Dysfunctional Duos (with Couples Therapy Podcast)

WHAT WENT WRONG

Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett welcome Naomi Ekperigen and Andy Beckerman from the Couples Therapy podcast to explore some of Hollywood's most infamous

Key takeaways

• Creative partnerships often collapse due to clashing visions, especially when one party feels their personal work is being misrepresented or disrespected.
• Tom Cruise's casting as Lestat despite physical inaccuracy sparked outrage from Anne Rice, who saw the character as deeply personal and tied to her life experiences.

Main topics

• Hollywood creative partnerships
• Artistic control vs. studio interference

Notable quotes

"In his mind, he's seven feet tall."

Conclusion

The episode underscores how personal investment in creative projects can lead to intense conflict when

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:08) Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone with somebody who may be your creative soulmate, but also you kind of want to murder. I'm not talking about our guests. I am talking about Lizzie. Just kidding. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett. Joined by Lizzie, who do we have with us today? We have the hosts of Couples Therapy, who, of course, are also an actual couple and extremely talented comedians. We have Naomi Ekperigen and Andy Beckerman. Welcome to the show. Hello. Hey. Hi. Speaker 1 (0:47) Chris, can I jump in for one second? Your intro reminded me a little bit, now I know you didn't mean it, what you said, but it did remind me, now when I watch a lot of House Hunters International, and you can watch and see the passive aggressiveness on some couples ooze out of their pores as they are. As they're saying like a little joke about their spouse or partner or whatever like that. So I just want to, I don't, I. I don't want to take over, but I do want to ask, was there any truth in there? Was there any truth in there? No, shockingly, we still don't want to kill each other. And actually, we got the chance to talk on your show. We came on your show and you provided a bit of therapy for us. Coworker therapy, if you will. Could you explain what your show is and what you do on it? Sure, Naomi. Well, on the show, we have folks we enjoy, a la Lizzie and Chris. Speaker 1 (1:44) come on and we talk about relationships, we talk about mental health, and then we answer some listener questions. And often, you know, we'll have an individual, we'll have some actual romantic couples, but you know, you guys, we had to just get to the bottom of this working relationship. We had to say, how are you staying sane? Also, because you also are in a weird kind of thruple with your husband, Lizzie, so we really wanted to unpack the thruple angle there, and so how does that affect the work? Speaker 1 (2:08) And just to note, we do own the interstate copyright on the name Couples Therapy. We do. And have owned it for over a decade. And maybe there's other couples therapies out there that maybe didn't check before they named their show that. Oh, man. Wow. Just wanted to throw that out there. He loves to mention the interstate copyright. He loves it. Looking at you, Dave, doesn't David Ellison technically own the copyright on, because isn't that on Paramount Plus? I guess so. Showtime, Paramount Plus, honey. It's all owned by three dudes in a trench coat, right? Speaker 1 (2:37) Yes. Sure. Two Ellisons and a Trump in a trash can. That's right. All right. Well, we've brought you here today because we have covered a lot of very dysfunctional couples, both romantic and working relationship couples over the course of the show. And we've selected three very dysfunctional ones that we thought it would be fun to present to you today and kind of get your thoughts on. the situation, what you would have done in the situation, what they should have done, could have done, anything you want to talk about with these. Does that sound good? Absolutely. All right. Lizzie, can I name, like, just one or two honorable mentions? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they didn't get... So, because she passed away recently, we removed them. We were going to maybe present Marsha Lucas and George Lucas. Very interesting relationship. Really interesting relationship. Marsha did, you know... Speaker 1 (3:29) just pass away, but kind of the head and the heart, you know, of a creative duo in many ways. I also want to mention Francis Ford Coppola. and Bob Evans, just an ego-fueled, cocaine-laced, explosive dynamic for the ages. And then I also want to mention Marlon Brando and anybody he ever worked with, which would also be an incredible relationship to explore. But those were my three honorable mentions, Lizzie, that I just wanted to get out there before we dive into the great slashes today. Marsha was black, correct? No. No, Marsha was the current wife. His second wife. Honey, isn't it always the second wife? Anyway, continue. Sorry. Sorry, continue. I do keep tabs on who has black wives. And so that's why I was like, wait a minute. But okay. First wife. Yeah. First wife. First wife. Very painful divorce. And she's maybe responsible for why the first Star Wars movie is pretty good anyway. Speaker 1 (4:23) All right. So we thought that we would kick this off with one of my favorite dysfunctional relationships we've ever covered and someone who we have sort of accidentally been going on a deep dive on recently, which is Tom Cruise and Zeno and Rice. Do you know anything? Really? No, I do not. Lizzie picked the not expected relationship. Right. It could have been Katie Holmes. Right. I don't want to touch that. David Miscavige. Sorry, I was making my Xenu joke. So I heard exactly what you said, but take me back. This is a romantic relationship. No, this is not a romantic relationship. This is a working relationship. When they were doing the interview with a vampire movie, he was a nightmare to poor Anne. Well, so have you seen the movie? Yes. Okay, what are your thoughts on that movie and his performance in it? Speaker 1 (5:21) Well, look, I am an AMC interview with a vampire, Stan. So knowing that, you know, I'm not really, you know, it's fine. I don't really care all that much. So I'm not, I wasn't really into either. They were the guys of the moment to be in that movie. And we understand why. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise. Were they the right ones to be in it? No. Was Tom Cruise giving theater production? Yes. Yes. Can I ask? Okay, great. Where was this in Tom Cruise's oeuvre? Like, what was before and what was after, please? Okay, so you would have had, you know, he's coming out of the 80s. He does Top Gun, Rain Man, The Firm. This is 1994. He's gearing up and he's working with all the best directors in Hollywood. Speaker 1 (6:09) And this is really pretty different. I mean, Legend with Ridley Scott in the 80s, he'd kind of done fantasy, but this is very different than that. He's never done anything quite like this. It's different in a lot of ways. I think it's different in... the sexuality of the character, which is somewhat unstated in the movie. But it's also heavy prosthetics work. It is a period piece, which he kind of stayed away from again outside of Legend, which isn't even really a period. It's just high fantasy and he plays an elf, basically. No, what's that one where he's Irish? Far and Away with Nicole Kidman, which I just, I don't know if he had done that yet. Okay. Lizzie, do you count Irish as fantasy? No, he was saying period piece because I tried to watch it recently and the accent is... That was the, yeah, Ron Howard directed, I believe, Far and Away. But so he's really, he's... Speaker 1 (7:02) Peaking, or about to peak, Mission Impossible will be shortly after this. So he is as big a movie star as there is on the planet, really. A much bigger movie star than Brad Pitt at this point, it should be noticed. So, you know, it's the early 90s. Anne Rice, obviously, she's the author of Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Chronicles. This was a truly revolutionary series of novels when it comes to how vampires were portrayed prior to this. They were really like monsters. After this, we get this sort of world of vampires as people, like vampires as sexy, vampires as, you know, emotional and potentially even sympathetic. So they're turning Interview with the Vampire into a movie. She should be super stoked. But instead, she's really pissed because David Geffen... Speaker 1 (7:53) had gone around her to cast Tom Cruise as Lestat. Oh. DreamWorks David Geffen? DreamWorks David Geffen. Yes. Wow. Yes. Okay, so she wasn't even involved at this point. No, well, she was not involved in this decision, that's for sure. Was that in her contract? I'm sorry, these authors, these authors trying to get into Hollywood, read your contracts. It was not. But Lizzie, she had written drafts of the script before. She had. Oh, good. So she had been involved. Yeah. And also, like, this was an extremely personal work for her. She said that Lestat was based partially on her husband, partially on herself. And also, I didn't know this until we started diving into this, but the character of Claudia in Interview with the Vampire kind of came to her after her own daughter had passed away from leukemia. Yeah, at five or six. So... Speaker 1 (8:51) This is like, I understand why she cared as much as she did. And also, it had an enormous fan base. So let's talk about why she was pissed. First of all, physical appearance-wise, Lestat is supposed to be six feet tall, blonde, blue eyes, androgynous, kind of like, you know, moves like a lion a bit. Does that sound like Tom Cruise? Absolutely not. But he has a history of play. He played Reacher. Speaker 1 (9:16) Right. He is in denial. He is, again, but this way it goes back to the Xenu of it all. Like, in his mind, he is seven feet tall, okay? In his mind, he's seven feet tall. He moves like a lion. He can have whatever he wants. And so he has this image of himself, and nobody's going to tell him no. So he was like, why wouldn't I do this? Because I'm shocked that he would even choose to do this for, I think, and again, they toned down the sexuality, but, you know, if you had ever read any of that source material, I'm surprised Tom would even... take the chance, which is probably yet another reason why they did water it down so much for him to be happy. Between him and Pitt, he embraced the sexuality more than Pitt did, in my opinion, if you watch the movie. Wow. He seemed less uncomfortable with it. Speaker 1 (9:59) Five years after this. Okay, so this is like five years of him kind of like playing around and he's like, fuck this, and I'm just going to go do like Spielberg and Mission Impossible. That's exactly it. He had a really interesting period where he actually was, I think, pushing himself in terms of the types of roles that he was taking. And this is like smack in the middle of that period. But Anne does not like this idea. The ideas that she had thrown out were Julian Sands, John Malkovich. Jeremy Irons. Okay, I can see Irons. Irons would have been pretty good. Basically anyone but Tom Cruise. So this is a quote from Anne Rice. I do think Tom Cruise is a fine actor, but you have to know what you can do and you can't do. Savage. Savage. Just the word fine. I think he's a fine actor. I think he's a fine actor. This is happening during like... Speaker 1 (10:54) pre-production on the movie or development of the movie. This is not years later. She's saying this as it's happening. Leading up to shooting the movie. She's trying to get him off the movie. She said, you know, I'm tempted to call up CIA Chief Mike Ovitz and tell him everyone will be gunning for his client. Cruz should do himself and everyone else a service and withdraw. Whoa. Oh, she wasn't playing. See, that's why I like Anne Rice. She was messy as hell. Speaker 1 (11:20) That is so rude and it's so inappropriate to decide to handle this in the court of public opinion. But I think it's also because she was also thinking about, again, you're joking about these like right, you know, these authors and their contracts. But it's like because the books were such a smash, I think she thought she would have more power than she did when it came time to do the movie. Because she was like, I come with like a strong fan base. This is a huge property. The fact that you get to make it, I should get to call shots. And it's like, no, and you don't. Speaker 1 (11:49) Don't sell the rights. Look, you didn't have to. I'm sure you had enough money from the books. You could have been fine the rest of your life. You didn't have to sell the rights. I don't. Look, all these like all these small town hicks come into Hollywood. Wow. Savagery. Small town hicks. You better be careful. The Anne Rice army can mobilize. Heidi, they'll come get you in half a second. They know I'm kidding. They know I'm joking. The Anne Rice heads love me. They know that. But she did. They know I'm goofing. She said of Hollywood producers, I think they're awful. I can't warn writers enough to stay away from them. They will kill you. I hate them. I hate them. Well, she's not wrong. Great, but that's accurate. That's accurate, actually, Anne. That's accurate. It's like that. What was that? That bad mammoth movie. Was it mammoth? Speaker 1 (12:39) Which one? I like David Mamet, but... Welcome to my home. Andy's like, is that bad Mamet movie? And I go, I don't know what you're saying. I need more information. It's stayed in Maine or something like that, where it takes place in a small town and it's like a bunch of Hollywood folks descend on it. I believe that's correct, yeah. Well, thank you. We'll have to cover it on the show. But Lizzie should tell you about the Anne Rice army. Yes. Because Anne Rice mobilized it. Once she realized her voice alone was not going to make a difference. She did. She started stirring the pot big time. There was actually a book signing in Houston, her book signing, where a crowd of a thousand people showed up and started chanting, no, Tom Cruise! No, Tom Cruise! Wow, that's good. Which is crazy. How did he respond to that? Speaker 1 (13:27) How do you think he emotionally, like he heard about it at some point. Oh, yeah, he actually did talk about it. He said when it first hit, it really hurt my feelings to be candid about it. Her venom hurt. Ooh, spicy. Venom. He also said there were certainly some nights where, you know, there was anxiety. And I was very surprised by the controversy that came up by it. You know, it's interesting because all of us were like, yeah, this is. And this is a strange role for him to take. I think he'd read the books in high school. He liked the books. He was, to your point, he was like, I'm Tom Cruise. I can do anything. This should not be a problem. And he, I don't think, had ever been met with this kind of aversion to him. Speaker 1 (14:08) And he had no idea how to handle it. Honey, they were all suppressive people. Honey, he said, I got to go clear my Thetans. These SPs are coming to get me and I will not let them stop me on my train. That's the thing. I think if you try to resist Tom, he is going to mobilize the church, right? He's going to take that energy. He's clear. He's level 10 and he's not going to let it stop him. I got a pitch. Paul Thomas Anderson, the master part two about this. Wow. That's good. I'd watch that. It's basically the character he's playing in Magnolia. I mean, a little bit. But what's interesting about... You're mentioning some Scientology. We just did an episode on Scientology. And Tom Cruise, though, I agree with what Lizzie's saying. Rejection only means he will double down to make you like him that much harder. And every quote of how... Speaker 1 (14:57) He wins over everybody on the crew. He wins over, you know, his collaborators in so many instances. He learned piano. Yes, exactly. He lost 12 pounds. He wore vampire teeth. He studied lions. It's not just, you think I can't do this, I'm going to do it. It's, I'm going to prove to you, I am the only person who could have done this. It's just such an extreme. He really dedicates himself to it. And also, one thing about Tom Cruise, though, is like, he will not... bad mouth people unless you're Matt Lauer. In retrospect, I'm kind of like, well, but you know, he really wouldn't. Well, I don't know, Andy. He really will not bad mouth Anne Rice. Instead, he just, to Chris's point, like goes to work and he works so hard. And I will say, do I think that he is the best Lestat? Speaker 1 (15:51) No. Is he fun to watch? Yes, which is more than I can say for Brad Pitt in this movie. So, you know, I think, like, he did his best, and I don't begrudge Tom Cruise for doing this one. Anne Rice, though, did. Filming had already started, and she was still publicly talking about the ludicrous miscasting. That is a direct quote. She said, I'm still at a boiling rage over the whole thing. The things I'm hearing now in the press, things the studio and producers are saying are very upsetting. Wow. It's on one hand, you know, my thinking is like, Ann, girl, you got to let it go. But then on the other hand, I'm like, I understand. To say you're at a boiling rage months later over something that actually was not your decision, I relate. I said, Ann, we've all been there. Speaker 1 (16:41) She doesn't stop there. She gets like, she gets kind of mean. She said, they're very cocky in Hollywood. They don't care about the thousands of loyal readers who cherish this character. And now we're going to hear that Tom Cruise is hurt. Well, you can't just take everything you want in this world. And he can, though, is he only. Wow. If only there had been like a 60 or 70 year period of Hollywood where people come to this town, get. chewed up and spit out for her to learn from before this experience happened. If only there were plenty of movies and books about that. She's the first person to be done wrong by a Hollywood producer. But now here's a question. How soon after this did Anne Rice die? Speaker 1 (17:27) Oh, a while, because she was involved in the early development process of the AMC show. Okay, okay. Just making sure. Again, once you're declared an SP, anything can happen. And I just want to make sure the and didn't come out here. Well, we don't know something didn't happen