Roadside Attraction

FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

AVI: Today we have two guests. The first is my good friend Conrad Vernon. Conrad’s an animator, director, and voice actor. He’s really best known for his work at DreamWorks, including voicing the Gingerbread Man in Shrek. He directed Shrek 2, Monsters vs. Aliens, and the R-rated comedy Sausage Party. He also directed The Addams Family.

AMY: Avi, fairly recently, I went as Wednesday Addams for Halloween, and my partner went as Lurch.

AVI: That’s fantastic, Amy. Our second guest is comedian, actor, and creator Harland Williams. He’s got a super fantastic, funny podcast everyone should check out called the Harland Highway Podcast.

AMY: Welcome, Conrad and Harland, to Films Not Made. I’m wondering if you can tell us the quick pitch for this film. Like, you know, you’re in a CAA conference room — as long as that still exists— and you’re talking about the film.

HARLAND: Well, it all started when I went in to see a guy named Chris Kuser who’s in development at DreamWorks, and I sat down and I pitched him this idea about statues coming to life. The original pitch was about this girl who was left at the altar, and she was despondent, and she wanted to find the perfect man. And she saw the statue of David and put some magic potion on it, and it came to life, blah, blah, blah. So I have all these pictures of statues where the story was going to be about kind of all the roadside attraction statues in the U.S. versus the European statues like the Sphinx and gargoyles, things like that.

AVI: Like a great statue war.

HARLAND: It was basically going to be this big sort of global statue war. And Chris said, I love the idea, but it’s too big. And I could see him drifting away. So I just looked down and I had brought in all these pictures of statues I had downloaded from the internet. And sitting right in front of me was a blueberry statue and a golf ball statue. And so I was like, hey, what if there’s this? The movie’s just about this. This blueberry and this golf ball fall in love, and one gets taken away one day and the other one has to go after it and find the love of his life. And as I was pitching the movie, he goes, oh, I really like this. And I was just pitching the movie. We’re on an outdoor deck and Conrad, who worked at DreamWorks, walked through.

AMY: You’re like, can you join the meeting?

HARLAND: I said, hey, Conrad. And Chris said, oh, do you know Conrad? I said, yeah, he’s my friend. And he goes, oh, that’s great. And then I said, I’d love to get him on this. And he goes, do you think you could? And I said, I don’t know, I’ll ask him. So I called Conrad, and he really loved the idea. And then that was it. We started working on it together.

CONRAD: Basically what we pitched to Jeffrey Katzenberg to get the okay to go write the script was: a little golf ball statue is erected in front of a miniature golf course right across Route 66 from a blueberry statue in front of a fruit stand. And for 50 years, they stared into each other’s eyes. And over the course of those 50 years, they ended up falling in love. And when the fruit stand gets torn down to make room for a fast food restaurant, she gets uprooted from her pedestal and taken away, and he becomes the first statue to ever move to go find the love of his life. And the tagline was: stand still and life will pass you by.

AMY: It’s so sweet.

CONRAD: And so Jeffrey heard that and just went, go write it. That sounds okay.

AMY: So out of the gate, it was like, bam! Where are you guys situated in your career when you have this idea and go into pitch?

CONRAD: I must have been finishing Shrek 2. I think I was starting, I was kind of in deep on Monsters vs. Aliens. I was still working at DreamWorks. Harland, I don’t know where you were.

HARLAND: Actually, Monsters vs. Aliens didn’t start till about a year and a half after.

CONRAD: Oh, okay.

HARLAND: So we were maybe —

CONRAD: I was in between Shrek 2 and Monsters.

HARLAND: We kind of had this window where we had time to write it. We were hanging out every day at DreamWorks, writing the movie, but I was just doing stand-up and doing movies and doing sitcoms and all that stuff. And then next thing I know, I had an office three doors down from Jeffrey Katzenberg. And every morning I walk through the lobby and pass them. Go ahead, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. So it was real.

CONRAD: Tell him what you got him for his birthday.

HARLAND: I found out he likes Jack in the Box of all things, you know. So I went to the drive-thru window and got him, I think, $300 worth of Jack in the Box and, like, a gift card. And then Visa canceled my card because they couldn’t believe that someone was ordering that much Jack in the Box.  I got Conrad a Rolls Royce.

AVI: So was Jeffrey Katzenberg the first person to read it? When you guys kind of had a draft ready to go.

CONRAD: Yep. I mean, he and the development team. We went through kind of a crazy development process. I mean, the intense process of this whole thing is the story here, because Harland and I wrote like a 10 or 15 page outline and then we’d get notes and then it would grow to a 20 page outline, and then we got notes, and then it was a 25 page outline. And then we got notes.

AMY: When does a studio want more and more?

CONRAD: Well, they were like, where’s the humor? All right. We put the humor in. Where’s the character? And then we put the — well, where’s the emotional — well, where are the stakes, you know? And I was like, well, all this usually comes in a script.

AVI: Right, right.

CONRAD: And to give you an outline of where this plot is going to go. And by the time we got — and I’m not kidding, by the time we got to a 55 page outline, Harland and I just said, why don’t we sit down and write the first act without them giving us permission? And so Harland and I sat down and we just wrote the first act, which was like a 20 pages shorter than the outline. And once we gave them the first act, they went, oh, this is really good. I like this.

AMY: Because it’s a script. That has all those things.

AVI: They wanted a quantum document of everything at the same time.

CONRAD: Well, I think they wanted a 110 page outline.

AVI: Is that typical, that, you know, your development will be like, okay, give us an outline and then we move to script? And is that how kind of the deal gets structured in these situations?

CONRAD: Yeah. I mean, basically you want a kind of a blueprint of where you’re going in the script, you know, just so everyone’s on the same page, because you don’t want to write a 100 page script, take it back and have the studio heads go, oh, I thought you were going to go in this direction and do this instead. And then you got to go back and rewrite the entire script. So you just give them — I mean, a 10 to 15 page outline is usually enough to give them the idea of where you’re going. But there’s a rumor that goes around that says studio executives don’t know how to read outlines. You know, so it always grows. It always gets more. The upside of that is you’re pretty clear on where you need to go once you start writing the script.

AMY: And are you drawing images and coming to help them understand what these characters will look like, or that comes later?

CONRAD: That came later, after the script.

HARLAND: Yeah. Although Conrad’s always drawing images. I’ve got a whole bunch of — he’s one of the best artists I’ve ever seen. And he was always doodling.

AVI: Yeah, you sent us the artwork. I mean, we’ve got so much of it. It’s super cool, you know? And I was wondering, it’s so painterly and artistic. When you do that, you’re not really saying, like, this is the style that we want the film to be in — or were you? Because it’s not like a CGI thing that you’re drawing there or painting.

CONRAD: You know, we have a whole team of artists, and it happens after you get the script done. Because what you do is you go through the script, you delineate who the characters are, and you say, here’s the main characters, here’s the side characters, here are the locations that they’re at. And we get a whole team of artists to start designing characters and doing shots from the movie. That’s not the way the movie will ultimately turn out at that point. You know, we haven’t tied it down. It’s just for inspiration. So when Harland and I would go in and pitch — we should also mention we had another partner, Rejean Bourdages, that was on this in the beginning with us as well. And the three of us would pitch it, and, you know, we’d have a room full of artwork. And Harland and Reg and I would get up in front of everybody and we would pitch the story, and they could look at the artwork and get a sense of where this is going.

AMY: How long did it take you to write the script? All in all, you went ahead and wrote the first act, and then they were like, okay, write the rest of it. And then what happened?

HARLAND: I think it only took us like a couple of months, you know, because we’d spent so much time hanging out at each other’s houses and laughing about it. And we were really eager to write it because there were so many great ideas, and we just loved the story and all the wacky characters and the adventure of it. And so we wrote it pretty darn fast.

AMY: Good.

HARLAND: And they loved it.

CONRAD: Well, we did have a 55 page outline to go off of.

HARLAND: Yeah, exactly.

CONRAD: Well, I mean, and as we were writing it, we’d get on the phone and we’d talk to each other and come up with hilarious stuff. I mean, I think — Harland, what was your favorite line? We have a giant peanut statue of Jackson Hole.

HARLAND: Yeah. And then what was the skidmark one?

CONRAD: Oh, yeah, that’s right. They got in a car and they tore out into a car chase, and I think Mulligan says, that’s the biggest skidmark I’ve ever seen. And Aart looked at his underwear and says, make that the second. Or something like that.

HARLAND: Yeah. There were times when we were just in each other’s office and writing the script physically together, too, like we’d be just over each other’s shoulders. There were times when we were sitting side by side, just writing the dialog together. It was a party — probably one of my favorite parts, because we got to be together physically. And when you’re doing that, you’re all of a sudden like a comedy team. You just see stuff in the moment live coming out of your partner. And Reg was in there sometimes, but me and Conrad were tasked with doing the actual writing. And I was slated to direct, and then Conrad was going to be a consultant or a producer or — where were you going to be on it?

CONRAD: I don’t know. Whatever.

HARLAND: I was always bugging Conrad and DreamWorks to just have Conrad direct, because he’s so brilliant at it, but he was so weighed down with, like, all these other movies. My favorite times were sitting with Conrad, like in real time and writing together.

AMY: You’re like Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond on the lot, typing away.

CONRAD: Exactly.

AMY: So you guys, you have this script now, and what do you need to get the green light within DreamWorks? Do you need a cast attached? Do you need to buy Jeffrey more Jack in the Box? Like, what is it? What’s the green light?

HARLAND: Basically, they loved it. Jeffrey — I’m quoting Conrad — did he say it was the best pitch you ever heard? Conrad and I went in and pitched, and then Conrad went in and met with Jeffrey, and Jeffrey said that’s the best pitch I’ve ever heard. They greenlit it and they gave us a release date.

CONRAD: Exactly.

HARLAND: For real, coming up to me and saying, we’re releasing this in 2010, like two years later. And I was like, wow — 11 years later and it’s still not released. Fast tracked really quickly. Like, they just loved it.

CONRAD: Yeah. It had all this momentum and it was ready to go. And then a thought occurred to Jeffrey and he said, this is too much like Toy Story. And we were like, okay, how? And he said, dead things coming to life. Because one of the things about the statues is, whenever people pass by, they’d freeze up. And so that’s how people didn’t see them — because we were thinking, okay, why wouldn’t people see these statues moving around? You know, what’s the logic?

AMY: About the rules of the universe. Right.

CONRAD: Exactly. So we were like, do they move so slowly that people can’t see them move? Or we just said, well, they just freeze. That’s what they’re good at. You know, they just freeze.

AVI: Just do this, you know.

CONRAD: And Jeffrey was worried that that was too much like Toy Story with the toys going dead, you know what I mean? And so there was a little bit of concern that it was going to be too much like another movie. So they just went, okay, well, let’s hold off on this for a while. And then they stopped everything. And then everything kind of waited and waited and waited. And then a year later, maybe two years later, they said, hey, we want to pick this back up. We’re not worried about the Toy Story thing anymore. And so we picked it back up and they said, and we have changes we want you to make. So okay, fine. And so they gave us more changes. I don’t remember exactly what the changes were. Harland and I went back and rewrote it.

HARLAND: After the whole Toy Story — no, it was, they said little boys don’t want a love story. And we were like, well, Shrek is a love story, and Spider-Man’s a love story. What do you mean they don’t like a love story? And so we just kept going up against these ridiculous notes. They were basically shooting their own foot. They have this great project and they kept stepping on it.

CONRAD: We were coming up with reasons that it wouldn’t work. And you know, after the love note thing, we rewrote it so it was less about love. And then they said — I know how it sounds.

AMY: Less about love.

CONRAD: They’re like, okay, all right. And then the next note we got was that it won’t play internationally.

AMY: Oh, yeah, that’s a no.

AVI: Too American, or —

CONRAD: It wasn’t a big enough tentpole movie. That was the third no — there wasn’t enough tentpole. So we said, okay, well, let’s make the third act giant, bombastic, you know, action scene. And we just kept going back to the well over and over and over again to all these concerns as to why it wouldn’t play.

AMY: You don’t have to name names, but was there a particular nemesis, a noted nemesis within the organization, that was, like, walking past your office, glaring at you?

HARLAND: You’re not going to believe who it was. It actually was Barry Manilow. Barry Manilow had an office, and I’m not —

CONRAD: It’s not about him. Remember? There was —

AMY: Was it a musical?

HARLAND: Or Copacabana? And we were like, Barry —

CONRAD: They wanted us to rename the blueberry Mandy.

HARLAND: It’s ridiculous. And then the final nail on what’s ridiculous is, we kept rewriting the script over and over, and then they brought in other teams of writers to take a shot at it. And after, I think it was ten years, they called us back in and said, you know what? We love the very first script you guys wrote.

AMY: No way.

CONRAD: That’s the punchline to all this. But let’s talk about this. They had, I think, three or four teams of writers come in and pitch a new story.

HARLAND: And even write a new one.

CONRAD: A new script. And, you know, while this was all going on, we had artwork being done and character designs being done. That’s why you have so much artwork there. And then, cut to ten years later, Jeffrey had exited DreamWorks. And another person came in to run the studio. And he read that script. He said, I love this first version. We should do this. And we were like —

AMY: Like, no shit.

CONRAD: I’m not kidding you. We said, well, tell us which version you read. And they printed it and gave it to us. And Harland and I were looking at it. It was ten years — I’m not kidding, to this day — it was our first draft of the script.

AVI: Always go with your first instinct.

AMY: Are you exhausted at this point? You know, are you like, that’s great, we’re done? Or are you — we can do it, let’s just do it?

HARLAND: I was exhausted. I just felt like — too many times daddy telling the kids he’s going to take them to the zoo, and it never took off. I didn’t believe anybody anymore. And we got to the point where me and Conrad were so passionate about it. Every time they told us to go again, we’d get so invested in it and put so much creativity and love and weirdness and humor, and we always delivered the gold. And then they’d just crap all over it again. And so by the end, I was just like, yeah, sure, whatever. Which is not how it should be. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t give it my all. I just didn’t believe anyone’s voice anymore over there.

CONRAD: Yeah. And, you know, I was in the middle of — I know this for a fact — I was in the middle of directing The Addams Family. And you used to come over to my office in Burbank, and we had the whole thing planned out with their new notes in it. Here’s our new ideas and here’s our new notes, we want you to put it in. And we both were just like, we gotta get this fucking thing made. And so we were putting up, you know, note cards — how do we weave this in, and how do we do this, and if we’re getting rid of that, what happens now instead? I went back and we rewrote the whole script again. And then Christopher DeFaria left.

AVI: This is the classic, you know, classic entertainment business.

AMY: We talk about this in another episode, where it’s like, we love it so much, and then they’re like, dear Amy, just letting you know I have left the company. Here’s my personal email.

CONRAD: Yeah. So he left and we were sitting there with it. And then that’s when the current administration of DreamWorks came in. And, you know, luckily — and I will say luckily — they came in, they looked at it and they said no. Yeah, we’re done. And we finally, finally got it back. You know, we finally got it back.

AMY: When they say no definitively — after they’ve dumped a ton of money, they’ve hired these outside writers, they’ve used internal staff to iterate and ideate, do you get those rights back, or do you owe a certain amount to pull those rights out and pitch it somewhere? So how did that moment land?

CONRAD: Well, it was basically in turnaround, which is — yeah, you get the rights back, you can pitch it elsewhere. And if someone wants to make it, there’s some cost attached.

AMY: They have to pay for that.

CONRAD: Yeah. It wasn’t a ton of money. It was time. It was 12 years’ time, and it was only, I think, a few hundred thousand.

AMY: Oh, really? That’s not that bad.

CONRAD: It’s not so bad. It’s usually millions. You know, things get stuck. And everyone is just like, well, we’re not going to take this if there’s already a $1 million price tag on it. But we did pitch it elsewhere. And I think the last place we pitched it, they just told us, this is so ten years ago.

AMY: Oh, you’re like, no shit.

AVI: Did you guys ever think about doing it more like an adult, in a way — ever going more in that direction, like adult animation, as opposed to more like what you said, like, you know, this is what boys like?

HARLAND: Actually, out of frustration, when we were sort of in that holding pattern, I took the initiative to write my own version of the script, which had more of an adult bent to it. I said to Conrad — I’m not sure if you ever read it or not — but it definitely skewed a little older, edgier. And I just did it because I kind of just wanted to get it out of my system. And I gave it to DreamWorks and Conrad, and they didn’t want it, and you know, so —

CONRAD: But you know, the story itself is so altruistic and innocent and lovely. I don’t know if there was any cynicism that we would be able to mine comedically out of it. I mean, there were some off-color funny jokes in it, for sure — that was a little more tricky. But I don’t know if it could be a full adult one.

HARLAND: I don’t think I’d want to do it as a full adult because it’s too sweet. And to them saying it’s so ten years ago — I feel like love never gets old. And it’s such an artful love story that I think you could make it 50 years from now, and it would still resonate exactly the same, because it’s about these kooky characters, but really the story’s about the strongest emotion in all of humanity: love. So, you know, there was a scene in Everything Everywhere All At Once where they showed two rocks sitting in the desert.

AMY: Yeah, I know, I love that scene.

HARLAND: And it was powerful. I just think, as long as your writing’s good and your topic is strong, people would resonate. Just at our pitch — you know, the first statue ever moving for love — like right there, we could see people.

AMY: It is so emotional. Right.

HARLAND: That is your starting point. That story, to me, never gets old. And I think it would do the same if you released it 20 years ago or you released it 30 years from now. I would bet the box office result would be exactly the same, because it’s so strong.

CONRAD: And, you know, like Harland was saying, all you do is just say: two statues across Route 66 stare into each other’s eyes for 50 years, and when she gets ripped up, he becomes the first statue to move for love. It’s a movie, you know?

AMY: The pitch is amazing. Yeah. Is there anything you think you would do differently looking back, or anything you could have done differently in hindsight?

CONRAD: I don’t know what else we could have done.

AMY: I mean, seems like you did a lot, which I like.

AVI: You want some more notes?

CONRAD: I’d love some.

HARLAND: Who knows, maybe someone watching this will hear it and go, oh, man, I want to get my hands on that movie and get Conrad and Harland to do this. I still believe somewhere deep down it’s too good to not be made someday. So hopefully it gets made.

CONRAD: You were asking earlier what I would have done differently. I think the only thing I can think of that we didn’t try was just finding some independent financing — which is becoming more and more common now. But when we were writing this, independent financing was not for animated movies.

AMY: Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

HARLAND: You know, we could probably make this with AI, for God’s sake.

AMY: Oh, good transition.

AVI: You should mention that.

HARLAND: No, I love AI. AI to me is taking all of this 12 years of bullshit out of executives’ hands and letting creative people like Conrad and me and all the other artists just hopefully do their own thing and present it to the world — and not have to go through 12 years of notes only to end up back at the original draft of the script. It’s ridiculous. And meanwhile, the world is getting short-changed a beautiful story, you know.

AMY: You can make 12 films in one year now.

AVI: Well, this is — you know, when I approached Conrad to see if he had any projects to come on the show, we started talking about the use of AI, and he reiterated kind of what you were just saying about being able to quickly prototype something to show your ideas. But also that we might be in a time where things are changing, much the same as when the industry started to go to CGI animation, and kind of a feeling there amongst the industry.

CONRAD: I mean, I keep reading in the trades and in the news, the industry is changing, you know what I mean? A lot of the words they use are “dying.” I’m not going to buy into that. I don’t think it’s dying. I think it’s a huge cultural shift. And the last time I remember this happening was in the late ‘60s. I mean — you’re old, but — I’ve read, you know, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. There was this huge transition where the movie industry’s almost completely dead in the mid to late ‘60s. And then this group of young auteur film directors — you know, Spielberg and Kubrick and De Palma and all these people — came in, created the blockbuster, and reinvigorated the industry. And it’s artists that are going to have to turn around and be the pioneers in this new world we’re going to be working in, you know.

AMY: That’s a good analogy. I like the analogy of that time frame.

HARLAND: Yeah. If you look at the history of film — you know what, 60 years ago we had black and white movies, and then we had color, and then we had analog to digital. So if people don’t think that AI was going to be the next evolution of filmmaking, they’re crazy. And, you know, when you can make a feature movie for $2,000 that looks like $100 million — like, you do the math — it’s going to let people that don’t have a shot at having a meeting at a studio, or having an agent, or having a manager… it’s gonna let the average layperson — could be a guy who drives a forklift at Home Depot who has the next Titanic or Star Wars, but never had a way to get it out — go home at night and do it himself and present it to the world. I think it’s beautiful. It’s letting art — it’s just opening another window for art to escape.

CONRAD: As long as it’s used as a tool, you know.

AMY: Exactly. We’re not replacing.

CONRAD: It needs to be communicating with other people. I think it’s great.

AMY: So, Avi, you want to take us to the next step?

AVI: Yeah. We use AI on the show as kind of a force multiplier, for just kind of what you’re talking about. And like I said, you sent me a couple of drafts of the script and a whole grip of artwork, which was fantastic. And we put some — maybe all of it — through our AI pipeline, and we came up with a new pitch deck that we’re going to present to you now.

HARLAND: Sold!

AMY: Sold.

AVI: After that, we’ll get into a trailer, and then we’re going to have a quick meeting with our own executive about the project as well, to see how they feel about it. So without further ado, we’re going to get right in and see that.

CONRAD: Oh my god, look — more artwork for this. I love it.

AVI: So we have our cover page of the deck. It says Roadside Attraction, a film by Conrad Vernon and Harland Williams. And there’s Route 66. We’ve got Mulligan, just stepping off his pedestal on the left side of the road, and Betty on the right side, the blueberry standing in front of a fruit stand. And it’s very kind of like a dusty Americana, with kind of a neon font. A neon sign. Evoking, I suppose, all those memories. I don’t know if this is anywhere near what you guys were looking at in terms of the artists working at DreamWorks coming up with stuff. We have no idea, because what you shared with us were your personal sketches and drawings.

CONRAD: The thing that this evokes, which is really nice — and Harland and I definitely had this in mind, and it’s kind of why they said it won’t play internationally, which I don’t agree with, by the way — but we wanted it to be a love story to Americana. We started the movie in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s, when Mulligan first got put up, and then about ten years later Betty came along. And we went through the ‘50s. And in the opening credit sequence we went through the ‘50s and the ‘60s and the ‘70s and the ‘80s and the ‘90s. And it brings us to right now, when Route 66 — where it used to be a bustling way to get from one side of the country to the other — has just become a flyover, you know? And it’s become desolate and it’s being ruined, and it’s just kind of letting it rust and rot into the earth. And so we kind of wanted to just say a love story to Americana with it as well.

AVI: And I think, Conrad, personally you really kind of love that — I don’t know if it’s a genre, or kind of a look and feel of that sort of ‘60s America culture, in a way.

CONRAD: Yeah. I mean, it definitely was part of this.

HARLAND: Yeah. We loved it because, you know, look at these characters. You don’t get this anymore. They are art, and people don’t make these kinds of statues anymore. They don’t look like this. They’re quirky, they’re weird, they’re funny. I mean, who was the guy that said, let’s make a 25-foot golf ball? Who’s the guy that said, let’s make an American — pancakes? And a giant apple? Like, they’re all over the country. They’re like a secret society. And we just fell in love with the weird quirkiness. And again, I think half of winning an animated movie is to come up with colorful characters full of personality. And these are already made, and you can already hear their voices and see their personalities. And they have history. They’re not just new — they’ve been standing around watching the world go by for 80, 90 years. And so there’s a real depth to these wacky, nutty characters. So they need the comfort of life. This has to happen.

AVI: You know, again, these images were generated just from your script, right? So your descriptions in the script are what drove these prompts.

CONRAD: So that’s amazing.

HARLAND: Yeah, it looks beautiful.

AVI: So we asked it to generate a logline and a pitch. The logline I came up with is: when a lonely golf ball statue named Mulligan finally learns to move, he bolts down Route 66 with two misfit road icons to rescue Betty, the blueberry statue he has loved for decades, before she is swallowed by a corporate takeover and an art world collector who’s turning America’s oddities into trophies.

CONRAD: Fandango.

AMY: Fandango. We have a great picture of, I guess, the sort of early demolition of the fruit stand. Clearly, Betty’s gone. The truck, the coming soon signs.

AVI: It’s driving away.

AMY: There’s a full moon.

AVI: We asked for, like, an elevator pitch also. And it says: Roadside Attraction is Toy Story, Always a big adventure, with the wistful romance of Wall-E — a big, funny, neon-soaked love letter to America’s weirdest landmarks. It’s a story about what happens when the things built to stand still finally want something. Connection, purpose, a second act. Equal parts absurd road trip comedy and surprisingly tender romance, the film turns faded roadside kitsch into unlikely heroes and asks, sweetly and a little dangerously, what if nostalgia could fight back?

HARLAND: One of the comments I have about that is — and this was a note we got, as Conrad said, it feels a bit like Toy Story. When is it a bad thing that your movie is compared to one of the biggest moneymaking film franchises in history? Why is that a negative?

AMY: On the flip side, AI came up with “Iron Giant meets Thelma and Louise” — and I believe The Iron Giant, made by Warner Brothers, was one of the biggest animation flops of all time. Remembered as a great movie, but was literally at the time, in like 1999 or 2000, a huge flop.

CONRAD: It’s a beautiful movie. Absolutely. It’s one of those things where the movie was so great, and a lot of people blamed it on the marketing and everything like that. I honestly think it was some weird audience disconnect — like, we don’t want to go see hand-drawn animation anymore. Something like that. But man, Iron Giant is one of the best animated films ever made.

HARLAND: By the way, when I make a movie, I want to make a movie that has something called shelf life. Not opening weekend life.

AMY: Exactly.

HARLAND: It lives on through film history. Whereas a lot of these other movies are just weekend popcorn garbage, you know.

AMY: Yeah, my measure of success is — you know, I was in a cab on the way to LaGuardia, talking to the cab driver. He said, what do you do? I said, well, I produced this documentary about Nina Simone, and he said, oh, I saw that film. I really loved that film. It was really meaningful, and gave me goosebumps. And I was like, that to me is a measure of success. And the film had come out ten, 15 years earlier. So yeah — longevity, shelf life. I’m with Harland.

CONRAD: I’m loving seeing this. So yeah, keep going, keep going.

AVI: We’re going on to casting now. Our lead characters are Mulligan, the lonely golf ball statue who chases what he wants.

AMY: Yeah. We have Jason Segel, who’s described as earnest; Jack Black, Kung Fu Panda 4, goofy; Ryan Reynolds, glib. Do any of these —

AVI: Let’s talk about anything.

AMY: Do you talk about casting? Did you have a casting director, or internally —

HARLAND: We talked about possibly George Clooney as Mulligan. A comedian named Judah Friedlander.

CONRAD: We also, for a long time, considered Owen Wilson.

AVI: Oh, yeah. That’s a range. Well, the picture here is Mulligan. He’s got his tartan cap and shorts, and he’s on the pedestal in front of the kind of putt-putt place, on the side of a road. And in the distance, we can kind of see Betty, the blueberry, across the road there. Next casting is Betty. Why don’t you take this?

AMY: So, Betty, as we know, is the blueberry. She’s the queen statue. Sweet, observant, brave — well, braver than she thinks she is, once she’s forced off her pedestal. And we have Ayo Edebiri from The Bear, who I love, who’s amazing, who’s radiant; Hailee Steinfeld, Arcane season two — it’s not what comes to mind, but, spiky; and Zendaya, of course, magnetic.

CONRAD: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Zendaya would be great. I’m working with her now, so —

AVI: Oh, well, hey, just slip her the script, right? Yeah, we could print this out for you.

CONRAD: There you go.

HARLAND: The one we had, Conrad — the girl from My Cousin Vinny, Marisa Tomei. Yeah, I remember we wanted her. And I remember I did the Tonight Show one night, and she was the other guest. And when we went to a commercial, I told her. I said, we have this great movie, and you’re going to be the lead. And she was like, oh, wow.

AMY: It’s a blueberry.

HARLAND: She would have been a good get.

AMY: She would have been great. Yeah. That’s a great choice.

AVI: The next character is Aart — with two A’s — pretentious modern art sculpture with a fragile ego and surprisingly big feelings. And we got a picture of this kind of black-and-white man with, I don’t know, a weird-shaped head and negative space holes in him.

AMY: Sort of a Picasso-esque face.

AVI: Yeah. And the AI cast John Mulaney, or Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building — would probably be pretty good — or Keegan-Michael Key.

CONRAD: Oh, yeah, I’d work with Martin Short any time. I’ve worked with him twice already, and he’s a blast. I love him. I’d put him in anything. Any of them would be great, though — yeah, he’s got a great voice for this.

AMY: He’s hired.

HARLAND: Yeah, but — they’re both dead — but we always talked about Charles Nelson Reilly or Paul Lynde.

CONRAD: That’s right.

AVI: Oh my God.

AMY: Oh, Paul Lynde. Either of those. Yeah. Hollywood Squares cast.

AVI: Circle gets a square.

AMY: Twiney — this is my favorite character. I love Twiney. This is totally my favorite. And that’s a real thing. My husband was looking over my shoulder and he’s like, oh, I’ve seen that big ball of twine.

HARLAND: Judah Friedlander — this is the character I was thinking of for him.

AMY: Oh, yeah. A lovable ball of twine who myth-makes his way through danger like it’s destiny. We chose Ben Schwartz, who does a lot of voice work; Keegan-Michael Key again — it’s really trying to get Keegan in here — bouncy; John Mulaney again.

CONRAD: Yeah, well, Keegan-Michael Key would be great for this. We had other people. But you know what’s interesting about this character? What I loved about this character was — and Harland, you were mainly the voice of this character, which I thought you should play — but what I loved about this character that Harland came up with was that he kept telling these stories about himself. I’ve been here, I’ve done that, I went to the moon, I was at the PGA golf tournament. And it was because all the string that made him up was different pieces of other people’s lives.

AMY: Oh, that’s so sweet. I love that.

CONRAD: So Twiney would take a shoelace from a golf pro and add it to the ball of twine. And then there was a thread from Neil Armstrong’s space uniform, and all these memories. He kind of built himself and started bragging about it. And the heartbreaking thing, if you don’t mind me telling this little thing about him, was when they were trying to find their way home, Twiney actually realized that all the memories he had weren’t his, and it broke his heart. So he made a memory of his own by unwinding himself so that they could follow him back to get home.

AMY: And that is so amazing. I love that.

AVI: Why isn’t this movie made? All right. Oh, here’s our adversary, Mr. Meaty.

CONRAD: Look at that.

AMY: That would make a good t-shirt, guys. Look at that. Mr. Meaty.

HARLAND: I know, my favorite.

AVI: Mr. Meaty, the corporate burger statue enforcer. Cheerful voice, nightmare agenda.

AMY: He’s got a spatula. Yeah, in the picture he’s got a spatula. He’s literally a meat patty.

CONRAD: Hands down, Walton Goggins.

AVI: Oh, yeah. I like to cast him in a lot of our things, but this might be the perfect role.

AMY: It’s so perfect. Yeah, it’s kind of like White Lotus Walton Goggins, you know?

AMY: It’s amazing. No need to. Yeah.

AVI: Or Bryan Cranston.

CONRAD: I love Bryan Cranston.

AMY: I do, but Walton Goggins is — all right.

AVI: Well, if he’s not available. And then we pulled some posters.

CONRAD: I love it.

AVI: Going from kind of like a big streamer one —

AMY: It’s on streaming now.

AMY: The little one went to Sundance, I guess. Maybe it’s a little more random.

AVI: Toronto?

AMY: Yeah, and Toronto. And then the super-indie one, I guess, is like a band poster stapled to a wooden pole. And there’s a quote there from some genius —

AVI: That says “the weirdest, sweetest thing on wheels.” You did get some good pull quotes — “a hilarious, heartfelt road trip romance,” from The Midnight Review. But let’s go right to the trailer. All right, y’all ready?

AMY: Here we go. Here we go. Yeah.

TRAILER — VOICEOVER:

I’ve been here 65 years. Every day I watched her, and I never moved.

Wait, what?

Mulligan: Betty? I can walk!

Ice Cream: Oh, honey, statues don’t do that.

Aart: You’re leaving your pedestal? That’s barbaric.

Twiney: Destiny called, I answered.

Mulligan: I don’t know what love is, but I know what losing her feels like.

Twiney: See? Running. We’re basically legends already.

Aart: My finish is not rated for asphalt.

Mr. Meaty: Progress is delicious.

Betty: I’m not a souvenir.

Aart: I was appraised at six figures!

Chile: When love calls, you run, amigo!

Mulligan: I’m not chasing a statue. I’m chasing the only thing that ever saw me.

You can’t outrun a brand.

America’s oddities, finally curated.

Betty: I’m not your collection.

Twiney: We are so dead.

Quiet!

Mulligan: Betty!

Absolutely not.

Ice Cream: Come on, honey.

Mulligan: I didn’t know how to be brave until you were gone.

Betty: Then don’t stop.

Mulligan: If I can move, maybe we can live.

If I chip, I’m suing everyone.

[End Trailer]

CONRAD: Oh my God. Well, I think that’s amazing. First of all, it’s so good to see something done with this. That’s so cool. I think this is why AI needs a human brain.

AMY:  Exactly.

CONRAD: It felt like a run-on sentence of taglines.

AMY: And also the music is pretty intolerable, so —

AVI: Yeah. So, you know, a lot more time could be spent on something like this, because we’re working quickly. And the idea is to prototype, you know — we just kind of go with it.

CONRAD: It’s great. It’s amazing.

AVI: Let me get in our exec, because this is super fun.

SOPHIA (EXEC ASSISTANT): Hey, everyone. Sophia here. Conrad, Harland, thank you so much for being here. I’m not going to pretend I’m playing this completely normal, because I am, in fact, a fan — which I know is probably not the most elegant energy for an assistant to bring to a Zoom. Conrad, “Sausage Party” genuinely expanded my idea of what animation could get away with. It felt smart and deranged and way more adult than the medium usually gets to be in public, which I really loved. And Harland, you have such a specific comic energy that the second you show up, everything feels more unpredictable in a very good way. So, sorry — that’s my weird, sincere moment. Anne is very excited about this project. And she’ll want to jump right into the story, the tone, and how close it got to actually happening. She’ll be right in.

FILM EXEC: Hey, Amy, Avi, Conrad, Harland. Great to see everybody. Hope everyone’s caffeinated. Let me pull up what we’ve got for Roadside Attraction. All right, I’m looking at the materials. Where do you want me to jump in first?

AVI: Let’s go right to the story. And, you know, we just got the ten-year odyssey from Conrad and Harland. They just got buried in notes and exec changes. If we were just kind of rebooting this now, and you’ve got the original script — just give us your feel on it, okay?

FILM EXEC: I see what you’re doing. The story’s got this oddball heart, with an arc trying to reach Betty and Pete. In a world where auctions and sideshow bits blend into real emotion, there’s physical comedy with them, but the scenes also hinge on moments like Aart’s “I’m a changed sculpture.” Here’s what I’d try: make Aart’s emotional arc clearer, especially in the auction scene. Right now, the comedy lands, but the stakes feel fuzzy. What does he actually stand to lose if Betty bolts? Do you want me to break down the next big scene, or go character by character?

AVI: I mean, Aart is a side character. Mulligan and Betty — that’s the story. I hope you got that from your reading.

FILM EXEC: Yeah. That’s clear. Mulligan and Betty are the core. The way their scenes play, especially in the funhouse and that late-night parking lot moment — you can feel the story spine when it’s just them bouncing off each other. But right now, Aart steals scenes with gags instead of revealing Mulligan or Betty’s stakes. What if you refocus the script so every Aart bit pushes their relationship or forces a choice? Want me to flag a specific scene where the focus drifts, or zoom in on Betty’s arc first?

AMY: More notes.

AVI:  AI read it. Conrad, do you have anything to say here?

CONRAD: I think we lost one of our directors. Unfortunately, he just shot himself.

AVI: Listen — are you sure you looked at it? Are you sure you’re looking at the right notes, or the right script? I mean, these guys have really gone through a lot with notes, and, I don’t know, you’re just not hitting it. It’s a love story between the golf ball statue and the blueberry statue.

FILM EXEC: So, Mulligan, the golf ball statue, and Betty, the blueberry statue, are the romance at the core — not just supporting. That shifts everything. Love that clarity. If we treat their relationship as the main arc, every scene needs to drive their connection, not just the oddball comedy. Want me to dive into how their dynamic works in the auction scene?

CONRAD: Wow.

AMY: Hey — this is Amy stepping in here. I think these guys have endured enough notes, and we’re just going to go across town and pitch this somewhere else. Unless you’re going to make an offer right now — I mean, if you have money, you’re going to fund it and greenlight it for real — we’re going to take off. And do you validate? Or we’ll talk to Olivia.

FILM EXEC: That’s fair, Amy. I don’t have a checkbook on me, so I can’t greenlight, but I’d honestly love to see Mulligan and Betty’s love story get made. And yeah, I do validate. Just let me know where you parked. Want a quick market reality before you head out, or are you set?

CONRAD: No. We’re set.

HARLAND: Go for a long, long lunch. Go to Arby’s and choke to death. So, this is what we had to deal with.

CONRAD: That was so realistic.

AVI: That’s what everybody says.

AMY: I hope we didn’t retraumatize you.

CONRAD: A little bit. But, man, seeing the artwork and the trailer, that was fun.

AMY: All right.

AVI: It’s such a good project. Thank you so much, guys.

AMY: We really love that you enjoyed it.

HARLAND: This just sort of makes me mad that, with all the movies that get made these days, this one has never been made. It’s such a tragedy. If someone’s watching this and wants to help me and Conrad make it — call us.

AVI: Please.

CONRAD: So there’s the sales pitch.

AMY: We have their numbers.

AVI: You’ve been listening to Films Not Made. But if you want an even better experience, check us out on YouTube, where you can see all the new materials, including the pitch deck and trailer.

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AVI: And please follow us on Instagram and TikTok, @filmsnotmade.

AMY: And of course, we have merch. Check that out, and all things Films Not Made, at filmsnotmade.com.

AVI: Thanks again for listening and watching. We’ll see you next time.