The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast

In the mood to get “Booped?” You’ve come to the right place!

In this episode, we deep dive into all things FLEISCHER STUDIOS with our guest MARK FLEISCHER. While WALT DISNEY captured an idealized, orderly pastoral world that flowed from Disney’s Midwestern roots, Mark’s father MAX FLEISCHER and his uncle DAVE FLEISCHER reveled in the Urban America into which they emigrated – filled with oddballs and idiosyncrasies. Instead of MICKEY MOUSE, they created BETTY BOOP and KOKO and GRAMPY. And then they made POPEYE THE SAILOR a star and put SUPERMAN on the screen.  

Along the way, Max Fleischer invented the ROTOSCOPE – a way to project images onto a screen so as to trace them and use the traced images as the basis for the animation.

In the 1930’s and 40’s, Fleischer Studios and Walt Disney were the two big animation companies in Hollywood – and they very much competed with each other. Success in show business is never simple alas – and it wasn’t simple for the Fleischer’s either. And it didn’t necessarily produce happiness all around. We’ll talk about that, too.

We’ll also talk about Mark’s father RICHARD FLEISCHER who was one of Hollywood’s most versatile, talented and successful directors ever.

He directed movies like 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, COMPULSION, NARROW MARGIN, SOYLENT GREEN (“Soylent Green is people!”), AMITYVILLE 3-D and CONAN THE DESTROYER across a very long career.

As this episode demonstrates, Boop happens. And a good thing, too. Because Betty Boop’s pretty much eternal. In fact, the first ever REAL LIFE BETTY BOOP is coming! Betty Boop is GOING TO BROADWAY in “BOOP: THE MUSICAL” – opening in 2025.

We’re going to talk about that, too.

So – if you’re in the mood to get Booped? Even if you’re not – don’t sit here reading this, hit play – and Get Booped!

Here’s a stone cold fact: it is really, really, REALLY hard to create an iconic character like Tales From The Crypt’s iconic Crypt Keeper.

For one thing, you can’t set out to create a character that will become iconic. That’s because it’s not up to the character’s creators, it’s up to you – the audience.

It’s your embrace – how warm it is – how long it lasts – that determines whether a character can even enter the “iconic” conversation.

With the Crypt Keeper, we ticked off all the boxes.

We created a character that a wide and widening audience still embraces – thirty some odd years after its creation.

But, HOW do characters like the Crypt Keeper GET created? Don’t they just spring fully formed – more or less – from one person’s fertile imagination?

Well, not really…

Every horror icon’s creation is complicated in its own way. And more than one person played a significant part.

Take The Frankenstein Monster.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly – Frankenstein’s author –

and her husband – the Romantic poet Percy Bysse Shelly –

were traveling with friends through Germany down the Rhine River in 1816.

At night, the travel party told each other ghost stories. Mary and her friends were all intrigued by the latest science: using electricity to spark dead limbs to life.

And, as they traveled down the Rhine through Germany, they heard local stories about a crazy local alchemist named Johann Konrad Dippel.

Dippel robbed graves and experimented on corpses at a very real place called Frankenstein Castle.

And then Mary Shelley – all of 21 – filled in the blanks – and published her book anonymously. She put her name on the second edition though.

In time, Mary Shelley’s character found a literary audience. But then a guy named James Whale directed the movie version of the book in 1931. And whatever the character had been on the page became the character in the movie.

And that’s the Frankenstein monster most people think of when they hear the name “Frankenstein”.

Remove any of those elements from the Frankenstein equation and there is no equation.

As you’ll hear – if you haven’t already heard this episode – it took puppeteer Kevin Yagher to create the Crypt Keeper puppet plus John Kassir to create the Crypt Keeper’s voice plus me to create the Crypt Keeper’s inner life plus Gil Adler – who directed and produced the Crypt Keeper segments.

Take any of us out of the Crypt Keeper equation – and this equation isn’t happening either.

When Kevin and John and Gil and I got together for that very first time, we  had never had this conversation before – about the Crypt Keeper’s creation story.

None of us knew the whole story ourselves – until we shared it with ourselves.

And you’ll get to share that discovery with us.

How do you make a Crypt Keeper? Well… it’s complicated – but quite fascinating.

And by the way – the young guy sitting in the dentist’s chair during our teaser?

That was me.

When Gil Adler and I took over HBO‘s iconic TALES FROM THE CRYPT at the start of its third season, one of our tasks was to reignite the series – or see it get cancelled. Crypt was a strange, hybrid creature. Today, talent moves easily from film projects to streaming TV projects and back. That didn’t happen in the mid-1990’s, when we made Crypt. The feature film world and the TV world didn’t mingle much (except for JOHNNY CARSON doing THE OSCARS). It wasn’t easy, but Crypt broke that rule. We merged features and TV every episode. So, it was both gratifying and instructive that we were able to attract a screenwriter like LARRY WILSON who had BEETLEJUICE and THE ADDAMS FAMILY to his screenwriting credit.

We had plenty of other feature film writers write scripts for Crypt. Few, if any, understood the show as intrinsically as Larry.

Larry grew up a huge fan of the EC Comics. His favorite movie was (and still is) the original BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. He loved it because it wasn’t just scary, it was funny, too. Like Crypt.

With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice about to drop, Larry’s a wanted person! But, as he points out in the interview, Crypt was an important part of his career. That was the case for almost everyone who worked on Crypt. That means we’ll have Larry not once, but twice. In this episode, Larry will “stick to the “scrypt”. We’re going to talk pretty much Crypt from start to finish.

Larry will revisit us in a few episodes to talk about the great book he’s writing – a history of making Beetlejuice and a screenwriting textbook all rolled into one terrific entertainment! But, that’s the future. We’re here to talk about the past today – about Tales From The Crypt – and Beetlejuice’s co-creator, Larry Wilson!

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Our good friend Roger Nygard makes his bread and butter editing and directing TV. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The League, Who Is America, Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But, Roger’s passion – the thing that drives him creatively – is making documentaries. That’s part of what motivated him to write his new book “THE DOCUMENTARIANS: The Way to a Successful and Creative Professional Life in the Documentary Business“. Roger’s first documentary out of the gate was the raging success “TREKKIES” about, well, Trekkies.

From there, he went on to make Trekkies 2 and documentaries about The Nature Of Existence, The Truth About Marriage and The Comedy Store.

Roger’s interviewed an incredibly wide range of people for his movies. He’s tackled deep, provocative subjects. Throw in the DIY nature of making documentaries and you have to figure that when Roger sat down and wrote a book about how to make documentaries? Inevitably it was going to be not just meticulous, thorough and exhaustive, but entertaining-as-hell, too.

A lot of the stories Roger uses for illustration come from the making of “Trekkies”. As you’ll hear, Roger has always been a note-taker. It’s one of his suggestions about how to be a successful documentarian.

In fact, Roger is filled with great suggestions about how to make documentaries or even just movies and TV shows in general. And every single lesson he learned, came with a great story to go with it.

And it’s all right there on the page.

If you live in LA or will be in LA on Monday September 23 at 7:00 pm? Roger’s having a book launch party at West Hollywood’s BOOK SOUP!

And all you have to do be part of it? Just show up! If only the rest of life was that easy…

Welcome to another in our series of “TALES FROM THE CRYPT” reunions. This episode’s guest – JOHN LEONETTI – isn’t just a great director of photography and director, he’s from one of HOLLYWOOD’S LEGACY FAMILIES. His dad FRANK LEONETTI was a sought after gaffer who helped light THE WIZARD OF OZ and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. John’s brother MATT LEONETTI DP’d movies like POLTERGEIST, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, COMMANDO and JAGGED EDGE. While John would go on to DP and direct movies like THE CONJURING and ANNABELLE, John’s really here to celebrate the thing we all have in common: TALES FROM THE CRYPT.

We’ve said on the podcast repeatedly what a remarkable experiencing it was making Crypt.

With hindsight, we can now see all the many ways in which Crypt really was remarkable. And remarkably influential. Crypt changed television because Crypt changed HBO.

Before Crypt, back in the 1990’s, the feature film world and the TV world were two separate things.

One could – like Robin Williams or Tom Hanks – go from TV into features. But, if you were going from movies into TV? Your career was dying.

The first two original series at HBO – First And Ten and Dream On – were basically regular TV shows but with tits and the word “fuck” thrown in.

Then Crypt executive producers – Joel Silver, Dick Donner, Walter Hill and Bob Zemeckis approached HBO with an idea to do little horror movies every week as a TV show – all based on a classic comic book from the 1950’s.

John Kassir – the voice of the Crypt Keeper – tells a story (he told it, in fact, on this podcast) about the cast and crew screening of the first three episodes just before the show premiered.

Some crew guys – having just seen the first episode – were talking amongst themselves. “Wow,” says one, “That’s great TV!”

“It’s not TV,” says the crew guy next to him, “It’s HBO”.

The two HBO executives in the row ahead suddenly turn and look back. They just heard HBO’s new ad slogan – and HBO’s new way of seeing itself.

When it comes to how Crypt “saw” itself, one of the key people responsible was JOHN LEONETTI. He was director of photography on eleven episodes including some of the very best.

In fact, John Leonetti DP’d Season One, Episode One, the very first Crypt episode ever: Walter Hill’s amazing “The Man Who Was Death”.

After Crypt, John made a name for himself as both a DP and a director of horror. His success putting James Wan’s vision onto the screen in THE CONJURING got John the gig directing ANNABELLE.

As you’ll also hear, John grew up living and breathing the movies – cameras especially. His family’s been in the movie business almost from its start.

Remember how John’s dad Frank (before he opened a hugely successful film equipment rental house) was a gaffer at MGM.? He worked on movies like WIZARD OF OZ and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. Well, ironically, one of the Crypt episode’s John DP’d was “STRUNG ALONG” which starred DONALD O’CONNER. From SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN.

See? It comes full circle.

The guy’s not just a Tales From The Crypt Alum, he’s a movie legacy.

Here’s John – and our Crypt reunion…   

Our guest today is both a friend and a co-worker. John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer. After 9-11, John was part of the CIA’s covert team tasked with tracking down Al Qaeda’s leadership.

In March 2002, Pakistani forces with CIA support captured the man we thought was Al Qaeda’s number three: a man with the nom de guerre ABU ZUBAYDAH.

For the first 60 hours that we had Abu Zubaydah – as he recovered from severe wounds suffered during his capture, John Kiriakou was his handler.

He built up a relationship with Abu Zubaydah. A degree of trust.  

Ultimately, Abu Zubaydah provided significant intelligence though, in the end, he wasn’t the number three at Al Qaeda. Despite those two facts, we waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

John deplored the Agency’s turn toward torture. Heart sick over it, he ratted out the program. And then spent 18 months in federal prison for doing it.

John’s written a number of books about his CIA experiences. He’s made TV shows. And (here’s where the co-worker part kicks in) he and I are about to drop a new podcast together called PRISONER EX.

“Prisoner Ex” is about people who are in prison – here in America and around the world – but who shouldn’t be. The podcast’s mission is to tell all these stories, but, more importantly, its mission is to empower the audience and tell them specifically what they can do to help make these prisoners ex ex prisoners.

A quick note for those who watch us on our YouTube channel – Alas, our visual elements this week – beyond this intro – are gonna be kinda sparse merging on non-existent.

We only ever think we have the technology. In point of fact, the technology always has us.

But. hey – on the bright side, if you experience this podcast sonically, you’ll never know the difference.

So – if you like spies and spy stuff, boy, is this episode’s right in your wheelhouse.  Even if you don’t, this episode will open your eyes.

Here’s John…