00:09:16] Giving us some facts to put it in like these.

[00:09:18] Jason Mantzoukas: I don’t need them.

[00:09:18] Paul Scheer: Well, some like somebody Rudland He goes, you know, I wonder what the sequel would have been you know the sequel comic miniseries had the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen dealing with the aliens from HG Wells war the worlds and.

[00:09:30] Jason Mantzoukas: We all read Black Dossier. We we know the stories they could be good. That’s not what you made of that fucker.

[00:09:37] Paul Scheer: Issue, right? It could be Anything could be good. I mean.

[00:09:41] Jason Mantzoukas: Anything could be good. This, I feel like a lot of the feedback is it could have been good and yes.

[00:09:47] Paul Scheer: Yes, we agree with, yes, that’s why we are so upset now, Ghostbag does.

[00:09:52] I like when people go to town on the, uh, On the math and the science of it. Cause Ghostbag writes,

[00:09:58] “Okay, how is the Nautilus? That’s the big ship traversing the narrow 16 feet deep Venice canals, given both its height and length, looking it up on Google, the Nautilus measures 70 meters. That’s 230 feet long and 26 feet wide. The ship in this film seems to be a bit longer than that. So there’s no way it’s making those narrow turns.”

[00:10:22] Jason Mantzoukas: No, it’s inside of the Venice canals. What are we talking about? But here’s the thing, even something as stupid as that, if the movie had been successful, I would not care.

[00:10:35] Paul Scheer: That you never question it.

[00:10:36] Jason Mantzoukas: I wouldn’t give a shit, but the, the movie is so, uh, such an offense to logic and, and narrative storytelling that all of the little nitpicks, then the Nautilus could never fit in the Venice canals, et cetera, et cetera, are only. Even more annoying because they can’t do anything right in this movie, as far as I’m concerned. They have all of the playing pieces for such a fun, adventure filled story and all they do is nothing.

[00:11:07] Paul Scheer: It’s a slap. It’s a slap dash. And this is what goes into what Dove is saying because Dove is saying like,

[00:11:12] “Look, this movie did not care at all. As a matter of fact, at the end, when they go to Sean Connery’s grave, they misspell the name Quartermaine, right? It is spelt quarter like the, like the currency, uh, when it’s actually spelled, uh, Q U a T there was no R. So, I mean, like, how could you misspell the character’s name on the pivotal moment?”

[00:11:35] Jason Mantzoukas: The movie is lazy. It is boring and it is a waste of an incredible property. Incredible characters, largely fantastic actors.

[00:11:45] Paul Scheer: Yeah.

[00:11:45] Jason Mantzoukas: Um, I, I don’t understand what, what people are annoyed about. You know, um, I couldn’t find it, but I just want to recommend the Juni Ba, uh, graphic novel that’s all about Captain Nemo and the Nautilus and it’s a giant book. Absolutely gorgeously drawn. And it’s a beautiful story about Captain Nemo, finding a little girl and raising her on the Nautilus. And it’s awesome. And it’s a stunning,

[00:12:11] Paul Scheer: I want you to remember your joy for that, because now we’re going to get into some things that are going to make you angry. All right. We’re going to go to the phones and we are going to hear from Jen. Who is defending the discord vote.

[00:12:25] Listener: Hi, Paul. My name is Jen and I am calling to defend the discord vote for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I think for a lot of us who are fans of the podcast, who’ve been watching for a really long time, this might’ve been the first really bad movie that we saw in theaters.

[00:12:41] I know I’m a discord member. I voted for it. And the reason I did is right before I went off to college, I remember seeing this in theaters with my dad and thinking that this was a truly terrible movie. We laughed the whole time. It was one of the worst things we’ve ever seen and I just have that memory.

[00:13:01] I’ll also add that my dad has passed away, but we did go see the live show of you guys in Durham, and he did laugh throughout it. So thanks.

[00:13:08] Jason Mantzoukas: Aww.

[00:13:08] Paul Scheer: That is I love that.

[00:13:12] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, Jen. How can I be mad at Jen?

[00:13:14] Paul Scheer: Jen really knew that you might be coming at her, so she had to kinda.

[00:13:18] Jason Mantzoukas: I was ready to be fired up at Jen, and then she comes in with a dead dad, not only a dead dad, but a dead dad who’s a fan of the show.

[00:13:25] Paul Scheer: I mean, this is, you know, like she, wow.

[00:13:28] Jason Mantzoukas: Thank you, Jen.

[00:13:29] Paul Scheer: I’m gonna say this, and this is the issue that we always talk about on the show, and it’s great that every now and then we prove the point, which is just because it was a bad experience for you, and it’s a bad movie, does not mean it’s a bad movie, like, by the way, I see tweets, people are like, you know what you should do on, uh, How Did This Get Made?

[00:13:47] The Brutalist. I’m like, first of all, I love it. I love the Brutalist. And it’s like, well, just because it wasn’t enjoyable to you, like it is not like a terrible movie is like, and this is the issue is like, I was bored by it, so you guys. What can you guys do with it?

[00:14:04] Jason Mantzoukas: You know what it is? It’s, it’s not, I, and I think I said something like this on the episode, but it’s not enough that a movie is unsuccessful or bad or boring because I actually, because a lot of those things are just boring, like something that like mistakes that we made early on, not mistakes, but movies that we covered early on without having Avaryll, uh, to vet stuff in the beginning meant that we, we covered movies that yes, were bad, but we did them because we knew they were bad or unsuccessful.

[00:14:35] Paul Scheer: Yes.

[00:14:35] Jason Mantzoukas: Or failures. The, the best example is the M. Night Shamylan Avatar the Last Airbender adaptation.

[00:14:40] Paul Scheer: Yes.

[00:14:41] Jason Mantzoukas: Uh, which boy, the boy could that be a similar, uh, to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, based on a beloved, um, ip, uh, a live action version of a previously, uh, you know, a graphic novel or an animated type of thing.

[00:14:56] A big time people adapting it, or boy, isn’t this exciting? Buh, buh, buh, buh, and then snooze. Boring. Uh, Avatar The Last Airbender, the movie, is boring. And it’s not a good, uh, for the show, because it wasn’t, it wasn’t Uh, exciting or interesting. They weren’t making such big swings that they could fail enough, or they weren’t finding themselves in situations that were juicy for us to dig in on or have fun with, it felt like it was boring or bored and I was bored with it.

[00:15:27] Paul Scheer: And with that’s it, Jason, I don’t want to, I don’t want to burn you out just too early because look, people are still popping in with thoughts about the movie. This is what we do. And Aaron had some more insights about Sean Connery’s Lord of the Ring connections. And this is something that I think. Is gonna be slightly interesting, maybe more interesting than the film. We’ll see.

[00:15:46] Listener: Hi, Paul. This is Aaron from Vermont. You mentioned that Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and Stewart Townsend, who played Dorian Gray, was actually cast as Aragorn and fired after production began with Peter Jackson. Apparently thinking he lacked the gravitas for the role.

[00:16:06] It’s hard to imagine anyone besides Ian McKellen or Viggo Mortensen in those roles, and I think maybe we all lucked out in that respect. Anyway, I saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen around when it came out, and that was enough for me. Love the show. Thanks. Bye.

[00:16:19] Paul Scheer: Okay. Um, look, I am. That always bums me out when you hear an actor getting fired.

[00:16:24] I, I was fired off of the Eddie Murphy movie. Meet Dave. I’ve talked about this in the past. Uh, you know, and it’s always a, you know, look, there’s a lot of reasons. And for my, in my case, it was, um, I didn’t have a good enough butt crack, uh, they wanted somebody to have a bigger butt crack than I did. So, you know, look, and there’s a lot of reasons. Gravitas, butt crack. You know.

[00:16:44] Jason Mantzoukas: Aaron from Vermont, love Vermont, uh, shouts to, um, Middlebury college and all of Vermont, but, um, Um, I, I like those stories to like the, the actor who shot two weeks on There Will Be Blood and was replaced by Paul Dano, you know, um.

[00:17:02] Paul Scheer: I mean, Eric Stoltz. I mean, Eric Stoltz and Back to the Future.

[00:17:06] I would love to see, I would love to actually see, because here’s the thing, and I think it’s, and it could, it could be the same for this. I’m fascinated because I know Eric Stoltz is a good actor, right? We’ve seen a body of work from Eric Stoltz to know he is not a bad actor. But for whatever reason, it didn’t work.

[00:17:23] Jason Mantzoukas: Well, and Zemeckis says, you know, that it was too serious.

[00:17:26] Paul Scheer: Right, and I would love to see it.

[00:17:27] Jason Mantzoukas: There was a darkness to Stoltz’s Marty McFly.

[00:17:29] Paul Scheer: Right, and I would have loved to have seen that just to see the different take. I mean, that’s kind of the fun of it.

[00:17:34] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, wouldn’t that be great.

[00:17:35] Paul Scheer: They only just play it without the, the audio track up. It drives me crazy. Come on at this point.

[00:17:41] Jason Mantzoukas: And to Aaron’s point, I love stories like this. It’s great to hear about what Sean Connery didn’t do or to imagine a Lord of the Rings, blah, blah, blah. Does any of that make it worth it for us to sit through League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for two hours? Absolutely not. It’s not worthwhile enough. The special interest, uh, tidbits are not value added enough for a slog of a movie.

[00:18:04] Paul Scheer: Okay, Jason, you got me thinking and I, I’m just curious. Did I ever show you some of the lost back to the future auditions?

[00:18:14] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, no.

[00:18:15] Paul Scheer: This is.

[00:18:15] Jason Mantzoukas: I’ve never seen any of this.

[00:18:17] Paul Scheer: I’m just going to play a clip of it that you can find them online.

[00:18:20] Um, this is so much fun. I think, um, all right, I’m going to. I guess, uh, you know, you can kind of pick who you want to see. This is, uh, I got Billy Zane as Biff. I got, uh, I got, um, I got Peter DeLuise as Biff. Um, I got, uh, Ciara Cedric, Ciara Cedric is great. I want to show, I think I want to show you, uh.

[00:18:41] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, and chemistry test.

[00:18:42] Paul Scheer: Yes.

[00:18:43] Jason Mantzoukas: Together. Interesting.

[00:18:44] Paul Scheer: I’m going to, I’m going to show you Ben Stiller as Marty McFly.

[00:18:49] Back to the Future Auditions: So what are your parents like? Are they as square as mine?

[00:18:53] Lorraine, lately I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know anything about my parents.

[00:18:58] Why are you so nervous?

[00:19:01] Well, have you ever been in like, in a situation where, well you know you have to act a certain way but, but when you get there, you’re not sure you can really go through with it?

[00:19:12] Like when you’re out on a first date with someone? Well, sort of.

[00:19:16] Paul Scheer: I mean, there it is. That’s kind of great. So they have like so many great people auditioning. It’s a really fun one to watch.

[00:19:23] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh yeah. And I love stuff like that. I loved what the SNL special recently that was just an hour of talk, people talking about their auditions.

[00:19:30] Paul Scheer: Their auditions, oh.

[00:19:31] Jason Mantzoukas: So uncomfortable.

[00:19:32] Paul Scheer: I was uncomfortable for them. It made me so upset. Um, okay. Uh, this is just another clarification of Mina Harkness, uh, from Devon in Brooklyn. Here we go.

[00:19:43] Listener: Hey, Paul, it’s your resident nerd, Dave Vaughn, calling out of Brooklyn, New York. Um, I am listening to your League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen, and a question was asked of Nina Harkness of why she can, um, walk in the daylight and turn into a bunch of bats.

[00:20:00] Is that the power of Dracula? So, no. She has the blood of Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler, who is a true vampire. Can walk in the daylight, and do all that crazy stuff. When he bites people, and turns them, they turn into vampires, or lesser vampires, who can’t walk in the daylight. And have all those weird fetishes with the cross and the garlic, yadda yadda yadda.

[00:20:29] I mean, it is a different lore, but basically, Mina, in the League of The Extraordinary Gentleman, has inherited Dracul’s true blood. So she can walk in the daylight, She can, um, well, she can walk in the daylight, but her powers are halved. Anyway, I love the show. Love you guys. Glad you guys are all safe from the fire.

[00:20:50] Please keep pumping out these podcasts because they bring me so much joy.

[00:20:53] Jason Mantzoukas: See great work.

[00:20:54] Paul Scheer: Love it.

[00:20:55] Jason Mantzoukas: Great work. Every, everybody who’s called in so far as from someplace I lived.

[00:20:59] Paul Scheer: Um, It’s like, I mean, maybe we should just make that part of the call ins, you have to be there. Uh.

[00:21:05] Jason Mantzoukas: And this, this, I don’t mind because, okay, yes. Great. So Nina Harkness, who is, uh, you know, a huge part in the books. I’ve also continued to go on and read the books. Um, yes, Vlad the Impaler. And, and my understanding is Vlad the Impaler and Dracula are different. Vlad the Impaler, a historical character, uh, Dracula, a fictional character. So. Thank you Devon.

[00:21:28] Paul Scheer: Well, again, I like a comment like that. It’s really good. And I think we’re gonna get another one like that from Micah in Illinois.

[00:21:34] Listener: Hey guys, Micah from Illinois. Um, love your show. You guys have kept me alive. I’ve been driving an hour, uh, to work every morning. On the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen episode, you talked about the fact that Sean Connery, uh, turned down, you know, the Matrix, at least one other job to do this one.

[00:21:53] I heard in an interview years ago, That the reason he accepted, uh, the role of, you know, uh, Quartermain in this movie was because he had turned down The Matrix because he didn’t understand the script. And then when he realized how big of a mistake that was, he promised himself he would jump on the next script that he didn’t understand.

[00:22:15] And unfortunately for him, it was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Alright, well anyway guys, uh, you know, keep doing God’s work. Thanks so much and, uh, I’ll, I’ll hear you all in the morning.

[00:22:26] Paul Scheer: Oh, no, this is interesting because I have, uh, I have heard this story as well, and I think the, the way he’s kind of put it together is actually quite interesting in the sense that he’s a.

[00:22:37] I won’t like. I’m, I’m clearly not hip enough to get it. And I can, I could see, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. This is what these idiots that America is going to like, I’m going to do this movie and just being so, so wrong about it in every way. I do love that.

[00:22:51] Jason Mantzoukas: Yeah. Oh. And I think, you know, I also think that. You know, there, if you’re in that position where you’ve missed out on these kind of massive, uh, properties that are, that go on to be massive hits, and you are given this, and, and not for nothing, you know, maybe the, I’m certain this was a bad script, but at the very least it had the It was coming with the kind of.

[00:23:13] Paul Scheer: Right lineage, right?

[00:23:14] Jason Mantzoukas: Yes, I mean, an Alan Moore comic series a like these are the people behind the scenes are real people. It’s not just like a Sean Connery’s taking a flyer. So I understand why he made this choice. Uh, but boy, you know, he was led astray and what a disappointment for him. I’m sure. And it. Put some out of the business, basically.

[00:23:33] Paul Scheer: And look, and now I’m going to go away from this for a second and say, yes, we got a bunch of other corrections in here. We got like that. Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Mr. Hyde was never very big. He was very small. Then somebody else points out something like, uh, Tom Sawyer was published in 1872, which would make sense why he would be a grownup in 1899.

[00:23:50] But the problem is the story was set in the 1840s. So at this point, Tom Sawyer would be about 60 or 70 years old. And now at this point, we’re just like, all right, well, now we’re just. Pulling out threads again, it’s not even worthy of pulling out these threads because.

[00:24:03] Jason Mantzoukas: These, I feel like people are trying to say like, these are avenues you should have talked about. You know?

[00:24:09] And I’m like, why?

[00:24:10] Paul Scheer: Now, here’s what I got. This is the one I’ve been saving for you, because I think this is actually a really good one. This is from Sean McBee, uh, a great, uh, corrections and omissions person who is writing to us about some information that he has not seen published anywhere. He got this information directly from the screenwriter, James Robinson.

[00:24:33] Okay, and all of this is from an interview that he did with James on an old podcast. Okay, so this is what he wrote. He said, when James.

[00:24:40] Jason Mantzoukas: I’m so sorry. What’s the podcast or should we.

[00:24:42] Paul Scheer: I don’t know.

[00:24:45] “Now, when James was hired to write this, only the first six issues of the comic had been released. It wasn’t zero as Paul claimed, but that was my research.

[00:24:54] And one of the initial conditions placed on his adaptation was that it had to include a younger member over the concern that the league was composed of older members endangering the appeal to the young demographic. This is why.

[00:25:07] Jason Mantzoukas: That’s the Tom Sawyer.

[00:25:08] Paul Scheer: Exactly.

[00:25:09] Jason Mantzoukas: Who’s not in the book.

[00:25:10] Paul Scheer: Yeah. And then James Robinson goes on to say,

[00:25:12] “the script was vastly different. Um, Robinson is an incredibly accomplished comic book writer. He wrote the nineties, uh, Star Man, uh, the JSA golden age mini series and countless other things. And he tried very, very hard to be true to Alan Moore’s original comics, but was impeded by several factors. As an example, the original script involved a Prussian villian who is planning on unleashing a flesh eating gas on New York, where the film would primarily take place. But then 9 11 happened and the studio said, we got to pivot away from that. We can’t be in New York. We can’t have an attack. And then a bunch of producers came forward and they’re like, well, we got to change a lot of stuff.

[00:25:50] We got to reshape this entire thing. We got to get it to check all these boxes. And that’s how the movie became what it is. He goes, if anyone wants to hear this 18 minute long League of Extraordinary Gentlemen discussion, he posted it to YouTube, uh, just for the, How Did This Get Made crowd. There’s a lot more information there and you can find it on a link that we’ll have in our show notes, but you can also find on the discord.”

[00:26:10] So that I think. Kudos kudos to you.

[00:26:14] Jason Mantzoukas: Super interesting.

[00:26:15] Paul Scheer: You came in, you gave us some info. I love that.

[00:26:17] Jason Mantzoukas: And James Robinson, a truly like fantastic comics, right? Like a one of the legendary comics writers of that era, you know, so I think super interesting. And that sounds like an interview. I’d be more interested in listening to than I would be to, uh watch the movie.

[00:26:34] Paul Scheer: The, I mean, there’s many things I’d like to be doing that are painful that I’d like to do more than watch that movie again. You know what? And honestly, without any further ado, I that’s the winner. I mean, that’s the winner of this week. That’s just.

[00:26:46] Jason Mantzoukas: Let me, I’ll just shout out one James Robinson comic that I think is worth reading is his, uh, it’s it’s cause it’s short and it’s full gonzo insanity.

[00:26:55] And it’s called Air Boy. Ooh, it is a fantastic comic series from, I don’t know, maybe 10 or so years ago, maybe longer now.

[00:27:03] Paul Scheer: Well, Sean McBee you are the winner. You don’t get anything, but you get this amazing theme by Bombay Beach Revival. Hit it.

[00:27:10] Music: [Winner’s Song] [00:27:18] Paul Scheer: All right. Now, if you want to chime in with your own thoughts, do it at your own peril. I mean, after this week, uh, you know, look, we really served you up, uh, but we’re going to.

[00:27:29] Jason Mantzoukas: Get this or just. Or just think of them to yourself and enjoy your own cleverness. And don’t feel like you need to send it.

[00:27:36] Paul Scheer: But we do need something to fill up these episodes. We do need something that.

[00:27:39] Jason Mantzoukas: We do?

[00:27:39] Paul Scheer: Well, I mean, we could make it all Just Chat.

[00:27:41] Jason Mantzoukas: Uh, I’ll just listen. I mean, we could talk about Shorzy, we have Shorzy’s back. We can talk about A Thousand Blows, the new Steven Knight show. We can talk about Reacher season three.

[00:27:51] Paul Scheer: I want to talk about the Lorne book, the Lorne Michaels book, so good.

[00:27:55] All right. Anyway, uh, make sure you hit up.

[00:27:56] Jason Mantzoukas: Disconnect the discord.

[00:27:58] Paul Scheer: Discord.gg/HDTGM or calls at 619-PAULASK. All right. We’ll be right back. Jason, uh, we are back and I’m sure that you’ve noticed that every week we release old, How Did This Get Made episodes back into the feed, uh, their matinee episodes.

[00:28:16] And, oh. We had some good ones. We just re released The Number 23, which is still one of my favorites that we’ve done. That’s a Jim Carrey movie, where he was obsessed with.

[00:28:24] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh, yes, it’s like a thriller, right?

[00:28:26] Paul Scheer: Topsy Secrets.

[00:28:26] Jason Mantzoukas: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:27] Paul Scheer: Great.

[00:28:28] Jason Mantzoukas: Topsy Krets.

[00:28:29] Paul Scheer: And then, uh, and then this week is, uh, one that was kind of out of the box, but I love this one too.

[00:28:36] This is the Justice League, the Snyder Cut with, uh, we had Griffin and David.

[00:28:39] Jason Mantzoukas: Oh yeah, with the Blank Check boys.

[00:28:40] Paul Scheer: Uh, I love those guys and they’re, they’re doing an amazing series on Spielberg right now, which.

[00:28:45] Jason Mantzoukas: That’s what I was just about to say. They’re doing the early Spielberg movies right now. E. T. Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They have been incredible episodes.

[00:28:54] Paul Scheer: I’m bummed that we’re not in it, but I also feel like we don’t deserve to be in those. We need to be on the, we need to be in the, on the outside. We got to be in the.

[00:29:01] Jason Mantzoukas: I’m so sorry. We absolutely deserve to be in there. They’ve got the fucking Dough Boys on.

[00:29:06] Paul Scheer: Oh, well then now, all right. All right. Now,

[00:29:09] Jason Mantzoukas: Mitch and Tiger Weger on the show. You can have the How Did This Get Made boys.

[00:29:15] Paul Scheer: By the way, you and I are gonna be, uh, appearing together, I believe, on the Doughboy for, uh, the uh, oh, March Munch madness. Much madness. I’m very excited about that.

[00:29:24] Jason Mantzoukas: Um, but well, let’s double down. We’re definitely doing it together.

[00:29:26] Paul Scheer: We are definitely gonna be on it together, so don’t let anyone dissuade you from that . Uh, Jason. Well, you know what? The discord is, you know, cause a lot of, uh.

[00:29:34] Jason Mantzoukas: Discord of the discord.

[00:29:36] Paul Scheer: You know what? Now they’re coming with their hat and their hand, their big doctor, uh, hide hat in their hand with some apologies. And here is an apologies theme.

[00:29:45] I’m sorry. So sorry. Uh, this is from Keith, a source Rex. “Personal correction, I am sorry for voting for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I had never seen it and I had high hopes. A movie with so much exposition left so much unsaid. The characters spent more time fighting with and rearranging furniture than the Property Brothers.”

[00:30:13] Bam.

[00:30:14] Jason Mantzoukas: This, this is how we ended up with a second term of Donald Trump. I haven’t seen it, but I voted for it. Get it together, Keith Asaurus Rex. It’s time to know what you’re voting for. Don’t vote from a place of ignorance.

[00:30:31] Paul Scheer: Do the research. Now Ghost Bag writes,

[00:30:33] “I admit I voted for this film to be covered, but when I watched it on Amazon prime one day out of boredom, I sat there with my mouth agape wondering how something like this could have ever been made. Apologies to Jason, but I need some sort of post traumatic review of this film and a podcast titled, How Did This Get Made seem like the best place to go to properly break this piece of shit movie down.”

[00:30:53] Jason Mantzoukas: I don’t want to be in the business of helping you out of a traumatic.

[00:30:56] Paul Scheer: We’re trying to keep the energy light here, people, we want to make this a fun journey.

[00:31:02] Jason Mantzoukas: This is not a, a, we’re not trying to trauma bond with you as the audience. We’re trying to have fun, assholes.

[00:31:10] Paul Scheer: All right, well, let’s get one final apology. And this one is, uh, we can hear it. We don’t have to have me read it. Here we go.

[00:31:16] Listener: Sorry, the discord voted for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

[00:31:18] It wasn’t my choice and, um, only serves to further erode my confidence in the democratic process.

[00:31:25] Um, I love the show. I feel so bad that you guys hated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Cause it’s my, one of my favorite bad movies. The CGI is terrible. And like, um, Jason said, it’s a really good book.

[00:31:39] Jason Mantzoukas: Yeah. It is. It is a good book. And it’s also a very bad movie. Both of those things are true. I’m not trying to take, I’m not trying to take it away from you guys who voted for a bad movie. It is bad.

[00:31:50] Paul Scheer: Well, they got it. They got it. And as a matter of fact, we’re going to try to make it okay in a way, with our next movie. So Jason, thank you for joining me for this.

[00:31:59] Jason Mantzoukas: Yeah.

[00:31:59] Paul Scheer: This was awesome to have you here. Uh, and, uh, you know, now I feel like we’ve laid down the law people. You can come back next week and you can write your, your math equations and your ship sizes. I will not come at you as hard as Jason did.

[00:32:12] Jason Mantzoukas: Disconnect the discord! That’s our lock the gates.

[00:32:16] Paul Scheer: Okay. Next week, we’ll be going from a joyless journeys to some double trouble. That’s right. Next week, we are watching Doppelganger starring Drew Barrymore and George Newbern. Oh, wow. Always wanted to see them together. Here’s a short breakdown of the plot. Our main character, Holly flees from Los Angeles to New York after a fatal incident, mysteriously involving her family while starting an affair with the young writer.

[00:32:39] She happens to be renting a room from Holly finds herself being stalked by a homicidal maniac who happens to look just like her. Is it her evil twin hallucination malignity, or as the film is dubbed, doppelganger, you’ll have to watch to find out this film has a 24 percent on rotten tomato and a letterboxd user,

[00:33:00] Sophie Cinema calls it “A bloody hell raiser of a beef flick that cycles ludicrously from cable era, wet dream to Lovecraftian nightmare from masturbation. To defenestration.” Holy cow. Now I want to see it even more. All right. Listen to the trailer. Remember this was the runner up in the discord pick.

[00:33:26] Trailer Audio: Holly has found someone new. Someone very secret,

[00:33:38] someone who hides from us all. Another self, a deeper, darker side. And now, the only thing she has to fear…is herself.

[00:33:55] Paul Scheer: You can stream Doppelganger for free on Tubi, Philo, and the Roku channel, Daily Motion, and more. Now, I encourage you to also check out Hoopla, Kanopy, and Libby, which are digital media services offered by your local library that allow you to consume movies, TV, music, audio books, e books, and comics for free.

[00:34:12] All right, that’s it, everybody. Remember, if you listen to us on Apple podcasts or Spotify, please rate and review us, please also make sure that you are following us and have automatic downloads turned on and helps the show. And we appreciate it. You can visit us all on social media at @HDTGM and a big thank you to our producers.

[00:34:28] That’s right. Codi Fischer, Molly Reynolds, and our movie picking producer, Avaryll Halley, who has been sidelined for two weeks, due to you discord users. Oh man. Anyway, our associate producer is Jess Cisneros and our engineer is Casey Holford. We’ll see you next week for Doppelganger.