At the Movies with Governor Tom: Better Off Dead

"Two. Dollars. I want my two dollars!"

This was one of the best events I've ever been to. Didn't I just say that a couple weeks ago after the Crazy Heart-Big Lebowski double feature with Jeff Bridges in person? Yeah that was definitely awesome. Hard to say which I enjoyed more. They each tapped into a different part of my movie-loving brain. Certainly Better Off Dead isn't as well made as Crazy Heart or Lebowski, but it is pretty hilarious, even twenty-five years after it came out. Indeed that's why it was screened tonight, the quarter-century anniversary. Just as much as the comedy, my having grown up with this film is obviously another reason I knew tonight would be awesome. Nothing like nostalgia. I never did see Better Off Dead on the big screen when it came out. I wasn't old enough to follow movie release schedules and the critics' reviews, but tonight I learned that, while Better Off Dead started strong, it crashed and burned like Lane Meyer on the K12. The movie made up for that, though, by being on cable all the time, which is how I, like most people, discovered it. It seemed like it was on HBO every other day. I'm not sure, but I think my brothers and I recorded it.

So anyways, I'm sure the nostalgia factor is what brought a lot of people out to watch this on a Sunday night. Although I should say how surprised I was to see a lot of teens and young adults in the crowd. No shit, a lot of folks tonight looked young enough to have been born after this came out. That's interesting as hell. I wonder how they discovered it? I have satellite with some movie channels but haven't come across Better Off Dead very often. Of course they could be John Cusack fans and/or eighties fans. At any rate, interesting. And a pleasant surprise too. Sometimes it seems like only the people who were around when a movie came out are the ones who come to see revivals of it, last Thursday's screening of Dog Day Afternoon being a perfect example. If anyone under, say, my age was in the audience, I didn't see them.

But wait, I haven't gotten to the gravy of tonight's event yet. A whole bunch of people from the film were there in person. Well, four specifically: Director Savage Steve Holland, Curtis "Booger" Armstrong, who plays Lane's best friend Charles De Mar, Diane Franklin (Monique), and rocker girl E.G. Daily, who at the time went as Elizabeth Daily. She's in all of one scene, that high school dance in the middle of the film, performing onstage with her band. She's credited as "herself," which is interesting. I didn't notice that at the time, or if I did, I probably wasn't sure what to make of it. I knew who she was, though. She was Dottie from Pee-wee's Big Adventure. That was the first time I saw her. I had no idea she was a rocker. When I saw her in Better Off Dead, I remember thinking how random and peculiar it was that she'd just show up with such a small role as a singer at a high school dance. Now I get it: Rock'n'roll was, and still is, her main gig. So she was there tonight, which was cool because Big Adventure is another of my favorite eighties flicks.

But wait, I still haven't gotten to the most awesome part about tonight. While they did do a Q&A after the film, they also did commentary during the film. Now that was a first for me. I've watched DVDs with commentary, but to see a flick in the theater with people from the film sitting up front with mics providing commentary? Now that was something special. As with the DVD commentary, you should only do something like this with a movie you've seen a lot. I have a feeling some of the folks in the audience, like the younger folks I mentioned above, had never seen this before. They must've been the ones who were like, "Turn it up!" The Aero staff had turned down the sound somewhat so we could hear the four up front. It was kind of awkward at first. Even with their mics, it was sometimes hard for me to hear them, and mind you I was sitting only a few rows behind them. Eventually, though, after some fiddling, they found the sonic sweet spot. It was an awesome time, I have to say. This one woman in the back kept saying how awesome the soundtrack is every time another song played in the film. That's cool because I had this soundtrack on vinyl in the late eighties when I lived with Mom in North Carolina. I wore that thing out.

If you haven't seen Better Off Dead, well, where have you been? If you're over forty, I suppose it's possible. You have your own childhood movies. But if you're my age (or younger, judging by tonight's audience), this movie's hard to miss. Story's simple enough. It's set in this fictional Northern California town called Greendale. Lane's in high school, a senior, I think, although it's never said. He's got a seven-year-old kid brother named Badger, who's far more intelligent than he is and much better with women. Dad's played by the brilliant David Ogden Stiers. I think he's supposed to be an attorney. And there's Mom played by Kim Darby, whom I haven't seen in much else, although she was in a season seven episode of The X-Files, so that's cool.

The plot kicks off at the trials for the high school ski team. The captain of the team is this blond stud named Roy Stalin. I didn't appreciate the significance of that name at the time, but I sure do now. Roy Stalin. Love it. Anyway, Stalin intentionally puts down the wrong time for Lane at the trials to keep him off the team. And then he steals Lane's girlfriend Beth. Lane had been dating Beth for six months and was head over heels for her. This is established from the get-go with how Lane sleeps with a picture of her and has a photo of her on every hanger in his closet. I shouldn't say Stalin steals Beth. She dumps Lane because Stalin's better looking, skis better, and drives a nicer car.

Thus ensues Lane's quest to win her back, which includes facing up to the K12, this one mountain that's like the local Everest. Only a few people have dared ski it, and most of them were hurt pretty bad. Along the way Lane meets Monique, the French exchange student across the street living with the Smiths. At first he's completely blind to her attraction to him, he's so focused on winning Beth back, but I think we all know where it finally goes. No, it's not exactly an innovate plot. Yes, some of the characters are stereotypes, like Beth and Stalin. But we don't watch stuff like this expecting Citizen Kane. Like most romantic comedies, it's middle of the road, but the comedy itself is gold. "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that." See? One of the best lines ever. I should point out, though, that those stereotypes exist for a reason. When I was growing up, I knew one or two Roy Stalins, these good-looking guys who felt cocky and confident enough to make fun of other people and who, despite being flaming pricks, always landed the hot blondes. Todd and Amber were the Stalin and Beth in sixth grade for me. Assholes.

Let's get to the commentary and Q&A. I learned a lot of interesting stuff tonight. For starters, speaking of Roy Stalin, that guy who plays him, Aaron Dozier, now lives in Florida and teaches yoga. I looked him up on IMDb. He guest-starred on a TV show just before Better Off Dead. Then he did that, and then he dropped off the map. Savage Steve Holland, who was a great talker and very humble, said that at the time he auditioned for Better Off Dead, Aaron was working as a busboy at Gladstone's, this really nice seafood restaurant in Malibu. "Best busboy at Gladstone's," he told Savage Steve at the audition. He also briefly dated E.G. Daily. She talked about that more than once tonight. Apparently he told her the key was to have a precocious smile and a deep tan. "A precocious smile and a deep tan," E.G. would say almost every time Stalin was on screen.

The blondie who plays Beth is still acting. She lives in New Mexico. Savage Steve said he called her about tonight's event. She really wanted to be there but couldn't get out of family obligations. I remember when Better Off Dead came out, I'd just seen her in the first Nightmare on Elm Street. But then I didn't see her much after that. She's been working fairly steadily, but I suppose her taste in film and TV doesn't quite overlap with mine. She did guest-star in a season one episode of Dexter, which is awesome. Dexter's one of my faves. She's done a ton of TV guest spots over the years, so it's possible I saw her but didn't recognize her.

As for Kim Darby, Curtis Armstrong related a funny story about her the first time she appeared onscreen, during the breakfast scene where she serves boiled bacon to her man. Apparently Curtis and Kim spoke all of once during the production. She told him that in Hollywood everyone would be out to destroy him. And then she went into her dressing room and never spoke to him again. Weird, huh? Curtis is still working pretty steadily so I guess he was never destroyed. And Kim's done all right for herself. She started strong as a teenager guest-starring on The Fugitive and Star Trek and all that and has been going strong since. She was pushing forty when Better Off Dead came along, with over twenty years of Hollywood experience under her belt. Her thing about people destroying you was obviously informed by experience, but it does make you wonder what the hell happened to her. I remember seeing an ad in the LA Times Calendar section a few years ago advertising an acting class she was teaching in Hollywood.

The most surprising thing I learned tonight had to do with John Cusack, whose absence at the screening, both physically as well as in the anecdotes shared by Savage Steve and the cast members, was the white elephant in the auditorium until someone asked point blank: "Where's Cusack?" Savage Steve's response? "Cusack doesn't like me, man." Apparently John Cusack hates this film. He did two films with Savage Steve back to back, Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. It was after shooting One Crazy Summer that Better Off Dead came out in theaters, in the fall of '85. After he saw it, Cusack went up to Savage Steve and told him it was the worst movie he'd ever seen. He felt like he'd been made to look like a fool and said he'd never trust Savage Steve as a director ever again. "Don't ever talk to me," Cusack apparently said before stalking off. Savage Steve, needless to say, was deflated. He was only twenty-five at the time and so didn't have the perspective that comes with age and which would've made it at least somewhat easier to get over that slap in the face. The lemon juice was that Better Off Dead did a belly flop at the box office. One Crazy Summer didn't do much better, after which Steve said he was in film jail. It was weird. He would eat lunch at the Fox cafeteria, but he wasn't working. Eventually that changed. Three years later he got to do How I Got into College, starring Anthony Edwards and Lara Flynn Boyle. That marked his final foray into feature filmmaking. Since 1990, Savage Steve's been living in TV land. He directed episodes of Encyclopedia Brown, VIP, Lizzie McGuire, and a bunch more. And some TV movies as well. The man's working.

I have to say I take exception to Cusack's attitude. And I think many in the audience were equally taken aback. How could he not have known the kind of movie he was making? I assume he read the script. He's in almost every scene. How could he have been so surprised at the final result? During the very first scene, Sunday morning when Lane's sleeping in bed wearing his ski goggles next to a photo of his girl Beth, Steve said Cusack quickly became impatient with how long it was taking. He'd have to lie there while Savage Steve and the crew were setting up the lights and whatnot. And I think they had to tear down part of the wall behind the bed. Something like that. It was a small room so they needed the space. Anyway, that sort of indicates right there that Cusack's an asshole. I mean he hadn't done much at that point. Sixteen Candles. A couple other small roles. Better Off Dead brought him to a whole new level. It was only after that when he landed stuff like Say Anything. E.G. Daily said something to that effect during the Q&A. She was more diplomatic about it than I would've been. Again, the film flopped, so I can sort of understand Cusack's attitude. Plus he was barely twenty, just a stupid kid. But today Better Off Dead's a classic. Look at the audience turnout tonight. People love it. Don't you think he should renege on being an asshole and maybe apologize to Savage Steve? Try to have a sense of fuckin' humor?

Curtis Armstrong doesn't remember Cusack being unhappy. He said the one and only time he sensed any insecurity was during the One Crazy Summer shoot. The two of them were hanging out with Savage Steve, Bobcat Goldthwait, and some other comedian. Curtis referred to those three as the smartest people in the world. And they were riffing amongst themselves, being funny and brilliant, while Curtis and Cusack sat to the side feeling lost. They just couldn't keep up. Cusack got agitated and left. That's the one and only time Curtis noticed Cusack's insecurity. I dunno. The man's had nothing but steady work since Better Off Dead. It just baffles the shit out of me that he could still maintain an attitude of being betrayed by the director who essentially gave his career a boast. Funny how he could complain about Better Off Dead, and yet willingly sign on for schlock like 2012. Talk about an obvious case of doing it for the money. What an embarrassment. And I bet he's still on speaking terms with Roland Emmerich. Of course the eminent tent pole film director from Germany has already proven he's the master of noise and spectacle, so I suppose if you're an actor agreeing to work with him, you know what you're getting. And if at any time you feel like you're wasting your time and talent, you need only look at that paycheck. Money talks. That adage applies to every nook and cranny of life, but it was practically born in Hollywood. I wonder if Cusack's hard to put up with. I've noticed he's never dated a woman very long. He's never married. In an interview with TIME a few years ago to promote Must Love Dogs, he came across as a rude prick. At the time I just chalked it up to his not wanting to promote a film you could tell from the previews wasn't going to be very good. But now that I see what he was like even as a teenager, maybe being an asshole is just in his very nature. I don't mean to beat this to death, but Better Off Dead is a childhood staple, I wasn't exaggerating about that. Cusack's opinion of it feels like a betrayal.

One thing you never think about when watching it, like most movies, is where they actually shoot the scenes. I certainly never thought about it as a kid, but since then I've been through film school and have gained a greater appreciation for the labor that goes into the craft. One thing I could tell right off the bat in several scenes was that it was in the Valley. Or I should say, a valley. They didn't film it in the San Fernando Valley but in the next one over, San Gabriel. Of the three schools they used for Lane's high school, the one they used the most was in Monrovia. The Meyer family's house was in Pasadena. They had to go out of their way for that flashback scene where Lane first meets Beth, as well as the scene where Lane's chased in the night by all those paperboys. Both of those scenes were shot at Malibu Lakes. If you live in the L.A. area, you know going from the San Gabriel Valley to Malibu is a pretty sincere drive, especially if you're in charge of a film crew with all that gear. In that flashback scene, by the way, that's Savage Steve's sister playing Beth's friend.

Speaking of crews, all of the skiing scenes were filmed somewhere in Utah. I forget the name of the mountain. And Savage Steve wasn't part of it. It was all shot by a second unit. This helps explain how he shot the whole film in thirty days flat. At different times tonight Diane Franklin and Curtis Armstrong talked about their experiences on that mountain. They pretty much said the same thing: It was so unbelievably cold they couldn't feel their faces. The stunt double for John Cusack was named Lane. The stunt double for Diane was nicknamed Kareem because of her very dark tan and afro. You'd never notice it otherwise, but when Savage Steve kept going, "And there's Kareem," you could tell. Diane Franklin didn't have a tan in the film, but if you look closely, that stunt woman wasn't tan so much as burned. And her hair really looked like a 'fro. Too funny. The stuff you notice if you're the one making the film. Although what's really funny is how Savage Steve never noticed that the stepladder was unnecessary for the scene where the dad's putting a big red bow on the newly repaired garage windows on Christmas morning. It starts as a close-up of him giving the windows one last polish, then affixing the bow. And then there's a wide shot of him folding up a stepladder before walking back into the house. That's when you see he's taller than the windows. Someone from the audience was like, "He wouldn't need the stepladder!" I think it was the same woman from the back who was the big soundtrack fan. Anyway, when she said that, Savage Steve was like, "You know, you're right. I never noticed that before." Really? One inconsistency that bothered him was during the ski trials in the beginning. When they were shooting at the foot of the mountain, it was snowing. But on the summit it wasn't. That seems like one of those obvious errors, but you know what? I never noticed it before tonight. Isn't that funny? Yet if I were in Savage Steve's shoes, it probably would've bothered the heck out of me. Another goof that's always bugged him was during the dinner scene when the dad's telling Lane that something needs to be done about the corpse of a car on their lawn. While he's talking, the wife is serving everyone this horrible green slime with raisins in it. "You like raisins," she says before dishing it out. When she spoons it onto Lane's plate, the slime spreads across it until it's flat as a pancake. And then cut to a close-up of it as it slides off the plate by itself. Suddenly it's no longer flat at all but is more like a clump. Again, yeah I noticed it tonight, but like the snow, I never would've noticed it had Savage Steve not pointed it out. Judging by the reaction of the audience when he pointed it out--"Ohhhhhhhh!"--it seems I'm far from alone. As for how Savage Steve got the slime to move by itself, he put a little remote control car under it. That's why he had to clump it up like that, otherwise the poor car would've been smothered. Savage Steve said that scene required the most takes, something like ten, because David Ogden Stiers couldn't stop laughing. I wonder if Cusack ever laughed.

This being his first feature, Savage Steve put a lot of himself in the story. He grew up in Greenwich with a lawyer dad who never smiled and was the furthest thing from hip. He put a lot of his dad in David Ogden Stiers's character, who was originally supposed to be played by Bob Barker, which would've made an almost completely different movie. Bob Barker? Anyways, Savage Steve said the only time his dad smiled or laughed was during Woody Allen movies. That's one of the staples of his childhood. They'd make the trip to New York City on the weekends to see Woody Allen movies. Apparently Dad's sense of humor was limited to Woody Allen and nothing else. Kind of ironic considering that Woody's put David Ogden Stiers in several of his films. As for high school, Savage Steve said he felt like he was the only one who didn't get it. That definitely explains that one scene in the classroom where everyone's eager to answer questions, and how they've all done those elaborate projects while Lane just has a piece of paper folded together with gum. Even the Howard Cosell bit comes from real life. Apparently in high school he really did know a kid who, as he said tonight, was "cursed to sound like Howard Cosell." The Cosell voice in the film, by the way, was dubbed by Rich Little. That's awesome. This would've been around the time he was doing Not Necessarily the News on HBO, one of my favorite shows from the eighties.

By the time he was in high school, Savage Steve had already earned the Savage nickname. It came from an incident in elementary school when he beat up this kid during a soccer game. He didn't really beat him up, just kicked him once when the kid was laying on the ground, knocking out a tooth. He felt terrible about it afterward, but his friends never let him live it down. They mockingly called him Savage Steve, and the name stuck.

So how was he able to direct not one but two feature films by the time he was twenty-five? Actually it's pretty much how most young feature directors get their chance: A short film that attracts just the right pair of eyes at the right time. I can't remember if Savage Steve mentioned where he went to film school. It wasn't at one of the big ones. I think it was Michigan. He just wanted to get as far away from Greenwich as possible. Anyway so he made a short film and submitted it to a contest. It was based on a birthday party when he was eleven or twelve. Well, it was supposed to have been a party, but the only people there were him, his sister (the one mentioned above in the Malibu Lakes scene), and a drunk clown. When it actually happened to him, it was depressing as hell, but like a lot of great artists, he mined his sad experiences for great art. So he made a short film about a kid with no one at his party but a drunk clown. It was screened before a feature film at some festival or other. Apparently a lot of important people were at this screening to see whatever the feature was. Steve had absolutely no hopes for it at all. The screening was on a Friday night. He spent the weekend moping, walking along the beach, feeling like he had no future. He did that all day the following Monday as well. When he got home Monday afternoon, around two dozen messages were waiting for him on his answering machine from producers who'd been at the Friday night screening. Including Henry "the Fonz" Winkler, which is awesome. Savage Steve calls him the nicest person in Hollywood. Too bad he didn't sign with him.

At first his parents couldn't wrap their heads around their kid writing and directing a feature. Savage Steve said they didn't believe him until he flew them out to hang out on the set. Only then, confronted with all those big trucks and all the gear and free food, did they appreciate what their son was doing. Speaking of the set, one funny little tidbit I learned tonight is that the Meyers' next-door neighbor, who's always trimming the hedges, was actually Savage Steve's cameraman. You've got that Christmas morning scene when Lane tries to kill himself in the garage with carbon monoxide poisoning and ends up backing up through the garage door just after his dad repaired the damage done to it by the paperboy. His dad had just come out to show his wife the repaired door, and they're both wearing those animal outfits she got them. Anyway, after Lane destroys the door, we see the neighbor trimming the hedges yet again, this time wearing the same aardvark outfit Lane's dad is wearing. Well, apparently that was the same outfit. Exactly the same. They made David Ogden Stiers take it off and the cameraman put it on, and then edited the scene together to make it look like they were each wearing their own aardvark outfit.

Speaking of the paperboy, that's another thing from Savage Steve's childhood. There was this paperboy in his neighborhood who would sit on his bike across the street and just stare at his house whenever Savage Steve didn't have the money to pay him. Now the paperboy in the film, Johnny, that's not his voice when he talks. Savage Steve wanted him to have a deep husky voice that would belie his pre-pubescence. Unfortunately the kid he cast, Demian Slade, had the right tough-kid look but couldn't pull off a deep voice. Savage Steve told him not to worry about it, just go through his lines, and they'd fix it in post production. So in post they got this other kid, who could effect a deep voice even though he was about the same age, to dub the lines. You do get to see him briefly. During that nighttime shoot in Malibu Lakes when Lane's being chased by all the paperboys, that kid who did the dubbing's one of them. He's the second one you see. First you see Johnny, and then Lane tries walking in the other direction and runs into another one, this kid with a 'fro who sounds a lot like Johnny. Again, I noticed it tonight only because Savage Steve pointed it out, but I never would've figured it out otherwise. One thing that's kind of funny is that the paperboy chase scene was filmed in Malibu, right after Lane leaves that high school dance....which was shot in Monrovia, a good hour's drive away. So he's walking away from the school, and then cut to him approaching his car in Malibu. Of course you have no idea he's in Malibu, but I'm just saying. The magic of editing, huh? Truth is stuff like that happens in movies and TV all the time. That kid who played Johnny, by the way, Demian Slade, seems to have worked fairly steadily for another ten years after this, into his early twenties, and then dropped off the map. Someone asked Savage Steve where he is today. He had no idea.

Same goes for Scooter Stevens, the kid who played Lane's genius kid brother Badger. It's funny, he seems all calm during the film, but behind the scenes apparently both he and his parents were worrywarts. One of my favorite scenes from the film is when he shows off that laser gun when Lane tells him to stop playing around with "kid-stuff garbage." Before they shot that, Scooter and his parents were worried about the prop that would explode when he pointed the gun at it. And you had all those hot women Badger landed while Lane was crashing and burning at the high school dance. Savage Steve said Scooter was less concerned with the women. That was more a parental concern. Scooter didn't work as steadily as Demian Slade did. He seems to have dropped off the map in the late eighties.

Besides John Cusack, probably the biggest success story from Better Off Dead is Dan Schneider, that big mutha who plays Ricky Smith. During the commentary Savage Steve said that Dan improvised a lot of those little golden moments in the film. Like during the one lunch scene when he pulls Monique closer, he improvised the grabbing of her chocolate pastry. And after the school dance? When he jumps feebly after the balloon? He made that up. That's awesome, that's one of those funny moments that never gets old. Right after he finished this film, he landed a part on Head of the Class, one of my favorite eighties TV shows. Dan was a regular on that. It lasted a good five seasons, over a hundred episodes. That's some nice coinage. But after that he moved more into writing and producing with a focus on kids' stuff. Eventually he landed at Nickelodeon. Guess what? Today Dan Schneider is the head honcho at Nickelodeon. A studio mogul in other words. He doesn't just sit back and let others do the work, though. He's still very much involved in writing and producing. Another cool thing is that to this day he still gets recognized as Ricky Smith. Literally not a week will go by when someone doesn't recognize him as Ricky. Is that awesome or what? And again, it speaks to the durability of Better Off Dead, which is why I'm sore at Cusack for being so down on it. He's done a ton of stuff that's forgettable, but I bet he didn't get mad at those directors. Seriously, it's still influential today, as Diane Franklin pointed out. Better Off Ted, anyone?

I haven't seen Diane Franklin much since Better Off Dead. I remember she guest-starred on an episode of Murder, She Wrote in the late eighties, but that's about it. Oh and she had a role in the second Bill & Ted movie, although I don't think she ever talked because she was supposed to be one of those Medieval girls Bill & Ted landed in the first film. I guess I'm just watching the wrong stuff because she has been working pretty steadily in film, TV, and theater. I wish she had talked about her French accent in Better Off Dead and how she mastered it. Was it just a matter of coaching? Was she already fluent? She never said. I remember being kind of surprised when I found out she was an American when I saw that Murder, She Wrote episode. I just assumed she was French in real life. Diane is the anti-Cusack in that she's grateful for having worked on the film. She wishes she could work with Savage Steve more often. And she had a great time on the set, "falling in love" with Cusack, Curtis Armstrong, Dan Schneider. Those cafeteria scenes were tough for her to shoot because she kept cracking up. There's this one scene when she's sitting next to Ricky. He pulls her chair closer to him while she smiles over at Charles De Mar....who then snorts his Jell-O. They had to shoot that a whole bunch of times before she could stop laughing. One thing that surprised her was the hand shaking the soda beneath the table during a later cafeteria scene when Roy Stalin's taunting Cusack. Lane and Monique are sitting together at lunch, and Stalin and his cronies walk by. Then you see a hand under the table shaking a soda can. Cut to Monique opening it so some of it sprays Stalin. During the screening tonight Diane was like, "Whose hand is that?" She's awesome. After the screening, while the others sat up front to take questions, she stood over to the side with the coat she wore as Monique. People lined up and put it on to have their photo taken with her. See? I like that. She knows that without the fans, you're nothing. Memo to Cusack. She's a few years older than Dan Schneider and Cusack, late forties or so. She's got a couple kids, an eleven-year-old son and a teenage daughter who was there tonight. She's a budding actress apparently, having landed a small part on Flight of the Concords. Diane related a funny incident that happened last year when her son was watching TV late one night. On came The Last American Virgin, Diane's first film, when she was like twenty or so. It's not the kind of movie you want a ten-year-old watching, especially if the ten-year-old's your kid, so suffice it to say it was kind of awkward. Anyway, my eyebrows perked when Diane mentioned she was working on a memoir. Really? Now that should be interesting. Seeing's how I haven't been following her at all since the eighties, I'm curious about the kinds of experiences she's had that would warrant a memoir.

It was inevitable someone would ask E.G. Daily about working with Pee-wee Herman, which is all the more apropos since Paul Herman is literally, as I write this, doing a Pee-wee Herman show downtown at the Nokia Theatre. E.G.'s already seen it and thinks it's hilarious. She's always been a big Pee-wee fan. No, they didn't ask her to be in the show as Dottie, but no matter, she doesn't have the time thanks to her music and all the voiceover she does for cartoons. Hearing Savage Steve talk about filming at Malibu Lakes reminded E.G. of the 1983 film Valley Girl, which she was in. When she landed the role, she was told her character was supposed to be, ya know, a Valley girl, and that she should make her voice sound like that. Only problem was, she had no idea what that meant. E.G.'s a self-described Hollywood rocker girl, practically born and raised on the Sunset Strip. When she was cast in the film, she didn't know the first thing about the Valley. She'd never had a reason to go there. But she did know a thing or two about Malibu. She knew people from that area. Without telling the producers, she made her voice sound like her Malibu friends, whatever that means. And apparently the producers didn't mind and never asked her about it. "I was playing someone from Malibu the whole time," she boasted. She wasn't born Elizabeth Daily. E.G. said she comes from a Jewish family and was accordingly born with a Jewish- or German-sounding name. She didn't tell us what the name was, but apparently it didn't make for a good stage name.

Curtis Armstrong may be the oldest of the Better Off Dead bunch. Well, if you don't count the parents of course. But whereas Cusack, Savage Steve, E.G. Daily, Dan Schneider, and Diane Franklin were all born in the sixties, ol' Curtis was born in the early fifties. Wow, you know what that means? The age I am now? Thirty-three? That's about how old he was when he made Better Off Dead. Which means he's what now? Late fifties? I never would've guessed he was that old. Like Diane Franklin, he kept some of the costumes and props from this film, as well as from One Crazy Summer. He said he almost never does that. It was thanks to Better Off Dead that he landed the recurring role on Moonlighting as Herbert Viola. I watched Moonlighting but forgot he was in that. Then it all came back to me. Herbert. Didn't that secretary, Agnes, have sort of a thing for him? Speaking of which, just to show you what a small world it is, the woman who played Agnes, Allyce Beasley, was married at the time to Vincent Schiavelli....who played the math teacher in Better Off Dead. They were only married three years, and they divorced while Moonlighting was still going.

As a movie buff, I like trivia like that. Savage Steve had more for us. During that one cafeteria scene where Lane takes the guy's roller skates and puts them on before hitting on cheerleader Chris Cummins, there's that guy standing behind him in line wearing those huge dark glasses. When Lane crashes and burns with Chris Cummins, he turns around to see this guy aiming his plastic knife at him, which makes Lane stumble out of the line, fall down, and rip off Chris Cummins' cheerleading outfit. Well, that guy with the knife was apparently the producer's son. It wasn't in the script that someone was leering behind Lane with a plastic knife, but the producer wanted Savage Steve to give the kid a part, so he made that up on the spot. Again, like those other improvised scenes, like Dan Schneider jumping after the balloon, that's one of the best moments in the film that never gets old. And remember when Lane has to go take Joanne Greenwald to the dance? The girl with the "big antenna on her face?" He gets to her house, and she makes him write her a check for what she estimates he would've paid had they actually gone to dinner. Well, when he first knocks on the door, you can hear a huge dog barking and jumping up and down against the glass. That was no dog. The barking noises were thrown in during post. And the movement against the glass was the producer's wife with a stuffed animal. Hilarious, huh? I'll never look at that scene the same way again.

Same goes for the scene when Lane's imagining the hamburger coming alive and making a female hamburger in a mock Frankenstein style. During that scene Savage Steve used a Van Halen song, "Everybody Wants Some." Someone from the audience asked how, with such a small budget, he was able to get the rights. Get this: Savage Steve said that when he asked Van Halen for permission, they were going through a messy breakup with David Lee Roth. "Everybody Wants Some" was one of the songs they did while he was their lead singer so technically Savage Steve should've probably gotten Roth's permission as well. But the Van Halen brothers let Savage Steve use the song for free as a "fuck you to Roth," Savage Steve said. And then he worked with them again on One Crazy Summer. Savage Steve said that Eddie Van Halen kept asking him if he'd slept with Demi Moore. "So have you fucked her? Have you fucked her yet?" No, he never did. You can tell he's not that kind of director.

When I was watching this on TV all the time in the late eighties, I didn't know who the mailman was. As it turns out, Taylor Negron's done quite well for himself. His background is standup comedy and improv. He's still good pals with Savage Steve. And he hangs with Whoopi Goldberg. Which makes sense because I swear he was on Hollywood Squares about ten years ago. It was when Whoopi was running it. Bobcat Goldthwait was a regular, as was Jeffrey Tambor and that big guy, Brad Garrett, who played Raymond's brother on Everybody Loves Raymond. I used to watch that every night when I got home from work while I was eating dinner. It came on after Entertainment Tonight. I'm positive Taylor Negron was on that. And he's been working steadily besides. Like Dan Schneider, his focus is on the younger audience. Curtis Armstrong's still in touch with him. Apparently Taylor lives in an awesome chateau in the south of France. "Like R. Crumb," Savage Steve said, referring to the awesome artist and illustrator.

It was inevitable someone would ask about the scene during the school dance when Curtis Armstrong's character Charles laughs hysterically. It's one of the best scenes in the film. My favorite for sure. Lane and Charles are sitting at the table looking all mopey. Stalin walks by with Beth and his cronies and tells Lane he better shave "her" (the stubble-faced Charles) a little closer before he kisses her good-night. And that's when Charles cracks up. And then he does it again a couple scenes later. Savage Steve said the way it was written, Charles De Mar takes whipped cream off the holiday cake and snorts it. And that's when he starts laughing uncontrollably. They bought several crates of whipped cream but gave it all to hobos before they could shoot the scene. "I'm not proud of it," Savage Steve said. So that's why in the film Charles rolls on his ass for no apparent reason. Later on in the Q&A when they were asked about their influences, Curtis Armstrong talked about Laurel and Hardy. His laughing scene is a direct descendant, so to speak, of Laurel's laughing gags. And of course Laurel and Hardy were awesome at improv, like all great comedians. Curtis did some improv in Better Off Dead, like at the end after Lane beats Stalin on the K12. The Asian Howard Cosell sound-alike is talking on his mic, looking slightly off-camera, presumably at a news camera or something, as he's trying to interview Lane. And then Charles De Mar stands close and smiles at the "camera." Savage Steve said Curtis decided to do that on the spot. There was no camera there. Curtis cracked up watching himself do that.

Woody Allen was the biggest influence on Savage Steve, which just goes to show he has at least that to be thankful for about his Greenwich upbringing. If not for his dad, he wouldn't've been exposed to the Woodmeister so early and so often. This helps explain Lane's predilection for suicide attempts. He's failed in love and thinks life isn't worth living anymore. He's not all jittery and neurotic like Woody's characters, but he is a fatalist like them. Savage Steve said part of the reason this film didn't sit well with critics was because he had Lane attempting suicide several times throughout the film: In the garage (hanging), jumping off the overpass, the garage again (carbon monoxide). It's another of those obvious things you don't notice until it's pointed out to you. He's right, Lane does try to do himself in an awful lot, but it's not disturbing, I suppose, because of the film's cartoon-like humor. Heck, Savage Steve even made a little cartoon for the opening credits. Lane likes to draw cartoons. When he scratches the chalk board accidentally, his classmates' hair literally stands up, like you'd normally see in a cartoon. And people fall off cliffs in cartoons all the time. And get blown up. Johnny falls off the K12 at the end and lives. Ricky Smith's mom blows up at the dinner table and lives. I suspect the critics knew all of this but felt an obligation to be mean for political correctness.

When someone asked why Better Off Dead hasn't gotten the royal DVD/Blu-ray treatment, Savage Steve said no one knows who owns it. Now that's weird, isn't it? No one knows who owns it? Someone's got to know. I did see it on one of the movie channels a few years ago. How did that channel get to show it? They must've gotten permission from someone. Or did they? If ownership is in dispute, can they just show it whenever? Anyway, that's pretty frustrating, as I'm sure Savage Steve and the gang would do an awesome commentary. I bet Dan Schneider would participate. In fact, I bet everyone from the film wouldn't mind participating in the commentary. They all seem like decent people. Except Cusack of course. Fuck Cusack.