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me as to start or tap the

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This is sudden brew. On the

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editor of Filled Stories Magazine and a

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very warm welcome to the Film Stories

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Podcast. I'm delighted for this

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intro to invited Peter Capaldi A Law

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just to share his views on how

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I am hosting a podcast. Renew

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or a real of boring

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with me. And

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I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole. And

0:57

movies movies that at stories

0:59

discourage a suck. So now

1:01

says just the beginning. We

1:06

would be on in. June.

1:12

Low on a very warm welcome to film

1:14

stories with someone brew I am so I'm

1:16

a broom as always is absolutely everything you

1:18

need to know about me that the podcast

1:20

I was given away but the title. I'm

1:23

here to talk of the stories of films

1:25

that I tend to talk about. development stores,

1:27

production stories, marketing stores really stories, all the

1:29

ingredients really that go towards making the films

1:31

that we know and sometimes love just that,

1:33

the films that we know and sometimes love.

1:36

The fails I tend to cover on

1:38

this podcast they lean more towards the

1:41

mainstream than anything else if those are

1:43

interesting or invested in some degree. I

1:45

try not to start or try not

1:47

to punched and this podcast is a

1:49

celebration of said I'm and real appreciation

1:52

rarely the somehow for all the difficulties

1:54

movies get made and for this particular

1:56

episode first the two films are going

1:58

to talk about hey. is there

2:00

a story? Let me take you back into the

2:02

world of Walt Disney animation. Let me take you

2:05

back to the 1980s. I'm going to set

2:07

this story up with a clip from the trailer for

2:09

the film and then we'll come to it the other

2:11

side of this. Legend

2:15

has it there was once

2:17

a king so cruel and so

2:19

evil that the gods feared him.

2:23

Since no prison could hold him he

2:25

was trapped forever in the

2:28

form of a great black cauldron. What

2:31

king? That black

2:33

card in give you. Walt

2:36

Disney Pictures presents the

2:39

Black Cauldron. Escape

2:42

into a world of darkness. Are you coming? This

2:45

goes in here. Oh

2:48

no, no, no. It's eternal place.

2:52

A world of excitement. A world

2:54

of dreams. A

3:00

world of pain that will

3:03

never fool you. The magic

3:08

of 70 enemies of the King remains in

3:10

16th-day society. The

3:14

world is so despondent to a fantasy that's

3:16

all coming in time, family. And look, no

3:19

fire. It's working. Now

3:23

I just ran that clip long enough to

3:25

get the key words in there that Disney

3:27

sold this film in the trailer as a

3:29

family event for all the family. A

3:32

family event if you've seen the Black Cauldron

3:34

my life within about five minutes it's very

3:36

clear the last thing it is is a

3:38

family event. The film's eventual

3:41

credited directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich.

3:43

The film is the Black Cauldron dating

3:45

back to 1985. Quite

3:48

a lot of credits on it. I mean the

3:50

story in the end was credited to Ted Berman, Vance

3:52

Jerry, Joe Hale, David Jonas,

3:54

Roy Marita, Richard Rich, Art

3:56

Stevens, Al Wilson, Peter Young.

4:00

Lloyd Alexander's books which I'll come to

4:02

shortly a voice cast who I

4:04

don't really touch on in the bit we're going

4:06

to talk about but it's Grant Bardsley Susan Sheridan,

4:08

Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne in there, Arthur Malay, John

4:12

Beiner, Phil Fonda Caro and

4:14

John Hurt. God bless John

4:16

Hurt. So in the aftermath

4:18

of the death of Walt Disney towards the end

4:20

of the 1960s Walt Disney

4:22

animation needed really to find itself

4:25

a fresh footing that it would

4:27

have built up of

4:29

a bunch of animators who'd stayed with

4:31

the company for a very long time and

4:34

the stories really were, I mean you

4:36

sort of knew roughly what you were

4:38

going to get. It

4:40

was in 1971 that

4:43

Disney turned its attention to Lloyd

4:45

Alexander's stories The Chronicles of Predane.

4:48

Now this is five books that

4:50

had Welsh mythology at their

4:53

foundations really and so Disney

4:55

took an option on them with the plan

4:57

being to take the first of those two,

4:59

the first two of those books that would

5:01

be the Book of Three and the Black

5:03

Pauldron and use that as

5:05

the basis for an animated feature

5:07

film. So the deal

5:09

was complete in 1973 and development work got

5:13

underway at that point it

5:15

had at some of the

5:17

legendary gang of Walt Disney's nine old

5:19

men working on the film. The nine

5:22

old men were anointed in the 1950s

5:25

really by Disney himself as

5:27

basically the rock, the cornerstone

5:29

of Disney's animation work. They

5:31

were the key animators that

5:33

Disney himself had identified and

5:35

two of that legendary gang were

5:37

involved in choosing this particular project.

5:40

They would be Ollie Johnson and Frank

5:42

Thomas. The subject themselves are a really

5:44

interesting documentary called Frank and Ollie which

5:46

I think is still just about on

5:48

Disney Plus but still

5:50

there was a denseness a richness to

5:52

Lloyd Alexander's stories that made them incredibly

5:55

hard to adapt they were effectively trying

5:57

to boil to well that there's no

5:59

effectively They were trying to boil two or five

6:01

bucks down to what a 90 minute

6:03

feature film, one that all

6:05

the family could enjoy. It had a very

6:07

large cast list. I mean, straight away that

6:10

was impractical for any kind of movie, really.

6:12

It had to be manageable. You had to

6:14

be able to get a handle on it

6:16

all. And so the

6:18

development work got underway and there was

6:20

lots of work on which direction to

6:22

take the story. There was lots of

6:24

early work done as well on

6:27

just the sheer look of the film.

6:29

But several years went by and

6:32

then it was in August 1978

6:34

that the New York Times ran

6:36

an article about the film that

6:38

would become The Black Cauldron. Now,

6:40

at that point, it was pegged as a film that

6:42

was going to cost $15 million. $15

6:45

million in 1978 was a very, very high movie budget. This

6:49

was not Disney skimping on it.

6:51

This was, in fact, originally earmarked

6:53

as the studio's big release for

6:55

1980. However,

6:58

that summer 1978 New York

7:00

Times report, well, really,

7:02

it put across the fact that this

7:05

film was in trouble, that it was

7:07

already four years behind schedule. Now, if

7:09

you consider at the moment that a

7:11

high end Disney animated film tends to

7:13

take four years start to finish, the

7:15

fact that The Black Cauldron was four

7:18

years late, wasn't even taking four years

7:20

to complete. It was four years late

7:22

was quite something. Now,

7:25

the problem was an animator shortage. There

7:27

were several problems, but that was at

7:29

the heart of it. And

7:31

the studio boss at the time was a

7:33

man called Ron Miller. He had been handpicked

7:35

by Walt Disney to be his successor. And

7:38

Miller was overseeing really a generational shift

7:40

that was taking place at Disney. That

7:43

it had this crop of animators who

7:45

had come up with the company and

7:47

enjoyed the success and helped build the

7:49

success of the company and its animated

7:51

films. And on the flip side of

7:54

that, there were new recruits

7:56

coming in and really those new

7:58

recruits needed a. level of expertise

8:00

that they didn't have at the

8:03

start of the Black Cauldron project.

8:05

And so there was a point where Disney

8:07

decided to switch the emphasis of its efforts

8:10

to another film it had going, which was

8:12

The Fox and the Hound, which was earmarked

8:14

for 1980, but actually that

8:17

would end up late too, which I'm coming to shortly.

8:20

So it was at the end

8:22

of the 1970s where things really

8:24

went wrong here, that Disney had

8:26

been enjoying the fruits of re-releasing

8:28

its animated films. They were helping put

8:30

some money in the coffers. And

8:33

there were projects on the go that

8:35

would help really build up the experience

8:37

level of the incoming animators, heading up

8:39

the animation team at that point with

8:42

a man called Don Bluth. He

8:44

was said to be working on a 25

8:46

minute short film to help these new animators

8:48

cut their teeth on something substantive. Short

8:51

films at this point were making Disney no

8:53

money, but in terms of giving animators a

8:55

chance to just get their hands dirty were

8:57

very, very useful vehicles. And then

8:59

of course there was The Fox and the Hound, which

9:01

was a much more straightforward and very traditional

9:03

style of Disney film, although that in itself

9:06

caused lots of upset. That's a whole story

9:08

for another time. But it

9:10

was animals in a wood and this was

9:12

kind of the stuff that Disney was a

9:14

lot more familiar with. But

9:17

Don Bluth would really be the

9:19

catalyst for some significant change that

9:21

went on at Disney because by

9:23

1979, he was just desperately unhappy.

9:29

He had been identified as the cream

9:32

of the next generation of animation talent

9:34

at the studio. And he got to

9:36

the point where in his late 30s

9:38

he was heading up its animation unit.

9:42

But in 1979, frustrated at how slowly the

9:44

Black Cauldron Project was moving, as well as

9:46

lots of other issues at the studio, he

9:48

left. Now Don Hahn is

9:50

a producer of Disney films such as

9:52

Beauty and the Beast and The Lion

9:55

King, but also an excellent documentarian. He's

9:57

been a guest on this podcast before,

9:59

talking about... is from Howard about

10:01

the life and times of the

10:03

late Howard Ashman. But for the

10:05

purposes of this particular story it's

10:07

his documentary feature Waking Sleeping Beauty

10:09

that I really just cannot recommend

10:11

enough. This is Dong

10:13

Han telling the story from an

10:16

insider's perspective of how Walt Disney

10:18

feature animation basically got to the

10:20

edge of the cliff nearly just

10:22

out of business altogether and pulled

10:24

itself back and the black

10:27

cauldron was what was pushing it

10:29

towards that cliff edge. Han charts

10:31

this superbly in his film and

10:34

he also talks about the impact

10:36

that Don Bluth's departure really from

10:38

Disney had because it wasn't just

10:40

blue foot wend. He took 14,

10:43

well I've seen different sources, I've seen 13

10:45

people or 14 people. What they

10:48

tend to agree on though is it was

10:50

basically half of the animation payroll went with

10:52

him. As per a Los Angeles

10:54

Times report on September 13th 1979 that was the

10:58

day that Don Bluth just dropped

11:01

his bombshell and he and his team

11:03

of animators went off to set up

11:05

another company starting their work in Don

11:07

Bluth's garage. At the

11:09

point this happened, I mean it

11:11

opened up some gaps for other

11:13

animating talent to come through. This

11:15

is how people like John Lasseter

11:18

and Tim Burton got their break

11:20

in Disney. But still as

11:22

Don Bluth would later on explain to

11:24

the Los Angeles Times we were just

11:26

a group who loved animation and

11:29

felt it had disintegrated into something quite

11:31

inane. He said Walt wasn't there and the

11:33

pictures were just repeats of things he'd done.

11:35

I mean it feels like Fox and the

11:37

Hand were not inspiring people. He

11:39

said we wanted things to work there but

11:41

it's hard to reshape an old company. It's

11:43

like trying to bend an old oak. So

11:47

Bluth quickly away from Disney was pushing

11:49

an animated feature called The Secret and

11:52

Nim which came together a lot quicker

11:54

than the black cauldron did. But also

11:56

this was really the impetus Disney needed

11:59

to get it. its own foot on

12:01

the accelerator. However it had

12:03

to fill in the gaps, it had internally,

12:05

it had to replenish its ranks of animators

12:07

and they had to be brought into the

12:09

Disney fold and the way of doing things

12:12

and so the immediate new corner of that

12:14

was the Fox and the Hound was delayed

12:16

here and again the Fox and the Hound,

12:18

far more straightforward project really but that went

12:20

from 1980 to 1981. 1980 was roughly the

12:22

point where the Black Cauldron formally

12:28

got its green light as well where Disney

12:30

just got off the fence and just said

12:32

yeah Ron Miller just we're going to do

12:34

this, we're going to press forward with it.

12:36

It had had six odd years of development

12:38

to that point and as per the earlier

12:40

New York Times report it was already four

12:42

years behind schedule, it was about to get

12:44

even more behind schedule and the price was

12:46

starting to go up as well. Just

12:49

because it had the green light it

12:51

didn't mean the problems were going away,

12:53

in fact it meant there were more

12:55

just coming down the track at speed

12:58

but at the heart of the decision to

13:00

make the Black Cauldron in the first

13:02

place was Disney really take your leap

13:04

and I think this is often forgotten

13:06

really that it was taking a gamble,

13:08

that it could, as Don Blair has

13:10

noted, make repeats of the same pictures

13:12

and then re-release its old movies. That

13:14

wouldn't be a problem, that it could

13:16

keep making money that way but

13:18

what Disney features were not

13:20

attracting were teenagers. There's

13:23

a very lucrative part of the market that

13:25

you could put out an animation like Fox

13:27

and the Hound and you'd get under 10's

13:29

and their parents in but if you really

13:31

wanted to make a bigger hit you've

13:33

got to broaden the audience for the

13:35

films. In fact Walt Disney as

13:38

a broader studio would struggle with this right

13:40

throughout the 80s and 90s attracting a teenage

13:42

audience and it wouldn't really crack it until

13:44

the early 2000s when it bought up

13:47

Marvel, when it bought up Lucasfilm

13:49

as well and then all of a sudden

13:51

it had the feature films that teenagers were

13:54

desperate to see but the late 1970s the

13:56

early 1980s Disney was a

14:00

company really making kids films, kids and family films

14:02

and that was what it was known as. The

14:06

project, the Black Cardamom project was not

14:08

short of ambition, it wasn't just that

14:11

they picked material

14:13

that they felt could transcend their

14:15

usual audience. Disney had also decided

14:17

to really go for it, that it

14:19

was trying to set a high watermark

14:21

for its animation not least because it

14:23

had a new competitor snapping at its

14:26

heels and so it was going to

14:28

be filmed in 70 millimetre. This is

14:30

a big dramatic gesture. The first time

14:32

a Disney animated film had been in

14:34

70 millimetres since Sleeping Beauty and

14:37

as you heard in the clip right

14:39

at the start there to be released

14:41

with six track sound which is commonplace

14:43

now but that was a rump

14:45

up at that point and of

14:47

course it's animation. You have to create

14:50

all of those sounds from scratch. You

14:52

can't take a microphone out and just

14:54

accompany it with live action footage. Everything

14:56

had to be made. It was setting

14:58

itself one hell of a job. If

15:01

we pinpoint that production

15:03

started in 1980

15:06

which is generally the consensus on the Black Cardamom

15:08

although it's one of those where lots of people

15:11

have different stories. The story

15:13

I'm zeroing in on is by an animator

15:15

called Michael Perazzo. Now in

15:17

the early 2010s Perazzo

15:20

was putting together a terrific blog

15:22

which has been archived online and

15:25

he wrote about his experience as

15:27

one of the animators working on

15:29

the Black Cauldron and in particular

15:31

the cultural problems behind the scenes

15:33

of the movie because in

15:35

an article that he

15:37

entitled Cauldron of Chaos and

15:40

what Perazzo had noted was that the

15:42

schism that existed in the animation building

15:44

he said he wrote in this corner

15:46

there were the veterans including what was

15:48

left of Walt's nine old men. He

15:51

said they were almost all gone by then although

15:53

thankfully some would still come by and check in

15:55

with us from time to time but he said

15:57

in another corner there was a generation of great

16:00

artists that hadn't really had their opportunity

16:02

to strut their stuff with the old

16:04

guard in place and were hoping to

16:06

get their chance. Now

16:08

the Black Cauldron would give some of them

16:11

a chance. The directors were ultimately

16:14

Art Stevens, Ted Berman and Rick Rich

16:16

were chosen to take that job on,

16:18

although by the end of the production

16:20

Art Stevens would not be one of

16:23

the credited directors. But also

16:25

interestingly one of the original directors of

16:27

the Black Cauldron was set to be

16:29

a man called John Musker. Now

16:31

Musker was a very upcoming animator through

16:34

the Disney ranks and he had been

16:36

mentored to a degree by the 9

16:38

old men as well and this was

16:40

to be his directorial debut but his

16:43

tone for where he wanted to take

16:45

the Black Cauldron was determined to be

16:47

too light. And so Disney

16:49

appointed a producer by the name of Joe Hale

16:52

and he was the person who was going to

16:54

have to get this film ultimately from A to

16:56

B. He came on board in 1980 and under

17:00

his watch things got even darker and

17:02

that meant there was no place for

17:04

John Musker or the person who would

17:07

go on to be his directorial partner

17:09

across his career Ron Clements. Now they

17:12

went off to do a picture called The Great Mouse

17:14

Detective as we know it here in the UK. That's

17:17

all the Great Mouse Detective I've film

17:19

I'm really really really fond of. But

17:21

it's interesting that the people who were

17:23

who were shuffled away off the project

17:25

were the ones who would be absolutely

17:28

fundamental in Disney's ultimate resurgence in

17:30

animation. They would direct Musker and

17:32

Clements would direct The Little Mermaid

17:34

they would direct Aladdin. In more

17:36

recent times they directed Moana and

17:38

gave the studio some of its

17:40

biggest hits but they

17:42

weren't determined to be right for

17:45

the Black Cauldron. Production

17:47

then was ongoing without

17:50

them really and let's go

17:52

back to perhaps his article he just

17:54

talked about how the layout department was

17:56

given gorgeous new 70 millimeter widescreen

17:58

charts from scene planning department

18:01

to compose their scenes, but

18:03

perhaps I said after using them for a few weeks

18:06

I found myself comparing them to an

18:08

old set Don Griffith at Disney had

18:10

given to me from working on Sleeping

18:12

Beauty and perhaps I noticed

18:14

a marked difference in the width versus height

18:16

ratio. He wrote,

18:19

unfortunately by the time I discovered

18:21

the discrepancy and went to Dave Thompson

18:24

in the scene planning to show him

18:26

quite a few scenes had already been

18:28

handed out to the animators and thus

18:30

had to be adjusted as we were

18:32

given the new improved and corrected field

18:34

charts. It wasn't quite

18:36

a case that the work had

18:38

to be completely redone but time

18:41

had to be taken to go

18:43

and make the corrections an avoidable

18:45

error really. Outside of specifically the

18:48

production of The Black Cauldron there

18:50

were broader issues really with regards

18:52

cartoonists working in and around Hollywood

18:55

and that led to a further

18:58

challenge for the production because for 10 weeks in

19:00

1982 as

19:02

the film was supposed to be moving

19:05

forward animators across Hollywood went on strike.

19:07

This basically brought

19:09

The Black Cauldron to an

19:11

absolute standstill and so for

19:13

nearly three months really the

19:15

project lay pretty much dormant

19:18

and then as it continued to go

19:20

through development did finally move forward

19:23

with the idea of get the film

19:25

out by 1984 which was finally looking

19:27

doable there was another big upheaval behind

19:29

the scenes because as much as The

19:32

Black Cauldron was challenging just the sheer

19:34

ambition of what Disney had done on

19:36

screen before the techniques that were being

19:39

used to animate it were really ramping

19:41

up there was so much in the

19:43

craft of the film and the way

19:46

it was being put together that was

19:48

trying to evolve Disney. The biggest evolution

19:50

in the studio in the midst of

19:53

all of this was in the

19:55

boardroom that Ron Miller again the

19:57

man who'd been handpicked by Walt

19:59

Disney. to head up the

20:01

studio was ultimately defenestrated as

20:03

Disney's chairman. The

20:06

people brought in to take over, well

20:08

they came across from Paramount Pictures where

20:10

they had been enjoying an enormous amount

20:12

of success and Disney wanted that success.

20:15

So installed as Disney's new chairman of the

20:17

overall company was a man called Michael Eisner

20:19

who would stay with Disney for a couple

20:21

of decades, books had been written about Michael

20:24

Eisner's time at the top of Disney, not

20:26

least by Eisner himself, and he

20:28

brought with him then his colleagues soon,

20:32

eventually they would part company with some

20:34

animosity but at this point he brought

20:36

with him a man called Jeffrey Katzenberg

20:38

as studio chairman. Now in the mid

20:41

1990's Katzenberg and Eisner would have a

20:43

very obvious falling out and Katzenberg would

20:45

go and co-found the Dreamworks animation studio

20:47

but at this point they were working

20:50

together. Katzenberg heading up the studio, Eisner

20:52

heading up the overall company and

20:55

the first signs were not good for

20:57

the animation division when the pair came

20:59

in that they were reportedly conversations

21:02

about shutting down Walt Disney

21:04

animation altogether. And

21:06

it was Don Henn in the midst of

21:08

all of this who was one

21:10

of the people trying to hold it together

21:12

as a production manager on the Black Cauldron

21:14

even as things in the boardroom were changing

21:16

and he talked to Collider about this, he

21:18

just described how I was the guy who

21:20

walked around with a clipboard and after what

21:22

scenes they would have done that week and

21:25

he described this bizarre situation

21:27

where there were three directors

21:29

and the three directors didn't

21:31

always talk and instead they

21:33

would go to Joe Hale who would have

21:36

to mediate between them all but

21:38

the three directors were splitting up

21:40

sequences and as Hans said with

21:42

each sequence having completely a different

21:44

tone and tempo that nothing was

21:46

really matching here, the animation wasn't

21:48

matching, the atmosphere wasn't matching and

21:51

Hans with no understatement described

21:53

it as another part of the

21:55

problem. There was also

21:57

that schism again between the old guard

21:59

animator and the incoming young animators

22:01

to the point where the old guard

22:03

and the new guard were on

22:06

separate floors at the studio and they weren't

22:08

even getting in the same room to talk.

22:11

So in comes Eisner and

22:13

Katzenberg. Ahead of this

22:15

Roy Disney who was now heading

22:18

up animation, he'd

22:20

seen an early cut of the film

22:22

and he was not happy. He was

22:24

said to be incredibly disturbed by the

22:26

violence in the black culture and by

22:28

the graphic opening of the film as well.

22:31

And so it hadn't gone down with

22:33

him. By the time it had screened

22:35

for Eisner and Katzenberg, heck it hadn't

22:37

gone down well with them either. Katzenberg

22:40

was said to have absolutely hated the

22:42

initial rough cut of the film that

22:44

he saw which was running to about

22:46

92 minutes and he

22:48

wanted big changes to it. This was

22:50

in 1984. This

22:53

was months ahead of the release of the

22:55

film and Katzenberg at this point was an

22:57

absolute novice to animation. And

23:00

so a lot of this is charted in James

23:02

Stewart's book Disney War which I've used a few

23:04

times on this podcast. And Katzenberg, again not understanding

23:06

the process, just turns to Jo Hayl and says

23:09

well you've got to edit it, you've got to

23:11

change it, you've got to you've got to you

23:13

know stuff out of this,

23:15

you've got to rework it. And

23:17

Hayl had to explain, it's just like

23:19

no everything you see is handcrafted. You

23:22

can't use a different take of a

23:24

shot because that was the take that was

23:26

drawn. That was it, that is all

23:28

you can do. Katzenberg told Jo

23:30

Hayl you've got to edit the film, you've

23:32

got to take 10 minutes out of it.

23:35

Hayl stood his ground and said no. Katzenberg

23:38

went into the edit suite himself

23:40

to start the work. And

23:43

so at this point Jo Hayl was not

23:45

a happy person as you would expect. He

23:47

put in a call to Roy Disney. Roy

23:49

Disney at that point was having lunch with

23:52

Michael Eisner and again as

23:54

James Stewart notes in his book, he's

23:56

butchering the black cauldron Hayl fumed

23:58

about Katzenberg. It

24:00

was admitted that the Black cauldron was a

24:02

dark film, but again the whole idea that

24:05

Disney knew that going in that bit Wasn't

24:07

a surprise although the new management it was

24:09

a surprise to them, but the idea was

24:11

they're trying to be more contemporary They're trying

24:14

to be edgier the animators when they learned

24:16

that Jeffrey Katzenberg was in the edit room

24:18

hacking away at their work They

24:20

were in absolute uproar And

24:23

so in the end Michael Eisner fairly quickly

24:25

had to intervene and he had to get

24:27

Jeffrey Katzenberg out of the editing room As

24:30

he said what are you doing?

24:32

He said to Katzenberg everybody's upset and

24:35

in the end Eisner did calm Katzenberg

24:37

down and I mean

24:40

it left the editing room, but he

24:42

told the team in no uncertain terms

24:44

You've got to fix the movie now

24:46

This did not cultivate a friendship between

24:49

Roy Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg at that

24:51

point that was a difficult relationship as

24:54

well But the cutting

24:56

of the black cauldron was was

24:58

underway again that Katzenberg was

25:00

the boss of the animation division If he

25:03

ultimately wanted it cut down It had to

25:05

be cut down and after a

25:07

decade of work to get to this point

25:09

The final cut of the black cauldron has

25:11

really been hacked together at the last minute

25:13

and not to the film's benefit I mean

25:15

if you've ever watched the final cut of

25:17

the film a you've got nightmares and

25:19

you need a good therapist But be I mean the

25:22

continuity of it the sense of it isn't quite

25:24

there There is a sense that things are

25:26

missing still Disney delayed the

25:28

film to try and accommodate some of the

25:30

changes It moved it from Christmas 1984 to

25:34

summer of 1985 and in the end the

25:36

film was trimmed by about 10 to 12

25:38

minutes One of the

25:40

casualties of this was Elmer Bernstein's score

25:42

for the film It was quite again

25:44

quite a leap for Disney to be

25:46

releasing an animated film with no songs

25:49

in it And so Elmer had to

25:51

particularly 80 I mean particularly at this

25:53

point in its history And so Elmer

25:55

Bernstein's score was going to have to carry some of the

25:57

load, but most of that was gone And

26:00

of course the studio around the Black

26:02

Cauldron was not standing still, there were

26:05

other films that were being developed. In

26:07

fact Joe Hale and many of the

26:09

Black Cauldron team were expected to move

26:11

on to an animated feature called Mistress

26:14

Masham's Repose, which was in development as

26:16

well and of course the Great Mouse

26:18

Detective Project was also moving. But

26:21

now it was all about the build up to

26:23

the release of the Black Cauldron, July 24th 1985.

26:27

And with the price tag this didn't come out for

26:29

many many years, in fact it was Don Han who

26:31

revealed it, a price tag

26:34

that ballooned to $44 million

26:37

in 1980s money, $44 million,

26:39

an incredible amount of money to spend on

26:41

any film. And Disney was,

26:43

I mean it was all in, so

26:46

much so in fact that when the Motion

26:48

Picture Association of America came back with a

26:51

PG rating, I still think Disney got off

26:53

light there, it went with it, this was

26:55

the first Disney animated movie to carry a

26:57

PG. I remember when Pixar,

26:59

it was The Incredibles was the first

27:01

Pixar film to get a PG and

27:04

such a big deal was made of

27:06

that. Here in the 1980s, I mean

27:08

pathfinding was underway, it just wouldn't

27:10

go anywhere near as well. The

27:13

Black Cauldron arrived, I mean

27:15

five years late really, twice

27:17

as expensive and in the

27:19

end nearly took Disney animation

27:21

down. The reviews of

27:24

the film actually were really really

27:26

strong, on a technical level the

27:29

75mm, the 6 channel sound,

27:31

that was singled out for praise.

27:33

But also the fact that it

27:36

was such a swing and so

27:39

different from what people were

27:41

expecting from Disney, in many

27:43

critical circles it earned it

27:45

very very strong to good

27:47

write-ups. Even Lloyd

27:49

Alexander would, I mean he would

27:51

say that the film

27:53

doesn't really sit alongside the book particularly,

27:56

but he enjoyed the film, it's not

27:58

an adaptation of his story. stories that

28:00

he considered really but the film he

28:02

was quite happy with. There

28:04

were naysayers really who weren't

28:07

so keen on it however

28:11

off it went into cinemas on that

28:13

weekend July 26th to 28th and

28:15

there was competition out there. The

28:18

films that were out were Kiss of the Spider

28:20

Woman, The Heavenly Kid was released but National Lampoon's

28:22

European Vacation was the number one movie that weekend

28:24

and it opened in week with $12.3 million dollars

28:27

in the US.

28:30

Films that worked also in cinemas, Any Back

28:33

to the Future was in second place on

28:35

its fourth week of release, 9.4 million

28:38

it took on its fourth week.

28:40

A re-release of ET many

28:42

years after the original, that was in

28:44

third place, $5 million dollars. You made

28:47

more money re-releasing ET than spending 44

28:50

million on The Black Cauldron. It opened

28:52

in fourth with 4.1 million. Now no

28:54

matter you might think and rightly so

28:56

because family movies tend to build audiences

28:58

over a period of time and the

29:01

expectation was at the very least The

29:03

Black Cauldron might do that. There

29:05

was other family fair around at that point,

29:07

The Goonies was towards the bottom of the

29:09

chart although Rumba First Blood Part 2 wasn't

29:12

attracting quite as many families. The

29:14

problem with The Black Cauldron was the

29:16

word of mouth was not helping it

29:18

and so the following week films such

29:20

as Fright Night and Weird Science came

29:22

out, Black Cauldron dropped to fifth as

29:24

Back to the Future went up to

29:26

first place. That was on week five

29:28

of release and it was comfortably outgrowth

29:30

in Disney's movie. The Black

29:33

Cauldron disastrously dropped out of the top

29:35

ten altogether after three weeks. Other films

29:37

that were knocking it down, Real Genius,

29:39

Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Summer Rental

29:42

came out. By the end

29:44

of the summer it was clear that

29:46

this was not going to be salvaged.

29:48

Week four it was down to sixteenth

29:50

place. Almost unthinkable for a Disney animation.

29:53

Teen Wolf then comes along the following week.

29:55

That makes a fair amount of money. A

29:57

re-releases Ghostbusters makes a fair amount of money.

30:00

by the time the Black cauldron limped

30:02

out of US cinemas, its box office

30:04

was way below what Disney

30:06

needed to be. All right, what,

30:08

20, 21 million dollars? It

30:10

was, there was no way of

30:12

rewriting this. It was a massive

30:15

disappointment. And it was leaving

30:17

a real hole in Disney's bottom

30:19

line as well, was animation really

30:21

worth still investing in if

30:23

this was, you know, if this was the

30:25

kind of return that the studio could have

30:28

had, it lost its magic touch. It's

30:30

telling as well, the legacy of the film

30:32

is a very bumpy one. I mean, how

30:34

long did it take for us to get

30:36

a proper DVD release of it? Ages,

30:39

and even now we don't have a Blu-ray

30:41

of it. We don't have a 4K disc

30:43

of it. You go round to Disney theme

30:45

park, if you find any mention of the

30:47

Black Cauldron in anything other than the slight

30:49

Easter egg, you are doing incredibly well. When

30:51

they run those floats down the Disney theme

30:53

parks with all the characters, there is not

30:56

a single character from the Black Cauldron on

30:58

them, I can tell you that. There

31:00

was also the end credits of Disney's

31:03

20, 23, 100th anniversary animation feature Wish.

31:06

And across the end credits of

31:08

that, there are visual nods to

31:10

virtually every Disney animated film to

31:12

that point. One of those

31:14

that's missing, that would be the Black Cauldron.

31:17

And it's not a film that Disney has

31:19

deleted entirely. It's certainly done its fair share

31:21

of those, but it's just hidden at

31:23

the back. It's not something Disney

31:25

wants to talk about. And if you sit and

31:28

watch it, even now, I mean,

31:30

it's chilling and fast. It

31:32

really, the 80s was not

31:34

shy of very, very creepy

31:36

family films. This was fun,

31:38

I would suggest. But

31:41

in the end, Disney decided to stick

31:44

with animation and the Black

31:46

Cauldron would hasten the reset at

31:48

Disney animation as well. Joe Hale

31:50

would leave fairly soon after this,

31:52

as would several who'd

31:54

worked on the film. Mistress Masham's repose,

31:56

that would be quickly canceled. But it

31:59

was filmed. as the great mouse

32:01

detective and Oliver & Company that kind

32:03

of reset the tone and started to

32:05

rebuild an audience for the studio. But

32:08

in the end it was those

32:10

two animators taking off the black

32:12

cauldron who were at the heart

32:14

of what became. Just five years

32:16

later really Disney's second golden age

32:18

of animation Ron Clements and John

32:21

Musker along with Howard Ashman producer

32:23

and composer again the subject of

32:25

that excellent Howard documentary. Well they

32:27

were the ones they were crucial

32:29

to fashioning what became The Little

32:31

Mermaid and in the aftermath of

32:34

The Little Mermaid that I mean

32:36

it just revolutionized revolutionized what Disney

32:38

animation was standing for again. And

32:41

standing too looking back at their

32:43

success Clements and Musker would recall

32:45

how they were quote basically banished

32:48

from the black cauldron. Going

32:50

back to that Michael Prater thing

32:52

as well I mean just to

32:54

tie up Jeffrey Katzenberg's approach. He

32:57

did say that that perhaps he

32:59

did write that Jeffrey wasn't

33:01

really an animation person however he proved

33:03

to be a very hard-working exec and

33:05

showed how serious he was in rectifying

33:08

his lack of knowledge by immediately going

33:10

into a thorough self-education process involving every

33:12

step of the creative and production processes

33:15

used in Disney feature animation. He soon

33:17

became a hands-on manager who garnered the

33:19

respect of quite a few on the

33:22

stuff including me and along with Roy

33:24

Disney's help and guidance would see Disney's

33:26

animation eventually regain its

33:29

prominence in the field. It would not

33:31

take that long to do ironically enough.

33:34

Hail went several others that

33:37

new guard of animators cut their chance and

33:39

in Beauty and the Beast actually the

33:41

1991 film what

33:43

you see there is the fascinating marriage

33:46

of that old guard versus new guard

33:48

actually working more together. Meanwhile

33:51

as though as the tone of Disney

33:53

films going forward was set there

33:55

has been a kind of fondant look

33:57

back at the black cauldron that an

34:00

appreciation that it was taking bolt

34:02

swings a lot earlier than anyone

34:04

else was in the family movie

34:06

space and perhaps in terms

34:08

of its rehabilitation in Disney history

34:11

at least it was quite

34:13

telling that in 2020 Disney went

34:15

back to this world and acquired

34:17

the rights to the entire Chronicles

34:19

of Predained series of books with

34:21

a view to a live-action franchise

34:23

and movies. No progress on

34:25

them there but with the original

34:28

Black Cauldron animation still

34:30

out there still ahead of its time

34:32

but still very much overlooked it might

34:34

be really quite fitting that this

34:37

dark chapter in Disney's history comes a

34:39

bit full circle and gets really the

34:41

appreciation it deserves just do not show

34:44

it to your kids on a test.

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35:40

that brings me to the halfway point of this

35:42

latest episode of Film Stories. As always thank you

35:44

for listening and thank you so much for your

35:46

time just going to do a couple of parish

35:48

notices before I get on to the second film

35:50

which is very sweary but I've edited the swear

35:52

words out. Firstly if you

35:54

like this podcast there are three ways you can

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36:03

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36:13

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also if you can leave ideally a hugely

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positive review, particularly now, it's getting harder and

36:33

harder to get noticed, everyone who's done all

36:35

of these things, thank you, I can't thank

36:37

you enough for all of this. In

36:40

terms of other parish notices, I'm just

36:42

finishing off Film Junior, the new issue

36:44

of the regular film

36:46

print magazine for youngsters, you

36:49

can find that soon at

36:51

store.filmsstories.co.uk, I'll be telling you

36:53

about the new issue of Film Stories magazine, another

36:55

168 page issue coming

36:57

your way in February and

37:00

you can find out more about that

37:02

soon at store.filmsstories.co.uk as well.

37:05

But that is enough of my parish

37:08

notices, I'm already overrunning, so I want

37:10

to move on to a British film

37:12

that I absolutely adore, absolutely adore this

37:14

film. I'm going to play you a

37:17

clip from the movie first, again with

37:19

no swear words and I'll come to

37:21

the story the other side of this.

37:26

He did not say unforeseeable, you may have

37:28

heard him say that, but you did not

37:31

say that. And that is a fact. I

37:33

apologize for Malcolm, don't apologize for me, apologize

37:35

for yourself. Is war

37:37

unstable, Minister? To walk the road

37:39

of peace. Sometimes we need

37:41

to be ready to climb the mountain

37:44

of conflict. Climb the

37:46

mountain of conflict. Nancy, Julie,

37:48

Andrew. The

37:51

Pien wants you to go to Washington. Just talk

37:53

to as few people as possible, I'll be there

37:55

for you. I'm going

37:57

to blow the gate. I feel like we should have a blow gate. That

38:00

then is a clip from 2009's comedy In

38:02

The Loop, directed

38:29

by Armando Iannucci. Screenplay credited to

38:31

Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci

38:34

and Tony Roach and based on

38:36

the TV series The Thick of

38:38

It, a cast here

38:41

led by Peter Capaldi as

38:43

the potty mouth Malcolm Tucker

38:45

alongside Tom Hollander, Gina McKee

38:47

in there, Chris Addison, James

38:50

Gandolfini, Anna Klumsky and Zach

38:52

Woods amongst a very extensive

38:54

ensemble. My confession here

38:56

is before I saw In The Loop

38:59

when it came out in 2009, I

39:01

hadn't actually seen the TV series that

39:03

it was based on, The Thick of

39:05

It. The Thick of It is a

39:08

terrific satirical television show, comedy

39:10

half hour episodes on the whole

39:12

that introduce the character of Malcolm

39:14

Tucker, the foul mayor of government

39:16

advisor, spin doctor and I

39:19

quickly remedied it afterwards but I

39:21

went in absolutely blasted away by

39:24

some top grade fifth down swearing.

39:27

Armando Iannucci, an

39:29

extensive background in comedy to this point, you

39:32

go to the very roots of Alan Partridge

39:34

back on radio four and there's Armando Iannucci's

39:36

name in The Thick of It, no pun

39:38

intended, he hadn't actually directed

39:41

a feature film by the time he

39:43

came here and so he

39:45

kind of opted to make In The

39:47

Loop his directorial debut but as he

39:49

admitted to Filmmaker magazine that

39:51

really wasn't always the plan because he said

39:54

I had absolutely no intention of doing

39:56

a film of it but he did say I've

39:58

always wanted to do a film of it. wanted

40:00

to do a funny film. He

40:02

said he wanted to do something fast and

40:04

sparky like a screwball comedy. He said

40:07

I've been attached to various projects but

40:09

I wanted to wait until I found the

40:11

right story. And that's when

40:13

I read more and more about the

40:15

stupid sort of office politics that went

40:18

on in the lead up to the

40:20

Iraq war. Now this was the second

40:22

Iraq war that began in 2003 and

40:25

when Iannucci discovered some of the things that I

40:27

had up to it he did say that's the

40:30

story and so he kind of

40:32

reconciled. Again as he told Filmmaker magazine

40:34

I've got the model here of how the

40:36

thick of it works so why don't we

40:38

take that but not have to say minister

40:41

government minister and staff because this is international

40:43

and the thick of it's a more domestic

40:45

story. He knew that

40:47

the war story could bring together

40:50

UK and US governments and explore

40:52

the so-called special relationship between the

40:54

pair. At the point this was

40:57

being put together I mean Tony

40:59

Blair and George W Bush had

41:02

really come together quite

41:04

strongly in the build up to and

41:06

the aftermath of the Iraq war and

41:08

even though Blair was no longer the

41:10

Prime Minister at the point in the

41:12

loop came out his shadow really is

41:14

partly over the movie. Iannucci

41:17

too knew that he would need a

41:19

UK and a US cast and it

41:21

would also give him a chance to

41:24

basically start over with one exception that

41:26

he carried one character over from the

41:28

TV show to the big screen and

41:30

that would be Malcolm Tucker as

41:32

played by Peter Capaldi. Now the half

41:35

hour episode format that they'd been working

41:37

to for several years of the thick

41:39

of it that had clear boundaries for

41:41

Iannucci. I mean he's taught quite interestingly

41:43

about how much you have to get

41:45

through in the first five minutes of

41:47

a half hour TV episode because you've

41:49

just got to set so much up

41:51

in such a short space of time

41:54

and so by this point

41:56

in 2007 they'd done a couple

41:58

of hour long special episodes of

42:00

The Thick of It and so he'd seen

42:02

the potential in expanding this over a longer

42:05

running time and so this

42:07

was it. It kind of saw the

42:09

potential of what was possible. Very

42:11

early on Iain Ouchy set himself an

42:13

upper limit of 105 minute

42:16

running time. It couldn't go for longer than

42:18

one hour 45. He like many of us

42:21

was fed up sitting through comedies

42:23

that went well past the two hour

42:25

mark and really had run out of

42:27

steam but he brought together

42:29

the key writing team that brought The Thick

42:31

of It to life that would be Jesse

42:33

Armstrong, now known for succession, Simon

42:36

Blackwell and Tony Roach as well as

42:38

himself and they knew

42:40

between them the machinations of the

42:42

UK government system quite well but

42:45

they threw themselves into researching how

42:47

the George W Bush administration in

42:49

the US had been including characters

42:52

such as Dick Cheney and Condoleezza

42:54

Rice and again as they

42:56

told filmmakers this is part of the research

42:58

is to get the authenticity right just in

43:01

the detail and what

43:03

they uncovered here was that quote a

43:05

lot of Washington is run by 23

43:07

year olds. They do spend a

43:09

lot of time hanging around more senior people's

43:12

offices in the hope of being spotted which

43:14

means they do all their work at night

43:16

and then there's that thing about if you

43:18

leave the meeting you leave the power so

43:20

you must never leave the meeting. There were

43:22

lots of little comedy beats that they were

43:24

identifying in the midst of this. They

43:26

were throwing out stories that they

43:29

considered too silly but then some

43:31

of the stuff they considered too

43:33

silly they then discovered further down

43:35

the track that that's the stuff

43:37

that would actually happen. Now

43:40

Jesse Armstrong would go a bit more

43:42

into the process in an interview with

43:44

Clash and he just said it's exactly

43:46

the same format as used in the

43:48

thick of it that Armando holds it

43:50

together in the middle Simon Blackwell, Tony

43:52

Roach and I meet him then come

43:54

up with the storyline us three go

43:56

away and do the storyline then send

43:58

it to Armando to be are

44:00

okayed and do the initial drafts then

44:02

Ian Martin does additional material and rewrites

44:04

it as well and so it's basically

44:06

a five-man team at the heart of

44:08

the thick of it and then in

44:11

terms of the writing of In The

44:13

Loop that was mirrored exactly there as

44:15

well a five-man team once again.

44:18

Armstrong added that it's a five-man team

44:20

that's broken down into quite different compartments

44:22

and so he said it never fails

44:24

on wielding and then he

44:26

explained the next part of the process said once

44:28

we had the storyline mapped out with Armando each

44:31

of us took an act each if you think

44:33

of it as a three-act movie and

44:35

so Armstrong took the first act that it

44:37

would be Sino Blackwell took the second Tony

44:39

Roach did the third then they brought them

44:41

all together looked at them all they got

44:44

their notes off Armando Iannucci then they all

44:46

did a rewrite and then

44:48

they passed the acts around so that

44:50

everybody could interrogate the other person's work

44:53

and again Jesse Armstrong he said he's not like

44:55

one person does the plot one does the jokes

44:57

and one does the politics but he did say

44:59

we all have had different strengths now

45:02

what this meant was a very sizable

45:04

script in the end in fact Peter

45:06

Capaldi in an interview with Under The

45:08

Radar said I did a number of

45:10

readings on a number of variations of

45:12

the script they did a trio of

45:14

table reads in the end and he

45:16

said each time the script was about

45:19

400 pages long so the old

45:21

adage of movies is one page of script

45:23

equals one minute of screen time so by

45:25

my bad maths that's six and a half

45:28

hour film with a bit of change on

45:30

top Capaldi would say it was a

45:32

really good script and it wasn't necessarily the movie that

45:34

we ended up with or the story that we

45:37

ended up with but he argued it was

45:39

in there somewhere and then

45:41

eventually they settled on one story

45:43

in amongst those 400 pages and

45:45

we began to pursue that and

45:48

this was leaning on a book

45:50

by celebrated journalist Bob Woodward called

45:52

Planet of Attack leaning too on

45:54

a research trip to Washington and

45:56

then the whole thing muddled as

45:58

Iannucci had hinted before on

46:00

a screwball comedy. This

46:02

came together in the end then relatively

46:05

quickly that BBC films was involved the

46:07

UK film council before it was disbanded

46:09

was putting in some money. Optimum releasing

46:11

in the UK was going to put

46:13

the film out. Optimum releasing is no

46:15

longer with us. I think the rights

46:17

to this have now gone on to

46:19

Studio Canal instead but for the purposes

46:21

of this it was looking at a

46:23

cinema release. In fact that's clearly what

46:25

they made it for that Peter Capaldi

46:27

came back in very early. Chris Addison

46:30

also one of the stars of the thick of it

46:32

but in a different role he was on board early

46:34

as well and then the cast was

46:37

fleshed out. Steve Coogan would take a role. Tom

46:39

Hollander was announced in May of 2008. James

46:41

Gandolfini was also announced in May 2008

46:43

and quite a coup to

46:45

get Tony Soprano in the movie. Gandolfini

46:48

hadn't worked with this team before either

46:51

and so his process was slightly different.

46:53

He went off to the Pentagon for

46:55

a couple of days. He also went

46:57

apparently to get his hair cut alongside

47:00

four star generals and was

47:02

just relaying back some of

47:04

the stories. Armando Iannucci's directorial

47:06

process meanwhile was not for

47:08

rehearsals. As Peter Capaldi

47:10

would say to Under the Raider we

47:12

did some workshops in New York with

47:14

James Gandolfini and the rest of the

47:17

American cast so we sort of played

47:19

the scenes but not written

47:21

and as Capaldi would

47:23

say James is playing the general you're

47:25

playing Malcolm now you're going to argue

47:27

about this whatever this might be and

47:29

so it was workshopping material that way

47:32

rather than specifically rehearsing the film. This

47:35

was more of a culture shock

47:37

to the American actors. I mean in particular two

47:39

who work quite closely together are Anna Klumsky and

47:41

Zach Woods and Klumsky is admitted that it took

47:44

her a day to get into this that this

47:46

wasn't the way she'd done a film before and

47:48

then she sort of realised well what she has

47:50

to do is top whatever Zach Woods was doing

47:52

and then it can start to work. The

47:56

start of production was in May 2008 and as producer Ken

48:00

David Lowder said to Variety at the start of

48:02

the production announcement, we hope that in the loop

48:04

will make you cry with laughter and possibly fear

48:06

as it takes you behind the scenes in

48:09

the heart of the global political village. Ian

48:12

Ouchy behind the camera decided to shoot

48:14

the film in a slightly different way

48:16

to the way The Thick of It

48:18

had been shot. Now, The Thick of

48:20

It TV show had relied on a

48:23

shaky cam documentary style. And Ian Ouchy

48:25

figured you can get away with that

48:27

for half an hour on a smaller

48:29

screen, but he had concerns about how

48:31

that would look for 90 minutes on

48:33

a cinema screen. And so

48:35

he changed the technique a little bit. He

48:38

didn't want it to go too glossy, but

48:40

they used tools such as Zoom and more

48:42

traditional techniques really for the shooting of the

48:44

movie. They kept the camera slightly steadier. Ian

48:47

Ouchy was insistent, though, that he still wanted

48:49

the whole thing to feel a little bit

48:52

messy and a little bit unfinished. He

48:54

wanted to resist the urge to go

48:56

too glossy. And if there's one word

48:58

that came through in all the interviews

49:00

that I've read that Ian Ouchy did

49:02

around the release of the film, it

49:04

was fluidity. It was keeping the story,

49:06

keeping the material fluid. Now,

49:09

to make that happen, he kind

49:11

of figured he needed to get

49:14

instinctive, almost sometimes improvisational words out

49:16

of his actors. And what

49:18

he didn't want to do is the traditional film

49:20

thing of someone does submit brilliant just off the

49:22

cuff and then you have to set it all

49:24

up again from a different angle with a different

49:27

camera and shoot it twice. And you lose a

49:29

little bit spark the second time. And

49:31

so what he did was he shot the

49:34

film with two cameras. And so always

49:36

throughout wherever the actors wanted to go,

49:38

two cameras were on them. They would

49:41

get slightly different direction off

49:43

Ian Ouchy. But fundamentally, the actors got to a

49:45

point where they knew that if they had a

49:47

spark in their head or something, they could go

49:49

with it and two cameras will capture it. They

49:52

didn't have to worry about going back and doing

49:54

it again. And so, I mean,

49:56

as he explained, what we do have is these

49:59

two cameras all time. because I want the

50:01

actors to feel they can wander everywhere. He

50:03

also said there are no marks on the

50:05

floor and he said that actually then dictates

50:07

the style and because we keep moving it

50:09

just allows you to cut in the edit

50:11

and the style of the film he was

50:13

making meant you could do a fairly abrupt

50:15

jump cut that wasn't going to be a

50:17

problem they pretty much knew that. Even

50:20

so as much as there

50:22

were there's a lot of improvisation and

50:24

space for improvisation on the set it

50:26

was it was crucial that they shot

50:29

the script first and so the

50:31

process throughout was you shoot the written word

50:33

and make sure you've got that captured and

50:35

then you can take another look at it

50:37

and then you go back in and throw

50:39

a few more things in including

50:42

just just fresh bits and bobs really for

50:44

the actors to react and respond against and

50:46

you just kind of see what you get.

50:49

Now for Ian Uchi he did admit

50:51

that the challenge with jumping to a

50:53

feature for him was quite keeping the

50:55

whole story in my head keeping the

50:57

rhythm the pace at which the story

50:59

was told as new elements and new

51:02

characters were introduced into it. This was

51:04

really his first his first directorial outing

51:06

at such a length really and so

51:08

that was the kind of thing he

51:10

was he was trying to keep on top

51:12

of. Amongst the locations

51:14

of the film the film primarily shot

51:17

in the UK it wasn't the longest

51:19

of shoots but there was a little

51:21

bit of work done in Washington but

51:23

most of it is done in Britain

51:26

but a little bit of it as

51:28

well he's actually shot at 10 Downing

51:30

Street and they kind of figured

51:32

they weren't going to get permission to

51:34

do this but they they

51:36

wrote a letter asking anyway and

51:38

because of timing and just because

51:41

of the popularity of the sick of it

51:43

in the corridors of power they just got a

51:45

note back saying yeah all right so the governing

51:47

party in the UK at that point was the

51:49

Labour party they were having their party conference in

51:51

Blackpool at the point the sick of it was

51:53

shooting and so they were able to go into

51:55

Downing Street and the people in the UK were

51:57

able to get the money to do that. the

52:00

corridors of power where they sounded like

52:02

they're a little bit starstruck at seeing

52:05

Malcolm Tucker a character based loosely

52:07

on government spin Dr. Aleister Campbell

52:09

at the time. Well he was

52:11

there in Downing Street and it

52:13

was kind of a little bit

52:15

of a wear moment really that

52:18

they taught that I mean the casting

52:20

crew talked about how the people in Downing

52:22

Street were taking pictures of Malcolm Tucker. That

52:25

Malcolm Tucker more to the point in

52:27

Downing Street himself. If

52:29

you aren't familiar with the thick of it

52:31

if you've I mean if you're someone who's not in

52:33

the UK for instance you've never heard the show it

52:35

is a it is really a behind the scenes working

52:38

of government comedy which is I mean

52:40

it's quite funny so roriously funny very

52:43

very foul man and it was a

52:45

bit of a surprise that it would

52:47

get official permission to film in the

52:50

corridors of power. Peter

52:52

Capaldi actually talked too about the process

52:54

of making the film to the website

52:56

I for Film and he talks about

52:58

how I think we're all learning about

53:00

it as we went. They think any of

53:03

us had done that sort of improvisation before

53:05

and after every take they

53:07

were encouraged to respond to what they

53:09

heard and he said also it's sometimes

53:12

it's far funnier on screen someone seeing

53:14

someone just go what then seeing them

53:16

come back with a really funny line.

53:18

Still by the time production wrapped up

53:20

a few weeks after it began Ian

53:23

Nuchy's two cameras had captured a fair

53:25

amount of material that he could wade

53:27

through in the edit to give himself

53:30

a whole chunk of options. I mean inevitably

53:32

there were some things and some rules that

53:34

it was built around I mean Ian Nuchy

53:36

talked about how in the thick of it

53:38

they deliberately never show the Prime Minister for

53:40

instance and so in the loop they never

53:42

wanted to show the President of the US

53:44

and he wanted to keep it real and

53:46

believable and show the people doing

53:49

the day-to-day stuff and make sure

53:51

the focus is on there and

53:53

so you know when you do something

53:55

like a motorcade you have the

53:57

day-to-day people in there who get excited about getting

54:00

in a motorcade, he did tell

54:02

one story about when we were filming the

54:04

motorcade in the film, and he said this

54:06

to IFA Film, we were using Dick Cheney's

54:08

Outriders and we kept stopping at traffic lights

54:10

then going again and Iannucci

54:12

was thinking I have to get a shot where

54:15

that didn't happen and he described how the guy

54:17

came over and just said for one shot do

54:19

you want them to put their bells and sirens

54:21

on so you could just go straight through the

54:23

traffic lights and that's what they did and I

54:26

mean Iannucci was taking moments like that

54:28

but he also said I kept

54:30

thinking we mustn't get carried away because that's

54:32

exactly what happened to the characters. The

54:35

grounded realism and sticking to the rules

54:37

of what he wanted this to be

54:40

whilst keeping that screwball comedy tone was

54:42

pivotal in the edit room of course

54:44

and Iannucci had a lot of material

54:46

to work with but also

54:49

he had that self-imposed rule one hour

54:51

45 minutes and so his

54:53

editing team was headed up by Billy Sneddon

54:55

and Ant Boys and

54:57

Iannucci described the hardest

54:59

part of the process, no the worst

55:01

part of the process of the word he used

55:03

was fine-tuning the film to get it down from

55:05

a cut of two hours to 105 minutes

55:09

and in the end that is exactly

55:11

the running time that the film landed

55:13

on. He was really really really disciplined

55:15

on it and cutting and

55:17

trimming and trimming and the difficulty

55:19

of it was right up

55:22

there for him really. The

55:24

film was completed in time to go

55:26

to the Sundance Film Festival in January

55:28

of 2009 that's where it would

55:30

make its debut ahead of a cinema

55:33

release in the UK in April

55:35

2009. The first

55:37

critical response then came off the back

55:39

of that Sundance screening and it was

55:42

primarily from people not familiar with the

55:44

TV show they were getting this pretty

55:46

much absolutely cold and

55:48

the reviews were really strong on the

55:51

whole really strong some people who were

55:53

fans of the thick of it felt

55:55

it was just a little a little

55:57

bit short of that perhaps I don't

55:59

know I mean I couldn't comment on that

56:01

because I wasn't a fan of The Think of

56:03

it at the time, I've rectified it since. But in

56:06

the loop was knocking it

56:08

out the park really for the

56:11

people particularly who never met Malcolm

56:13

Tucker before. Even those that

56:15

had met him before, there's so much to

56:17

love in the film. I mean as long

56:19

as your ears don't mind a bit of

56:23

Cossie, you're pretty much in

56:25

gold here I would suggest. So

56:28

when it arrived in UK cinemas,

56:30

the reviews were similarly strong. In fact it

56:32

got some absolute flat out raves. It cost

56:35

around £600,000 to make the film. And

56:40

the release of it went well. I

56:42

mean it did okay in the UK.

56:44

It also did okay in the US

56:46

as well. I mean you can get

56:48

a huge release over there but IFC

56:50

Films put it out on limited release.

56:53

And it picked up a couple of million in

56:55

the US. By the time it had completed its

56:57

theatrical run, it's hard to do my usual box

57:00

office comparison on a film like this,

57:02

it made about seven, eight million dollars

57:04

worldwide. And so it had made profit

57:06

and it had got strong reviews. And

57:08

then just to ice the cake in

57:10

the midst of it all, it got

57:13

an Oscar nomination as well.

57:15

That the Academy Award, the

57:17

82nd Academy Awards, and

57:19

if you just want to, if you

57:21

just want me to contextualise that, that

57:23

was the one where the Hurt Locker

57:25

won, where Avatar was knocking up tonnes

57:27

and tonnes of nominations as well. There

57:30

you had In The Loop screenplay

57:32

in the best adapted screenplay category,

57:34

ultimately won by Jeffrey Fletcher for

57:36

Precious Based on the Novel Push

57:38

by Sufferer. Going up

57:40

against District 9 and Education and

57:42

up in the air was In The Loop.

57:45

And I remember following Chris Addison's Twitter feed

57:47

at the time, at the

57:49

kind of surreal moment where there

57:51

he was on the screen at

57:53

the Oscars when they played a little bit of

57:55

a clip from the film. The

57:58

character of Malcolm Tuck and was

58:00

revisited with further TV episodes of The

58:02

Sick of It but not kind of

58:04

like the version and the world that

58:07

we saw in The Loop. Instead,

58:09

Almondo Iannucci decided to go

58:11

in slightly different directions when

58:13

it came to his further

58:16

film directing career. He

58:18

would tackle the death of Stalin in 2017 and

58:20

the personal history of David Copperfield in

58:22

2019. But as a calling card

58:28

for people who didn't know his work, who were

58:30

meeting him for the first time, In

58:33

The Loop number one was just

58:35

one hell of a film. It's still one hell of a

58:38

comedy film. And also beyond

58:40

that really it led to

58:42

his work, indirectly, directly,

58:44

it's up to you really, his work in the

58:47

US not least

58:49

the hugely successful political

58:51

comedy series VP which

58:53

HBO picked up and ran from 2012.

58:57

Still, if you've not had the pleasure,

58:59

if you've not had the pleasure, dig

59:01

out in The Loop. It is available

59:03

on streaming services. It is terrific and

59:05

I mean provided the people around you

59:07

have the ears that can cope with

59:09

it, you're going to be quoting it

59:11

for an awful long time. Exactly your

59:13

purview. And that

59:15

brings me to the end of this latest

59:17

episode of Film Stories. As always, thank you

59:20

so much for listening and thank you for

59:22

your time. If I've not bored you completely,

59:24

you can find more from me on Twitter

59:26

at Simon Brew. You can find more from

59:28

the entire Film Stories project at Film Stories.

59:31

We're on Facebook, facebook.com/Film Stories online. You

59:33

can find us on YouTube where we're

59:35

putting some of these podcasts and some

59:37

of our reviews as well at youtube.com/Film

59:39

Stories. Our website is

59:42

filmstories.co.uk where you can find

59:44

news, reviews, features across film, TV

59:46

and gaming. And if you go to

59:48

store.filmsstories.co.uk that's where you'll find all of

59:50

our print magazines for sale that I

59:52

told you about in the middle of

59:54

this episode. But I think I've

59:56

waffled on long enough. I've got a whole host of

59:59

specials I'm putting together. for you which you'll find

1:00:01

out about soon. Main thing as always you

1:00:03

all take care, you all look after yourselves

1:00:05

and we'll be back soon with another bunch

1:00:07

of film stories. Thank you so much for

1:00:09

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