Original subtitles

Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to behold a sight so strange, so

so utterly monstrous, that I urge both of you who are easily... Hi, this is Ted

Bonnet, the director and producer of Malmouse XX, and I'm with Eddie Muller,

writer of Malmouse XX.

That was the shot of Dave that started the picture. It was perfect.

I mean, that is a portrait of the artist as a young carny.

We're going to sit with you and watch it and talk a little bit about how we made

the movie and offer a lot more editorial depth that we were unable to contain in

the movie itself, a little more background on the movies. A little

background, as it were. Yes, I'm not that smart.

I wasn't as good as Dave at it, but I was a businessman.

Dan Sonny was down the street from where I live, visiting his daughter, who owns

an apartment house down the street. He found me before I found him. This is

after I met Dave, thanks to Eddie, and was looking for Dan Sonny, and he just

heard about me before I heard about him.

Lived a block away, one of those incredible bits of synchronicity there.

see him.

kind of fell an immediate like with him and realized this would be a real good

story to tell about the story of these two guys' lives who lived the fastest of

fast lanes in the 60s and the ultimate square -up, as they call them in their

movies, of what happens when you land in your 80s.

And it was interesting, too, because Dave has always been much more the front

man of this outfit and the emperor emeritus of skin pics and all that kind

stuff, and it was great to be able to get...

Dan to go along with this because he's always been the behind the scenes

operator, the money man, kind of the quiet guy until you get him on camera.

Dan is one of the funniest and coolest guys considering that he's in his mid

-80s in this movie.

I think we just could all hope to be as healthy and funny as he is.

And it was a great opportunity because having known Dave for a while and

what a character he is and what a raconteur he is, I sensed even before

Dan how much Dave admired the guy and looked up to him and thought he was the

real... you know, the ace in the deck of this whole operation.

But, you know, Dan always shied away from being on camera and in the

And so it was just such a great opportunity to be able to get the guy in

situation and see what Dave had been talking about all along.

They wanted to make a policeman out of him.

He cleaned up that town real fast.

In the headlines that came out, Roy Gardner, the smiling mail train bandit,

escaped from jail.

And my dad had a picture of him. And my dad was on his feet walking.

And then another man was walking. You know, this is really the last of an era

Dan and Dave represent.

And we were very fortunate to be able to capture their stories.

Yeah, that Dan could become sort of a mogul in this business considering, you

know, his origins and such an operator and such a savvy businessman, you know,

as he likes to say, you know, he didn't have a lot of book schooling.

But out there on the road, he certainly learned the ins and outs of this

business. And he's lucky.

He's right. He says he's the luckiest guy in the world. And, you know, I think

he really is one of the luckiest guys in the world.

And he still counts it. I mean, he still talks about how he's still $20 ,000 shy

on She -Freak. You know, still needs $20 ,000 back from that production. I think

he still studies the books at night before he goes to bed.

So they've had a lot of interviews, and a lot of people come to talk to them. We

were very fortunate that they really consented to do this.

because they didn't know what the heck we had in mind. Well, that is absolutely

true. I know that Dan, in particular, couldn't quite figure out what the hell

were doing and how it was all going to turn out. I think Dave sort of

a lot more.

Dan was really asking me throughout the shoot, you know, when I was following

around with the camera, saying, you know, are you sure you're okay in the

Are you sure you're all right? Are you sure you're not crazy?

Who the hell would want to go see a movie about an old man?

Now, here's a man who made a fortune showing young, beautiful, scantily clad

women, so I can understand his logic.

Who's going to pay to see a couple of old goofs like us?

This whole story with how Lewis Sonny got his start was pretty remarkable.

You know, the law and order thing.

This was the story that really sold me on Dan. When I was researching the book,

it was just a remarkable story. This is kind of how I started the whole thing.

When you talk about the book, you're talking about Grindhouse. Grindhouse,

the forbidden world of adults -only cinema, which Dave was such a huge part

the research for that.

And he talked so much about Dan.

But because Dan was so far behind the scenes and wasn't a guy who sought the

limelight, I didn't really pursue him that much in doing the research for the

book. And so it was really a treat when you met him and then we finally hooked

up and all this stuff sort of came to life.

Which is why I got involved, because reading your book and then reading

book, The Youth in Babylon, I just realized this was too great a story to

up, to tell.

And we made it with digital video technology very early on, which was sort

way.

that they made their films. I mean, sort of the democratization of film, movie

-making tools like digital video cameras and Final Cut Pro really allows one to

go back to the old days of going out on your own as a small businessman and

making a movie, and self -distributing, too. Yeah, absolutely. That's what we

did with Mouth Mouth Sex Sex. And it was, you know, a throwback to the way

guys made pictures.

And Dan really just, you know, he doesn't see...

It's just his reality.

I mean, he almost doesn't even think that there's anything odd about what he

did.

No, not really. Well, because he had the advantage of being able to think all

the people he was working with were the crazy people and the con men, like

here's Maniac, which was actually a picture made by Dwayne Esper.

that Dan's father, Louis Sonny, put up some of the money for and distributed.

But this demented vision, it's more reflective of Dwayne Esper as a

than the Sonny family.

And Esper was a real character. There was this whole group of filmmakers and

distributors.

called The Forty Thieves, of which Esper was probably the most legendary.

I mean, this guy, it was just beyond his capability to tell a coherent story.

But he knew exactly how to pack every sensational element into everything he

did. And, you know, he and his wife were quite the team.

You know, any subject, Esper would manage to get some crazed movie out of

But all the guys in The Forty Thieves.

We're like that. But Esper was probably king of the road shows.

He knew how to go into a town.

You know, the movie was secondary. He had the great lobby displays and the

marquees and create a big fuss and then get out of town before the cops showed

up.

Those scenes with Dave and Dan in the car.

We had gone down to Alabama and spent a couple of days with Dave and got our

interview with him, and then we did the same thing with Dan in the Los Angeles

area where he lives.

So we had what we needed in terms of meat and potatoes subject matter and

interview.

So Dave comes from Alabama into L .A. once a year for, you know, an annual

And we timed it out so that when he was in town, we'd take them for a ride

around the city to their old haunts just to help them reflect.

But really the importance of the object of those scenes with the two of them in

the car, which are a pretty big audience favorite, was just to let them relax

and have some fun to show the chemistry in which they operated all their lives,

laughing their way to the... bank and uh and you know that was all done in three

hours because these are old guys who really don't have a lot of patience or

energy for the camera crews to constantly contact them yeah we'll we'll

know facing our bladder breaks pretty soon i'm sure and uh

yeah this is in uh in dave's study down in alabama he is the king down there

Next time we go to that shot, you'll see that this is his office in Alabama

where he's running a carny downtown, which we'll visit the fairgrounds.

You'll see a large wad of cash to the right on the frame in his office. I

he is carny through and through. He walks his talk.

And just so people know, a lot of the clips that we're showing here are films

made by other filmmakers in that period.

Willis Kent made The Wages of Sin and J .D. Kendis and guys like that who

all sort of were on the periphery of the mainstream movie business, but they

were independent filmmakers who saw an opportunity to make money on their own

much more than they would ever make being a third or fourth stringer.

This little girl was in The Grapes of Wrath. If you watch The Grapes of Wrath,

the family, she was a little girl. I assume she made that after she made

Bride.

Yeah, that would be true. Which this movie still manages to offend today.

Yeah, it's pretty extraordinary. I think this guy was with the Jodes, too. No,

maybe not. Maybe not.

They left him behind, I think, when they came west.

With good reason, as you can see.

But, yeah, Lloyd Friedkin, I think, made Child Bride. You know, I have

to say, I researched all this stuff, but these movies have traded hands so many

times over the years that I kind of lose track of who the quote -unquote author

is. of some of this stuff is, it's amazing.

Like, Child Bride continued to show up on the Southern Circuit, you know, all

the way into the 60s, just repackaged. There's that money on the right side

there, a big wad of cash. Yeah, that's heading down to the lot. Yeah, going

down to the left for a red one.

Yeah.

But it was, oh, and then all the burlesque stuff. This is really when...

You know, they figured out how to package the sex shows.

I kind of feel sorry for some of the girls in these situations because, of

course, once they had the photographic record of their performances.

They weren't making any more money off of it at all.

That was a lot better than filming burlesque. It was easier for the

across the country to run a film over and over again and try to find local

talent, if you will.

You know, not quite the titillation of seeing the live performance by Louis St.

Cyr, but...

You know, you get a one -shot deal. They'd shoot them after the regular

were done. They'd just bring the sets back out, and the gals would do it one

more time for the cameras, and then it was just raking in the dough from then

on that film.

Yeah, Dan shot that down in Los Angeles on a burlesque stage where she was

performing after hours one night.

And then you, of course, have to talk a little bit about Frank.

Frank Cannon Lauder.

who really was the glue for this movie because the guys are a little reluctant

to be that introspective. And Frank really

allowed us to delve in.

And Frank was a great pivot to the movie because he knows every foot of the

movies.

On the other hand, he stays outside enough of it to have some fun with it.

Exactly. Makes it safe for the audiences that have never heard of these movies.

And he provides great and hilarious commentary.

Because some of these movies, I mean, how can, you know, these guys who made

these movies never took them seriously. Why would we in a documentary?

Yeah, and that's what's great about Frank is he doesn't really take them all

that seriously, but he does have such a great interest in it, and he's able to

provide that context for everything that's going on. And he's got such great

good humor about the whole thing.

Without him, it would have been tough. Well, if you're going to get an expert

about the subject matter on camera, you could get a professorial type from a

film school.

Or you could get somebody that's in it and having a good time with it. And for

people who are maybe unfamiliar with Frank, who is, of course, billed here as

director and film historian, I mean, he is the man behind the legendary

Frankenhooker and Basket Case.

So Frank has been down this road himself, and he sort of is a disciple of

guys in terms of his own films and also the marketing of movies because

Frank was very savvy.

when he marketed his films and learning lessons you know the kind of thing that

dave used to do for his pictures i remember frank had the talking box for

frankenhooker for the video release of frankenhooker it was like a squeeze me

box and the woman on the box would talk and all those video

cassettes behind frank are in his apartment he's got about

He's got a huge, huge shelf of an entire wall, and behind that wall of VHS, it's

double. I mean, there's another row of VHS behind those.

Probably the greatest library of this kind of stuff I've ever seen.

I'd say Frank is in pretty deep.

And now Mau Mau, of course, which gives us our title.

This was wild. This stuff was all shot by a guy from San Bernardino who was a

used car dealer. He was a Rambler dealer.

Yeah, Elwood Price.

And just took his camera and traveled to Africa and was like Johnny on the spot

for the Mau Mau uprising.

And, you know, tried to sell it to, as Frank said, to, you know, all the major

TV networks at that time. But, you know, at that point, who cared about Africa?

Yeah, he wasn't even going over to film an uprising. He was going to do a nature

travelogue. Yeah, exactly.

And he stumbles onto the uprising. He staged a few scenes, like the hut

scenes. Those were staged, evidently. Well, that was, yeah, well, after, I

it was after Price tried to sell this damn thing to everybody.

And it was finally, there he is. Dan Sonny was the guy who bought it, you

It's a classic filmmaker story. I mean, here in 1954, he makes this film. It's

too raw. No one wants to know about the third world in America in 1954.

And theatrically, it wasn't enough.

So he, like so many filmmakers, found himself desperate.

And in the offices of exploiteer Dan Sonny, who figured, well, I can make a

market for it. And he shot these scenes on Cordova Street, little toplessness

and sex and violence.

And then marketed it. He just did, you know, as he said, he just made those

shots for the lobby cards but decided to throw it into the movie anyway since he

shot the stuff.

And, you know.

In truth, you know, what would become a time -honored tradition.

in exploitation movies, the creation of the insert shot.

And there are filmmakers, you know, like Radley Metzger, who would go on to be a

very, very successful adult movie maker, got his start shooting a lot of insert

stuff for foreign films that were brought to this country before there was

art house market.

There was the grindhouse market, and they'd take these Scandinavian movies or

French movies or whatever, and they'd say, there's only just a little more

in this. And guys like Metzger would go out there and shoot the insert shots,

try to match them as best as they could, and cut them into the films, and they'd

show in the grindhouse circuit.

Of course, these weren't necessarily prurient sex movies in their home

countries, but when they got to America, that was how they were sold.

And so much of this is about marketing and packaging, as we discussed in the

movie. It's all about marketing and packaging.

And the artwork is terrific, which, from my perspective as a director, I saw

this as a great opportunity to make a film because we would have access to all

that art.

I mean, all of our artwork is based on their original artwork.

That artwork is funny. I guess, in a sense, this might be very fitting. The

whole thing, the whole road for me began finding a bunch of this stuff in a

dumpster thrown out behind a theater years ago in the early 80s. And I had no

idea what it all meant or who made these films or anything, but my buddy Fred

Klein and I found this stuff.

It fascinated me for years, and the road eventually led to Dave and then to Dan.

It was all these lobby cards and posters and things from the 30s, which a lot of

them are on display in the movie here.

Each one of these people is a character.

My father's a character, Dave's a character.

Rosalie Sonny, Dan's daughter, has become a great friend, and she was

responsible for making...

Mau Mau happened in many ways, like getting her father to do it because he

wanted him something to do, you know, in his retirement.

It was more fun.

And all the, many of the photographs and the old film clips of the home movies

all came from the Sonny collection. I mean, a lot of this stuff we were just

handed on old VHSs. They were like 8mm film transfers to VHS.

And, you know, it's really a credit to Keith Robinson, the executive producer

who did the finishing work on this movie.

to enhance all this stuff digitally to make it look as good as it does because

this is really just taking an old VHS home movie and plugging it into the DV

camera.

and then upgrading it from there.

Keith was a stickler. He did a great job.

He had me in there touching up all the still photos and everything in

Not only was I a writer on this project and a co -producer, but was actually

touching up the photographs in the other room. It was a pretty quick operation.

We were touching up photos and dumping them into the software and turning them

around and spitting them out in minutes.

We never touched a piece of film ever in the making of this movie, which is very

interesting.

Not even the old film club? No. The films had already been transferred, and

went to the facility where the master tapes were stored, and we just did video

-to -video transfers, and that's what you have. We did a lot of enhancement

work. A lot of the movies look a little better than the way we found them

because of our own digital enhancement work for this particular piece.

But everything was scanned or transferred. It was an entirely digital

production, from transcribing the digital videotapes into script form to

all the source material, including the stills.

It's funny to think, looking at that shocking birth of a baby.

footage that was such a big deal at the time. I mean, who would imagine that

years later, you know, with the video revolution that, you know, people would

in the delivery room videotaping the delivery of their own babies and all

stuff. And everybody has that footage now. But at the time, these guys were

operating to actually show a baby being born was considered some incredibly

shocking thing that could, you know, get you run out of town on a rail.

But then again, here the girls are in Catholic school, you know. That was the

fascinating thing about Dan and Dave are as different as they are fascinating

characters. And Dan, who had this other life as a Catholic patriarch.

and raised his kids right in Catholic schools and paid all their college

tuitions. They're all bright, energetic women.

You couldn't ask for a better father. No.

I have to say the Thunnys, having gotten to know them, are one of the most

together and normal families I've ever met.

And then you see what he made for a living.

It's one of those great things in life.

I've never quite gotten my head completely around that concept.

We've been through this whole thing, and it's still pretty shocking. Every so

often I'll be watching one of Dan's movies, and I'll just think, my God,

were they thinking?

I know what they were thinking, just what Dave was just thinking. Yeah,

Snapping a big bill.

Got to buy those girls a car.

How are we going to do that?

And the girls squared up with it. They just adore Dan.

It's a good family.

This was one of my favorite things in the picture. I mean, this is just Dave

a T.

Hustling a three -year -old. You know, they're never too young to hustle.

Dave is a one -of -a -kind, a real genuine character, and brilliant, too.

He's a very well -educated man, a very sophisticated man.

You could buy the cops off with peanuts in that town.

Yeah, and he's a born performer.

I mean, you know, granted this is a documentary, but we just went down there

I said, Dave, I just want you to go and work the lot the way you would work it

any day. If you've got to give somebody a little hell, you go ahead and do it.

And here he is giving people hell. Yeah, this was perfect.

I mean, this walk around the lot was just great.

Again, we did that in probably 20 minutes. It was a very efficient

We shot this in about, over the course of seven days, over a three -month

period. But it was seven partial days.

That was how quick it went.

You know, here he is buying off the cops.

And, you know, they're so fast, Dave and Dan.

You wire them up with a wireless lavalier microphone, you let them run.

And it's really a challenge to just make sure you got them framed and in focus

because they're just going all the time. And if you, they're putting it down

and... You better pick it up or it's gone.

Dave, here he is. I mean, this is the man in his kingdom right here.

This is what it's all about.

That whole image, the ticket taker, you know, is a character in this country

that has always fascinated me. And Dave is just a prime example, you know, how

to just, you know, pick people's pockets with a smile.

Dave is the champ.

This is from She Freak, right?

This is a hot little number. I like this.

you couldn't stand it. Now we've got 16 beautiful girls on the inside in various

stages. Remember when we shot this interview, it's funny, interviewing Dave

tricky because he has his rap that he has perfected, and you've got to keep

him.

Amused. You've got to keep him amused or else he will go into the carny rap so

fast. This was our first shot of the whole movie. This was our first shoot

shooting this sit -down with Dave. And it was the first day we used this new

camera, the Canon XL1, and we lit it very carefully.

And, you know, I just took about an hour to get the set, which normally is not a

lot of time.

But, you know, I was just trying to get it right and get the frame focused, and

we finally got it together. and we ask him one question, and he's looking at

watch. And I'm thinking, oh, we're screwed. Yeah, I thought we were in

there. Well, it's also tricky because, you know, I had, having interviewed him

at length for the book,

you know, I knew exactly what to ask and where to go. But, you know, you get to

be Dave's age, and it's like we've been down this road before.

And so I was, you know, it was very tricky.

to try to make it seem fresh when he's looking at me and saying, you know, I

so afraid that he was going to say, I told you all this already. You know all

this stuff. You know, why am I doing this again?

But he got into it. Once he knew how thorough we were going to be and how far

were taking this thing, he became accommodating. I think he's used to...

very accommodating. At the same time, he was also a little annoyed by it all. He

was. We weren't that...

We weren't that breezy. Normally he can dispatch a camera crew in a couple of

hours. That's exactly it. He's had crews come in and do this stuff, and they get

there 15 minutes, and he's done.

We hung on to him like a leech for two days.

Solid. And we came down there purposefully on the last weekend of the

of his fairgrounds before it closed for the season.

So he had business on his mind. He was running a carny, and the last thing he

needed was a camera crew bugging him.

I think Dave appreciated it once he saw the movie because he really didn't know

what we were going for. And he also had not ever seen digital video technology

on a prosumer level.

He didn't know how long you can run.

I mean, the two of them would look at the camera and say, I can't even begin

go there. I don't even understand what this is about. But at the same time, it

didn't look like a professional crew.

So I think they were a little thrown by who we were and what we were up to.

And yet we were prying into his life. In fact, when I went down to see Dave

originally about a year before we shot, I asked him, I said, look, I'm really

interested more about who you are and who Dan is as individuals with the film

being a wonderful secondary story.

It's not about the films first. It's about you first. It's a character study.

Therefore, it's really important that your wife Carol would be involved in

And she was very reluctant and very shy.

Yeah, very much so. And it was actually a bit of a struggle. But on the other

hand, we were able to luckily establish a personal rapport.

And I think Carol knew exactly what it was that we were looking for. And she

gave it to us in one statement. And that was it. And we got it. And thank God we

were in focus and the sound was on. Yeah.

With Carol, less is more. I mean, she really...

What she said was very strong and wonderful, and she became a favorite to

audience as far as the character is concerned.

And I just really thought Carol was terrific.

We established a really terrific relationship behind the camera when

we were doing this, and it was tough to get her in front of the camera. She was

very natural and terrific when the camera was on her.

But as soon as you went off to do interviews, things with Dave in the car,

was hanging out with Carol. She was so open, talking about everything.

And they're very different people.

Even politically, they're very different. Carol is much more liberal

than Dave is.

But they've had this incredible relationship for so long.

You know, the scene when they go to the country club, of course, we really

wanted to shoot them at the country club having lunch, but they didn't allow

cameras in there, which was really too bad because that was the one thing I

regret more than anything else that we missed.

in this was at the country club when I asked Carol, because her family, they

were all Baptist ministers.

She comes from a whole family of Baptist ministers.

And I said to her, how did your family react to you marrying a guy who

makes dirty movies for a living? And she just looked at me and said, honey, my

family never got over me marrying a Jew.

Which is just, you know, from Alabama, and that was the...

That was the deal, and it's a remarkable relationship.

She had a wonderful life in the sense of when this was all going on, they were

living in Los Angeles, and he was the king of exploitation.

She was at the Los Angeles County Zoo.

She was doing really wonderful community service.

And as Dave said, you know, she has more degrees than a thermometer.

She's a very well -educated woman and wonderfully refined. In fact, the two of

them are the perfect couple. Gracious hosts. Yeah, and she was very, very

concerned about the state of affairs in the country. I remember when you were

off shooting in the car with Dave, Carol got into a long thing with me about the

school system in Alabama, and I just said, well, let's go see for ourselves.

We actually drove to one of the local schools.

and just walked through while class was in session because she wanted to see for

herself what was actually going on with the tax dollars down there. It was an

eye -opener for her.

Now we're talking about the nudist camps down in Florida where Dave, now working

with Herschel Gordon -Lewis in Chicago, was just desperate to get out of the

Chicago winters. So they would make these movies in the nudist camps in

And, of course, they imported all the beautiful women because you don't find

them normally at a nudist camp.

And a lot of them he mentioned were, you know, hookers out of Miami and a bunch

of them, you know, hooked on smack.

But, you know, other than that... Other than that, well, and then eventually

they got around to the bright idea of marquee value where they would actually

bring some strippers of note, or shall I say burlesque stars of note, down there

and do the films with them as the main attraction.

These films are just so daffy. It's unbelievable.

But, you know, these guys were operators. Like you say, the idea of

getting out of the winters in Chicago, going down to Florida, writing it off on

your income tax.

And writing the script, by the way, on the airplane. On the airplane. They'd

write the scripts on the airplane.

You know, what scripts there were.

And, you know, not a bad little con game they're playing, you know.

And there's a point that Dave is going to make later about how the independent

filmmakers were sort of, you know, breaking down the doors against

and things.

You know, and truthfully it was these pictures that were doing that.

and sort of paving the way for greater permissiveness on the movie screens

on. As Frank said, these were really pretty much adult films for children.

Absolutely. Well, the key thing in these movies, what made these movies possible

and why nudity was suddenly...

okay on movie screens was a Supreme Court decision that nudity per se was

obscene as long as people weren't doing anything in the pictures. I mean, you're

just looking at them and they're walking around, of course, playing volleyball

and all this stuff. There's no sex. As Frank says, it's not even implied.

So there is an incredibly innocent quality to all this. Well, one of them

down the law by basically doing a story of Adam and Eve.

And when they were brought into the court, they're saying, well, are you

that the Bible's obscene? Yeah, Dave jumped at the opportunity to distribute

that, yeah.

He couldn't run to the Legion of Decency fast enough with that film.

The music in Mal Mal Sex Sex by Eddie Betos and the Nervous Brothers really

helped the movie. I mean, right here we're hearing original music from the

movies. We use that occasionally.

But in order to create a cohesiveness, we had this wonderful group of

the Nervous Brothers here in Los Angeles, pretty much riff genre, because

were going chronologically in order from Dan's story through Dave's story. There

was a rough...

chronology from the 30s through the 60s. And the music of the Minerva's Brothers

went decade by decade from speakeasy right into wah -wah guitar. And the

knowledge that those guys have is so extraordinary that to be able to just

in and say, okay, we're thinking of something like New Orleans 1938.

It's a brothel with floral wallpaper.

And it shows you what the music does in a movie because it just brought up the

production value of the whole movie, and it created a cohesiveness and a

character to the overall film of Malmau Sex Ex instead of having all these

genres pieced together.

And, you know, I can't speak... And they really... The soundtrack is such a

pleasure. I mean, you know, I listen to it all the time because it really does.

It's like a little history of American roadhouse, grindhouse music.

that is just so evocative of those different eras.

There's a soundtrack CD, which is something you can listen to over and

again because it's instrumental and it's very flavorful, and it's available on

the website at www .malmousexx .com.

That was almost a graceful plug we were working on there.

You know, after hanging out with these guys, a little of it rubs off after a

while. A lot of it rubs off. In fact, a lot of what they taught has helped in

the marketing of the documentary.

Some of their old tricks and everything, we've applied them.

Yeah, this is where Dave is making the comment about how the independent

filmmakers are the ones who did all the work in breaking down the doors and the

barriers to freedom of expression.

Here are the parrots.

Dave and Carol didn't have children except for the parrots, which last a

time, outlive them.

Yeah, they're amazing birds. I don't know how fond Dave really is of those

parrots, to be honest with you.

Well, they're awfully loud.

They dominate the household there, there's no question about it. I just

this scene. Yeah, this is one of my favorites.

Dave is an entirely different person. I mean, you know, he's the exploitation

king, but he's got foibles like everybody else.

And the relationship between Dave and Carol right there, I mean, she really is

like not just a wife, but a mom in some respects, you know.

You know, it's funny, after showing in theaters, people go, why the hell did

have a thermos scene in there? What was that about? And then I have other people

come up and say, that was my favorite scene in the whole movie.

Now, this was an interesting setup. That was one of our favorite moments.

These guys love each other so much that they just have to go at it, boy.

Dan was waiting for that one.

He was. He was whispering to me several times that I'm going to get him on this

one. I'm going to get him with the Connie Mason thing.

Even though they're still active and their movies are still selling, they're

an age now where they can let their hair down, so to speak, and laugh about a

lot of it and be a lot more candid. I don't think we would have gotten this

insight into their personalities 15 years ago. No, they would have been much

more guarded, I'm sure.

But right now they're like, hey, you know, it was a good run.

They're both happy.

They're both proud of what they've done.

And they've had a good score up, so they're pretty open about it.

You could believe that he screwed every leading gal I ever made a picture with.

This scene always gets a lot of laughs, too, because this is yet another

American couple.

She just knows where everything is and has to take care of everything.

And Dave's going.

I mean, he was like, are you coming or what?

He's heading down to the lot to run the carnival. Well, nothing gets between

Dave and the carny lot.

I mean, he'll run you over if he's late to get to the lot. So that's his whole

thing, man.

As, you know, Frank just hits it on the head here, you know, and has that little

bit of larceny. Here's this fabulous thing where he waves to the cops.

And this is, you know, driving around Anniston.

It was interesting. When we got Dave and Carol in the car, there was a lot more

intimacy and a lot more introspection.

For example, in this scene, I went off with Dave alone in the car so there

wasn't a crew, even though it was just three of us.

And also with Carolyn in the car scene, I was alone with her.

And I put the camera pretty much on my lap, so it wasn't even in her face, and

was just hoping it was in focus.

And that, you know, these cameras are great that way, and it really sort of

lets, after a while they forget it's there, and it becomes a very

moment.

Scored getting this footage of Dave in the pickup.

And I think a lot of people wonder, huh, what was Carol's reaction to all this

stuff? And I think, truthfully, she just didn't watch it. No.

She really has no knowledge of it. And, you know, to our knowledge, she has not

seen this movie.

But it's not like it embarrassed Dave because that scene, for example, from

pickup where he's in bed with a woman, I got a call from Dave when we were

making the movie and said, hey, by the way.

They found a copy of the pickup after 40 years of it's been missing, or 30

years. He led us to it. It was in the vault in Scandinavia. Somebody found it.

He says, you've got to get a hold of it. So we did, and then we see this scene,

and we said, well, I'm sure Dave's not going to be offended if we use this

scene. He was proud of his performance, I think. He is proud.

And the purpose of these scenes with Dan at home is,

personally, I'm fascinated by elders.

And it's just amazing to me about what kind of lives they led.

And no matter what, this is what it comes to.

And it's so slow and it's so quiet. And that's why the house is silent because

it's just, it's quiet. It's old and quiet now.

And I find it interesting that he is happy and he is very satisfied with,

as he says, being a shut -in now because he doesn't have really the health and

vitality to get out of the house much anymore.

But because he lived his life to, in his way, the fullest and was happy and he's

got good kids and he's been successful financially, you know, the quietness,

solitude of the house is fine with him. He can rest easy.

And I think that's a real statement about what one does in the course of

life, that if they can end up shut into their house with what looks like a very

sedentary, if not boring life and be content, I think that's an amazing feat.

And a lot of people who watch this sequence says, well, now I know what my

grandfather does when he's home alone. This is the only way I can get any

exercise.

And so this is a, you know, I think this was a very important part of Mau Mau

Sex Sex.

It's as far as you can imagine from nudist camp films, but it's really, to

the essence of the story about the square up of being an elder.

Margaret, she's an interesting character because I was never quite certain how

much awareness she had about the product that Dan was

producing.

But what mattered was really taking care of those girls.

That was what it was all about.

They were very family -oriented. For example, Dan and Dave each smoked about

cigars a day, but never in the house.

And Dan didn't drink. He maybe had a drink here and there, but he wasn't a

drinker. He lived a very simple life. I mean, he's a very successful man in

every respect, including financially.

But he likes a good Carl's Jr.

and a Pollo Loco, and he lives a very, very simple life.

That smoking is no good, too.

When Carl comes over, we play a lot of gin.

It's a nice game.

Not that he wasn't a tough guy in his younger days. We've certainly got

inferences from people that Dan would read people the riot act.

But he was having to run hurt on a pretty tough crowd, tough business.

But this is the stuff like here where he's playing cards with Carl.

You know, this is what he misses.

And that was the whole point of this scene was just to show that this is like

what's left of the hustle that he used to have down on Cordova Street, you

when the guys would come in and sell him this and sell him that. And he would

always get them in a gin game.

This is the way you get to be.

My hobby was playing gin.

They'd come into town just to play gin with me for three, four hours every day.

I'd win all their money all the time.

Take your monies down.

You're building a good hand there. You're taking everything into the world.

can see it.

So you'd win $30, $40, and then you'd go out and buy the guy a drink.

What the hell are you talking about?

Oh, God.

You know, you go back to your sneaky self, you get that... You look good on

face there, and your belly aches about the worst cards.

Son of a bitch.

And then, of course, by contrast, this is Dave totally in his element here.

is what it's all about.

Dan's left with Jen, and Dave, he still has to lie.

And man, does he love this.

And it's just interesting that at this stage of the game, Dave has been through

everything in the movie business. He's really, in a sense, had every job that

you can have in the movie business, starting as a publicist and moving

everything, writing ad copy, writing scripts, designing posters, producing,

writing, directing.

He's done everything.

And it all ends up back on the lot, which is where he started.

And I think this is what he loves more than anything else, to be honest with

you. Oh, I think so, too. This is his passion, no question.

Although he still, you know, attends film festivals and showings of his

any chance he gets, he really does enjoy speaking about it.

This was interesting, and you did a great job shooting all this stuff. You

this is all just one man, one camera, capturing all this madness.

And all of these people, of course, know Dave and love Dave.

All the wrestlers here. In fact, Rick there under the blue mask is, I think,

partners in the carnival. Yes, with Dave. With Dave.

In fact, we had just missed, they did a thing in the ring where they beat on

Dave.

Where the hell were you? Why weren't you here shooting? So it's like, you know,

you really have to be fast with these guys.

I have to say, you haven't experienced all of America until you have seen a

carnival. In the deep south like this, it is really something.

Remember when we tried to film that one guy who was in the flannel cake booth?

He did not want to shoot in that grease.

Well, that or else he was probably wanted in four or five states, one or

other.

Yeah, that was a great shot you got of Dave there. That was very fitting.

And this is a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles where the Sonny's called and

said, you know, we're going to go eat lunch down there with Dan's sister. Why

don't you come meet us?

Because we felt that Dave, who's 10 years younger than Dan, is much more

than Dan is at this point.

And we wanted to balance the movie a little bit. We didn't want just all Dave

action and just Dan sitting down.

So what does Dan do at age 85, 86?

Well, you know, he plays cards and he eats.

So that was what we had to work with. But, on the other hand, the amazing

characters that hang out with him, like this guy, Steve, were just hilarious.

And I think the point of this was to show that, you know, Dan is a very

successful man in that he has a tight family.

He's a real patriarch in the true sense of the word. Exactly. And it's

fascinating. And they're all funny people, like his sister to the right,

His sister, another achiever in that she raised 150 foster, teenage foster boys

over the course of 10 or 15 years.

Single -handedly. Incredible woman. Just because she wanted to.

It's too bad in the time frame that we have here and we have to stick with Dan.

These peripheral characters who are so remarkable like Annie and like Steve.

You know, you wish you had more time to explore their stories.

Well, we did actually in the original cut, but it just didn't make any sense

be there. Well, yeah, we were veering off into too many different avenues.

And here's Dan talking about, you know, a good family man, obviously, very

politely opens and closes the door at this age for his wife and talks about

he knocked her up and had four girls in the process.

I mean, he's just completely an unaffected man, which is very refreshing

film business.

It is interesting how different they are.

Best of friends. But, you know, here Dave and Carol have been together as

as Dan and Margaret. But, you know, they have no children.

And I think it's pretty obvious that Dave, you know, the carnival life is,

know, the substitute for a family, really. I mean, that's his family in a

ways.

This is really the one moment Carol allowed us.

And, you know, she used it so wisely because she really sums it all up with

humor as well.

She was most entertaining and very pithy.

Interview subject.

She's terrific, actually.

Yeah, Carol was a very, very pithy woman.

She was not always certain of the...

the value of the work that Dave was doing.

She had her questions about it. Look at her.

Oh, yeah, she was a formidable woman. No question about it.

And this is where the camera's literally on the lap because she was so

intimidated that once I put it on the lap and looked ahead like I was just a

passenger, she opened up a little bit. Thank God it was in frame.

And, you know, the whole point of the movie here is that after we show this

really warm family relationship segment, like, gosh, you know, these are just

benign old grandfatherly types, really good guys.

Then we just turn the screws a little bit and get into probably the most

controversial part of their careers, which was the splatter films, the

splatters, which are, you know.

Personally, you know, I find objectionable to this day. I mean, you

ridiculous as some of them are.

But, you know, our whole intention here was to have the audience maybe second

-guess their feelings about these guys. Yeah, now we're moving into Act 3 here,

and it's like, well, you thought these guys were cute, grumpy old men. Well,

do you feel about them now when they're ripping out people's hearts and things?

And, of course, it's a...

You know, there are two ways to look at this. I mean, these guys were just

having a good time. And it's part of the great con job that they love so much.

And that they're saying, oh, we're going to shock people. And guess what?

They're going to pay for the privilege of being shocked.

And the reality is we're just screwing around and having a good time.

Except Dan. Dan didn't like these movies. No, Dan did not approve of this,

really. It didn't, of course, stop him from taking in the money.

But he was not...

Behind these. But, you know, Dan was not involved in the Gore films.

And unfortunately, because of time limitations and such, we really didn't

into Herschel Gordon -Lewis, who is really identified with Blood Feast, even

more so than Dave is. I mean, Dave was, of course, a partner in the whole

operation.

But Herschel went on to make a lot more of those films, the Gore films,

after their partnership had split up and Dave moved out west to hook up with

Dan. And then Herschel Gordon -Lewis went out on his own and kept making the

Gore films.

That was a conscious decision we made editorially, which was the second you

up the can of worms of who made all these movies, even Herschel, which in

hindsight might have been an oversight. Perhaps we should have mentioned it in

the body of the movie that Herschel did make these. I mean, granted.

But for the most part, it was a very difficult situation because we were

to focus on two individuals who happened to make movies.

I mean, that was the main thrust of the movie. The second you start talking

about Herschel, you need to go here and there and here. Right, and Herschel's

his own story, you know.

And then suddenly you get into a very unwieldy situation where, you know, it's

not the story you intended to tell. This was never intended to be a

comprehensive look at the genre of exploitation.

That you'd want to do a ten -part series, you know, before. Or at least

Grindhouse, The Forbidden World of Adults. Yeah, buy the book.

answers a lot of those questions.

But, yeah, and it's funny because of the fact that we didn't really mention

Herschel or the footage we had with Dave. He did, of course, talk about

Herschel, but there was no, you know, clean way to bring it in without people

saying, well, what's that all about? Who's he?

It's unfortunate because people think because he's not mentioned that there

something between them, which, you know, there was slightly for a while, but

that's all.

patched up, and both of these guys, of course, have their odd and equal place

film history now.

The one story we decided in the movie to tell from start to finish about a

particular movie, the conception through the marketing and success of Blood

Feast. And I don't know what the reality of it is.

You're remaking Blood Feast.

Well, yeah, I've heard that for years. We'll see what happens. I think they're

actually doing it now.

The thing is, it's been remade a million times.

I mean, the concept is there. It's a splatter film.

When Dave talks about the opening, you know, the premiere, I think over the

years that line of cars has grown by several miles.

$30 million gross.

Oh, yeah.

That blood piece was terrible. Well, you know what they did? They cut off a...

a pig's head or something like that, wasn't it? I mean, I didn't even see it.

didn't want to see it. In doing research for my book, it was always, there was

this magic number when you'd ask people, how much did it cost to make and market

this movie? And it was like $26 ,000.

I heard $26 ,000 so many times that it seemed to be like the Blood Feast, $26

,000. The Immoral Mr. T's cost $26 ,000. And you know how much that little movie

made in the long run?

It's like Rodriguez's film, El Mariachi. El Mariachi, yeah.

You know, it was a $7 ,000 film. Well, it really wasn't a $7 ,000 film, but

great publicity.

And I remember when Blair Witch came out, Blair Witch Project, Dave called me

up, and he was shocked, offended, and probably completely impressed. He said,

that is the greatest scam I've ever seen in film history, that movie.

And he was, I can't even operate the camera. I think he was horrified and

impressed all at the same time. And envious, very envious. Yeah, I mean, it

Now, this, I have to say, that scene we just saw, I think is the worst example

in the movie of the roughies. And honestly, the splatter films are so

and so obviously fake that they don't bother me as much as some of the

I made what today I don't like to sound too immodest is still considered the

standard roughy, and that was a picture called The Defilers. Even Dan comes out

of this. You know Dave's a little bit more of a rascal, but Dan comes out of

this and says, oh, that was a good picture. That was a good picture.

And all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute. And I have to throw in a two

cents here. This fellow who is the chief defiler, Byron May, was

actually the gaffer on this movie.

And Dave had cast another actor in the lead role, and on the very first day of

shooting, the guy that they hired just couldn't convincingly play such a rat,

such a lousy guy.

And Byron went up to Dave and said, I'm better than this guy. He'd never acted

before. And so Dave gave him the part.

And that's how this guy got his start in Hollywood. And he ended up directing a

number of pictures for Dave later on as B. Ron Elliott

on a space thing and a few other pictures.

But he was like a walk -on. He was just a grip turned maniacal movie actor.

I was putting up the money.

It's interesting. Frank Henenlotter obviously doesn't care for these films

particularly either. I mean, he's not being happy here. He was pretty serious

about and solemn about what these movies were about.

Another thing I liked about Frank a lot was that he loves these films, but he

comes from a very light, almost entertaining level. He likes to keep

Well, you know, you have a choice.

When I was researching Grindhouse, I had to watch an awful lot of direct.

And you have the choice of being appalled or, you know, trying to find

humor in it and kind of laugh it off.

The drag here was that there was just no photographs that we could find of the

interior of their office that they're talking about on Cordova Street.

These guys were not working for posterity, shall we say.

So, unfortunately, as you say, no pictures of the working life down there

Cordova Street, which was too bad.

I mean, there were, you know, these typical shots of the family.

And that's Dan's brother Ed, yeah, on the left.

Who died relatively young.

In fact, Dan doesn't understand why he's still alive, because most people in his

family did pass young.

Now, in theory...

Stacy Walker, of course, and some hardcore TV addicts may recognize Sam

here, who was on an ABC TV series called The Rookies.

This is, at least in theory, everybody says that, including Dave.

He says, you know, that's Sam Melville. He went on to do The Rookies.

You think so?

Maybe we'll hear from Sam Melville. I don't know.

He was quite good in Smell of Honey, Swallow, and Brine. My personal favorite

title.

Dave took such pleasure in trying to get stuff past the censors and past, you

know, what you could get in the newspaper.

And that's what really kept him going. That was the biggest thrill he got out

the business, I think. And he used to, you know, he talked about how they had

legal packages he would send out to theaters that were like do -it -yourself

legal defense kits.

to help the theaters fight censorship violations in their local cities where

they were playing, if they should get into trouble with the censors. They

actually had legal kits.

I mean, they really did blaze the trail for the First Amendment in many ways.

I saw an ad slick that he did for a picture he distributed called The Big

Snatch. And then he had on the slick a whole page of C's.

for the local newspapers to cut out and put over it so the title would be

changed to The Big Catch in your area.

If you have problems with the censors in your areas, cut these out and paste

them over. It's thought of everything, this guy.

And I have to say, of all the mainstream sex films that you

could see, the stuff that was made in the 60s was by far the most.

prurient and strange and perverse.

You know, really much more so than the hardcore stuff that you see today. At

least mainstream stuff.

Here's a classic Dave and Carol moment.

Lesbian scene and a whipping scene.

Doesn't matter what the film is. It doesn't matter what the context is. He's

going to find an excuse to put those two things in there. So in the midst of a

frothy, silly sci -fi comedy, one girl gets whipped.

Some of the transfers, these were like three -quarter inch video transfers we

found in very bad shape.

We had some bad source material to work with, but we did as best we could. we

could with image enhancement here.

But you know what? It doesn't really matter because they were never stellar

-looking movies to begin with. Right, right. Space Thing, the picture directed

by the guy who was the star of The Defilers.

And I remember Dave told me a great story about his wife was the production

designer and came to him with all these elaborate costume designs.

And Dave just threw them all out and she says, don't you respect the director's

vision?

Dave said, the only thing we respect around here is the producer's wallet.

And there he is in all his glory.

This is how I'll probably always think of Dave. Yeah, this is Dave at the

of his career.

And the fabulous she -freak.

And this really is, you know, Dave's...

baby this was this was his opportunity to try to portray his first love which

was the carnival and uh dan still doesn't quite get that i

love this stuff between them how they uh it was a lot of fun getting them to

talk about each other when they were apart as well as just getting the

and they were together oh yeah get them to tell tales on each other from from

long distance was Pretty amusing.

Yeah, hey, hey, Dave, did you know Dan said, oh, that's not true, or I say,

Dan, you know, Dave said that you did this or that. He goes, oh, he's a liar.

He always says that. He's making shit up again. If he doesn't know the real

answer, he'll make it up, and it'll sound better than the real answer, which

thinks is a gift that Dave has.

And then, of course, here's our montage of all their...

Strangest bits, all the coming attractions.

Which is really the essence of their movie making, the coming attractions.

The lurid lures of David F. Friedman.

Dave is one of the greats in copywriting. He truly is. I mean, some

the copy he wrote to sell movies is legendary.

It's pretty amazing stuff.

And then, of course, throwing this stuff up in the trailer.

There might be like five seconds of that in the movie, but Dave makes sure that

he's got the tease working.

The announcer that you hear, he used on all the trailers, and he used to hand

the copy to the announcer to read these trailers.

And he said, you know, I'd have to give him about ten minutes to just stop

laughing, and then he'd record the copy.

And I think this is where Dave really...

This was probably Dave's favorite part of the business was the hustle, selling

the sizzle, not the steak, as he says here.

And he was truly a gifted copywriter. And in this little section here, he

mentions Kroger Babb in passing, which I think a lot of people won't know who

Kroger Babb is, but he was sort of Dave's mentor, a legendary.

a con man, producer, distributor, who made a picture called Mom and Dad in the

1940s that was the most successful independent movie ever made in this

really. And it was all showmanship. It was a dreadful movie that featured a

birth of a baby at the end. But Dave went out on the road with Kroger Babb to

sell that thing, to roadshow it, and that's where he learned all the tricks

the trade from Babb, who's a whole story in his own right.

This ethereal look is courtesy of perhaps the brightest, sharpest day in

Angeles history when we shot this in December.

And, you know, you lean a little heavily on this camera technology thinking it's

going to get whatever you need, but the fact that it got the skin tones was

amazing to us.

And here's Frank after a three -hour interview. I said, let's just have some

fun. Let's watch the movies.

But that whole row behind him of VHSes, imagine there's another row behind those

on the shelves. Incredible. And as part of Dave's classic copywriting, he tried

to convince people in the advertising for Darcy Blows that it was an award

-winning film, or it had the award for best spanking scene from an

organization called ASS, the American Spanking Society.

bestowed their award for best spanking scene on Darcy Blows.

And don't even try to go to the internet and find the organization because I'm

sure it doesn't even exist.

It does not exist. I guarantee it.

And I think this is really portraying who they were and how much fun they had

making these movies.

I mean, they used real bikers. They'd find the bikers. Look at these guys.

had a ball.

Here's Dan in the 60s.

Despite that photograph, I can attest that he was not a stoner in the 50s. No,

nor was Dave, if that would be my guess. No, no.

But, you know, that's another interesting story, is that Dan and Dave

were hip and in their prime in the 60s, and look how old they are now.

with adult theaters all over the country. You will note that Dave's cigar

days is never lit. No. He does not smoke them anymore. It's merely a prop.

It's part of who he is, and he can't get through the day without them. No, no,

no.

Goldfinger. Goldfinger.

Goldfinger. No, the girl in Goldfinger. No, no, no. The Goldfinger was a...

Please believe me, because I...

I've been arguing with you for 25 years on this.

Goldfinger. But here they are. As the New York Times calls it, the Sunshine

of smut. Yeah, there they are.

And this is where they're going around and around, I think, on how they came up

with the name of the pussycat.

We had an interesting effect here. Every time the two of them would get together

in the car, we had a tuba, a solo underneath them.

And we held it until this somewhat seemingly serious conversation digresses

again. And the tuba comes in, and it tells everybody comedy's about to start.

And it works with the audience. It was a great little placement of music.

I love this where Dave whips out his role.

Because the first time I met Dave was in Las Vegas. He was there for the

showman's convention.

And I went up and met him in Vegas. And I got to tell you, man, doing Las Vegas

with Dave when he was still really rolling.

was quite a show because he was known in every casino. He'd walk through the

door, and, Mr. Friedman, good to see you.

He'd just, in passing, throw down 100 and get his chips and blow 30 minutes at

craps table or something.

He really knows his way around.

And this is where Dan made most of his money, which was the Pussycat Theater,

which Dan and Dave started originally downtown L .A., and Dave pretty much

out pretty quickly.

Dan then had it, and then a gentleman by the name of Vince Miranda walked in the

office one day and said, I want to buy your theater chain. Problem is, I don't

have any money.

But Dan listened to him, and Vince Miranda...

became a hugely successful real estate man. Owned 100 buildings in Los Angeles.

When he died, he owned... Dan loves to tell this story. He owed $13 million in

taxes to the IRS when he died. That's how much money he has. Had the key to

city given to him by the mayor of Los Angeles.

And that's where Dan... It was probably Dan's greatest deal. He said, meeting

Dave Freeman and Vince Miranda were my two best deals.

And this is something that would blow people's minds to think how much bricks

and mortar.

was invested in the adult film business just to show the movies. Because this

was only a few years before the invention of the videocassette recorder,

was effectively going to put an end to the pussycat theater chain. But they

scored right when the time was right, and Vince parlayed that theater chain

real estate holdings all over the place that had nothing to do with the adult

film industry.

It was pretty fascinating.

I mean, I guess that kind of sprung up in the mid-'60s and was done, you know,

inside of 10 years, really.

And there were theaters all over the western United States. I forget how many

they had at one point, but it was a lot.

75 or something like that? Yeah, there were theaters actually being built from

the ground up just to show adult -only movies, and that's incredible.

running double features there.

I do remember in those theaters seeing guys masturbating, not overtly, but so

there were guys there masturbating just at the bare breasts, and that is what it

was all about.

I don't think the guys came there.

to see a plot.

And talking about

operating these theaters, he just had the most bemused attitude about the

thing.

This was one of the funny comedic tit -for -tats between Dave and Dan where

talks about how

You know, the unwritten law of never having anyone sit in front of you,

you, or next to you in a movie theater in these kind of theaters.

One day, you know, he says, Dan just took out every other seat.

And we asked Dan about that, and he said, oh, hell.

He said, now, why the hell would I take seats out of the theater? Why would a

businessman take seats out?

And, you know, they went back and forth on that one, but we didn't go there with

that because we had enough of that, and who knows what the truth is? Who knows

what the truth is?

Well, that kind of defines their characters as well. You know, Dan is the

pragmatic businessman, and Dave is the...

is the publicist and the great copywriter, and he knows a good story

tells it.

And Dave, he's a very complex man.

You could tell he could get down with the dirtiest of them to make this

work. And at the same time, he is such a polite and well -mannered man.

Absolutely.

And he sort of held fast to his credo here because they did kind of get

out of the business when Hardcore came in because the tease just wasn't there

anymore. And when he makes that comment about somebody put the third act right

up front and they showed everything, as soon as the curtains parted and the

projector went on, you saw it all. That was very offensive to Dave.

It was against every rule of showmanship, and it really is a big part

reason he got out of the business. Now, in truth, I've got to tell a tale on

Dave. I mean, he did produce a couple of hardcore movies along the way.

He didn't jump out at the first sight of it. He just decided after experiencing

it for himself that that was not something he was interested in.

And here, of course, is Mike, Mike Rainey, who is their current distributor

their films. And this is Mike's vault where he has not only Dave and Dan's

films, but many, many other films that his company, Something Weird Video,

distributes now on DVD and does quite well with it.

And Mike, as Mike himself likes to say, he is the 41st thief.

And this is like some cavern.

Some ancient civilization. If somebody stumbled across this, they would wonder

what this society was all about.

Dan had never seen the vault.

I mean, you know, he's just, he's done with the business.

He's done.

Although they still get royalty checks from Mike because his stuff still sells

all over the world.

Yeah, Dave's hand is much deeper in this at this point than Dan's, for sure.

Dave still travels the world to film festivals where he's honored, all over

world.

And all the stuff that he does with Mike, he kind of has an interest in.

But, of course, Mike's collection of stuff far exceeds just Dan and Dave's

things. I mean, he is amassed.

You know, literally this whole warehouse full of stuff from all kinds of other

filmmakers as well.

He really is sort of the archaeologist of smut, I guess

you'd say.

But he's the man for it.

This was funny. You know, you should comment about the weird little thing

we noticed when we were doing it. Yeah, there was this weird thread through the

entire movie. There were references to schools all the way through.

which was funny to us.

And the simplicity of that billboard that we found right on the way to the

office. On the way to the office, yeah.

Here are the pioneers that allowed people to put sacks up on a billboard.

Here's the street where they did all this stuff, and he says they're still

there. They're really not there any longer. A lot of this, they're pretty

all gone now.

But it's an unknown, fascinating street in film history there.

Yeah, and it's so nondescript, and that was kind of interesting, the way, you

know, you can have these fond memories anywhere.

You know, and these guys, we turned onto Cordova Street, and it was just, it was

so much of nothing.

But they hadn't been there in a long time. They hadn't been there in a long

time. And I've been back there since, and I've seen that, you know, in this

here where it reveals the fact that their den of iniquity has become a

church.

You know, I've been back there on weekdays, and I've looked over, you

cruised by there, and I see, you know.

You know, it's kids smoking joints in the alcove in front of the office that's

the Korean church. You realize it's another world.

This was a going place when they were there.

And there was a lot of film business going on around this street. I mean,

had offices very nearby.

This street was sort of a transport area for the major studios. Like, the prints

would ship out of this street to the theaters for Disney and stuff like that.

it was sort of an industrial side of the movie business.

The popcorn manufacturer, I mean, where they would make giant bags of popcorn

and ship them to the theaters.

That's kind of where this was at the time. And, of course, what they did, you

know, they made them there.

because Dan's father actually built this. Yeah, he bought this property and

built the soundstage and everything right there. And again, that's where

made their money. I mean, the Sunnies would rent the facilities to Disney. I

mean, Disney was his tenant.

See, there's the school thing again.

It popped up everywhere we went. These guys were talking about the dirty

racket. It seemed to be they were standing right across the street from an

elementary school.

We kind of knew when we were shooting that this was the wind -up.

Didn't really necessarily plan it that way. In fact, we had shot this scene

before we went over to see Mike Rainey in the valley.

This was the first place we went to.

But it just seemed in the final analysis that the idea was that they were going

home. I mean, we know that these two greats are in the sunset years.

They walked up and down the street reminiscing, and it just seemed like an

emotional departure point.

I mean, I was hoping that in this last shot, when they're walking away,

that one might catch the metaphor, if you will, of them walking off into the

sunset. It's over. The days are gone.

In a way, when people come up to me and say, yeah, they actually cried when they

walked away.

then then then that makes me feel good because that's that was what the

intention was because it kind of it because i've obviously we've grown fond

them oh yeah and this walking away has a deep deep meaning for me and what it

all represents and you know we get the movies often called a loving look or a

valentine

But it really is. I mean, personally, I think we needed to make a movie about

people we liked. You spend three, four years on something, ultimately, with

marketing and planning.

You better like your subjects.

And they were great here at the end. I mean, they didn't realize this was going

to be the last shot in the picture. But just their dialogue as they walk away,

it just had such the right tone.

So, just technically, we shot it on MiniDV with the X -01 when it first came

out. We worked out the story over a four -month period on Final Cut Pro on a G3

Apple computer.

And we got the story worked out, then we took it over to Keith's place, Motion

Arts. We bumped it directly from the, you know, we took it off the G3 back

MiniDV, and we took that little MiniDV tape.

and dubbed it to Digi -Beta, which is the highest format quality you can get,

and then did the finishing work there and the color correction and inserted

film footage simply because we wanted to stay on a time schedule to get to the

finish line.

And that's pretty much how we produced the movie.

So it was done in ways that hadn't been done before, really.

And it was really sort of in the spirit of the way in which they made their

movies, which we sort of realized in horror as we went through the production

it. And now in the marketing, too.

We're just sort of, you know, using the new technology to go back to the old

ways and keep it independent in the true sense of the word.

But it's been a lot of fun. And, you know, we got a couple of real good

friendships out of it with Dave and Ben. It's been a real pleasure.

Absolutely. And it was, you know, making a movie on your desktop.

Yeah, desktop to big screen.

It's pretty extraordinary.

We used the Avid only to get the film clips in real fast because we just had

get it done. We could have done it on Final Cut if we had the time.

But you can do it now. You can do this at home in your spare time if you've got

a lot of money to lose.

But thanks, Eddie.

Thank you, Ted. Thanks for watching. Bye.