Moviefone Editorial

Tag: bo-derek

  • ‘Tommy Boy’ 30th Anniversary Interview: Director Peter Segal

    V4waOHXD

    Available for the first time on 4K Ultra HD in a 4K/Blu-ray Combo or in a Limited-Edition SteelBook on March 25th is ‘Tommy Boy’, which marks the 30th anniversary of the classic comedy.

    Directed by Peter Segal (‘Get Smart’), the film stars the late Chris Farley (‘Saturday Night Live’), David Spade (‘Just Shoot Me!’), Rob Lowe (‘Wayne’s World’), Julie Warner (‘Doc Hollywood’), Bo Derek (‘10’), Dan Aykroyd (‘Ghostbusters’), and Brian Dennehy (‘Silverado’).

    Related Article: Director Penelope Spheeris Talks 30th Anniversary of ‘Wayne’s World’

    (L to R) David Spade and Chris Farley in 'Tommy Boy'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
    (L to R) David Spade and Chris Farley in ‘Tommy Boy’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

    Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with director Peter Segal about his work on ‘Tommy Boy’, how he came to direct the project, improvising on set, Farley and Spade’s chemistry, Spade’s comedic abilities, Farley’s genius and legacy, and why Rob Lowe did not take a credit in the film.

    You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.

    'Tommy Boy' director Peter Segal.
    ‘Tommy Boy’ director Peter Segal.

    Moviefone: To begin with, from your unique perspective can you talk about how this project came together and you were hired to direct?

    Peter Segal: I had worked with Farley a couple times before this movie, once on an HBO special and then on a sitcom called ‘The Jackie Thomas Show’. At that point I had not done ‘Naked Gun 33+1/3’ yet. But I knew that if I had an opportunity to ever do a movie that I absolutely wanted to work with Farley in a starring role. So, about a year after ‘The Jackie Thomas Show’, the script from the Bonnie and Terry Turner came to me, ‘Billy the Third: a Midwestern’. It was a first draft and I had a lot of ideas. I actually wanted to take the story, if I did it, in a different direction, adding a little bit more of a relationship with Tommy’s father and himself, in addition to Richard and Tommy working together to save the factory. By doing that I was unraveling the very thing that was greenlit. It put us in a precarious place because suddenly we had no script and we were heading towards the ‘SNL’ season, which meant we were going to be splitting time. That was the good and the bad news. The bad news, it was hard for Dave and Chris to go back and forth from Toronto to New York. But it allowed me a couple of extra days a week to work on the script with Fred Wolf as we were filming. So that’s how we survived.

    (L to R) Chris Farley and David Spade in 'Tommy Boy'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
    (L to R) Chris Farley and David Spade in ‘Tommy Boy’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

    MF: Famously, the “Fat guy in a little coat” and “Housekeeping” scenes were improvised on set and were bits that Farley and Spade would do off screen. Can you talk about those scenes and how much of the film was improvised?

    PS: Well, once, like I said, we changed direction on the script and started with not much we were desperate for any bits or stories about what they did together at ‘SNL’. “Fat Guy in a Little Coat” was definitely one of those things. But it was spoken, not sung. That was Chris’s thing at ‘SNL’. Well, both Chris and Dave were a little bored of the moviemaking process of multiple takes, multiple angles, they’re used to one take with live cameras. So, when we were shooting “Fat Guy in a Little Coat” from the office scene, I shot Chris and then I turned the camera around on Dave. I wasn’t paying attention to Chris but he was getting so bored that he started to improv and sing just to try to get Dave to break and laugh. I wasn’t really paying attention, I was just focusing on Dave, until my editor that night after dailies said, “Oh my God, you’ve got to go back and reshoot him this time singing.” That’s the type of thing. There were so many little things like that that I would just jot down. One example was Dave looked at Chris coming out of a wardrobe test, and Chris was wearing the now iconic brown tweed jacket, and he said, “Hey, Dave, does this suit make me look fat?” Dave said, “No, your face does.” I went “Okay, that’s going in.”

    (L to R) David Spade, Chris Farley, producer Lorne Michaels and Bo Derek on the set of 'Tommy Boy'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
    (L to R) David Spade, Chris Farley, producer Lorne Michaels and Bo Derek on the set of ‘Tommy Boy’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

    MF: ‘Tommy Boy’ is very much a chemistry movie. Can you talk about Farley and Spade’s relationship and onscreen chemistry, and how you were able to capture that with this film?

    PS: What I have heard is that Spade and Farley were goofing off during a writing session at SNL and Lorne (Michaels) said, “We’ve got to do something with you two, so Turner’s see if you can come up with something,” and they did because he saw the chemistry between them. You can’t teach chemistry it sort of is what it is, you have it or you don’t. Dave and Chris were best of friends but they were also an old married couple. They’d get into fights, and then kiss and make up and everything was fine, and then fight again. It was just sort of like watching two young boys. I mean, we were all young at the time. It was a little juvenile. But it was also where the inspiration and the fun came from because they loved to pick on one another. Dave could say stuff to Chris that I would never have imagined anyone saying like the thing about the coat but it would make Chris laugh, and that stuff was just priceless.

    David Spade in 'Tommy Boy'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
    David Spade in ‘Tommy Boy’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

    MF: Can you talk about how important David Spade’s role as the “straight man” is to the film and his ability to work off of Farley?

    PS: Well, he’s really sort of the engine of a lot of the improv. I would not say that a lot of improvisation happened while the cameras are rolling but the improv happened off camera where they would just interact. If Dave served up the beginning of a joke, Chris would knock it out of the park and they loved that. It’s like watching in basketball someone make a great assist. Dave was an assist leader. That helped with the writing process. His idea for the Carpenter‘s song (“Superstar”) and many other things. Like I said, we were just so desperate for anything that when these guys, as much as they were exhausted, would come up with ideas, we’d try to find a way to put it in the movie.

    (L to R) Chris Farley and Brian Dennehy in 'Tommy Boy'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
    (L to R) Chris Farley and Brian Dennehy in ‘Tommy Boy’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

    MF: In addition to being a comedic genius, Chris Farley was also a strong dramatic actor, and you can see that in the scene where he says goodbye to his late father on the boat. Can you talk about Farley’s legacy and were you aware of how talented he was when you were making the movie?

    PS: Well, I sort of discovered that. Even though I’d worked with him a couple of times before, those were definitely comedies. This story I knew was going to touch on something that was very important to him and that was his relationship with his father in real life. The fact that we knew that the character of Big Tom was going to die, I knew that there was an opportunity here to show a different side of Chris Farley because there are going to be more serious moments, it wasn’t just about the jokes. It was delightful to see how good he was at that. That’s what makes me, and still does to this day, so very sad that he didn’t get to really explore that part of his personality. The original writers for ‘Shrek’ actually told me that they patterned the characters of Donkey and Ogre after Spade and Farley in ‘Tommy Boy”. Then Chris, of course, was hired to play the Ogre but didn’t complete it before he passed.

    (L to R) Chris Farley and Rob Lowe in 'Tommy Boy'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
    (L to R) Chris Farley and Rob Lowe in ‘Tommy Boy’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

    MF: Finally, why did Rob Lowe take no credit in the film?

    PS: It’s a little bit of a mystery to this day. I think possibly because he thought the movie might’ve sucked and wanted to protect himself. I mean, that’s sort of just a joke. I really don’t know. I’ve never really asked him but it seems to be on a lot of people’s minds.

    1321

    What is the plot of ‘Tommy Boy’?

    To save the family business, two ne’er-do-well traveling salesmen (Chris Farley and David Spade) hit the road with disastrously funny consequences.

    Who is in the cast of ‘Tommy Boy’?

    • Chris Farley as Thomas R. “Tommy” Callahan III
    • David Spade as Richard Hayden
    • Bo Derek as Beverly Burns-Barrish
    • Julie Warner as Michelle Brock
    • Dan Aykroyd as Ray Zalinsky
    • Brian Dennehy as Thomas “Big Tom” Callahan Jr.
    • Rob Lowe as Paul Barrish
    'Tommy Boy' will be available for the first time on 4K Ultra HD in a 4K/Blu-ray Combo or in a Limited-Edition SteelBook on March 25th.
    ‘Tommy Boy’ will be available for the first time on 4K Ultra HD in a 4K/Blu-ray Combo or in a Limited-Edition SteelBook on March 25th.

    List of Peter Segal Movies:

    Buy ‘Tommy Boy’ on Amazon

     

  • The ‘Jaws’ Movie That Never Was: Everything We Know About ‘Jaws 3, People 0’

    The ‘Jaws’ Movie That Never Was: Everything We Know About ‘Jaws 3, People 0’

    Universal

    35 years ago, “Jaws 3-D” exploded onto movie screens nationwide. Part of a trend of low rent horror movies getting goosed up with added dimensionality (along with “Friday the 13th Part III,” “Amityville 3D,” and early Demi Moore vehicle “Parasite”), “Jaws 3D” is … fairly forgettable, despite a marketing campaign that excitingly promised that, “This time, the terror of ‘Jaws’ won’t stop at the edge of the screen.”

    It shoehorns existing “Jaws” mythology into a a conventional monster movie screenplay, this one about a giant shark terrorizing folks at SeaWorld Orlando. (Yes, a literal SeaWorld. And this was decades before we rightly declared them to be evil.) Somewhat shockingly, there are some heavy hitters behind the scenes, most notably Richard Matheson, the genius genre writer who penned “Duel,” a TV movie that got Steven Spielberg the job to direct the first “Jaws.” (Carl Gottlieb, one of the writers of the original movie, also returned.) Still, when the dust settled, “Jaws 3D” was a dud. Try watching it at home and the way that the shark, now robbed of all its stereoscopic oomph, lurches towards the camera. Lame!

    But it wasn’t always like this. For a while, at least, Universal had a much more ambitious, much goofier plan for the third “Jaws” sequel that became, in the years since, a legendary case of what-could-have-been.

    This is the story of “Jaws 3, People 0.”

    In 1978, two films were released by Universal: one was “Animal House,” a brilliant, slapstick comedy that successfully transplanted the humor of National Lampoon magazine to the big screen. It was a huge hit. The other film was “Jaws 2,” a creatively inert cash-in that, while making money, was nowhere near the blockbuster the original film was.

    Two years later, “Airplane” became a smash, making nearly $84 million on a $3 million budget. “Jaws” producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown had an inspired idea: what if the third film was a low budget comedy?

    Brown and Zanuck tasked Matty Simmons, the National Lampoon publisher and producer of “Animal House,” with putting together the movie, which he pitched as being about the production of a “Jaws” sequel (in this one the shark is an alien!) while the director and crew are mercilessly hunted by a vengeful Great White. (Supposedly Brown and Zanuck loved the concept.) Supposedly, Simmons was protective of the National Lampoon brand and was more interested in developing an “Animal House” sequel, set during the summer of love. (That project was ultimately derailed after the failure of the thematically similar “More American Graffiti” and the untimely death of John Belushi.) Ultimately, Simmons agreed to take on the project, and would later say that it helped him learn about the way that Hollywood functions … or lack thereof.

    After he got the go-ahead, Simmons then turned to John Hughes, a star Lampoon writer who would go on to become one of the defining filmmakers of the decade, who penned a screenplay with another Lampoon writer, Tod Campbell. Together, they concocted a script full of both lowbrow and highbrow comedy, at times savagely insightful and oftentimes downright insipid. (The script, completed in 1979, opens with Peter Benchley, the novelist who penned “Jaws,” getting eaten in his swimming pool.)

    And for a director, the team made an even more impressive get — a young Joe Dante.

    Dante, now known for a string of high concept comedies, was then just starting out. In 1978, the same year that “Jaws 2” and “Animal House” were released, Dante directed “Piranha,” a low-budget “Jaws” rip-off produced by grindhouse titan Roger Corman (it was released through Corman’s New World Pictures). While an admitted Xerox, “Piranha” was also incredibly witty and delivered real scares, thanks largely to Dante’s direction and a script by future American indie pioneer John Sayles. It was reportedly Spielberg’s favorite rip-off and he enjoyed the fact that a character can be seen playing the “Jaws” videogame early in the film.

    They had even assembled a cast for the film, which included Bo Derek (in a role that would mostly require her to bounce around while wearing a skimpy bathing suit), “Animal House” alum Stephen Furst, Mariette Hartley as a network exec, and in, the main role, Roger Bumpass, now best known for his voice work on “SpongeBob SquarePants” (he’s Squidward). Everything had solidified … or so it seemed.

    Universal

    While a few million dollars had already been sunk into pre-production and securing deals, Hughes recalled walking into the National Lampoon offices to find Simmons fuming, having just gotten off the phone with Universal, who told him that the movie was off. Simmons blamed Spielberg’s reluctance to move forward with such a tonally disparate sequel, although it was Spielberg who singled out Dante for the job and encouraged the more comedic direction.

    According to a Spokane, Washington Sun article from 1979, Ned Tanen, the President of Universal, is quoted as saying, “The script didn’t work.” Simmons also weighed in: “It’s very difficult for a humorist to do business with a studio sitting in judgment about what is not funny, especially when they’re [the studio] not humorists.” The article notes that if there is a sequel, it “won’t be a parody.”

    Years after “Jaws 3, People 0” fell apart, in the special features for the “Jaws 2” special edition DVD, Brown said that making such a broad satire would have been like “fouling in your own nest.” Still, he concluded, “It would have been golden, maybe even platinum.”

    Hindsight is 20/20, even when you’re looking back while getting chased by a giant shark.