Xanadu: 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 histories and little known, fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, music, movies and more. We are your electric Light Orchestra of Ephemera. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan. Run Talk. Yeah, you like that one bit Jordan's. We're kicking off Olivia Newton John Week here at t M. I a thing that we didn't know. Yeah, Oh yeah, points. This guy pours one out. What should I pour out for her? Foster's I mean, I'd say champagne, because she deserves it. I Love Olivia John, I know you do, Buddy. Well, does your love with stand Santa Do? We'll see. I only ever knew about this film from like Coffee Table Books My parents got me about twentieth century American pop culture and vh one's buzzfeedlistical presaging, full court press. Of I love the seventies, eighties and Nineties Talking Heads Extravaganza hosted by how sparks, sparks, whither how sparks? Yeah, this was one of the first movies that low showed to me really yeah, yeah, you're now wife. This was one of your first dates. Yeah, yeah, I think we. I think she actually made me double feature this and sergeant. No, I didn't watch sergeant peppers with her. She tried to make me and I said no, I put my foot down. The last relationships, I'm told. Yeah, Um, it's exactly as bizarre as everyone says it is. I don't know, you didn't even watch it. No, I started to blow up your spotif on the that's that's okay. You know, I just I delayed in watching this for a long time because I felt it besmirched the good name of my beloved of living, Newton John. and honestly, yeah, this movie feels like the result of someone going into a cocaine induced fugue state. I mean to me, someone who loved like bright, frothy, colorful rock and roll nostalgia. That was, you know, grease, the perfect example. I felt like Xanda do was kind of the contemporary world intruding into my fifties fantasy, and I never really was into like fantastical sci fi stuff anyway, and the visuals of Zanda do, I just I never liked it. It looked like a cross between a workout tape and like an early nineties animated Japanese adventure series like sailor moon or something, which just was never anything I was into. Um, I. The SPANDEX leg warmers and the neon that we all associate with like a certain look in the early eighties can really be attributed to Zanna do and honestly I'm just turned off by the aesthetic. Um, yeah, the neon in the sense it just registers, is really cold to me, whereas Greece was very warm. I mean, we've got we're following this up with grease very soon, which y'all wax poetic about that. But yes, I have come to a appreciate Zanna do for the camp absurdity and also for the soundtrack by Jeff Lynn and the Electric Light Orchestra, which you correctly identified as a favorite of mine. But yeah, if I'm completely honest, I've really only ever seen highlight clips from this and you know, there are undoubtedly great moments which we'll talk about. Uh, it sounds like everyone's in agreement that the script for this is unsalvageably bad. It's just so funny that people are just like, oh, yeah, it's bad, like no one involved. I don't think anyone is. Maybe, I don't know, maybe I a super fans. There are definitely I know they're super fans, but I don't think anybody involved in the making of it is still like towing the like. It's still like the good soldier, that's like I made a good movie. Like I think everyone involved was like, yeah, that one didn't really pan out. But I mean, on the other hand, I do have to give props for just how crazy it is, combining Greek mythology, swing music, Lidia Newton, John Roller, skating, disco and Gene Kelly. I mean it it definitely sound psychotic enough for me to want to get mixed up in, but it's been compared to a cinematic Frankenstein. They sought to create something beautiful by bashing together a bunch of disparate elements, hoping to reanimate the big, splashy nineteen forties musical, but instead they made a monster. They were so preoccupied with the fact that they could they didn't stop to think about whether or not they should. Well, from the film's important role in the establishment of the razzie awards to the boggling array of past and future Hollywood royalty involved to the bid ter fight over the film's soundtrack. Here's everything you didn't know about Zeni. Do you know we never recall the plot points of anything that we do here because we assume a degree of listener familiarity with what we're covering. But I gotta do broad strokes here because, as you said, it scans like a cocaine induced fugue state of its time. Um Sonny Malone own U is a struggling artist in Los Angeles who rips up and discards a sketch which then collides with a mural of the nine sister muses of Greek myth brings them to life, one of whom roller skates through L A and has a meat cute with him. Um, he has a job. Hold on, Buddy. He has a job painting album covers at a record store, fextimiles of them for displays and sees the image of the woman he has just met in the art that he has tasked with reproducing and somehow tracks her down to a Hobo shag shack across town, which we'll talk about the Pan Pacific Auditorium, and this is Terpsichor, known affectionately as Kira, and that's Newton John Not terps. That's the University of Maryland football team or basketball team, something sunny. Makes Friends with Danny McGuire, a construction mogul who used to lead a big band orchestra, you know that old trope. His heart was broken in the nineteen forties by a woman who looked like Kira and he was left creatively bereft as a result. Kira pushes the pair of them to open a nightclub called Zena Do, and her and Sonny's Romance Continues Apace. Just before the club's opening, Kira confesses that she is one of the nine muses of Olympus, sent to Earth to inspire the creation of this club. She has to return to Olympus. Sonny is upset because they're in love, et CETERA. Sonny somehow roller skates through a mural into Mount Olympus and pleads with Zeus to let Kira return to Earth. He is sent back to Earth, but, nagged by both Kira and his wife, Zeus ultimately allows Kira to return to Earth to be with Sonny for quote, maybe a moment, maybe forever. It was the classic Um. Is it like theat where you don't know, like what the length of time is if she was gone. Yes, it's like the Oh henry shorts, now the Lady of the tiger. What am I doing here? Let me get through the damn plot summary. Run Talk Karen. The muses perform at the ZANTA Dou grand opening before leaving Earth once again, Sonny is bummed, but then spots a waitress who looks like Kira and begins to chat her up. And seen. befitting its entire Bizarre Mien, Zanna Dou emerged from the combined creative efforts of two unlikely Hollywood players, Larry Gordon and Joel Silver. Two years later, silver would rocket to fame with the enormously successful forty eight hours, while the two of them would go on to make Predator and die hard together, which is such a hilarious trio of films coming off of Santa D so how the Hell did this happen? Well, according to the extensive press pack that accompanied Zantado's original release, Gordon said that silver quote wanted to make an old fashioned musical. There's an article from entertainment weekly in two thousand seven that has making up with some of these quotes silver was, quote, hell bent on producing a disco fied remake of the seven Rita Hayworth vehicle down to earth, once claiming, and I have seen this quote repeated in multiple places, he was prepared to stab myself in the back to get it off the ground. What's that mean? He's a weird guy. Uh, if you consider Sanna do a proper remake of down to Earth, it makes the chronology here even more confusing, because down to earth was a sequel to here comes Mr Jordan's, which is also concerned with heavenly bean's meddling with mortals, and two actors from Mr Jordan reprised their roles. And Down to Earth here comes Mr Jordan has been remade twice, once in v Heaven Can Wait, starring Warren Batty, and again in two thousand one as down to Earth, starring Chris Rock. All of those films are adaptations of the play heaven can wait. So that makes Sanna do a remake of a sequel to a movie adaptation of a play. Oh No, I've Gone Cross side everything you've said in the last five minutes, from you're recounting the plot of this movie to its origins, as whatever you just said, the remake, of a sequel, of an adaptation of a play. I have I have no I'm gonna have to listen to this at half speed, and advised listeners to do the same. It gets easier from here, but this just does it the you have to understand that Joel loves musicals. Larry Gordon told entertainment weekly I think when he came to l a he was more familiar with musicals than action films. So even though this film arrives at the down of the eighties, Hollywood is still very much in the thrall of the roller skating and disco era and also the wonderfully uniquely American combination of the two known as the Roller Disco, which is roller skating to disco or disco dancing on roller skates. Glasses half full, half empty. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Choose your poison. It's all bad. The year before Xanadude came out, in nine, there was the movie Roller Boogie, which is also a Roller Skating Music, starring Linda Blair of the exorcist fame, and there was also a movie called Skatetown USA, which you mistakenly put as Roller Boogie again, Rookie Uh, starring Scott Bao of Joni loves choccy and happy days fame uh, and many others, including Patrick swayze and his first film role. So there's a whole little mini genre evolving at the end of the seventies, the roller disco exploitation flick Um. And if you want a real whiplash of context, you know that Larry Gordon also produced ninety nine, the Warriors, which was also starring the male lead in Xanadu, whose name I never remember, Michael Beck. It's so funny he went from warriors to this, because warriors is just like this icon of like Grimy New York City taxi driver era x gag exploitation. It's got, you know, the warriors come out and play bid. It's got all the color aerful gangs, like the abandoned stuff in the city and like. But there was an aura of real danger around this movie. I mean it was made off of soul urice book, I want to say. And then they were so petrified that this film was going to cause upsurge and gang violence that they were like squashing it because the poster, if I'm remembering correctly, like the tagline for this movie was like New York Street gangs outnumbered the NYPD ten to one. It's just it's why again, just so wild to me. I mean again, like Joel Silver going from Zannah Dude to Predator in like five years. Hollywood's weird. Well, Olivia and John went from Greece, which is where she became a global icon, to Zanna do and she actually suggested. A fellow Australian, a young Mel Gibson, stars the male lead in this movie of Car. It's types of car. A Jewish name got that? Oh yeah, it's really it's up for debate whether or not Mel Gibson would have been an improvement over this Michael Beck Guy, who the BBC referred to in a stunning insult as a Jim Morrison Mannequin that's broken out of Madame Tussau's Wax Museum to pursue the acting dream truly all times. That was a great piece. We'll quote more of it later on. Apparently Andy Gibb another Australian, was actually initially cast as the male lead and Zanna do it first, but he dropped. Heard I've heard it either variously pinned on his cocaine addiction or sergeant peppers. I mean both are yeah, yeah, exactly. Um. John Travolta was also offered the role, but he turned it down to do urban cowboy, which, to quote Indiana Jones once more, he chose. Well, okay, I mean both were poor options, but I guess I don't know. Coming for John, teaming with Olivia, Newton John Right after Greece for another musical. He could have minted money like that might have been the thing to save, but he went with urban cowboy, beginning his slow slide too, as close to obscurity as a John Trouble they could get until Quentin Tarantina rescued him. I've also seen that Peter Frampton was another living in John Choice, but he was also tainted by his appearance in the God Awful Sergeant Pepper's Jukebox Movie, Uh, starring who was in that? The bags Arra's right Erosmith were in that, Alice Cooper, I think. I think so. Yeah, I'm starting to blend it with the Tommy Ken Russell Movie. Oh Yeah, Elton John and UH Clapton and cocaine, Tina Turner. Yeah, but for all these fantasy castings, somebody who did wind up in Zanna do. That as a pretty cool backstory, is Sandal Bergman who, to me he was most famous for playing the warrior Valeria in Conan, the barbarian, just after Zanna do in two. It was her springboard. She's one of the night. Yeah, she's one of the muses. Anyway, apparently, Brian and Grazer, uh, he's Beautiful Mind Guy. Right, he's done like a lot of one of the biggest producers in Hollywood history. He wanted to he he was, I guess, a Venice Beach Guy and wanted to make a roller skating picture. Uh, and he bugged his buddy, who's one of the like seventeen screenwriters on this film, and guy named Mark Reid Rubel, to write a treatment which they they took to silver and Gordon. I think silver at the time was Larry Gordon's assistant. The character of Sonny is apparently based on Brian Grazer, which is hilarious. But yeah, as we mentioned, Michael Beck is something of a nothing burger, so I don't know how much of the essence to Grazer UH comes through. Uh. They took it to warner brothers, who passed, and Gordon wrote later. Maybe Warner Brothers was right to do so. A musical fantasy was chancey and at that time we didn't have Olivia or Gene Kelly, the eventual stars, but Joel and I still believed in the pro in the project. Ruble made the title Zanna do. Not from the Collor Ridge Poem Collar Yes, not from the college poem, but from the Citizen Kane reference to the college poem, which is uh Kane's mansion. Is Charles Foster Kane overson wells's character. Charles Foster caine builds a mansion, costly, overblown, great metaphor for Zanna do, and he calls it Zanna do after the Holly Ridge Poem Kubla Khan, a rich text for a roller disco movie. I might add. The BBC wrote a great piece in called Zanna do, rethinking of misunderstood masterpiece, and it includes this great line referencing citizen Kane. Cane's Zanna do is a costly nightmare with plenty of ambition and high concept thinking, but an empty void were the soul and care arcter should be, just like the infamous rollers movie fantasia that shares its name amazing. That's the same piece. To call the lead a wax work, Jim Morrison, that wandered out amount of tussas to try standard acting. So yeah, that that writer some bangs, in the parlance of the time. UH silver moves over to universal pictures at that point and he takes the project with him and then when universal picks it up, they're like, okay, we're gonna pick up your picture, but we're gonna rewrite it. Sorry. So that's the first knife, that's the first incision to this film, and there's something that comes up again and again when you hear about the making this movie. It was originally supposed to be a low budget, no star movie, basically half a notch above a quickie exploitation flick, and then all of a sudden Living Newton John, the biggest female star in the world at that time because of Greece, became interested and it just sort of took off and they snagged gene Kelly, the icon of movie musicals, and in this context just the bizarre stylistic mishmash makes a lot more sense, because this whole movie just kind of grew up and around the producers and they started throwing everything they had into the mix because they had these stars, everything, apparently, except the script. It's like the emperor has no clothes right. Like there they get some point. You would have thought there would have been an adult in the room to look around and go like, let's play on this, guys, what are we doing? And they're like no, we have gene Kelly and Olivia Newton John, like just keeps, just just roll, stretch, stretch vamp. We'll fix it in post Um. I'm just really proud of this heading. I called it much ado about xena Um. The film made it to production without a proper script, which does show h Robert Greenwald, who is the director. He got a forty page outline and he says when I got the forty pages I thought, well, this is strange. Maybe there's a plan here that I'm not aware of. Maybe there's another version of the script someplace. For sure the script will be improved. Unfortunately, that never happened. Yet even the people intimately involved with this movie have nothing nice to say about it. The outline that he saw never turned into a real script. I believe Oliva Newton John signed on after reading an even shorter outline. I have read that her. The one she signed on was twenty pages. So an outline of between pages was all it took. Michael Beck was talking to USA Today and he said half a dozen writers were hired and fired and brought into so called fixed the script. So it was difficult from an acting point of view, and I was a fairly young actor. Then I would get revisions that had nothing to do with the story I thought I was filming and I would go well, what am I supposed to be doing now, which is, to be fair, kind of his stick. He's also like a cardboard man and the warriors. He just looks really good in the leather vest. Anyway, I just love that thing out Robert Greenwald to direct this, because pretty much everything else on his resume are these super left wing documentaries where he like does expose s on the Koch Brothers or Walmart or the war in Iraq and Rupert Murdoch. He even did a movie with Vincent and Afrio as the sixties radical Abby Hoffman called steal this movie. Um, I have to wonder if Xanadu scarred him, just kind of ruining Hollywood decadence forum for life, one of the just top tier anecdotes from the making of this movie which you've been unable to confirm, but I choose to believe it. It was a rumor that was printed in the nineteen seventy nine issue of Premier magazine and said that Joel Silver the producer, locked writers in a room at one point until they came up with pages. According to IMDB, one writer who's locked in a closet for three days and Silper said the son of a bitch wouldn't deliver, so I locked him in. I love that. It's one of those things I want to I don't want to. Somebody says it's not true, I won't. I just won't believe them. Um Gordon says, in going back to Zannado, the documentary accompanying the film's release, that they poached green rolled from a competing roller disco movie in development to sandbag that production the cutthroat world of also greenwold's dad was a Broadway choreographer named Michael Kidd Um, but that's a big deal, like in the birdcage when Robin Williams is doing the famous like Michael Martha Graham, but keep it inside. Yeah, and uh, I guess he was sadly going through divorce at the time. He told the L A times in two thousand two that it was a time in my own life when retreating into a fantasy world was a highly desirable and necessary thing for me. I will say that there's a making of documentary for this. That a contemporaneous one, and it is the Batan death march of behind the scenes documentary. Everyone in here looks like the bizarre middle ground of being like coked out of their Gourd and also desperately unhappy. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Well, that's true, but like there's like like Greenwald is like talking, he looks like Marty Scorsese. He's like he's got this like rapid fire like kind of pattern thing, but he also has this like thousand yards stare or just like what have I done that he must know. Yeah, it must have been like oppenheimer watching the atom bomb for the first time, like I have become death destroyer of worlds, careers, destroy careers. Yeah, Um, Oh, yeah. So this is really funny because these two films are kind of the two roads diverged in a wood Um Olivia. Newton John turned down the village people musical biopic. Can't stop the music to be in Xanadud so either. I guess it's not diverged. I mean either. Yeah, I was gonna say either one would have. Yeah, can't up. The music was the brandchild of Grease producer Alan Carr so that must have felt like a big betrayal for him. I think it was. I think it soured their relationship for a while. I read that she also apparently turned down a bit, I would imagine, a bit, part in the Blues Brothers. I don't know what she would have been in that, but probably the Carrie Fisher role. Right, like that's the only problem female role in there, which is weird because they were looking at Carrie Fisher to be sandy and Greece initially holy. But at least she met her husband of eleven years, Matt Latanzi, on Zanna do it was. Yeah, he was the guy who played the young version of Gene Kelly's character, right. Yeah, and he's super cheated on her with I think they're nanny. Yeah, didn't end well. Uh. But, expounding on the film and her autobiography, don't stop believing Olivia wrote. It did sound fresh, entertaining and intriguing. I also like that Zanna do would take audiences into a mesmerizing fantasy world, and I appreciated that there was no violence in it. More than anything, I identified with the message about dreams coming true. Ah, sweet girl, she she's wonderful, just such an adorable hippie. I guess when she and her husband Split, it was supposedly because friends close to them sighted the disparity between her spiritual interests and his more earthly ones. As a key fast, which sounds like you have him, isn't for cheating. But yeah, I guess she got tired of all the show bizz stuff in the late eighties, probably as a result of the stalker that we'll talk about later in this episode. She moved to like Australia and like lived on a farm and, yeah, she's so great. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more, too much information in just a moment. Getting Gene Kelly to appear in what would become his final film. I think he plays like a I think he starts as himself in something from the nineties, but this was, for all intents and purposes, his last dramatic role. A little more difficult. Greenwald at the INN making of I was talking about, he says, number one, gene doesn't have to work. Number two, yeah, number two. He's very particular. So when we talked about doing a musical, it was a very tough thing. Uh. The often repeated stipulation that Kelly had upon accepting this role was that he wouldn't touch one toe. You know, this is also not long after he lost his wife, Gene Coyn in UH and so he was a single father at this time and the film was shooting close to his house, in the time honored tradition of movie stars taking roles that are geographically convenient for them, moving the mountain to him. Kenny Ortega, one of the film's choreographers. Oh, I love this story. God, this is a good one. I forgot where we were. UH, Kenny Ortega, one of the film's cooreer. I blacked out. One of the film's choreographers. Were called that. He got a call after he had gotten the Gig to the effect of you need to come down to the studio. You're meeting Gene Kelly. He's not gonna Dance in the movie, but he won't do the movie if he doesn't like you. And when they met, and I guess Jean took him into a side room, just him and Kenny Ortega, and locked the door, leaving the producers outside, which I love. So it's just man, the man, Gene Kelly and Kenny Ortega. Jeane's gonna do a little soft shoe on your kneecaps, I guess. Gene Kelly told him if I were to dance, and I'm not saying I'm going to dance, but if I were to dance, what would you have me do? And Kenny says he said, well, why don't we just start with some of these steps that you've already done, which to me are classic and timeless, because I guess Kenny Ortega grew up like watching, like hero, learning to dance from the gene Kelly movies and Um, so he starts get doing some of these old moves and Gene Kelly says, oh, that's the old Nora Bays and that's gaming his old movies. Yeah, he's like, that's not right. It's this way. And they're just dancing together in a locked, windowless room. Oh that's so. I mean, can you ever tell? It must have been freed, because I watched some interview with him and he was saying like yeah, I didn't prep anything, like I didn't think Jeane is gonna Dance, so like, I didn't. He was just going off his pure, like childhood passion form and recalling these movies that inspired him to want to do this. So that's so cool, man. That's like if I got to like play Bass with Paul McCartney on the fly and just remembered his early Beatles songs, not because I knew I was going to see him, but because that was the stuff that made me want to make music. That's that's so cool. I love that. This whole story is so cute. They were going for like half an hour just dancing together, breaking a sweat, and then suddenly gene Kelly stops, opens the door, goes to the producers who were just waiting breathlessly in the hall, and only announces I'll do the picture. I love that. Yeah, Ortega was talking to NPR in. He said Jean mentored me and when the movie was over he continued to. He would invite me to his home and we would look at his films together and he would talk to me about how he designed choreography for the camera, which was the greatest education I had received up until that point. He even, I don't know if he gave him or let him use, his viewfinder from singing in the rain. That was like engraved with Jean's name on it, and I guess they sat and watched all of his old movies and broke them down together. I just I love this so much. Yeah, or taking is a big name as far as Hollywood choreography goes. He got the GIG through the being a choreographer for the San Francisco band the tubes, who will talk about in a second. He also worked with share Bett Midler, Ethel Merman and kiss, who I I no way this is possible, but I imagine Ethel Merman and kiss in a room together just gacked out of their boards dancing. It's a huge deal. Yeah, he did the dance scenes from dirty dancing and all the high school musical movies and Hocus pocus and newses, and he also did the choreography for the final Michael Jackson tour. That never happened. This is it. What are the tubes doing here? I guess we'll get to this, my friend, don't put the cart ahead of it. Don't put the skate ahead of the disco. Um. There were a few nons to Kelly's career in Xanadu. The name of his character, Danny McGuire, is directly lifted from the character that he plays in the film cover girl, which, like down to Earth, also starred reading Hayworth. Kelly, despite all of his protestations, ended up choreographing his dance number with Newton John, and it's basically a cover version of the routine he did with Judy Garland in uh two. For me and my Gal I think there were also elements of anchors away, which is the one where he's dancing with a cartoon mouse. I think he's a little of that too. He's a retired widow. Word, dude. He's he's gonna just go back into the well for you don't you're not getting. You're not getting new gene for a roller disco picture. He must have been pushing seventy. Yeah, he was pushing seventy. He was like sixty eight years old, still still feather yeah, Um, and this that may have been because the dance scene was a last minute picture. The film was done and then when they started like, I guess, putting the press materials for it together. People were like, Oh, well, do gene Kelly and Olivia Newton John Danced together, and they were all they like all looked at each other and we're like wait, we forgot. We got we got disco, we got gene Kelly, we got Greek mythology, we got we got this abandoned like theater in the middle of L A. Oh, we forgot. We've got that. They were supposed to dance together. Yeah, so Kelly's contract was complete and he was dead set against returning, but he agreed on the condition that he would get to direct this scene and that it would be shot on a closed set with only himself, Olivia Newton John, Kenny Ortega and the technical crew, like, you know, the DP and sound guy and so forth. Director Robert Greenwald was explicitly banned. In interview, Gene Kelly gave in. He basically played it like he didn't want to disappoint Olivia. He said I had already decided, about a year and a half before I did Zanderdo, that I was through with dancing. But several journalists told me that Olivia Newton John kept saying how sad she was she wouldn't get a chance to dance with me, so I finally said, all right, throw in a number, but I'm through with dancing. Uh. One of the performers in this film tells the story of the scene where Gene Kelly is the roller skate through a line of jugglers tossing pins back and forth behind him as he goes. And, as is often the case in any situation where a bunch of people need to perform something perfectly in order, someone would always screw it up. So they, which is all these like twenty year old jugglers, would be like sorry, Jean, can you get back on your marks? Sorry. I just love imagining a surly gene Kelly on roller skates surrounded by clowns juggling pins. It was like a Proto breakdancing crew in this chain breakers, something like that. I just loved him being like what the hell are you kids doing? She tended to be robots, and they're like take thirty six GEEN, get back on the damn skates. I guess he was also really pissed that they didn't show his legs to prove he was skating. And the roller skating scenes they're all like tight shots from his chest up, and he did all like he was a really good skater. I mean skating since he was a kid, and I don't know anytime that you don't show gene Kelly's footwork seem like a big miss. So maybe that's why Jeane Kelly banned the director from the set. Um there's a similar scene where there's some tight rope walkers walking and they were genuinely really far off the ground, but they shot the scenes so that you just like at the bottom of the frame you see the edge of the rope. So like for all you know, the rope is like six inches off the ground and all the type rope walkers when they saw the finished movie, we're like Wow, I wish we didn't have to do that because I was really stressed about made doing that eight feet off the ground or whatever it was. Yeah, you know, this was his first theatrical I think, Green Bald. Yeah. Well, again it gets back to like this was supposed to be a nothing movie. Yeah, he got Emmy noms for basically the movie Munich, but he did a documentary about Munich, about the massacre. Uh, that was seventy seven. So he went from doing a movie about the Munich Olympics massacre to a roller skating picture where Gene Kelly hated his guts. Holly Weird. Kelly did not like Santa Do. Sadly, he wrote in his autobiography. I have to admit it is a terrible movie, but I must say it was fun working with Olivia. For that reason alone I don't regret the experience. It's the last time you'll see me dancing in the movie. So in that respect I guess Santa do occupies a special place in my career, but only in that respect. I hastened to add. Oh, I love the fact that he lived into so he had enough time to like absorb how much of a disaster this was. Um Kenny Ortaga worked mostly with Geene Kelly, but there was a choreographer named Jerry Trent who worked mostly with Olivia. Um. Originally he was hired on a five week assignment to just teach her how to do some steps. He ended up choreographing six of the film's numbers, including suddenly uh, the number in which Olivia and John fell and broke her cock. Six, she says. They put me in an ice donut in between takes, which I presume she means like an inner tube filled with ice that they would like let her sit in. That's damn. That's a tragic mental image. Uh Yeah, she refused a stunt double for the rest of the movie. She's a good soldier and John Literally busted her ass for this movie that got universally pans. It's just heartbreaking, but at least she got to dance with Gene Kelly. Uh. In a interview with the daily Harold Olivia said that she understood what an honor of that was. She said he was lovely. I still can't believe I danced with Gene Kelly. How lucky I am that I've been in movies where I've danced with two of the greatest dancers of all time, Gene Kelly and John Travolta. I never would have thought that because I had two left feet growing up. AH, sweet girl. Um another heading. I'm proud of. Zeusicle. The Musical Electric Light Orchestra came in and Jeff Lynn. Is that? Are they an actual band, or is it just like jobbers that came in to Support Jeff Lynn? You would know this. I you know what I don't know? I would imagine it's mostly just the Jeff Lynn show. All Right, UH E. L O and Jeff Lynn came in at the behest of Joel Silver. The band was writing high on discovery, which debuted at number one on the UK charts and stayed there for five weeks. Is that Mr Blues Guy? I don't know about L O. I think Mr BUSCO was earlier. I think that was they did evil woman. Yeah, I mean my main thing about Jeff Lynn was that not only was he in the traveling wilberries, but he produced the closest thing we ever had to a Beatles Reunion, when Paul Georgia Ringo finished off two of John's Demos for the Beatles Anthology. So that's I don't know why they didn't get George Martin. It might of just I think George Martin was losing his hearing at that time, so that might be why they didn't get him. Probably too many cooks to Jeff Lynn doesn't really seem like a team player. All due respect. Anyway, he said he took this gig solely because of a living Newton John. Well, yeah, I took it because I thought, well, I like Olivia, she's Great. It would be nice to meet her, but he seemed to regret it immediately. In the aforementioned making of documentary there is an extremely awkward clip of him sitting there with sunglasses and I think the bucket had on. He's sitting next to Liva Newton, John and the guy that wrote all of the songs for her half of the soundtrack, her producer and Co writer, John Ferrar, and the interviewer goes what do you think of John to Jeff and he says I don't know, I'm still trying to work it out, and all three of them laugh like it's a scene from the office. It's ridiculous. Um, there was all kinds of drama going on behind the scenes with his stuff. Lynne was supposed to contribute both songs and the film's score, and Greenwald at some point, I guess, scrapped Lynn's score and asked the composer named Barry Divorson, which sounds like a Battlestar galactica character. That's amazing, to contribute one. Um. And then I guess this whole thing was such a you know, Babytown frolics that Lynn submitted demos and was like, okay, I'm gonna Finish these later and production took the demos and just cut all the scenes of the movie to those demos. So rather than green lighting the songs based on the Demos then waiting for the finished version of these tracks to choreographed the movie too, they just did it to the rough version of these songs. So then they had to do the final version of all of these songs for the soundtrack and it caused all these problems. The Drummer, Bev Bevan. There's no way that's that guy's name. That's that's a Typo. I think that is actually Bev Bevan. God the English. Uh, he told Martin Kinch. When we came to record it for real, we had to keep in time with the demo and the demo was not in time, so it was a bit of a nightmare to actually record the thing. We were at music land studios in Munich and it became a very frustrating experience which should have taken a couple of hours took about three or four days. Good Lord and Jeff Lynn's deal mandated that if the film didn't include all of the songs he submitted, they couldn't use any of them. So right, yeah, I mean is that a normal thing? Like, I don't even understand. Is that just to give you all the power you must be? Yeah, UH, so production had to make space for the song. Don't walk away at the very last minute in order to not have to start all over again. Jeff Lyn later told rolling stone I wrote half the songs, though I've never seen the thing. Referring to the movie. I don't suppose anyone else has either. It was supposed to be really bad. I don't think I'll ever see the movie after reading the reviews. And he even blamed Zena do for stalling yellow's career, saying that radio stations wouldn't play the band's follow up to discovery, which again was a huge album, because of the taint of that movie. UH, he said it's because of that film. He's talking to the L A times rock radio programmers were saying we don't want to touch them after that bloody film. It's because the film was so bad and it's a failure and we're associated with it. WHO's like? Who? What are all the careers that this movie is tanks living in John's for quite some time. It's Michael Beck, Guy Yell O, movie again, Robert Greenwald, Robert Greenwald, trail of blood, of moved on to left wing expose documentaries. Oh my God, poor guy. Yeah, anyway, the band playing that bizarre forties big band, eighties rock and roll scene, San Francisco Proto punk band, the tubes, mentioned earlier, best known for a hit called White punks on dope, which I believe was like a sort of scathing critique of Um, like white hipster culture on sort of the drug scene in San Francisco. And they were brought on board by Ortega. They were really a fascinating band. They were kind of like, Um, really like multi media experience. They had choreoslography. Yeah, I was just about say, yeah, they have like choreography, they had visual aspects, they had coordinated costumes. Take it. Work with him for like a dozen years. Uh. They have never once performed this song live, at least as of uh again, another person shoveling dirt on the coffin. UH, Michael Cotton, who played keyboards for them. Totally Entertainment Weekly. The film was a disaster. I wasn't surprised how bad the reviews were because I mostly agreed it was a train wreck, a big giant colorful train wreck. On the flip side, the story behind the song suddenly is actually kind of sweet. It's obsensively Sung in the movie by Michael Beck, but that guy is, despite his resemblance that Jim Morrison, is not a singer. So Olivia and John brought in Sir Cliff Richard to sing the duet with her as a way of paying it back. Cliff Richard was, uh, he's a huge star in the UK and the fifties he was kind of like positioned as England's answer to Elvis. He was this kind of teen idol figure and then he transitioned into all around adult entertainer mode and uh, I don't even know what the American equivalent would be. But Olivia and John got to start singing for him on his British TV series in the sixties and she later said after clip had been so wonderful to me earlier in my career by introducing me to English audiences, I had the opportunity to return the favor, which is wonderful, and she wrote the center onto biography. So that was sweet and you know, torture Genesis, but hard to argue with results. Um. The soundtrack was a huge hit. It was the fifth most popular soundtrack of the year. There's some great tracks on it, magic and Zanna Dou we're both number one hits in the US and the UK, and in one of John Lennon's last interviews before his death, he identified magic as one of his favorite songs of the moment, which I'm sure it's just a dagger in your heart. I'm gonna see you. The other one he mentioned was L Ow Song. It was also from Santa Do. What the it was really into the B fifty two is too, because he thought that was like Yoko's sound and suddenly, like the stuff that Yoko really wanted to do, the kind of like you know, yodeling type sound, was now becoming mainstream and that was one of the things that made him feel like he was ready to come back into the recording business after taking a bunch of years off to raise his son. Yeah, Newsweek. Well, quite a thing that. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more, too much information, after these messages. Santa do has to well, aside from Venice, has two historic shooting locations from l a that are featured prominently uh the shopping montage. The Gene Kelly outfit montage is the FIORUCI Boutique in Beverly Hills. That Boutique was Beverly Hills first movie theater, the beverly. I didn't know that. You know, I don't know anything about fashion. UH, fiorgi popularized camouflage prints in the eighties before Um inventing stretched jeans and, I guess, with them, you know, skin tight denim in the eighties. Anyway, that the theater of the beverly became a clothing boutique in which was something of a new wave Mecca in L A. Clouds no me worked there along with Madonna's brother for Christopher, just Christopher. It's just just Christopher. Are they still feuding? I hope so. I don't know. Gives it? Ah, they were one of the first places to sell Betsy Johnson stuff and Keith herring's art, and Andy Warhol Launched Interview magazine with a party there. Eventually it became a bank before and the well before it was wiped off the face of the earth altogether for a luxury hotel, because that is Los Angeles. That all over the world. Number that they shot there is great. That song whips. I love that song. I remember one of the only times I ever like tried the roller skate of my adult life. It was at one of the track Roller Disco Nights and the first song, as I'm out there like bandby on the ice trying to move, was that song. And they're all these fantastically dressed people in like Shimmery gold, Lamy spandex flying past me as I'm like holding on for dear life to the wall, and that song was playing. I love that song so much. Do you know what the singer Brenda Lee, you know, of rocking around the Christmas tree and, I'm sorry, fame? She was a cameo in that musical number that they shot there. I guess she was just at the studio that they had to tape something else and walked by. Did it also tank her career? I think she. Well, I name a song she did after this. As we enngtioned earlier, the Hobo Sanctuary, the Pan Pacific Auditorium, all the exterior shots of Zanna do, what beautiful, beautiful building, Um but incredible. Notably, only exterior shots of that are are used. In fact, Um Sonny says at one point what a dump and he also says they used to hold wrestling matches here, and they did. Uh. The Pan Pacific Auditorium was built by promoters named Philip and Cliff Henderson, the latter of whom's wikipedia page delightfully notes that he was a member of the quiet birdman, a male only aviators social club. Draw your own conclusions, folks. The building was designed by Los Angeles Architects Wordman and Beckett, who I was unable to find anything else from. Um, I don't know, but it was historically important. It was an early example of the streamline darn style, which was architectural nerds, I think, getting their first shout out. No, we did the whole deep dive on the we did the building in Roral Tenem bombs, I was gonna say the first architecture moment in t m I. Anyway, the streamline mdern style was in the thirties. America was trying to get back at Europe, as we always are for art deco, so this was our rejoinder to art deco. Yeah, Disney heads will know the Pan Pacific Auditorium as the entrance to the MGM Theme Park. Disney modeled like the whole ticket turnstyle area after this. It's very distinctive looking building. Yeah, and the auditorium was open. It was L A's main indoor venue for decades. A lot of names passed through there. The Ice Capades, the Harlem Globe Trotters, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Elvis Pressley. Sadly, The Los Angeles Convention Center opened in one which was the death knell of the Pan Pacific Auditorium. It closed in two UH, and quit. They just did nothing with it. They literally just left it open and people were squatting in there and, you know, lighting fires. And Anyway, there's an l a district supervisor who wanted to have the city by the property from the current owner and turned it into a park and l a was like no, so they just shoddily padlocked it and the unhoused population of l a moved in and uh, it just kept catching on fire. Basically nature took its course. Um, there were some fourth of July fireworks that went awry and damaged part of the building and then a series of smaller fires charred a lot of it and then finally in nine, almost a decade after it appeared in Santa Do, a fire allegedly set by a man living in the building, burned out of control and engulfed the entire thing. The wooden structure went up in what the papers dubbed a spectacular fire that could be seen all throughout the L A basin. Uh. The man was arrested but released for lack of evidence, and thus ends the sad story of the Pan Pacific Auditorium. Perhaps because of all of what we just mentioned, city officials would not grant the filmmaker's permission to shoot inside. Like do not go in there, uh, and instead a costly set with mirrored walls, rising floors and waterfalls was built on stage four at Hollywood general studios to replicate the Interior. According to a November article in international photographer, that was a two story, hundred and sixty three by ninety foot set. At the time it was the largest ever designed by a guy named John Corso, who did the sets where coal miner's daughter Storry, my beloved leave on helm. They started making that in September nine, continued for three months, costum million dollars, and that finale that you mentioned earlier took two weeks to film featured two hundred and thirty seven performers, including the aforementioned tightrope walkers, jugglers, roller skaters and dancers. Uh, moving right along. The extremely visual effects for this film. Uh, we're handled by she got named Richard Greenberg. But the bigger vfx story in the film is Don Louth. As we mentioned earlier, the animated sequence for don't walk away was added to the film at the last minute because Jeff Lynn was being a big wet asked baby and refused to allow any of his songs to appear unless all of the songs that he wrote for the film appear. So the simplest and quickest solution was to insert an animated sequence. Does Not seem like the quickest story. Well, you know what's really interesting to me about this is this is right around the time that photoscoping was just coming into food and you can actually see one of the earliest examples of rotoscoping is Um, of all things, that Tom wait's music video. Yeah, if you looked this up, rotoscoping, for the for non dorks, is when you Um, you actually paint or animate directly over the film cells. As I repeat constantly and without prompting, he was the technology utilized by Martin Scorsese in the last waltz to paint out Neil Young's visible coke booger. Uh that appears all throughout, helpless and an uncredited cameo, the coke booger Um. Anyway. Yeah, I don't know why they didn't rotoscope it, but anyway, so bluth had. I love this. Don bluth retired from his first job at Disney to work on a Church of Latter Day Saints Mission in Argentina for two years. Anyway, he's at Disney icon. He worked with the what do they call him? The nine old men, the nine great old men or whatever, like the big I've never heard that. I think they call him the grand old man or something like that. It's like the first crew of like Disney animators. He worked on Robin Hood, we need, the Pooh and tiger, to the rescuers, Pete, Dragon, Fox and the Hound. And then he resigned from Disney in ninety nine, at forty two, to start his own animation studio and, crucially, took ten other Disney people with him, which did not endear him to Disney. But he was hard up for work when he's launching his new company, so he took on a job working the ZANTI due production wind up being his first mainstream work post Disney. DOUB BLUTH was given twelve weeks to complete two minutes and seven seconds of full animation totaling three thousand images. That is for non animation dorks as not a lot of time. But Blues Animation Studio was also two months into their first animated feature in two is the secret of Nim so bluth did much of the work himself. Is All of his employees were busy working on their actual movie. And in a two thousand eight documentary, Don Bluth recalled his conversation with someone, we assume Joel Silver, some producer working for Zanna. Do this is Dun blue saying I told him we were really busy and I couldn't do it. He said, yeah, you can, and I'll pay you this much money and more money whatever. Just do it. Don Blue is, uh, just a gem. All of his interviews are hilarious. Asked about his work on the film at one point later in the eighties, he told the interviewer no one could possibly be interested in hearing anything about that film. That's amazing. Um, yeah, man, I mean this is just spectacularly bad. Timing with this movie, greenlit in the late Seventies. Production, as we mentioned, once it got Olivia and Geane on and the whole thing sort of snowball really straddled the time period during which America turned on disco. It was released in August of eighty and the infamous disco demolition night at Chicago's Comiskey Park, which, again, for those of you who are not for those of you who have had sex um, that is when they trucked like a boatload of disco records onto the field and ran them over with a steamroller. Didn't it like turn into like a mini riot? People are just like in the field, like smoke bombs and stuff. I think. Yeah. So that was in July sevente so a year earlier. Meanwhile, can't stop the music which started the village people and, as you remember, was the film that a living in John turned down in favor of Santa due, had come out in June, two months earlier, and flopped. which all of which means the writing was on the wall for this movie even before it came out. And it's bizarre, considering what happened with this movie, there's so much promotional material around this the original press packets are like huge laugh ish her Britz, who is like the sort of arty porn photographer, and this documentary I just mentioned. So there's all of this promotional material finning, there's this big press push and the retail tie ins. They made clothes tied to it. But Um, they dropped in August, which was like a dumping ground at that point, and only opened it in two hundred theaters, which is, you know, nothing. Um, the other films that opened against were raised, the titanic, uh, smokey and the bandit too, and Peter Seller's last movie, the fiendish plot of Dr Fu Manchu. These are all enormous box office bombs, and all deservedly so. They're all terrible movies. Yeah, they also, I guess, canceled press screenings for this. I guess after the first few the writing was, as you said, it's kind of on the wall like, Oh, this isn't Kinda go well, let's let's let's tamp it down a little bit. Well, the reviews, Oh boy, just the whole sidebar and reviews variety did not mince words, calling it truly stupendously bad. Roger Ebert said it was mushy and limp, and perhaps the most famous review was esquires, which equipped, in a word, Zenna don't that's good, that's medium funny. That's not bad funny. There was another that said where else can you have a living Newton John as a roller skating light bulb with rags around their ankles? That's pretty good. One of the studio executives called the director, Robert Greenwald, and said they love it in St Louis. What he didn't say was that they hated it everywhere else. It's playing well in Peoria. I guess the film made its money bag. I mean, yeah, well, you know they always lie about this, Greenwald said. He told E W is made between nine and thirteen million. It's a budget and gross twenty two million domestically, but they never include marketing and that. So I assume it was closer to twenty mile all told. But you know, still made its money bag. At least didn't lose money. But now we come to one of the more lasting legacies of the film, the Golden Raspberry Awards, an awards show dedicated to bad movies, colloquially known as the RAZZIES. Hollywood publicist by the name John J B Wilson, whose job involved cutting trailers for movies, saw a ninety nine these two movies, man, they just keep coming up together. UH, saw a nine nine cent double feature of the aforementioned village people musical biopic can't stop the music, and Zanna do. And UH. That year he turned his annual Academy Awards potluck dinner into an informal ballot party for the worst films of the year. He hated both those movies so much it was double feature. He tried to get his money back and failed. Apex Petty, can't stop the music one. Incidentally, Zanna do couldn't even win at the RAZZIES and Brookshields. In the a gross and weird teenager like nature smut movie the Blue Lagoon, she beat Olivia and John for worst actress, directed by the director of Greece, Randall Kleiser. I believe I have a bitch. By the fourth annual Golden Raspberry Awards, CNN and other major wire services were covering this and Wilson had his, arguably his bigger stroke of genius than even having the awards show period, because he scheduled them the night before the Oscars, because he reasoned that you couldn't get any coverage the night of the Oscars, but the night before the Oscars all the journalists and personnel would be in town and, in theory, have nothing better to do. And they've become kind of a beloved industry joke. I mean the big famous examples. Halle Berry accepting her Razzie for catwoman with her Oscar for monsters ball in her other hand. Um, a number of people have scepted their razzies as a kind of like, sort of you. You You, Um friend of the pod Alan Mankin won for one of his songs from news ees and, uh, the same weekend he won two Oscars for Aladdin and he then made a show of formerly accepting his razzie like almost thirty years later. News is what's wrong with newsies? This is gonna soundstrack, Buddy. You know what people think of newsi loves newsies. Are you talking about? People love Newsies, not critically, people love it. Uh. Paul Verhoeven, I think, was one of the first people to accept his for worst picture and worst director for show girls classic. He was given two standing ovations for his accept his speech, in which he said he had been driven out of the Netherlands for being, quote, sick and perverted and disgusting. Ben Affleck was surprised with his during a two thousand four appearance and Larry King Live, and he proceeded to rip the thing apart with his bare hands, commenting on how cheap it was by it. I didn't know he's surprised by it. I spring that on him. Oh, Larry Larry King, that is cold. Got Your Journalism, Baby. Um The resis, I guess, somehow wound up with their hands back on the shredded trophy and uh, auctioned in onto ebay. They've made a big log line about how these statues only cost them like four ninety five to put together, and the thing fetched nearly a grand at onto Ebay, and they put the proceeds towards renting las famed Ivar Theater for next year's Resi awards. I mean now, I I want a piece of that. Now. Let's see, let's see you read this next part. I'll Google, I'll see what Sonny Bay Zanta Dow was also honored, slash disgraced at the now defunct stinkers movie awards for quote, least special special effects. And Yeah, these sets are literally made out of cardboard in some cases. And, as one retrospective critic noted, this was the year that the empire strikes back was made, so it wasn't a case of like lacking technology. I mean Zanta do, looking back at the trail of bodies in its way, has really been held responsible for killing off live action musicals for the next two decades, really, until Malone Rouge in two thousand one. The film did essentially kill off both Michael Beck and Olivia Newton John's film careers. Hers limped along for longer than he did. It was really her three much bally hood reunion with John Travolta, a little flop of a picture called two of a kind. Do you know too? Of A kind Jordan's. But you do know is that the baby movie where they talk. Let's look, he's talking. Oh, that's luck, he's talking now. Hell is two of a kind, romantic fantasy, crime, comedy drama film. Jesus Christ, that's too many hyphens. Travolta plays a cash strapped inventor, while Newton John Plays the bank teller whom he attempts to rob. They must come to show compassion for one another in order to delay God's judgment upon the Earth. What Co starring Scatman crumblers as an angel God voiced by Gene Hackman, the devil voiced by Oliver Reed. What the is this movie? Wow, Janet Maslin of New York Times asked. Can It really been that difficult to find a passable screen vehicle for John Travolta in Olivia? Newton Shawn, any old romantic fluff should have sufficed, and yet something as horrible as two of a kind has been yeller made for its stars. The results were so disastrous that absolutely no one has shown off to good advantage, with the possible exception of the hairdressers involved. Ah Wow, I I kind of want to watch this. Um Olivia did not need the work, though, because physical came out and sort of washed the taste of Xanadu out of the public's mouth. Michael Beck apparently rebounded into voice over work, including audiobook narration. You can hear him as the Voice of Bill Clinton's autobiography. That's the thing you're you're interested in. Okay, yeah, alright, you, yeah. Is this the darkest this show has gotten? Oh No, but it's up there. The Vietnam Ghost thing. Yeah, that was high on the list. Alright, alright, this is maybe this isn't. This is just pressed the skip thirty seconds thing if you don't want to hear some really um a man named Michael Owen Perry was living in a trailer behind his parents house in Louisiana after escaping a mental institution in the early eighties and after watching Xanadu, he came to the conclusion that live in Newton John was actually a Greek goddess and communicating with him through her eyes on camera. That like she was sending a messages through just eye movements. That's that freaks me out. She doesnt have beautiful eyes. Yes, he wrote her multiple letters, one of which read, in part I heard voices, and the voices said to me that you were a muse and trapped under Lake Arthur. Two, he sent her a package that included multiple photographs of her, press photographs he wasn't actually physically near her, one of which had the eyes scratched out for some reason. That freaks me out the most. I really don't mean that. I maybe Google this, but I think that is a pretty common like parinoid schizophrenic behavior, delusion like focusing it on the eyes. Um, go ahead, take take it away Jordan's. In July three, Perry went on a shooting spree, killing two of his cousins, a two year old nephew and his parents, before heading to Washington d C. Living Newton John's name was included on a list found at his parents House that also included Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. For some reason. Uh, this man, Perry, was arrested in Washington D C, where they believe he traveled in order to assassinate Sandra Day O'Connor. I assume the whole thing scared of Living Newton John Enough that she left the country. Yeah, uh, this is I mean, I don't like dwelling on this, but it is fascinating. His case actually became a legal precedent in prisoners rights. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but the trial court found that his competence to be executed depended on his being medicated, essentially being forced to take his medication, which I think was how doll really strong antipsychotics, and that he had to be medicated in order to be mentally competent enough to be executed. And this was overturned and is now like a widely cited case. That because mental health medication is not, like, I guess, not covered under the some of the definitions of the hippocratic oath in terms of prisoner rights. You can't force someone to take medication to make them be mentally competent enough to be executed. And then again this guy's name comes up in because apparently in Angola prison, which is like one of the famously worst prisons in the country, he sued the state of Louisiana with a few other prisoners, alleging that they had been in long term solitary confinement, in his case for over twenty years. Ah, that's a long damn time to be in whatever. Man, let's not get an of the politics. It's just wild that Zanna do has took us here multiple yeah, exactly, the road to hell is paved with Santa Do. In Happier News, uh, Zanta Dou has gone on to become a cult hit, particularly within the gay community. Um Douglas Carter Bean, who wrote the Broadway musical based on the film, told E W in a quote I will take to my grave. Gay Men, Never Missing Joel Silver Film. He's the Judy Garland of our generation. U Um. The film's relatively diverse casting, albeit in the background and in non speaking roles, was embraced by young fans who saw themselves in it, and that's a legion of fans Zanna dudes, Zannah dames and Muse heads were born. Uh. There's rocky horror and like sing along of screenings. That happened to this. There was a stage parody of this film called Zanna do live that ran in Los Angeles in two thousand one. Uh. The director of that was a woman named Annie Dorson, who called this the film The queerest movie that's not actually about being gay. And then an assistant at paramount by the name of Robert Aaron's saw that production and was sufficiently moved to quit his job and set off on what would become a five year quest to adapt Zanna do as a musical. This was not easy. Locking down the rights alone took several years because there were multiple people who owned the film, as was getting the thing funded and cast. He told entertainment weekly as soon as you say Zanna do, they either get it right away or they looked down on you and then they call the police. Being wrote one of my favorite cult movies too. Wong Foo. Thanks for everything, Comma Julie Newmar AH. He passed quickly, many times, in his words, before this Guy Arn promised him complete creative control. He kept the big musical numbers and the basic plot, but jettison almost everything else, saying it has a great score but the dialogue is bad and the plotting is abandoned. The first time I saw it I thought that they had misplaced a real my version has quaint little additions, like character development. So caddy, there are actually just five lines from the movie that are in the play. The production opened in July two seven. It ran for a little over a year, five or thirteen performances, including a guest run with Whoopie Goldberg as a muse. It was nominated for four tonys, but it wouldn't be a Zanta do adaptation if it didn't lose all four, which it which it did. That's thirteen pages on Zanta tube. There's a great quote from this L A times article. Two thousand to this guy, Ken Anderson, who was so inspired by a Zantity to quit film school and become a dance and fitness instructor in Santa Monica, he told the paper. I remember there was this feeling that the eighties were going to be very different from the seventies. Zanna Dou had the feeling that they were going to be all these different races and generations and music's mixing together and that it was going to be something different. And now it seems very naive, but there really was something euphoric about it. I love this guy. He, in a documentary about Zanna Dowee, talks about how this film changed the course of his life and he waxed his poetic about it in this really beautiful way. And then he adds, I wish it was a more profound film that did that for me. Hey, buddy, I get it. Big Trouble, little China is one of my favorites. Like, come on, I don't know what this means on a spiritual level, but Living Newton John passed away on the forty two anniversary of Zannadu's release, on August eight. Um, Jamie can get anumerologist in here. She's roller dancing with Gene Kelly. Now, yeah, well said, well folks, yeah, but I actually was touched by that. You got me to you got me to break. Uh, this has been too much information. Ah, I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan runtug. We'll catch you next time on Olivia, Newton John. Week too much information. Was a production 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 Runtalg and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost funk orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.