Exclusive Interviews
Robert Rothbard - SMB Archive Interview: 10/31/2011 by Ryan Hoss
Although he's credited in the film as a second assistant director, Robert Rothbard was in fact the production manager. I was fortunate enough to speak with him last Halloween about his time on Super Mario Bros. (mere hours before our interview with Richard Edson). Since Robert was involved in the "sci-fi" production from the start, you'll hear a well-rounded account of his experiences on the film--such as location scouting with the film's original production designer or hiring security guards to look after the M-16 assault rifles in the Koopa Square shopfronts. And just as we've heard from so many involved with the production of this film, his experience on the film was a good one.
Robert Rothbard: Good morning.
Ryan Hoss: Hello, is this Robert?
RR: Speaking.
RH: Hey. This is Ryan from the Mario website.
RR: Hey Ryan. How are ya?
RH: I’m pretty good. Are we still up for the interview?
RR: Sure.
RH: Sounds great. Okay. Well, how you doing?
RR: I’m very well, thank you. How are you?
RH: Yeah. Not bad, not bad. I’ve been looking forward to this. Hopefully you can talk about your experience on the film and all that cool stuff.
RR: Sure. Well, it was I guess 1991 or ’92--I don’t even remember--we were scouting New York City, because it had originally been written for New York and Wolf Kroeger was the original production designer that I’d been working with and at the time I was working as a production manager, as I explained to your partner, that I was actually the production manager but because of a SNAFU with the Director’s Guild of America I wound up with a second AD credit. I probably could put on my IMDb website “uncredited production manager,” [but] I just never got around to it.
But I was actually scouting around New York City with the original script. They had some pretty interesting underground locations and I went with Greg Lipari, who worked on it in the preliminary stages of the locations because he knew New York very well and we went to a very interesting place up in the Bronx. It was a water treatment center or actually where they were pumping the water in. It was about a half a mile underground and I still remember this, you know, going there and taking pictures of it and obviously it was before 9/11 or the bombing at the Trade Center in ‘92 or ‘93 in the basement.
So they just let us go down there. It was this real narrow elevator. We went underground and we saw this incredible, just incredible--these tunnels and this is where the water--you know, New York has the best water and you can see why. This water was coming in from the underground streams or whatever and we took some pictures of it and I thought “Aww. Filming under here. It’d just be impossible,” but we were scouting the locations and then the producer Fred Caruso decided that we’d be better off shooting it in North Carolina, so we packed up and moved it to North Carolina for six months to shoot in an empty cement plant, which we shot some of those big scenes where the tubes [and] the big tunnels and stuff like that were actual cement, but I don’t believe they were still in operation. I think they had been… Something had happened. Either they were off-production or they stopped production, but I remember a manager still being there at the plant.
The Gowanus Tunnel--Robert later informed us that this was the facility they scouted
We built all our sets within the confines of the cement plant and we put our offices up and it was a very kind of lime-stoney kinda place and your hands were dried-out. [People would say] “Why am I so dry!” because there’s so much limestone in the air. We had to test the air at the time. The crew was kind of apprehensive about all the chemicals so we ran some tests on the air quality and everything checked out fine. It was natural. Natural occurring minerals and stuff.
But that was where we shot the picture, but it had originally been written to be shot in New York City. Chris Woods--who did our special visual effects--I guess he did a green screen or composite shot where we actually saw New York at one point in the movie, but that was done in North Carolina and he just composited the shot.
RH: When you were scouting with the original production designer. I mean, when were you brought into the project? At one point the production had basically a completely different movie in the pipeline, right? It was all fantasy-based and they brought in a new script and the new directors and completely made it into a different movie. So did you come in at that point?
RR: Well, I was involved in the early stages of the project and, you know… Did we have a different director? No. I think it was always the same director. The husband and wife. But there was a different production designer. The script did undergo some changes. I guess there was more fantasy. I don’t really recall. I just remember that it wasn’t--Rocky and Annabel wanted it to be a “grown-up” version of a kids’ game. Originally I guess it was a kids’ game. (pause) Let’s see, I’m trying to remember. Was there something before the 64?
RH: Yeah. At the time there was the original Nintendo, which released was in 1985, and Super Nintendo was released in ‘91.
RR: Right. I guess they were remembering the kids, you know, for children, like Cars was. It was supposed to be more geared toward kids. It actually did grow-up on its own. I mean, I remember playing it with my kids and they still play it today. But they wanted to make the change and I don’t really recall the whole change with the script, but I do remember some additions and improvements, too, for [the] story, which I don’t think really work.
The Goombas, you know, which I thought “Well, this is obviously tongue-in-cheek.” “Goombas” is an Italian slang for “friend” and these creatures who had these little pinheads and guys in suits and stuff--it just wasn’t funny enough, I thought, to make it work. It was neither fish-nor-fowl, if you know that expression. It wasn’t enough geared for children and I’m trying to remember that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a big hit. I think we came in after that. Or was it before, I don’t remember.
You know, it kinda didn’t have enough of one or the other. It wasn’t enough of an adult film and it wasn’t really enough of a kids’ film, so it sorta landed in the middle, although I guess it’s got some resurgence. I guess people are watching it [maybe because] they never made another one and it kind of hits a cult classic.
I know I just looked up on--digressing a bit--the very first film I’d ever worked on for full-length, for the full time, was Blow Out and I remember […] originally De Palma wanted it to be kinda tongue-in-cheek film noir and the producer, George Litto, who produced Dressed to Kill with De Palma and Dressed to Kill was really film noir and horrific and scary and that was the big film for De Palma and then he did this little movie Blow Out and he and Litto--De Palma and Litto--kinda disagreed about the ending. De Palma liked the ending that we had, which was the sad film noir ending where the Nancy Allen character [Sally] dies, she gets killed, but Litto wanted it to be a happy ending. He thought the audience wants to see them get together. It should not be a film noir ending. And, at the time, the film did not do well. It didn’t have the success of Dressed to Kill. And you always thought that, well, maybe Litto was right. Maybe they did need to have that ending for it to be successful. But then, somehow, over time, people changed their opinion about the movie. What’s his name--the guy who did Pulp Fiction…
RH: Quentin Tarantino.
RR: Quentin Tarantino said “It’s one of the greatest films ever made! Blow Out!” And if you look on Rotten Tomatoes, everyone’s saying it’s De Palma’s best film. Wow. You know, 20 years, 30 years really has a way of changing peoples’ opinion. So tastes definitely change and you can’t guess as to what the audience is gonna want. But, my opinion [that] is Litto was right: They did want a happy ending. It was a time when people wanted to have a happy ending. It could’ve worked and it could’ve [had] a director’s cut with her dying, you know. (laughs)
But, anyway, just digressing to that place in regards to Super Mario Bros. It’s probably akin to people’s tastes changing and appreciating Super Mario Bros. now for what the intention was. There was a lot of talented people on it.
RH: Oh yeah.
RR: David Snyder was one, Patrick Tatopolous, who I guess designed the creatures, he’s a pretty big-time director now in his own right. There was a lot of genius behind it, you know, [but] it didn’t have the focus I think it needed because Rocky and Annabel were not experienced film directors. That was a time when you could create a music video you could direct a movie and I remember from film school, you know, I went to Temple University Radio, TV, and Film and school communications and graduated and part of film theory [that] you learn in 101 filmmaking is never, never take a piece of music and cut visuals to it. So, what happened [is] MTV came along and people were doing exactly that. That became an art form unto itself. But does it make you a moviemaker? Does it make you a storyteller? No.
And in my very humble opinion is what happened to Super Mario Bros. with Rocky and Annabel: they didn’t really have a story that they wanted to tell and they didn’t really know how to tell a story in a three-act play, which is what American audiences want. That was I think the reason why it didn’t entertain the way Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did or some of those other films that were very successful box office fare.
But I’m curious, is there a website or blog-site where you could go to find out what people are talking about the movie and why is it being doubted now?
RH: Well, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff on my website, which is probably the biggest one that there is. We’ve got message boards and everything like that. But yeah. Popular opinion of the movie has changed since it’s been released because I think, like you said, when it was released who did they market the movie to? It should have been, I guess, to fans of the game. Like you said: was it a drama, was a comedy, or was it a sci-fi film, was it an adventure, was it serious? But over the years, now that we’ve been able to go back and look at what the intentions were and what was trying to be done with the film I think it’s really interesting to look at from a lot of aspects.
RR: Right. Right. I thought casting Mario was pretty funny because he kind of looked like Mario. I thought it was a cute casting. You know, it’s hard to make a movie and then get a lukewarm response. It’s kind of tough for the filmmakers, it’s tough for the producers, [and] for the people that put up the money. And tough for the people that helped make the movie, too, you know because I worked on Glory and my kids are in high school and they’re in high school and they talk about Glory. So that’s a fond memory of a movie that you put your heart and soul into and it’s a bit of a legacy where you got some recognition.
[You and your partner] are the first [people] to call me about Super Mario Bros. (laughs) No one’s asked me about it or even discuss[ed] it. There’s not really much to talk about… Other than it was a fun experience to make the film. I mean, it was really futuristic. I remember actually building David Snyder’s brilliance to create this underground “lair” where the subterranean world was and we brought in an armorer who put weapons in the windows. I don’t know if you remember buy you can see those guns in the window. But they were real. They were real automatic weapons, man. And I remember saying to the producer “Jim, these guns are like real. We should--” And we were having some theft and we didn’t know who was stealing it. Security.
North Carolina was starting to have film and Fred Caruso had started Dino De Laurentiis’ film company down in North Carolina and it produced Blue Velvet there and he was partial to that part of the country and Dino set up shop in an old fiberglass boat warehouse right across the street from the airport and when the plane comes in they actually have to cut around the plane sound and Dino’s only issue was he wanted to get off the plane and go right to work. He didn’t want to drive anywhere, so that’s why they were where they were and I think they eventually soundproofed the stages, but this was the mentality down there. It was really “shoot whatever you can,” and all the rules of filmmaking went out the window.
Going to North Carolina was sort of a slapdash deal, but that was some of the fun. Some of the creation and fun of building… Snyder used the depot where these big trucks would drive in and dump--the quarry, you know, where they would mine this limestone, which was ironically all this prehistoric--you could find all these fossils and stuff and shell[s]. They would dig it and dump it into these big dump trucks--they had these huge dump trucks--and drive it through the factory and then dump it. Anyway, David built the street through there. I remember he had meat hanging and guns hanging and we finally said “We better bring in some security.” The guys we had were college kids and they were falling asleep at the-- So, anyway, we did have some theft, but fortunately none of the automatic weapons were stolen. I mean, we couldn’t do that today and really you wouldn’t need to. They have replica[s], they have plastic airsoft guns that look just like that. But we had the real M16s and all that crap and assault rifles just hanging up.
"But we had the real M16s and all that crap and assault rifles just hanging up."
RH: Just for a window shop? Just in a storefront?
RR: Yeah! I haven’t seen the movie in awhile but when they’re walking through that underground market you could see there’s some automatic weapons-- Who knows, you probably can’t even see it. That’s another reason you get pissed off when you’re a production manager: people order all this crap and it’s used and you don’t see it, so why the hell are we spending all that money? But that’s another story. But Snyder did a great job, David Snyder.
RH: Yeah, he was cool. I interviewed him a couple weeks ago and we talked for a few hours. He had all kinds of great stories on the development of the sets there. I thought it was really creative how they used that entire factory for everything, including the desert shots. He said the desert shots were outside in the desert-looking quarry.
RR: Yeah. We had all that. North Carolina, you know--it didn’t have the big city feel, obviously. We did some second unit. Actually, David directed some of the second-unit in New York. We spent a couple of days just doing some driving stuff, driving shots. Tied it all together. But, you know, being in North Carolina it was purely to escape the union hold.
RH: Right.
RR: A lot of your budget goes right out of the window just for union fringes and stuff so you try to get more bang for your buck, being in North Carolina. It’s a right-to-work state, but I think they are now. Today you can shoot down there. It’s union.
RH: Yeah. We heard in another interview we did that the union tried to get the crew to stall the production at one point.
RR: Yeah, I told your partner that. They did organize. We spent the day just meeting to discuss how we were gonna make it work and the crew took a vote and they voted not to unionize, but what we offered was that we would pay the crew pension--it was like 15% or something--that we would have had to pay the union, we gave directly to the employee. So they were able to take that 15% and put it towards health or pension or whatever they wanted.
So, that was the end of that, but they did shut us down and the reason they could was because we had union people working. They were unionized on other shows. Some of them were union, so there’s a certain amount of pressure they put on their employees. They could have said “Don’t work on it,” but they didn’t because the union promised them at a certain point--whatever they promised them on other shows that they worked on--and the union came in and said “We’re gonna help you,” and now they’re saying “We’re gonna hurt you,” so they turned [and said] “Well, you’re not helping us. You’ll help us if you let us go back to work.” It was a compromise and I think it was a good compromise, I think, but ultimately the union went away with its tail between its legs.
RH: Well, what kinds of things did you do on the production after location-scouting ended and the actual filming begun?
RR: Well, you know, it became a matter of approving the time cards, approving expenditures, purchase orders [and] trying to regulate expenses [and] keeping people on budget… Those are the kind of things that you did as a production manager.
RH: That’s cool. And we’ve heard all the stories about how things got a little funny there with the directors and everything at the end and how, basically, the whole climax of the film was totally different than what was originally planned because the budget got out of hand and they just needed to kind of wrap things up.
RR: Yeah. You know, the thing is this is the kind of movie you could easily spend twice what we spent. And, you know, because we didn’t have a solid script and because we didn’t have… I mean, I remember at one point the directors storyboarding [and] shot-listing the entire film and I knew it was a waste of time because anytime you start having a storyboard artist come in and start storyboarding… I’ve heard--not on that particular show, but other shows--where the cameraman goes “I can’t shoot that storyboard.” That’s a laugh! We’d laugh because of course you can’t: it’s a comic book. This is something that gives you an indication of what the shot is. But, it’s really not money well-spent.
However, they did need some sort of organization and, like I said, Rocky and Annabel were from the Max Headroom/MTV-world and, really, it was a huge undertaking for two people, but it really wasn’t two people, it was one person. And they traditionally would have an argument behind the camera, behind the monitor, about one thing or another, doing another take and all that. It really needed a visionary. It needed somebody to--and I don’t recall them being that entity. I don’t think we had a visionary. I think we had a great visual account of “Super Mario,” the games, [but] I don’t think we had a story. And, honestly, what could of story could you possibly concoct from a video game. But I know one thing: an audience needs a story in our world and in movieland. In an MTV music video you have a 2 ½ or 3 minute[-long] song and you watch it and the song is the story. Whether it’s a beat, whether it’s lyrics, [or] whether it’s a bunch of visuals that somebody put together. And that’s what we have. We have that.
So, to answer your question: yeah, they were gonna spend another 50 or 100 thousand [dollars] to shoot some big ending. I don’t even remember what it was, to be honest with you. I mean, it was forgettable in the making-of, for me. It was a very forgettable when I saw what was happening. One day they were having Squiggy, or whatever his name was--the Richard Edson character--climbing up the side of the building and he’s supposed to be going backwards and they had smoke coming out, steam which is going in opposite way and they were going to reverse-crank the camera. I said “Well, that means the steam was going to be going backwards.”
So they didn’t really think through what they were… They were shooting from the hip. They were hot directors because of Max Headroom--and I don’t know what else they had--they were hot, and they had that kind of Euro-, European thing, English thing and everybody was like “Ohh. This is the new “it” group,” and they were just shooting from the hip and they created some very interesting visuals but, storywise, which is what our audiences in America want, they didn’t have it. They didn’t know what it was. I can’t tell you what the story was. They didn’t know what it was. Like I said, I checked out. (laughs)
RH: Yeah, well, I think you’re completely right about that. What is really disheartening is that Rocky and Annabel: they had the whole idea for that take on Super Mario Bros. in terms of the people descending from dinosaurs and the parallel dimension. All of that was straight from them. They had the idea for the world, but they couldn’t get the story down.
We have talked to a few of the writers--and I think that was the point, was that it was the first time a video game was adapted into a movie and--especially at that time and especially with Super Mario Bros. in particular--there’s not much of a story; they’re just icons. They’re just characters in a game and there wasn’t enough story to make a film-feature out of, so they really did struggle with, like you said, trying to actually get a story.
RR: Did you speak with them about it? Have you spoken with Rocky and Annabel?
RH: Not yet. We’ve just now are trying to get in touch with them. But hopefully we’ll be able to.
RR: Yeah, that would be interesting, I can imagine. I don’t imagine what they’d really want to say or if they’d to you talk at all. But it’s interesting how they’re watching their movie come full-circle from it being not very well-received to suddenly people are becoming a cult of some form or another.
Anyway, that would be interesting. Maybe they’ll talk to you. Like I said, now that you mention that they did come up with the parallel dimension idea--yes, I remember that. But like I said, I checked out from that experience so much because it was disheartening to not see the evidence of the literary from their side of it. You know, directors can’t just be visual storytellers. They need to understand the literary side of it.
RH: And an interesting conversation I’ve had with one of the writers is the difference between an adaptation and an original concept. Ignoring the source material is usually pretty detrimental when you’re trying to do an adaptation, but in the case of Super Mario Bros. they didn’t really have a whole lot to work with, so they tried their best, I think, to come up with the world, but I guess the time-frame, the budget and all that kind of stuff really got in the way as well.
RR: Yeah. “If it’s not on the page it’s not on the stage,” is the old adage.
RH: Right. (laughs)
RR: They tried while we were shooting it to sort of patch the holes and they were successful, I think, to a degree because the fact is that you’re calling me to discuss this, so they didn’t completely fail. The failure was more in the idea of making this into a film and the concept stages, like you said, it wasn’t an adaptation, it was an original screenplay that needed that three-act arc, man. It needed to have a middle, beginning, end that was gonna gear towards probably the middle of the road you could take your kids [to] like Ninja Turtles. The teenies and the tweenies and the twenties and the thirties could go and see it because its got the big, cool special effects.
So, once again, I say they hired the wrong directors because, at the end of the day, really, that’s your job as the director to make a determination about what the heck it is we’re doing. What the heck it is we’re shooting. I mean, yeah, you could have a strong producer, but then that producer: he’s not the director. So that has to be figured out in the early stages. Look, it’s not craps. You could roll dice all day long and you’re going to come up with sevens and you’re going to come up with different numbers, but you don’t want to do that while you’re spending all that money.
RH: On that topic we’ve talked to Mark Goldblatt, the editor, and we’ve also talked to Mark Miller, who played a couple of roles in the movie, and they talked about like second-units shooting all day for shots that didn’t end up in the film. One of Mark Miller’s roles was the food cart vendor [and in one of those shots] he would drop a piece of food from his cart--
RR: Yeah! Yeah, yeah.
Photo courtesy of MEL
Another mention of the deleted allosaurus rat scene. Will we ever get to see this thing?
RH: --and the little dinosaur animatronic would run up and get the food and run away, or something like that.
RR: That was not in the movie.
RH: But yeah, that wasn’t in the movie.
RR: Yeah, I think that might have been shot with Jimmy Devis, who was our second-unit director. I don’t recall if that was with Rocky and Annabel or if he was shooting on first-unit. I don’t really remember. But we did have second-unit.
RH: Do you recall any other interesting deleted or extended scenes that didn’t make it into the movie?
RR: I don’t. Is there not an extended DVD out on the market, or?
RH: Oh no. (laughs)
RR: There isn’t.
RH: Unfortunately, the DVD that we do have isn’t a proper anamorphic transfer, even. So, it’s not really enhanced for widescreen television. It’s really hard to see the detail of anything in the movie.
RR: What I would suggest is send some query letters to them, because they could go in. They do have all that footage. They could go in and do an extended version if there’s actually people interested in buying it.
RH: Yeah. I mean, actually, we’ve been sending letters out to Disney about it. Just last week, on the Amazon.com sales list--which has different categories that tells you how well certain films are selling. They have an Action & Adventure > Comic Action category and the last time I checked Super Mario Bros. was ranked #45 on the entire site.
RR: Really.
RH: Yeah, and that’s just the barebones DVD that was released in 2003. So surely there’s interest.
RR: Well there’d have to be an anniversary edition released or re-release the movie. You know, they could re-release the movie with new footage and all that. I mean, they could do all that, because Dennis Hopper’s in the movie, so there’s some reason to see the value. But who knows. Like I said, it’s getting over the disappointment side of things. It was fun to make. I mean, it was fun to work on.
RH: Do you have any interesting or funny stories about any of the cast or crew on things that happened during shooting?
RR: I remember Dennis. We were friends. We became friends. Actually, before that we’d worked on some things. I remember him wearing his little signet ring, or whatever it was, [and] I thought “Why are you wearing that ring?” (laughs) “This character of Koopa.” I think you can actually still see it, that he’s still wearing his piece of jewelry that he wore all the time. He just wore it. But that was funny.
What else… Oh god, I’m sure I could think of some idea… I could… Nothing that comes off the top of my head. That’s one. Going into the bowels of [the] Bronx water-treatment plant was pretty fun… It was not water-treatment, it was actually where water was collected. I think that there’s a place up in the Bronx where it was like an underground, secret underground--I thought it was better than the movie, actually--that we went underground like a quarter of a mile underground to these aqueducts. That was really cool. That was neat.
RH: Would that location have been used like the cement factory as a structure to build the sets onto or was--
RR: No, that would have just been considered as a location to film at. It was underground. We also went into the subways. We walked along and it was different underground subway platforms, which was kind of weird. And I’ve used that, actually, on other projects that I’ve worked on: the idea of that. Like The Regular Play. It was supposed to be in a courtroom. So I thought “A courtroom’s boring. Let’s put it on the subway platform, an abandoned subway platform.” (laughs)
But, yeah, outside of being in Wrightsville Beach with my family, it was a beautiful place to be and people were nice and made a lot of friends. It was just being on location, once again, on another movie. Yeah. That was about it. I don’t have any other anecdotes, unfortunately. Sorry.
RH: That’s okay. (laughs) Well, to kind of wrap up, what did you think of the film when you first saw it, when’s the last time you’ve seen it, and what do you think of it now?
RR: Well, I thought it was visually very entertaining but it didn’t have the satisfaction that we talked about, storywise, and it didn’t have to compare to anything, which was [an] unfortunate situation that it didn’t compare to anything because [whether] it could have improved the story or not, but at least it would have been something. What did people really expect when people went to see it?
I think they were--I’ll just go on a limb and say--they were doomed because of that, because if they had created more of a story people would say “But that’s not what the game’s about. What is the game about?” and Rocky and Annabel said “This Ain’t No Game.” You know, that was their tag. “This Ain’t No Game.” I haven’t seen it. I do want to watch it again. I do have a video copy of it. I don’t have a DVD, but I will watch it again in honor of our conversation.
RH: Oh, that’d be great. (laughs) Oh, I think you told Steven that the original tagline was “This Ain’t No Kid’s Game”?
RR: It was something like that. “This Ain’t No Kids Game.” I wonder if it’s on the video box? Let me check it out…
RH: The video says “This Ain’t No Game.”
RR: Could have been. Yeah, maybe I added ‘kids.’ That was the intent of that statement, that it wasn’t a children’s game, even though five-year-olds were going seeing it. Like I said, I took my three-year-old to see Cars. He wanted to go see Cars and I think that was the same idea with Mario Bros.: they wanted kids to go see it, but it later became more of an adult [film].
Here, here’s the video box: [reads VHS tagline] “This Ain’t No Game. It’s a Live-Action Thrill Ride.” (pause) That was pretty… that was pretty good, I mean that was actually--
[reads back review] Sixty Second Preview said “‘Eye-Popping Special Effects’” It’s a video box.
[reads first sentence of the synopsis] “Buckle up and hang on tight--the discovery of a parallel universe launches you into an adventure of a lifetime!” So they did have concepts, but it didn’t have story. I don’t know. I’ll have to rewatch it. Maybe there is a story now. Maybe that was then and this is now.
RH: I think a lot of the elements are there. I think the two biggest things the movie is really lacking that could have really helped it, like you were saying, is 1.) the story, and, 2.) the characters. Better characterizations and motivations for the characters and character arcs would have really helped, I think.
RR: Right.
RH: So, thanks for the interview. This has been great. Do you have anything from the film that we can use on the site, like photographs or anything like that?
RR: (sigh) You know, I’d have to go through and see if I have anything. I have jacket. I actually have a jacket which was “Member’s Only.” It was a crew jacket. Let me see if I still have that piece… Like they say “Success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan.”
I think this is the only memorabilia I have [from] the movie.
RH: Oh, okay.
RR: Do you have an E-mail? I’ll take a picture of it and send it to you. It’s a “Member’s Only jacket.” (laughs) It has my name on it.
RH: Oh, cool.
RR: Yes, it does. It has my name on it. “Member’s Only.“ Ohh that’s funny. I’ll take a picture of it right now and send it to you. That’s the only thing I have, other than maybe some photographs.
[reading the jacket] “Super Mario Bros.” Lightmotive was the company. You know who that is, right. That is--
RH: Yeah. Roland Joffé’s company.
[…]
RR: I’m sending you the photograph right now.
RH: Ah, cool. Do you have maybe a headshot or something like that that we can use for the interview?
RR: Sure, I’ll send you a picture.
RH: Ah, cool. That’d be great.
RR: If I can think of anything else I’ll send it to you.
RH: Oh, that’d be awesome.
RR: Or call you with it, but I’m pretty sure… Did anybody have an original script?
RH: Yeah, we have a couple scripts. We have a shooting script, we have--
RR: You got that off the Internet?
RH: Actually, let’s see… We have the Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais script, which we got off the Internet. We have--
RR: That was the original-original, right?
RH: Well there’s one before that, even, that was Parker Bennett and Terry Runté’s original script and we’ve talked to Parker Bennett. He sent us that one.
RR: Right. His partner died, was killed in Jamaica.
RH: Yeah, like a year later. And we then got Ed Solomon and Ryan Rowe’s shooting script, but I’m sure there’s other versions out there. I mean, if you have something that we don’t have we would certainly--
RR: I don’t think I do. I’m lucky if I have anything at this point, but I would have used it for the Director’s Guild at some point to prove to them I [was on the production]. But this jacket is in excellent shape.
[reads] “Members Only.” (laughs) Oh, I’m laughing. It’s the ugliest teal color, man, when you get to look at it.
Robert's super-cool production jacket. Screams "1992," doesn't it?
RH: Oh, I got the picture. Oh, that’s cool.
RR: That’s the back of it. The front of it has my name and stuff on it.
RH: I have a couple of production T-shirts that look very similar to this.
RR: Oh, okay. Maybe they were given out to the crew people and stuff.
RH: That’s cool. That’s a cool picture. (pause) Yeah, send me a headshot or something.
RR: Yeah, I’ll send you something. Let’s see here…
[murmurs to self] That’s funny, “Members Only.”
Yeah, I’ll get off the phone and I’ll send it to you. I’ll have to go to my computer and come up with a picture.
RH: Okay, that’s cool. Thanks for the interview. And if there’s something else you can think of feel free to call me anytime.
RR: Okay, brother. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Where are you? Where’s your office? Where do you hail from?
RH: I’m from Johnson City, Tennessee. East Tennessee.
RR: I filmed a movie in Tennessee.
RH: Oh, really?
RR: King Kong Lives. We were in Knoxville, Pigeon Forge.
RH: Oh wow. That’s not too far from here.
RR: Yeah.
RH: Oh, that’s cool. I didn’t know they filmed that down here. Is that the one with Linda Hamilton in it?
RR: Yeah, yeah. It was in--I guess that was before Super Mario Bros. Pigeon Forge…
RH: Yeah, I think it was.
RR: It was a nice place to be. People are nice down there.
RH: Yeah, it’s pretty nice down here. Yeah, now that we’ve got your interview in the bag I think here in about an hour we have an interview with Richard Edson.
RR: Oh yeah, tell him I said hello.
RH: Oh, okay. I certainly will!