Though filming was going great down in Mexico, Searchlight didn’t have the same opinion. We were having communication problems. Phone service at the remote resort was so bad that calls would drop, and then the whole system would go down for hours. Getting to the resort required hours of flying and land travel, so no one came down. Searchlight hired two local producers to oversee us—to make sure we were going to bring the film in on time and on budget. But, for whatever reason, the producers were not reporting what we felt was the accurate picture. They told Fox that we were falling way behind and that we were hemorrhaging money. Maybe they wanted to appear to be saviors to Fox? I really don’t know, because it just wasn’t true, as evidenced by the fact that the film came in both on time and under budget. Regardless, with four weeks of shooting to go, a narrative was forming and it wasn’t good. As my high school headmaster said, “Perception is reality.”
Eventually, Searchlight became so concerned that they pressed the nuclear button, sending two people down to rectify the situation. The first was a stunt director named Ernie Orsatti. He was sold to me as someone who would help me shoot the big action finale.
The second was an executive from the bond company. All studio movies are bonded, which means that if a film falls behind and goes over budget, the studio can turn the film over to the bond company, which is really just an insurance company. We weren’t behind by more than a day, or over budget at all, but it didn’t matter. The bond company was now in control, and their executive was there to make sure that the film was finished on time and within the allotted budget. This executive was there to break a couple of eggs. Which he did, when he immediately fired me. My replacement? Ernie Orsatti, the new director of Club Dread.
What the bond guy didn’t know was that I was one of the stars of the film. He literally didn’t know that. So in firing me, he also lost me as an actor. Then Heffernan quit, as did Lemme, Soter, and Stolhanske, Bill Paxton, Brittany Daniel, Jordan Ladd, M. C. Gainey, and Lindsay Price. The bond company had a new director, but he had no actors left. Now what?
After a frenzied negotiation between our new agents at UTA, my producer, Rich Perello, and Searchlight, I was reinstalled as director, the bond guy went home, and the cast came back. We kept Ernie Orsatti, who became our stunt director, shooting a bunch of amazing shots I never could have gotten on my own. In an impossible situation, Ernie busted his ass for us and made the movie vastly better.
When we got back to LA, we dove into the edit, and ten weeks later, we were ready to test a cut. I had my concerns. The opening of the film hadn’t turned out as originally imagined. Or maybe it had. In the opening of Club Dread, three resort staff members meet in the woods for a sexy threesome. Unbeknownst to them, someone (the killer) is watching. The guy in the trio (played by my good pal Dan Montgomery) is a cocky prick who leads the girls into a Mayan temple for a little privacy. We were looking to mock the terrible decisions horror movie characters make, like when they go in the basement when they really shouldn’t.
We were trying to scare the audience, but also make them laugh. We wanted to let them know that we were in on the joke. We wanted the tone of the opening to be different from the rest of the movie—broader and sillier, while the rest of the film would be hip, real, funny, and scary. I told the actors in the opening (three great actors, I might add) to overact. I told them to be dumb people who made bad decisions. Now that the film was done, I was worried that people wouldn’t get that we were mocking horror movies. I was afraid they’d experience the overcooked tone and think that we had just whiffed.
When we screened the film, my fears were realized. People were confused by the opening, which then caused them to doubt the rest of the movie. It didn’t matter if the rest of the film got laughs, this version of the opening was flawed and now we had a hill to climb. Someone call Billy the Dummy.
We went back into the edit, trying out different performances and juggling scenes, hoping to raise our test scores. And though the numbers went up, they didn’t go up enough. Each screening said the same thing—the opening needed to be reshot in the same tone as the rest of the movie. There was also a deeper problem. The audience had met Broken Lizard in a pure comedy, and they wanted more of that, not this blood-soaked horror-comedy thing. They wanted another Super Troopers. You could feel Searchlight’s enthusiasm waning.
In a normal schedule, you edit for three to six months. We were going on a year, which was costing Searchlight money. I suggested reshooting the opening, but the studio had lost confidence and didn’t want to spend good money after bad.
Wondering if we were the problem, Searchlight went radical. They hired an outside editor. Yup, we were fired again. The new editor came into our room and took over, generating her own eighty-minute cut. But when Searchlight tested her version, the scores went down twelve points. So we were rehired with the direction to wrap it up.
Club Dread opened on February 27, 2004. Though we knew that the film had issues, we still held out hope that Super Troopers fans would show up and propel it to a hit. On the Monday before the release, I stopped by the marketing department to take their temperature. “How’re we feeling?” I asked.
One of the marketing execs was actually quite optimistic, saying things were looking good because our weekend’s competition was weak. I had to agree, though I was concerned about one film, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. We loved Braveheart and were worried that this film might be as good. But our executive just laughed. “Don’t worry. I think we can beat a self-distributed film about Christ that’s in Aramaic!” (No studio would finance The Passion of the Christ, so Gibson self-funded both the production and the release.) I left feeling confident.
The Passion of the Christ made the odd move of opening two days early, on a Wednesday, and it got off to a brisk start. Who am I kidding? It was breaking records. This film, which was in fucking Aramaic—a film that no studio thought was a good bet—was selling out theaters across the country. When our film opened on Friday, we stood in the lobby of a Times Square theater, watching as organized church groups handed out free tickets to The Passion to anyone who wanted them. Churches had bought out the screenings, hoping to spread the word of God while guaranteeing that Christ’s movie was a hit. Meanwhile, Club Dread, along with the other movies that opened that weekend, got crucified. Ahem. And while I’m a huge fan of Mel Gibson as a director, to this day, I still haven’t seen that movie.
Club Dread was a theatrical bomb, although it would go on to find a big audience on DVD. Today, when fans tell me that Club Dread is their favorite Broken Lizard film, my heart warms, because there are a lot of goddamned great jokes in that movie and I truly love it.
In the end, our relationship with Searchlight was a casualty of poor communication and a lack of savvy on my part. It was my first studio film, and I didn’t know how to play the game. I should have figured out a way to communicate with Searchlight, so that they could have known and felt confident that their millions of dollars were being minded as well as they actually were. Searchlight didn’t want to fire me (twice)—they felt they had to. And in the end, when the film came in on budget, nothing was said on either end, but the facts were clear. Had I communicated better and had we kept the energy positive, Searchlight would have let us reshoot the opening and who knows what might have happened? Regardless, with all of our goodwill from Super Troopers gone, our relationship with Fox Searchlight was over, and now Broken Lizard was in the wind.
CHAPTER 14
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The Dukes of Hazzard: Smoking with Willie, Fighting with Burt, and Other Stories from the Deep South
After Club Dread tanked, Broken Lizard was looking for a new studio home, but there were no offers. I was in director jail, which meant I was being blamed for the bomb. We needed help—we needed someone with power to vouch for us again. Thinking about my post–Super Troopers call with Adam Sandler, I decided to find out just how big a fan he really was.
When Broken Lizard met with Adam’s producer, Jack Giarraputo, he asked us what we wanted to do next. So we pitched him our idea about a five-man beer-drinking team that goes to Oktoberfest to compete in a secret underground beer-games competition. Jack loved it, so he brought us downstairs to pitch Adam Sandler himself. That was surreal. Adam was cool and funny and everything you’d hope for. Adam dug our idea and said that he wanted his company to produce it for us.
We spent the next two weeks pitching Beerfest to the studios and eventually sold it to Adam’s home studio, Sony. Over the next six months, with notes from Jack and Adam, we wrote roughly ten drafts and then turned it in to our executive at Sony. Walking over to the meeting, Jack was confident that we were going to get a green light. He was used to green lights.
We didn’t get the green light. Not even close. Our executive really didn’t seem to like the script. After many lukewarm comments, he finally said, “Do these guys really need to drink Budweiser? I mean, wouldn’t we root for them more if they drank something imported like Stella Artois?”
Jack stood up and said, “We’re going.” On the way back to Happy Madison, Jack grumbled. “Fuck them if they don’t get it!” Jack called Sony and convinced them to let us make it elsewhere if we could. We couldn’t. Everyone passed—Fox, Paramount, New Line, Warner Bros., everyone. And Beerfest quietly died (or went into a coma), a casualty of Club Dread, no doubt.
Though the phones were quiet for Broken Lizard, my agent was getting calls for me to direct other comedies, but nothing really thrilled me. Then, Greg Silverman called. I’d first met Greg when he was an executive at Revolution Studios. He was a big Super Troopers fan and was now an executive at Warner Bros. After some small talk, Greg got to the point. “How’d you like to direct The Dukes of Hazzard?” I was intrigued. As a kid, I was a huge fan of the show, both for the kick-ass driving stunts and for Daisy Duke’s shorts. Plus, outlaw country music had always spoken to me. I loved Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Billy Joe Shaver, Leon Russell, Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jerry Reed, Dolly Parton, and June Carter Cash, all of it. Maybe it’s because my family originates from the Deep South—Deep South India.
So, I was intrigued. But I also kind of needed it. I had made three movies—Puddle Cruiser, Super Troopers, and Club Dread. Hollywood loved me for Super Troopers because, in addition to it striking a comedy chord with a lot of people, it also made the studio a lot of money. But they hated me for Club Dread. Yes, the film had a large group of fans and made the studio money in the long term, but many didn’t like it, maybe didn’t get it, and felt vindicated when it didn’t perform theatrically. I was in director jail, and no one cared about the surprise that was The Passion of the Christ. Why a film fails doesn’t matter. People just know it failed and they know they don’t want to hire the guy who directed the failure.
So I was hopeful when the script for Dukes arrived at my Laurel Canyon home. It would be cool, I told myself, to make the General fly again. Sadly, the script wasn’t quite up to snuff. It was comedically broader than I thought it should be and the story wasn’t all there. So I passed.
Three months later, my agent, Keya, called. “Hey, Warner Bros. has a rewrite on the Dukes script. Greg really wants you to do this. This could be big. Will you take another read?”
I read the new draft, really wanting it to be good. It was better, but my earlier notes still applied, so I passed again.
Two months later, the phone rang. It was Keya. “Warner Bros. has another draft. Will you take a read?” It’s nice to be wanted. And normally I wouldn’t read a third draft of anything, but I wasn’t doing anything else, so . . . Here’s the thing. I didn’t hate it. The story finally made sense. The dialogue wasn’t there, but there were some pretty good scenes. This script had the bones of something I could build on.
A meeting was set at the executive suites of Warner Bros., where Dukes producer Bill Gerber and I sat down with Greg Silverman to talk about script and tone. Greg was looking for me to bring some of that Super Troopers magic to Dukes. I told Greg that his instincts were right, in that Super Troopers and Dukes were creatively related.
In 1975, Gy Waldron made a small film called Moonrunners about southern boys who run moonshine. But it was only after the insane success of Smokey and the Bandit that Warner Bros. Television hired Waldron to make a TV show on the same topic. So while The Dukes of Hazzard is a TV version of Moonrunners, it is also closely related to Smokey and the Bandit. Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed became Bo and Luke Duke. Sally Field in her tiny jean short-shorts became Daisy Duke. Sheriff Buford T. Justice became Boss Hogg. And the bumbling jilted groom became Rosco P. Coltrane. Both Bandit and Dukes even have hound dogs.
And while I was a big fan of Dukes, Smokey and the Bandit was my true love. I loved that film both because of the number of swearwords in it and because of Burt Reynolds’s charming anti-authority attitude.
For me, Super Troopers was inspired by Smokey and the Bandit. I told Greg that I wanted to make a tough, funny Dukes of Hazzard with state-of-the-art, ass-kicking stunts. Ten-year-olds need to see that car fly and feel the same sense of awe that we felt back in the eighties. In terms of casting, I said we had to follow Smokey and the Bandit by hiring real southerners. Dukes had hired northerners to play southerners, which caused it not to age as well. Our film needed an authentically southern cast. We needed two guys to bridge us back to the eighties. Our film needed Burt Reynolds and Willie Nelson.
Greg cocked his head. “To play the Duke boys?”
I laughed. “No, but I’d see that movie!”
A deal was made and we got to work. Warner Bros. is an old-school studio that prides itself on valuing the director’s vision, so they were more than amenable to bringing in Broken Lizard to do the rewrite. This was a security blanket for me, because my guys are brilliant writer-comics who understand the importance of tone and structure.
I told the guys that the film should be funny but real. We weren’t going to make fun of southerners, and the plot should be as simple as any of the plots that existed in the TV show. We kept two elements of the original script: Boss Hogg would be trying to buy up Hazzard to turn it into a coal mine, and the film would end in a rally race.
Broken Lizard started writing, focusing on the first act, which is roughly the first twenty pages. After six drafts, we turned it in to Warner Bros. so they could see where we were going with it. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. sent Billy, another producer, Dana Goldberg, and me down to Louisiana in a private jet to scout locations. Scouting was hard since the script wasn’t close to done, but Warner Bros. wanted us to stay ahead of the process in the event that they decided to go forward. On the flight back from New Orleans, we got a call from Jeff Robinov. He liked the tone and humor of the first twenty pages so much that he had green-lit the movie. Everyone on the plane celebrated. I was concerned. Shouldn’t we wait until we write the rest before we go into production? But Billy and Dana looked at me like I had two noses. You don’t question a green light, rookie.
Immediately after the green light, Warner Bros. hired a car broker to secretly start buying 1969 Dodge Chargers. At the beginning of the weekend, you could get a Charger for $2,000. By Sunday, when word spread that the General Lee was going to fly again, the price was $10,000.
Meanwhile, we hired the casting director Mary Vernieu and began the casting process. I told Mary that I wanted the film to be fun and not take itself too seriously. I wanted it to be a classy piece of pop culture. I told her to find great actors who were authentically southern.
We quickly made an offer to Burt Reynolds to play Boss Hogg, and then another to Willie Nelson to play Uncle Jesse. Mary made lists of potential Duke boys and I began a round of meetings. The last major piece was the role of Daisy Duke. This was an important role to me. I went through puberty with a poster of Catherine Bach on my wall. Yes, the other roles were important, b
ut this one was too. When I sat down with Mary to discuss possibilities, I learned from her that larger forces were at play. “Warner Bros. wants to make an offer to Jessica Simpson.”
Hmm, Jessica Simpson. Pop phenom Jessica Simpson. Reality TV star Jessica Simpson. The girl who famously wondered if tuna (Chicken of the Sea) was actually chicken. Sure, she was wildly famous, but she wasn’t an actor. She was famous for reality TV, the lowest form of entertainment. Snobs would never accept her. I was one of those snobs. I wanted a great southern actress who knew her way around a joke and who could do those shorts proud. Yeah, Jessica was southern, but she was exactly the opposite of what I wanted for Daisy Duke. Compounding the issue was that she was publicly campaigning for the role in the press. The tabloids had picked it up and were constantly referring to her as the next Daisy Duke. She’d even gone so far as to name her new puppy Daisy. Grrrr. I told Mary not to worry about Jessica and to first focus on the rest of the cast.
Making two independent films and a low-budget studio film doesn’t prepare you for working with Warner Bros., the biggest movie studio in the world. If Dukes had been an independent film, I would have talked about my love for Willie Nelson and Burt Reynolds, and then, when their agents ignored our calls due to a lack of money, I would have cast the best “will work for cheap” substitutes. So I was more than a little surprised when Billy Gerber called to tell me that Willie Nelson wanted to meet me.
I froze. “What do you mean by that?”
“He’s doing a show in Palm Desert on Sunday. Go offer him the part and get him in our movie.”
I drove out to Palm Desert, armed with the phone number of Willie’s tour manager, David Anderson. On the way, I gave him a call. A deep Texas voice answered. When I asked him how to meet up, he cut me off. “Just park behind the bus and knock.” Uh, okay.
Mustache Shenanigans Page 19
