Hook: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little alone fascinating facts about your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more. We're two guys with too much free time on our hands. My name is Jordan Runtug and I'm Alex Hegel, and our inaugural episode features everything you didn't know about the cinematic classic Hook, which turned thirty years old last December. But being our first episode, we wanted to tell you a little bit about ourselves and why we have all of this useless knowledge. Yeah. You know, we're thirty three year old man who can talk at length about Hook for half an hour, so we should probably explain ourselves. Uh, we're veterans of the what would you say, post BuzzFeed journalism world, the content minds, veterans of the content wars. Basically, we're two listical writers. Let off the leash. Between the two of us, we have accrued literally thousands of words, millions of page views, decades of experience, and hundreds of dollars eight bucks maybe, yeah yeah. Over the last decade, We've worked in places like H one Entertainment, Weekly Page six, Rolling Stone, and People Magazine, where we met and became friends. Jordan also plays in my band, That's right, I play in the Highgl's band World's Greatest Detective. One of the things I've always loved about your writing is your insane, granular attention to detail, which you have already brought to bear on on hook and um Phil Collins near rosis. Oh well, thank you. Well, you know, I mean those kinds of anniversary pieces were always my favorite to write because it was just they were fun. You know, you got paid to learn and share that with others. I mean, I always love that. What did you think of doing all those like listical pieces. I think the joy that I took in them is that with so much um biol on the internet and in my heart, um, it's just great to get people excited about stuff. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, did you have any sort of like early love of trivia? Well, we had about seventeen different Uncle John's bathroom readers in our house, but that was like my dad's favorite thing. Originalistical, yeah exactly, and copy I was in my middle school what the what we called quizbole, which is sort of competitive interdistrict trivia team essentially, and I like you, you know, I I came of age during the US run of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which I know you have quite the personal history with. Yeah, that's right. I was, I was. I was on it. Unfortunately not during the Regions years. It was during the uh yeah, I know, the daytime Cedric the entertainer. Uh And spoiler, I did not win. I am. I am not a millionaire. A thousand air uh no, a hundred air No. That they changed the rules by that time, and there was a lot harder to win. That's going to be my my defense. Yeah, so I have I gotta know what what what? What What? What was it? What happened? The question? I still have night terrors about the question. All right, well, let let me put it to you. Who was the only person to have guest hosted the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Was it a Brian Williams, Was it be Katie Kirk, was it C. Betty White? Or was it D. Jerry Seinfeld? Without getting into the whole digressive like millionaire structure, I would personally say Seinfeld because they're both rich white men with extensive classic car collections, and that's what I said I was wrong. Apparently it was Katie Kirk. They did a Tonight show Todays Show flip Flop as a promo thing. Yeah, and I got it wrong. What won't Jay Leno take from you next? But I it did not damp in my love of trivia, which began as a kid when I started studying trivial pursuit cards in hopes that during family game night I would convince my family that I was a genius and they wouldn't make me go to school. So I was going to memorize the answers on on trivial pursuit cards and study them in advance. And um, and that didn't work. I say, learning so much about your early childhood psychology here, Jordan, so we should probably move of this now. Let's get into the childhood psychology of Hook Yes, because we got a lot to talk about. There's Michael Jackson's would be role on the film and Dustin Hoffman's disgusting Daily Breakfast. There's the saga of the onset Pirate Wranglers and Julia roberts hellish production experience. We'll also have all the ways the kid who played Rufio was a real life badass, and also all the ways that Robin Williams was predictably the best. We'll discuss a cavalcade of hidden cameos you probably never noticed and divulge the true meaning of bang Arang. So let's do it. Here's everything you didn't know about Steven Spielberg's hook. Well, I'm speaking of childhood psychology, as you mentioned, at a very personal meaning to Steven Spielberg, the director of the film, he directed a version of Peter Pan in grade school. He had a really strong connection with the story because I guess he and his dad had a really complicated, troubled relationship. And there are a lot of films if you look at it, it's kind of a through line. A lot of his work exploring to functional father son relationships. You see that in E. T and Ninni and A Jones, in the Last Crusade with Indie and Sean Connery. He also famously said that, um, after he had kids, he would not have made the ending to Close Encounters the same. I didn't know that, Yeah, he said, Um, you know, since having kids, I would never have a father abandoned his children. He would have completely changed the ending of that movie. Wow, making it much worse in my opinion, But you know, I don't have kids. So the genesis of the film started when Spielberg's mother would read him Peter Pan and Wendy as a as A as a bedtime story. And yeah, by eleven years old, he was directing the story as a school production, and he would say, you know, I've always felt like Peter Pan. It's very hard for me to grow up. I feel like I'm a victim of Peter Pan syndrome. So this was always an ambition for him to direct a Peter Pan movie. And he actually started developing this movie in the early eighties, ten years before Hook ultimately went into production, and it was a little more faithful to the animated version. It was kind of a straight Peter Pan's story. And then he became a father, and as you mentioned, he decided that, you know, I'd rather actually be a dad that these kids rather than just spend time with with other people's kids on a on a set. So he took some time away and actually in the meantime he almost directed Big, which would have been kind of nuts, which you guess, if you think about it, kind of was a lot of same themes of like yeh, fertile ground for Spielberg's therapist. Spielberg has daddy issues from the defining aspect of his career. So yeah, this movie meant a lot to Spielberg. You know. At one point in the like protracted development of this it was conceived as a full fledged musical with Bielberg's constant running buddy John Williams, who actually composed eight songs for this embryonic version of the film. Um, you know, only the two of them actually made it in there we Don't Want to Grow Up, which is regrettably not a rewrite of the Tom Waits song off Bone Machine, and when You're Alone, which also plays in the Spielberg's Daddy issues. Presumably the libretto for the score, if you Will came from Leslie Bricuse, who did the lyrics for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which also like a deep well of childhood sadness deep rich vein to mind there. Oh yeah, we'll definitely be doing an episode on that at some point. Also Dr Doolittle, Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice m my favorite Bond theme. Oh gold Fingers incredible. You can just sing any like three syllable word to Goldfinger and it sounds awesome. Can you give us a demo? Though, No, that's gonna cost you extra. But interestingly enough, no one has ever heard the rest of these songs. They have been sealed in a vault, probably with the rest of Prince's unreleased stuff. And um, I don't know whatever John Williams has rolling around in the can. What unreleased John Williams scores do you think there are? I think I think he has Norbit. I think Norbit is one that he worked on grown ups too. But yeah, so sort of on this musical train. Back in the early days when it was conceived, There's a musical. Michael Jackson was initially in talks for the lead role of Peter Pan because a little on the notes, of course he was. And they were also thinking of getting David Bowie to play hook, which kind of works for me because like this right off Labyrinth. And the thing that I think makes David Bowie is so great in Labyrinth is that he's like sinister and and and like spooky. There's an edge there that I don't think you get with Wow. We'll get into Dustin Hoffman later. They were also considering for hook Donald Sutherland and Christopher Lloyd. Christopher Lloyd would have been incredible. Um. Not to bring this back to my childhood, but one of the most scarring things I've ever seen was Judge doom In. Yeah. I used to have spoiler we should probably say at the top of every episode, spoiler Roger Rabbit. Um. Yeah, I had nightmares for years about that. He is so scary in that movie and probably would have taken this too far into sinister. Well, he was in Dennis the Menace to remember, Oh my god, he's also terrifying in that. Yeah, he like cuts an apple with like a switchblade or something in front of this kid's face. Which do can I do? Christopher Lord Peter Peter the time traveling insane inventor Pirates. When this alligator reached me a lot. If you're gonna say some serious, I'm so glad this is this entire episode is really a vehicle for you to do that impression years in the making. Um, for sme, we had some really great contenders. We had Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci. I mean, of course most of those would have been perfect. Yeah, but you're right, you know what, the the guy who did get it. Bob Hoskins was in who framed Roger Rabbit oh Man Valiant? Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah yeah. But getting back to the the original dreamcasting of Michael Jackson as as Peter Pan, he turned it down when Spielberg revisited the film later in the late eighties as sort of a Peter Pan having grown up and and Michael Jackson kind of famously didn't want to grow up, so he thought that the project wasn't right for him. He was really bummed that Spielberg changed it into this other idea, and he was apparently bummed enough and I want to get my my citations right for this. He was apparently bummed enough about this that he placed a voodoo curse on Steven Spielberg. This is from a two thousand three Vanity Fair article and sort of hatchet job by Marine Orth and she reported that Michael Jackson sought out a to use her words, a witch doctor to curse his enemies and bless himself because this was in in summer of two thousand when he was starting to the bills were starting to pile up, and he was sort of he was having a rough time at this time, so he apparently had an enemies list of twenty five people. I think David Geffen was on it as well, and uh yeah, and Spielberg made it on too, and apparently I guess the jury is still out on whether or not the voodoo curse actually worked, although he did make Crystal Skull right. But um, actually I want to get the good, bad and the ugly bullet ricochet in there for every punch line. Um, I actually would like to crunch the numbers on this voodoo thing. So there were twenty people on the list, and it cost him a hundred and fifty thousand dollar wire transfer to a bank in Mali, and supposedly forty two cows were ritually sacrificed for this. Now my question is, do you also have to buy the cows or is that in figure? Is that included in the d K I I don't know. I haven't checked the market rate for cows and other bovine creatures lately, but back in the two thousand's it would have been I don't know. I mean, this was when he was apparently I think it's said two hundred and forty million dollars in debt at this time. Um, before we move on. Other contenders for Peter Banning as he was known as Peter Pan was known as he grew up. Was Tom Hanks kind of moment though, yeah, And Kevin Klein. I don't love either of those, to be perfectly honest. I you know, Robin Williams, and we'll get into this later. Rob Williams has a deep well of sadness that I think anchors that melancholic Yeah, that like anchors this whole conceit of Peter Pan growing up and forgetting who he is. And I Kevin Clan could probably pull that off. But Tom Hanks just too twinkling and pleasant. He was good and big, I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have nothing against big. I have no quarrel with Tom Hanks. Okay, So while we're on Peter Banning segue, Peter Pan author J. M. Barry originally had a story that was developed along the lines of Hook where Peter Pan grew up Um and God love him. The man could not write a decent title. Apparently he was titling it the Man who Couldn't grow up. And second contender, the Old Age of Peter Pan. Well, you know, I mean it's the title. It's like snakes on a plane, like you know what you're getting. It's like, okay, I appreciate that because it was like when the when were these written, like before the age of subtlety and in writing, so you just had to spell it out to get people involved. Yeah, pretty much the Hound of the Baskerville. So the man who couldn't grow up? Okay, so hook screenwriter James V. Hart, who after this would go on to corner the market in highbrow, big budget literary adaptations of the He also wrote the script for Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is Coppola's famous big budget Dracula movie, which we should do an episode on, like uh. And then he went on to do Mary Shelley's Frankenstein write the script for that not as well received or as interesting, and then he kind of went back to the children's movie out of classic literature well by penning the script for Muppet Treasure Island, which is another beloved nineties property, and then scaled to new heights in the two thousands with Laura Croft Colan tomb Raider, m Dash the Cradle of Life. So a mighty rise and fall for Jim V. Hart anyway, Jim V. Hart had been trying to find you have to say the whole thing every time. It's like a tribe call quest uh. Jim V. Hart had been trying to find a new angle to the Peter Pan story for years, and in his three year old son made him a drawing that he described as a crocodile eating Captain Hook, and hearts telling this story in Steven Spielberg a biography. But that crocodile didn't really eat him, his son said, he got away, so I went, wow, Hook is not dead. The crocodile is. We've all been fooled. A few years later, Heart's son brought up the subject of Peter Pan again, asking whether he'd ever grown up. Poignant, I realized that Peter Pan did grow up, Heart said, just like all of us baby boomers who are now in our forties. I patterned him after several of my friend ends on Wall Street where the pirates where three piece suits and ride in limos. Thank you Jim Hart for saying the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. Moving on now Hook. As I guess is often the case in Hollywood, there's a lot of nepotism going on in the casting of the film Hook. The Jim V. Hart's son was was cast in the movie, which is only fair considering he basically is the one who planted the seeds for Did You Get Like a Story? By producer credit as well well. He was one of the lost boys. He was personally cast by by Spielberg, and I guess every day on the set Robin Williams would would bow to this kid, his name was Jake and say thanks for my job, Jake, which is, you know, the first of many Robin Williams is the best stories will get to in this episode. And Dustin Hoffman also put I think all three of his kids in this movie. His youngest son Max played the five year old Peter Pan, his daughter Rebecca Hoffman played Jane and the play at the beginning of the movie, and his oldest son Jake, played a little player at Jack's baseball game. But probably the most interesting instance of what I guess you could call nepotism is that this is I think Gwyneth Paltrow's second movie that she ever appeared in. She was nineteen years old. She's also Steven Spielberg's god daughter. Spielberg remembers that he was going with Gwenna's family to the premiere of Silence of the Lambs. They all took a limo together, which weird. Yeah, that was weird. Spielberg again that Hollywood is all like one fifty person circle and they probably wanted to support Demi and it was a big prestige film, but weird film to take your family too. Yeah. So, and apparently kind of upset young Gwenne because they were driving back and Spielberg saw her in the backseat kind of like still looking disturbed by the whole movie. And apparently he would later say, I was looking at her the review mirror and she was talking about the film, and she had this really frightened look on her face, and it suddenly clicked and I said, hey, you could be young Wendy. You could be the young Maggie Smith. First of all, also yeared Stephen to like look at the look of terror and unsettling on a on a teen girl's face and say, I can make money off of that. Uh. And also, how dare you say that Gwyneth Paltrow is no Maggie Smith? Continue um, Apparently there there and then on the spot he said, do you want to make a movie And so that's how Gwyneth landed a role in one of her very first films. I guess she made her debut in the musical romance film Shout starring John Travolto. We all love that one and um many of the Lost Boys, specifically the kid who played Rufio, would later admit to having a massive crush on Gwyneth on the set and Maggie Smith, Dame Magnie, Maggie Smith, pardon me, you have a lot to say about Yeah. I think anybody who like saw this film in their youth was saw erf youmes like that is the coolest person in the entire world, and with good cause. Starting right off with the casting, Leonardo DiCaprio had auditioned for quote unquote an unspecified role basically based on his age at the time, he would have been fifteen or sixteen. It's speculated that he was either testing for Rufio or another older Lost Boy, given that he was too old to play Jack, who was eleven in the film. So in theory, there's a multi if you subscribe to the multiverse theory, there's a world in which Leonardo DiCaprio played Rufio, which kind of rules. Yeah. Yeah, But so the role eventually went to actor Dante Basco, who was just sixteen years old when he picked up the part. He landed it after one audition. He told news dot com that he landed the part so quickly because Steven Spielberg told him that, out of all the kids that auditioned for the role, I was the only kid who scared him. But you know, obviously the kids incredible in the movie. I mean he trained for sword sword fighting in this movie. They did a lot of it the way that you do like horror movie kills, where they would basically rehearse doing backwards, so they rehearsed the fight backwards. Yeah, so like you they do this a lot in horror films. They there's a famous one in one of the Friday or Thirteenth where the guy gets like a machete to the face and basically you filmed them pulling it out so that you can reverse the film and it looks like it's going in. So when he's sword fighting with Robin Williams and that he says the line you're dead, jolly man, he had to speak that in reverse because the whole thing was rehearsed and shot backwards. Is there no end to this young man's talent? He learned to fight backwards, and then he learned to speak backwards, and he scared Steven Spielberg. I want to know what his like audition piece was. Was it like a monologue? Did he do like something from Hey, Steven, I can fight backwards? I wasn't say. Did he do like monologue from Noises Off? He did the entirety of the monologue from the Iceman cometh. Uh. This is probably not a shock to anyone, but Rufio's look was inspired by the Mad Max movies. Another weird bit of of Hollywood is one big incestuous family um. Basco says he played basketball with Julia White, who played herkel because Hook filmed next door to Family matters. So I don't know who won. I'm gonna go ahead. I'm gonna go ahead. Well, you know what, I don't want to short sell Julia White. Julia White might have some handles, but I feel confident saying that Dante Basku probably schooled naturally. Basco kept a sword, kept Peter Pan's golden goal. Yeah, and he kept in framed the concept sketches for his own armor. Which is pretty baller okay, And while the last entry, now Dante Basco Lost Boys Lightning Round is that bang Rang, which, as everyone knows, is the Lost Boys rallying cry is a Jamaican word meaning chaos. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Now moving right along. There were two people who were not cast in Hook that Spielberg kept in his mind and later wound up in the movie Jurassic Park. For Hook, a young boy named Joseph Mazzello auditioned for the role of Jack. He didn't get it, but Spielberg liked him so much that he promised he'd put him in one of his upcoming films, and he made good on his promise. He wound up as the lead boy whose name escaves me in Jurassic Park a few years later, and apparently Spielberg also asked Sir Richard Attenborough to play Tootles, and Atonborough declined because he was directing Chaplain at the time. Mistake, Yeah, I know, but but no. But then Spielberg cast him as Dr John Hammond in Jurassic Park and in the Lost World Jurassic park In respectively. You mentioned earlier Hollywood one big I'll just call it family. I'll leave out the leave at the ancestors. So yeah, I'll just say one big Family. The set of Hook was like the hottest place in town at this time. I mean, this was, you know, Spielberg directing a big budget Peter Pam movie. This is great. Everybody wanted to come by and stop by and see it. Visitors on the set were so common that the filmmakers had people sign an official guest book and celebrities who stopped by Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Whoopie Goldberg, Michelle Pfeiffer, Warren Beatty and Nett Benning, Mel Gibson, Prince and then actual royalty Queen Noir of Jordan's. But somebody really interesting who who showed up was a young Angelina Jolie. Dustin Hoffman's former co star and Midnight Cowboy and his good friend John Voight asked if he could bring his children to meet Captain Hook, and one of them is, of course, Angelina Jolie, who was sixteen at the time, and Hoffman would describe her sort of ungallantly as a tall, thin, gawky looking girl, with a mouthful of braces and apparently after she told him that she wanted to be an actress, Hoffman later said to his wife, I don't think this kid has any idea what a tough road she's got. Filed under Dustin Hoffman being a jag, but she she showed him. And one of my favorite stories of of guests visiting the set was um Judy Garland's daughter Laurena Luft visited the set with her young son and she was walking through the sets and she actually broke down and started to cry, and when when I asked her why, she said, this was the same sound stage where my mother made The Wizard of Oz, and this is the closest thing that's been done to that. So it's been really this film is, you know, our generation's Wizard of Oz, but it's all the special effects and just the whimsy. It was really special for her to be there and kind of seeing in a small way what her her late mother had gone through. I think the film is hook is also really interesting because it is sort of closing in on the era when you would have something this big budget with all practical effects all like yeah, exactly, I mean this it's it is kind of a forerunner in terms of what you think Disney is really mining now in with giving every villain and every ancillary character like a gritty back story. Hook is really like a fore run under that. But nowadays you do all this, don't agree screen right or or interior sets are built not to short sell Cruella. Like the wardrobe and all that design looks amazing, but you know, we'll get into the budget for this a little bit later. But like this in the Couple of Dracula movie is it's sort of the last gasp of that like really intense practice because c g I starts to creep in starting with Jurassic Park, not starting with but you take my meaning. Now, none of the celebrities we mentioned who visited the set actually wound up in the movie. But Hook has a ton of celebrity cameos. Some are obvious and some are insanely hidden, but they're all pretty nuts. So, first of we have Glenn Close, who plays the pirate who upsets Captain Hook and gets thrown into the box, the Google box, the Boo box with a scorpion, an early forerunner in Glenn Close's history and male drag. You know, She famously did Albert Nobbs in two thousand eleven where she's in Dragged for that whole movie, she looks terrifyingly not terrified. She looks uncandidly like lev On Helm. I have to say, if there's ever like a late in light like a Todd Haynes, I'm not there, like re imagining if the life of of just leave on Helm, like not even the rest of the band, just leave on Helm. I went glen close to do the Cape Blanchet Dragon role. Her look of horror in that film is in that scene is really really scary. Well, it's like the Deer Hunter. They actually put her in a box with the scrape end. There's rats in here, Michael, We'll get into the deer Hunter later. Uh fun segue from hook getting into the deer Hunter. Okay, Next to the celebrity, this isn't the lightning round. We're moving at Molassas pace. David Crosby. David Crosby, actual must pirate, mustache owner and probably like one of the few people on this with actual sailing experience, as the pirate who screams long Live the pan on hook Ship. Jimmy Buffett, who wishes he was a pirate and is not. This debate over whether or not he's actually in this movie. Some people say he might have been cut. Obviously. I think it would please Jimmy Buffett to no end to have played a pirate in this movie, so I hope it didn't happen for him. I heard that he was the pirate who tries to steal Peter's shoes. And then, but my ever cameo in this whole movie, while we're on the topic of music legends, is Phil Collins. The police detective at the beginning of the movie named Inspector Good is Phil Collins, And he filmed this cameo in in two days. And the really interesting part, sort of an Easter egg, is in Myra's bedroom, there's a poster of the Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night, and Phil Collins was actually an extra in this movie in nineteen sixty four. He was in drama school and he was one of the crowd in the in the concert scenes screaming at the Beatles. So they kind of stuck that in there as a little as a little nod to him. But it's funny because he did have a background in training as an actor and He was worried that in some of the early press for the movie, they featured his name pretty heavily and it was just a little cameo, and he was really worried that everyone was going to think that he had a bigger role and he didn't perform very well and they cut it down to just a small cameo. So then he kind of gently requested that his name be uh faded a little bit from the early press coverage, which I'm going to We're not I'm not gonna lie a lot on this podcast, but I'm going to lie right now and say Phil Collins had a much bigger role in this movie, and it was cut because he's Phil Collins. Uh. Moving on, Carrie Fisher and George Lucas are both in this movie. They appear as the couple who are kissing on the bridge who start to get floated up into the air when Tinkerbell sprinkles Ferry Ust over them. Fisher actually confirmed that she's in there. She was rumored for a very long time. It was sort of one of those up in the air bits, and she was confirmed in what was this two thousand six anniversary of it was she confirmed that she was in there, and Kerry Fisher actually has more than just a cameo role on this film, as a lot of people found out when she um sadly died. She was like a major script doctor, real power behind the throne in Hollywood. She was just punching up stuff left and right. She did well, maybe I don't want to lead with Last Action Hero because that movie isn't great, but she did Sister the Wedding Singer. She also put in work on the Star Wars prequels, and you know, she also did specific work in Hook on Tinkerbell's lines, which brings us to Don la Fontaine voice tinker Hill. That is right. We we have come to the part of this episode where we talk about the major onset drama with Julia Roberts, who was playing tinker Bell, or, as she was nicknamed by the rather unkind cast and crew, tinker Hell. The role was originally devised with Meg Ryan in mind, and Winona Ryder was also considered, but of course they ultimately went with Julie Roberts. She had an absolutely miserable time filming this movie and many reasons, but chief among them is that days before they were due to begin filming, she called off her engagement to keep for Sutherland. Tabloids had found out that he was having an affair with an exotic dancer, and she dumped him two or three days before they were supposed to tie the knot on a studio back lot. I guess the theme of the web was Steel Magnolia's Weird. But also imagine because we mentioned earlier that Donald Sutherland was up for the roll of Hook. So imagine a world where Julia Roberts finds out that Kiefer Southerland was cheating on her with an exotic dancer, dumps him three days before the shoot, and then has to spend god knows however long this took to shoot on set with her father in law, Yes, playing the villain. That is a special kind of hell. That is a universe that I would would like to visit, but not live in. Uh So this was just a few days before you do to start filming, and of course her mindset wasn't great around this time. Spielberg would later say her biggest problem was timing. Her personal life fell apart. She reported for work on that same weekend, which e ugh Spielberg her biggest problem was timing Keefer Sutherland was stepping out on her with an exotic dancer like Spielberg. Don't blame Julia Roberts for that, Sorry, no, I agree, I was it was sad and she was really I mean, she was really high strung on the set. There was a story where someone on set called for Kifo, who was the name of Dustin Hoffman's stunt double, but Julia heard it as Keefer, as in Keef for Sutherland, and she went ballistic and she started saying, call security, how did he get on the lot? And then a script supervisor coordinator cleared up the confusion. She started dating actor Jason Patrick, who was Keefer's was his best friend presumably ex best friend Apex Petty move right, uh, And they took a trip to Ireland right around when she was supposed to be filming Hook and there was apparently a lot of tension on set of you know, will shear won't she actually show up? And Spielberg apparently had to threaten to fire her if she didn't come back immediately. So this was really a terrible experience for her. She was pretty frail and exhausted the whole time, and apparently she was even hospitalized for a really bad case of the flu. And to make matters where she worked most entirely in isolation because she you know, most of her her scenes were in front of a green screen. So while everyone else was you know, one big happy family in these elaborate sets and just kind of yucking it up, she was heartbroken, you know, alone in a green screen room in a like a wire trust from all the flying stuff like that message just sucks. Yeah, she was heartbroken. And then every tabloid on the planet was after a story about her, and they were starting all these awful rumors about how she was, you know, on drugs, which was ridiculous. Who among us could deal with that at any age, but especially at twenty three. So so this is what she was dealing with, and what the cast and crew interpreted as sullenness earned her the nickname Tinker Hell, and this first became public in a report in Premier magazine while the film was still being made, and the article, which was nominally a supportive one, described her as a quote curious presence on set, sometimes somber, sometimes at the near edge of hysteria, which there but for the grace of God, go all of us exactly. I mean that that's my daily You could describe me every day like that. And throwing it back to Dante Basco, who played Rufio, he actually has a lot of nice things to say about Julia Roberts. He says, I remember meeting her in the trailer for the first time and being like, oh my god, as any of us would. But you know, she was always sweet to me. My memory is that she was an ingenue at the time and would go through the ups and downs of being an ingenue in Hollywood. It must have been a tough time. Thank you, Dante A. Basco for all that you've done. Now, there's a fact about Julia Roberts on the set of Hook that usually gets kind of misconstrued. Uh. She apparently had an assistant whose only job was to clean her feet, which no, no, I mean, granted, she spent the entire movie barefoot, so you almost say it was necessary. But even if it wasn't necessary task, it does just sound bad. You're right, And then you know, Spielberg said that he would never work with her again. I mean, he did defend her at a certain point, you know, he said, at one point Julia went through the most trying times of her life while they were shooting Hook, and it was simply bad timing for all of us that she's happened to start on Hook at that low point and that, but he did say her performance was terrific. But then in a later sixty minute episodes, he said, it was an unfortunate time for us to work together. But I think Julia is a really, really good actress. So he chalks a lot of this up to timing, which sure, it's understandable even if it is Keith or Subwan's fault. But when he's asked if he would work together again, he says no, which like he does he think that Keither Suberoman is going to cheat on her again during their next movie. So anyway, this hurts Julia Roberts feelings, and she, in a later interview with Vanity Fair, says, I saw that and my eyes popped out of my head. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that this person that I knew and trusted was actually hesitating to come to my defense. It was a hard lesson to learn. It was the first time that I had felt a turncoat in my midst stirring calmdim condemnation of Steven Spielberg from Julia Roberts, which Steven Spielberg's you hurt Julia Roberts, I will never forgive you for that. As you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. Meanwhile, though Spielberg got along really well with Robin Williams on the set, I don't know why I said his name like that. That was no one in the history has ever pronounced Robin Williams name with that inflection. But you know what, we're gonna keep that. That's the keeper that's staying on. Uh. We have a series of you know, the requisite Robin Williams is the best stories, Alex take us there. What are what are some amazing Robin Williams stories from on the set? Well, I mean the first thing is that obviously Robin Williams is an incredibly hairy man, so he had to shave most of his upper body hair. The role of Peter, which I imagine him is like a scene from the pilot episode of Malcolm in the Middle where he's just standing there naked being shaved, reading the paper every morning. But did they need why did they need to do that. Why couldn't that have been more like one of many ways of illustrating that he he grew up. Yeah, I don't know if it's they were there. Steven Sperry had an imaginary line in his head where he was like two Harry, two Harry, shave it um. So in between shots, Williams would do stand up for the crew. Scriptwriter Jim B. Hart says Robin was the soul of the set. With a hundred plus shooting days, Robin could keep everyone laughing. The Lost Boys loved him, the crew loved him. He worked harder than any actor on the film. And you know, everybody has good things to say about him. Russian Hammond, the nine year old who plays thud Butt, which is we don't want to body shame this kid, but everyone knows why he's called thud Butt, And he asked Robin Williams to do a Mork bit for him, and so Robin Williams went with a bit about Mork hooking up with Barbara Bush. Regina Russell, who plays one of the mermaids, says that Williams would always call all of the mermaids sushi or sashimi. That's cute. Yeah, and bringing it back to Dante Basco, you cant do a whole side podcast, I'll just Rufio anecdotes. So Ruvio. Actor Dante Bosco was a big fan of Dead Poets Society because he's also an aspiring poet at the time, so he would talk to Robin Williams a lot about that film, and when they wrapped, Robin gave him as a rap present a limited edition copy of Leaves of Grass, which is, as everyone knows, like a huge part of Dead Poets Society. Walt Whitman figures very heavily into that film, and then Bosco says, consequently, I ended up opening a poetry venue out of my living room, which is now the largest open mic poetry venue in America. It's called the Poetry Lounge. So Robin Williams literally making dreams come true. On the flip side, he was also a big fan of Mooning Um. Apparently, Uh, Robert Williams pulled a prank on the set. Spielberg was directing a huge pirate ship battle scene and he was trying to get everyone's attention through a loud speaker and setting everything up, and Robin was just behind him, and right when they're about to shoot and everyone's calm down, ready to roll, Robin drops trout I believe is the technical term, and moons everyone and Spielberg lost control of the set for several minutes while everyone is falling around laughing. Despite that, Robert Williams and Steven Spielberg became very very very close friends. Robin used to call Steven Spielberg up a year or two later when he was making Schindler's List in order to cheer him up from making this, you know, incredibly heartbreaking somber movie and do like ten fifteen minutes of stand up on the phone, which h Spielberg would later say is really you know, helping him through that tough experience. And uh, apparently after Robin's death, Spielberg decided to uh to watch Hook Out of Remembrance, but he couldn't finish it because he couldn't stop crying for several hours. You can't hate Spielberg now, And yeah, I was gonna say that really humanizes Steven Spielberg quite a bit in my eyes, but apparently, Uh, though Robin and Spielberg were good friends, Robin and Dustin Hoffman were more like frenemies on the set. Yeah, you know, this is to the best of our knowledge, and unless they did something weird when they were struggling actors that we have no idea about. The first time Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman were on screen together and uh, they had an interesting relationship on the film. They would basically just start out the day by swapping dirty jokes and limericks. Um, which is, you know, maybe if you behavior on a set where there are that many kids. But Luke Lafontaine actors, Yeah, Luke Lafontaine, who played one of the pirates, says there was this parrot on the ship and Robin could imitate it perfectly, and invariably he would screech just when Dustin was in the middle of a long scene. So they would just start with each other like this constantly. Um. One of the extras later said that in the middle of a scene, Dustin said, I've lost my motivation. Let's do it again, and then Robin does an incredible deep cut reference to that. She says, when all else fails, try acting, which is a withering put down, even out of context. So the whole story behind this is that Sir Lawrence Olivier Um apparently on the set of Marathon Man like fifteen years earlier with Dustin Hoffman. I guess Hoffman said something similar like, I've lost my motivation and sear Horn's Olivia the greatest actor on the planet, the greatest Shakespearean actor of the twenty century, sniffs n ollilse fails try acting. It's just like, I don't know why I gave him the wayam F Buckley kind of voice. But yeah, so somehow Robin Williams knew that anecdote and probably delivered it in a pitch perfect Olivier accent and just murdered Dustin Hoffman. And he has never survived to this day. But Hoffman would get his own back right. He had some choice words for Robin too. I guess there were some moments when there was a time when Robin flubbed his lines and Dustin looked right into the camera and said, wow, what can you expect from Mark? But then Robin, of course that spurred him to greatness, and he did the next take perfectly. And then he looked into the camera and said, hey, Ishtars on television tonight, Ishtar being Dustin Hoffman's huge mid eighties box office bomb. So yeah, they they had a fun relationship. I hope all of those are captured somewhere. I hope they like that that's in Spielberg's vault and he just watches them bickering like children to cheer himself up. But this segues into the category we alluded to earlier, which is Dustin Hoffman is kind of a dick. Yeah, that is right. I mean, I guess you can't really qualify this as strictly diggish behavior. But he would start every morning, apparently for health reasons, he would eat an entire bowl of hot onions and garlic every morning before going onto the set, which you know, obviously can have smelled that great. Canna made his breath that great, and Robin, who was going to be doing a lot of close up scenes with him. We then also imbibe in this, just so that you know it canceled each other out and Spielberg, which is not how that works. Isn't that what you do? Like, you know, going to a date and Italian restaurant, you gotta both order the garlic. That's not Isn't that like a thing? I guess? And Spielberg not to be left out did that too, so they would walk onto the set, and Spielberg says the crowds would just part like the Red Seas when they walked onto the set because it just apparently smelled so bad. So, I don't know, you can't really call that dickish behavior, but it didn't make him a particularly liked presence on the set in the physical sense. He also kind of tried to be a director a lot, like he was always calling the shots on the set, and uh, Dante Brasco would say, it was weird. It was like having a lot of different directors. But Dante also said that Hoffman was really generous but trying to help him work through lines and stuff, so he was trying to be helpful, but um yeah, kind of it definitely made things a little tense on the set. Spielberg later said that, uh, Hoffman's sort of behind the camera phase, we were helpful, and he said that Hook was the most collaborative movie that he ever made. But I don't know, a collaborative sounds like a euphemism for being way more deferential and kind to Dustin Hoffman than he was to Julia Roberts. Uh, yeah, there are some incidents where Hoffman was really kind of a creep on the set. I mean, you know, he was a method actor and he got into the preening hook persona. He mentioned William F. Buckley earlier, the conservative political commentator. Hoffman based a lot of the hook voice on Buckley. But yeah, he was just kind of a creep. He would like walk up to the mermaids and invite them to get a drink with him and his like scary, creepy hook voice. And I guess he he drank champagne and Guinness, which is a cocktail called a black Velvet Bonna's favorite drink. Is it really? Yeah, he sends it. He sends like cases of guinness and dumpiring out the people as like a rap present. I did not know that. It's a hell of a drink. I don't give you one mother a hangover. Well, I guess he felt that Hook would drink that, So we just sort of drank that all day on the set, and uh, it made him a little aggressive and and some have said mean spirited, but you know that's hook was Hook. Yeah, I guess he would walk up to some of the girls and asked, did you dream about me last night. That's weird. Yeah, that's a little weird. But but maybe he was just pan sexual because in a two thousand four Playboy interview, Hoffman said that he had an ah ha moment with Bob Hoskins, who plays Mr Smee. Those are his words, the ahma aha moment. They decided to play their characters as quote a couple of old queens because they felt J. M. Barry had created them that way. So this is Dustin Hoffman talking to Playboy. Bob and I were rehearsing, and suddenly we looked at each other and realized at the same time, we said, these guys are gay, and it was fun. Suddenly we rehearsed that way. Get over here, sm give me a foot massage. Suddenly it made all the sense in the world. They were really good friends, they lived on a ship, they were devoted to each other. Or on the Bob Hoskins topic, he was apparently a great favorite of the Pirate extras. There was a scene when Spielberg got three D Pirate extras altogether for a scene was sme and then and Spielberg ultimately had to cut it from the film and to make up for this Hoskins bought beer for all three hundred of the Pirate extras. Hell Yeah. And he also when when things got tense on the set or boring whatever, he would apparently launch into versions of Lionel Richie's hit Hello, but altering the lyrics to Hello. Is it sme? You're looking for which low hanging fruit? But I'll give it to Bob Hoskins. While we're on the topic of the Pirate extras, um, it's interesting the strict rules. There are strict rules, but these people were bikers. There were like a hundred and fifty pirates who were cast for this movie, and they were recruited at biker bars and they basically lie around the Pirate wharf set drunk, except for the fact that they were very strict rules for them. They had six pirate wranglers on staff. That's being on your IMDb. Yeah, pirate wrangler on the set of Hook. And there was a printed list of thirty five rules that were circulated for the Pirate extras, including do not talk to the principles, do not touch the principles, do not ask for autographs, do not eat or drink the cast or cruise food, including Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman's garlic and onions breakfast. That would just threw that in no taking pictures. Do not touch the animals, Do not pet the monkey, or you will be fired. I don't know why they spent why they maybe the monkey was kind of a diva um anyway, And so in between the scenes, the hundred and fifties Surly biker pirates were just sent to another holding area, another sound stage, where they were given pretzels and water while everyone else was like eating real craft service food. That's it's funny about this, this massive, overbloated budget thing. They were like, where can we cut corners? Let's feed the makers pretzels, battle work. Uh So, one of the extras later said the hierarchy on the set was hard to take. I personally was thinking of petting that monkey on several occasions, which is just one of the greatest pool clothes you could ever ask for. And while we're on the topic of the film's massively bloated production and behind the scenes minutia, yes, here's a lightning round of hook production odds and ends. My favorite actually is the food fight in the movie. The food was actually just colored whipped cream, and most of the kid's weaponry was understandably made of rubber, but sword Rubio Dante Basco was real and he learned how to fight backwards. That still boggles my mind. Speaking of whipped cream, in an interview with E W. Julia Roberts said that the crew did whippets on her green screen sound stage, which is basically sprang more often thought in my second hand experience with whippets, it was nitrous outside from with cream canister, right, isn't that what it is? Yeah, so it's kind of like inhaling a bunch of laughing gas or something. And it's just so that she does not name names. No, she does not know, but that was how they passed time on the certainly less exotic and active green screen set. Uh. Something very strange. I didn't know. Lady Diana's boyfriend, who died with her in the car crash in Paris, has an executive producer credit on hook Doty fiatt Um owned a piece of the Peter Pan film rights and he sold them to the filmmakers in return for an executive producer credit, So he's on the on the credits there. Yeah, So fid was fascinated by Hollywood and he financed or co financed six films between like the mid eighties and the nineties when he died, including Chariots of Fire. So he actually had a piece of that one as well. Yeah, he was not like a Hollywood Dilton. He actually, you know, worked in the industry for a while. That is interesting. I did not know that there are some easter eggs, some more fun easter eggs in the film. Early on in the movie, when when Peter is on a plane, you hear the this is your captain speaking coming over the over the p a. That voice belongs to Dustin Hoffman, captain of the plane, Captain Hook yep uh speaking to Captain Hook. If you look at his pirate hat, you'll note that there's triangular detailing around it, and apparently this was designed to reflect crocodile's teeth, since we all know that was how Hook meets his in at the original story of Peter Pan and also in the movie, there is an original copy, first edition copy of Peter Pan the book. In one of the one of the early scenes when Sme played by Bob Hoskins, wakes up the pirates using a megaphone, he shouts good Morning Neverland. That was a nod to the Robin Williams movie Good Morning Vietnam, where he begins all of his radio broadcasts with same uh scream. Also, the character of Tootles references the Dead Poet Society when he shouts sees the day. The end of the movie, Robert Williams's character tells his students to carpet dim, which is Latin foresees the day in Dead Poets Society and Uh. Peter Banny's kidnapped children are called Jack and Maggie, which are the nicknames for John and Margaret. The German equivalents of those names have the nicknames Hansel and Gretel. Yeah, but one of the more famous things about Hook is that it was a bit of a sad trombone you know. Yeah, it did not do super great at the box office. Uh. It's obviously become much beloved cult classic. But you know, for something that had this much anticipation built around it, it didn't do super It didn't light the world on fire. And it's weird to think now, I mean, because I because it's such a beloved class exactly. But yeah, even even Spielberg doesn't like it. Yeah, so I mean as recently it's two thousand eleven, he was saying, I still don't like that movie. I'm hoping someday I'll see it again and perhaps like some of it, some of it, some of it. But he did later say that there are parts of Hook I love um, and then he gets unnecessarily like specific about it. This is a two eleven interview with Entertainment Weekly. He says, I'm really proud of my work right up through Peter being hauled off in the parachute out the window heading for Neverland. So that's the part of Hook that Steven spiel Work likes. Then he says, I'm less proud of the Neverland sequences because I'm uncomfortable with that highly stylized world that today, of course, I probably would have done with live action character work inside a completely digital set. So that's interesting to me because you know, you talk about poor Julie Roberts being strung up in a truss on a green screen, completely isolated from this magical world that everyone else was having a blast on, and Steven Sperroger is like, today, that's how I would do the whole movie. Uh yeah, so then you know, he also said I didn't have any confidence in the script, which throws our beloved James V. Hart under the bus. I didn't know what I was doing and tried to paint over my insecurity with production value. And uh yeah about that. Thanks in part to the elaborate production design, Hook is one of the very few movies at Spielberg ever directed that went way over schedule and way over budget. It was set to run for a seventy six day film shoot, rando a hundred sixteen days instead. The cost started out at forty eight million, but later balloon to eighty million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time. And that's just production budget, right, that doesn't get into marketing costs. I don't think, Yeah, I think so. I mean that is crazy. And while we are going with for the Spielberg Pylon, Yeah, while we while we're piling on Steven Spielberg. Hook is one of only three of Spielberg's movies to have been rated rotten by Rotten Tomatoes, along with ninety one and the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World. Roger Ebert, with his usual incredible gift for just murdering. People called Hook a lugubrious retread of a once magical idea which I'm getting printed on a business card. The original cut of the film ran three hours, hence the lugubrious part. Vincent Canby at The New York Times just said it was too much, and even Peter Travers panned it. Who's he likes everything? Yeah, Spielberg, it's still kind of in black mark in his career, like even garbage, like the Crystal Skull still has its champions, people like the Terminal, you know, but yeah, Hook still stands as that as a critically drubbed Spielberg film. You know my problem with Hook? Why is it called Hook? It's about Peter? Or just do this anyway? That is everything you didn't know about Hook. We are officially out. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed yourselves. This has been too much information. We'll catch you next time. We'll see you. Too much Information was a production and of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum on the Ghost Punk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.