transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:57] And action.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] Hello and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a warning to all parents that it is your job to shape your child into a good person, and the only time you can do it is when they are a child. And if you fail, your child may be incinerated in a goose egg garbage inferno, and it will be your fault. And also candy. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with Chris Winterbauer. Chris, what do you have for us today?

Speaker 3:
[01:31] Today, Lizzie, we are diving into a movie that begs the question, what if we did seven in a chocolate factory?

Speaker 2:
[01:38] But with kids.

Speaker 3:
[01:39] And we are joined by a very special guest. So we are talking about the 1971 adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will get into the title. But we have an incredible guest today. We are joined by the man behind a podcast I've been binging for the last seven days, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, which is amazing and we will have posted on our Patreon and whatnot before this episode. So hopefully you guys have listened. Please welcome Aaron Tracy to the podcast. Aaron Tracy is a best-selling writer, producer. He's worked across nearly every form of entertainment, from television to audio dramas to narrative non-fiction. As we mentioned, he is the creator and writer and narrator, great voice, of The Secret World of Roald Dahl, which is a remarkable look into the Zelig-esque, I would say life of the world's most or one of the world's most successful children's books authors. Aaron, welcome to What Went Wrong.

Speaker 1:
[02:34] Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. That was quite an introduction. Zelig, you're absolutely right. I should have said Zelig. I think I said Forrest Gump on my show, but he was the Zelig figure.

Speaker 3:
[02:43] It's a more contemporary reference.

Speaker 2:
[02:45] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[02:45] It's fair.

Speaker 1:
[02:46] I prefer Zelig.

Speaker 3:
[02:47] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[02:48] No, I appreciate you listening to the show.

Speaker 3:
[02:49] It's an amazing miniseries that you think, how many episodes have been released as of today? Is it nine so far or is it?

Speaker 1:
[02:56] Nine so far.

Speaker 3:
[02:58] You've listened to the first episode and it ends with, effectively, and it's going to get crazier. Then that's how you end every single episode and yet somehow Dahl ups himself in every episode. We're going to get into the details of his life in a few moments, but I want to start, Aaron, with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Let's start quickly, Lizzie, with you because you can provide a template here for Aaron. What we'd like to do is start with, what's your relationship to this movie? Had you seen it before and what were your thoughts upon watching or rewatching it for the podcast? Lizzie, maybe you can dive in to begin.

Speaker 2:
[03:29] Sure. Yes, of course, I'd seen this before, as I think all children, I assume, have. I don't know if they're still showing this to children, but they certainly did when we were growing up. I'd seen it many times as a kid. I don't think I had watched this as an adult at all. There were certain portions of the movie that are so burned into my mind's eye, when they first open the door into the candy room or whatever he calls it, the chocolate room, that I will see in my head playing on the back of my eyelids as I die. I know exactly what it looks like. I know what the mushrooms look like. I know what that disgusting chocolate river looks like. But then there's whole sequences, like the entire beginning of this movie. I was like, David and I were like, are we watching the right thing? It's a slow start. It's a slower start than I remembered and a very weird start. Charlie's teacher, David pointed out, looks like he should be in a Pink Floyd music video. There's never been a more apt description of a man and his teeth, I think, than that. I guess, I always knew that this is a children's movie slash book for adults, but I didn't know how much that was the case until rewatching it as an adult. I was like, I don't know if this is for kids at all. This is horrifying, truly, genuinely scary, especially when they're in the tunnel. Man, Gene Wilder is so fun and holds this movie together in a way that if you didn't have him, I don't know how watchable this is just because of how bonkers and all over the place it is. And all the other actors are wonderful. I particularly love Roy Kinnear and he looks so much like his son that I was like, wait a minute, is this a Black Mirror episode? It's crazy. It's crazy. All of us should say, I really enjoyed it. I don't know if I ever want to watch it again. It's just bizarre and it's scary, especially as a parent, because it really does feel like the moral of this movie is like the time to make a good person is when they are a child, and if you miss that window, you're screwed and it's a weird moral. Willy Wonka is a sinister character. Even at the end when he says that I've been searching for my replacement and the only one who can do it is a child essentially because they won't question me. I was like, okay. I don't know what you're trying to say here. Anyway, that's my take is I enjoyed it. It's weird and that boat ride might give me nightmares.

Speaker 3:
[05:55] All right, Aaron, we'll kick it to you. You've been knee deep in Roald Dahl for, I'm assuming, months at this point. How did it feel rewatching this?

Speaker 1:
[06:03] It's one of those movies that I think if you had asked me when the last time I saw it was, I probably would have said, I don't know, five, six years ago. But rewatching it ahead of this podcast, I realized that I have not seen it since I was a little kid. But I must have watched it a lot when I was a little kid because so much of it felt familiar. As I was making my show, I definitely watched a bunch of clips and we include some clips on the show. But watching it from beginning to end, yeah, I don't think I've done that since I was a kid. I was blown away. I thought it was fantastic. It's so dark, so surprising, and I totally agree by the way, Gene Wilder's performance is everything.

Speaker 2:
[06:37] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[06:37] He gives the most confident, strangest performance that I can remember seeing.

Speaker 2:
[06:43] No, please stop.

Speaker 1:
[06:46] Right, exactly. We'll jump into it. I'm sure we'll talk about it later, but it is really a performance for the ages. I'm sure we'll talk a bunch about this, but it is not what Dahl envisioned, but it makes the movie for me.

Speaker 3:
[06:58] Yeah. The 2005 version, as you discuss on your show, Aaron, is a much more faithful adaptation to the book. Maybe not from a Wonka perspective, but structurally and in terms of the focus and whatnot. And yet this version feels so much more alive to me, even though the 2005 version has the budget, and Burton seems like a natural fit for the material, etc. This version is held together with Scotch tape and popsicle sticks. But my review is five words and it is Gene Wilder is a star. And I actually think the casting across the board is pitch perfect in this movie. And even though I think you can feel that they didn't quite have the budget they needed to make this movie, more on that later, I had a smile on my face the entire time I was watching it. And maybe it's nostalgia, I watched it a lot as a kid as well, I hadn't seen it in a long time. But it has something to it. And I think I have a sense of what that is, and we'll get to it by the end. And I think even though, Aaron, as you mentioned, Dahl's feelings towards this film are at best complicated. In a way, I think it actually captures the heart, the Dahlian, the dark Dahlian heart of what his books try to convey better than many of the other adaptations of his work. But let's get into it because this one's going to be pretty crazy.

Speaker 2:
[08:09] I have one question that maybe you're going to answer, but one of the biggest questions I had while watching this movie was, where are we? Because I never recognized this as a kid, but they're clearly in England or Europe somewhere, and it looks like, it does not look like America. Half of the people have British accents for no reason, but then you are supposed to still believe that this is sort of small town America somewhere. That is strange. It makes it kind of otherworldly and alien in a way that I think ultimately works, but was confusing as an adult watching this.

Speaker 3:
[08:41] Well, Aaron, you can speak to this. I mean, the book is set in an unnamed town. Like, the book is never specified as anywhere in particular is my understanding.

Speaker 1:
[08:50] But Wonka is, especially the way Gene Wilder portrays him, is completely American. You know, I think a big theme of this movie, very much of the book also, is that it's Dahl's critique of American commercialism. You know, Dahl came from post-war England, which was completely austere, to the wild excesses of 1950s America. That's his, you know, biographical story. And he could not believe how spoiled Americans were. And so, that's very much what this book is about. I mean, Charlie is this really impoverished English boy who is able to keep all of his appetites in check. He is the opposite of spoiled or materialistic. And he's the one who triumphs, right? He's the one who wins. All the other children who very much lose are selfish and self-involved and incredibly spoiled, and they're completely wrecked by their American style appetites. So, I think you're right that it's not completely clear that a decision was not made about where to set this, but because Wonka is so American and because of this larger theme of anti-commercialism, for me, it just, it very much feels like an indictment of America.

Speaker 3:
[09:56] Yeah. Let's get into it because, Lizzie, to your question, I think the part of the reason it feels confused is very much by necessity where they had to shoot this movie.

Speaker 2:
[10:03] That's what I figured.

Speaker 3:
[10:04] And so let's dive into that too. So, really quickly, the details. So, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a, I would describe it as a fantasy comedy children's film directed by Mel Stewart. It's based on a screenplay credited to Roald Dahl based on his book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was produced by David Wolper and Stan Margulies and it stars, as we've mentioned, Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, Peter Ostrom as Charlie Bucket, Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe, Denise Nickerson as Violet Beauregard, Julie Dawn Cole as Veruca Salt, Paris Temin as Mike TV, Michael Bollner as Augustus Gloop, Rusty Goff as the lead Oompa Loompa and many more. It was produced by Wolper Pictures, financed by Aaron?

Speaker 1:
[10:44] The Quaker Oats Company.

Speaker 3:
[10:46] The Quaker Oats Company.

Speaker 1:
[10:48] Insane.

Speaker 3:
[10:49] Yes, distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was released in the United States on June 30th, after premiering on June 28th, 1971, and as always, the IMDb logline reads, a poor but hopeful boy seeks one of the five coveted golden tickets that will send him on a tour of Willy Wonka's mysterious Chocolate Factory. Now, a few sources. Obviously, The Secret World of Roald Dahl. Guys, go listen. It is a blast. I powered through it. In addition, Pure Imagination, The Making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Mel Stewart's book on the film, producer A Memoir by David Wolper, Gene Wilder's memoir. I love this name so much. Kiss Me Like a Stranger. I Want It Now, A Memoir of Life on the Set of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by Julie Don Cole who plays Veruca Salt, Pure Imagination, The Story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the 2001 documentary, and many more articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film. So the question is, how did a couple of not particularly well-known Jewish creatives use American commercialism to bring to life a controversial critique of American commercialism by a powerful author with a history of anti-Semitic remarks? And what went wrong? So let's dive in. Guys, Aaron, I'm sure you are aware of this apocryphal story or this warning in Hollywood. Never take pitches from your kids. Like, it is a trap that executives fall into often. Is, my kid had this idea or my kid thought this thing was really good, so now we're going to do it. And there's a famous example that I love. Adam Goodman, when he was the president of Paramount, got the idea for a movie called Monster Trucks, which I'm not sure if you guys ever saw it, but it's about trucks that actually are powered by monsters inside of them from his four-year-old son. They made it into a movie. It didn't go well. He is no longer the president of Paramount Pictures. I've not seen the movie. It may be fun. Well, back in 1969, there's a 12-year-old girl named Madeline and she falls in love with a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was published in 1964. Now, Aaron, you've mentioned in your show that Dahl's work, although originally published in the early to mid-60s, struggled to find its footing initially. I'm speaking specifically about his children's book work. Perhaps you can speak briefly about the beat it took for him to find footing in the world of children's stories.

Speaker 1:
[13:01] Yeah. It's a funny thing. When we think of Roald Dahl, I think everybody immediately thinks of the children's books, but he didn't start writing children's books until his mid-40s. So he lived this huge life before that, which included writing for adults. He wrote for The New Yorker, these sophisticated Urbane New York stories. He wrote for Playboy. He wrote some hard R stories. Then he did listen to his agent's advice and start writing for children, but it didn't go well. His very first book was James and the Giant Peach, but it only sold a few thousand copies. Children's writers before Dahl did not write like Dahl. They were not writing these dark stories. Dahl was writing from the perspective of the children's id. It's children against cruel adults. It's children against monsters. It recognized that the world is a difficult, sometimes evil place. No one thought that that could possibly work for children, but of course, it does. Children want to be treated like adults. Children appreciate that someone can recognize that they're actually having big thoughts and that they're seeing that the world can be cruel. But it was just such a departure from what existed before it that it took five years before James and the Giant Peach became a hit. They actually took it over to England because Dahl had a sort of an inclination that British children might understand his books better. He was right. They published James and the Giant Peach in England, and it sold out three printings in a row. Then they republished it in America and it became a hit there. His next book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which became just a giant hit.

Speaker 2:
[14:37] That's so funny. I don't know why, but it makes complete sense that British children would understand this, and American kids would not.

Speaker 3:
[14:44] Well, and James and the Giant Peach, if anybody hasn't read it in a while, features James' parents were eaten by a raging rhinoceros. He's living with abusive ants who are killed eventually, they're run over by the peach, they're ravenous sharks, a giant bat. But then there's a lot of lovely elements as well. It's complicated, which is what makes it great. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a hit. It sells 10,000 copies in its first week in the United States. Madeline reads the book three times and she does a verruca salt. She goes up to her daddy and she says, daddy, make this book into a movie. Make it, do it. I want it now. We don't know if she actually said it that way, but she did say daddy, make this into a movie. Unfortunately for her, her dad wasn't in the nut business, he was in the movie business. His name was Mel Stewart, but he like Dahl wasn't into children's stories. He directed serious documentaries. Mel Stewart was born in New York, Stuart Solomon. He's a Jewish man at this point. He's in his early 40s and he produced a bunch of great documentaries. 1964 is Four Days in November, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature, and he'd started to dip his toes into narrative feature films. But he's making movies that are distinctly for adults. The first is 1969's If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. This is the humorous adventures of a group of American tourists taking an 18-day guided bus tour of nine European countries. Then 1970s, I Love My Wife, I Have Never Seen This Movie. It stars Elliot Gould. It follows a, quote, successful young surgeon who has so much in life that he becomes bored with his wife and family and feeling empty, he goes through a series of brief meaningless affairs with attractive women. The point is that the book doesn't seem to be a natural fit for Stuart's sensibilities or vice versa. But what's so interesting and what you get into so well in your podcast, Aaron, is that the same could be said for Roald Dahl and his transition into making children's books. So let's do our first wind back the clock, deep dive into the man behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Wales to Norwegian immigrant parents, and he suffers a double tragedy early in his life. His older sister dies when he's three, and then as you discuss on your show, Aaron, his father seems to lose the will to live, and he does not fight the pneumonia that he's contracted, and he passes away within a few weeks of Dahl's sister. But his mom stays in the country because his father had believed an English education was the greatest thing that you could give your children. Then I do find it ironic that so much of his writing has to do with how miserable it is to be a child in the English school system in so many ways. So he goes through his schooling, and then he serves in the Royal Air Force. Aaron, maybe you can give us just a brief insane whirlwind from Royal Air Force brain trauma spy, sex spy in Washington DC playing cards with the president. Maybe we can hit some of these lily pads for us briefly and go listen to the show for more detail.

Speaker 2:
[17:38] How closely tied are sex spy and playing cards with the president? Are those the same thing?

Speaker 3:
[17:42] Let's get through it.

Speaker 1:
[17:43] Yeah, they are intertwined. Yeah, so Dahl, as I said before, he didn't start writing children's books until his mid 40s. So he lived all these different lives before that. And that's how I sort of organize my podcast, where each episode sort of takes us into one of these worlds. So first, he was a businessman for Shell Oil. I think you're right, like his father's death was such an all encompassing, important, childhood defining moment for him. He was constantly searching for what kind of man he was. Shell Oil businessman didn't quite work out, but it did take him to Africa. And when he was in Africa, he would see all these planes flying overhead. And he thought that that maybe was the next adventure. That's what looks good to him. So he just got in a car and he drove hundreds of miles. And even though he had never been inside of a plane before, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. And he flew a bunch of missions. You know, this is early in World War II. And he got shot down over and over again. And one of the crashes was really, really bad. His face went hard into the console in front of him. So badly that his nose sort of smacked back through his skull. He had to get major plastic surgery. He had to spend months in a hospital. And he started getting dizzy spells and becoming unconscious at random times. And so his superior said, You're done. You're grounded. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[19:00] You can't fly planes, sir.

Speaker 1:
[19:02] You cannot fly anymore.

Speaker 3:
[19:03] He was also 6'6, in these open cockpit planes.

Speaker 1:
[19:08] Right. Exactly.

Speaker 3:
[19:09] Sticking out like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Like this is, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[19:12] Exactly. Like an NBA player in a convertible. Yeah. So imagine that like his head was above the windshield. So he was just being pounded by the air and debris and bugs. It was, yeah, totally nuts. Not, I guess, a huge surprise that he would crash so much. But his superiors saw something in him. He was 6'6. He was really, really handsome. He was a great storyteller. He was incredibly charming. So they wanted to find something else for him. So they sent him to Washington, DC to join a group called The Irregulars, which was a secret spy group for MI6, whose job it was to find a way to get America to come into the war on Britain's side, right? To join the war. And they would try everything. They would sabotage, they would create propaganda. The group was totally fascinating. It was all of these young 20-somethings, all of whom were incredibly handsome and happened to be great writers. Dahl was in it. So was Noel Coward, the playwright. So was Ian Fleming, who created James Bond. So was David Ogilvie, who would go on to invent modern advertising and be the inspiration for Don Draper on Mad Men. So you got to think about Don Draper, James Bond and Roald Dahl sitting at a Georgetown bar late at night, coming up with sabotage ideas. There's a bunch of great ideas they had. Then I can get into Dahl's seductions if you want.

Speaker 3:
[20:34] Yeah, let's talk about it briefly because it's so incongruous with I think his children's work. But one of the things that Dahl as you highlight on your show was so good at was women. He had a way with women. He seemed to understand women and you point out in your show that he writes female characters very well and he often has lead female protagonists and it's not in a token way. Maybe that's from being raised without a father and having a strong maternal presence in his life with his sisters as well.

Speaker 1:
[21:00] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:00] But yeah, please dive in because it's fascinating.

Speaker 1:
[21:03] Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Dahl was surrounded by women. It was his mother and it was sisters who raised him. So part of his job in The Irregulars was to seduce women who were married to powerful men who were not yet on the allied side in order to try to convince their husbands, a whisper in their husband's ear to get on the allied side. So there's a whole litany of powerful women that Dahl supposedly seduced. We know for sure people like Gloria Vanderbilt and several others. The most famous is probably Claire Boothloose, who was married to Henry Loose. Henry Loose was probably the most powerful man in media at the time. He owned Time Magazine and Life Magazine and so many others. And they were often printing anti-British pieces, which Churchill could not abide because he's desperate to get America, FDR specifically, to come into the war on Britain's side. Claire Boothloose in her own right was also incredibly influential. She was a major journalist for places like Vanity Fair. She was a huge playwright. She wrote the Broadway play The Women, which was then adapted twice for the movies. That was her only play. And then she decided to run for Congress and became a really rare woman in Congress. So she was incredibly powerful. She was 13 years older than Dahl, but Dahl dated her. They had a long-term affair. And the idea was, yeah, to convince her husband and to convince her that this was a good idea to enter the war.

Speaker 2:
[22:26] Okay, I'm thrilled that her legacy was not just had an oopsie affair with a spy called Roald Dahl.

Speaker 3:
[22:31] No, she was like a deeply influential person. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:35] Absolutely.

Speaker 2:
[22:36] That's so interesting. It's also immediately, as soon as you said he was 6'6, I was like, and we're sure this is not just a Jacob Elordi, he's so tall situation, but it sounds like no.

Speaker 3:
[22:45] He seems like he was quite the charmer on top of it. And then he meets his match and Patricia Neal, the actress who was younger than him and who was very much on the rise when they met. I think she was 26, Aaron, if I'm remembering your show correctly. Yeah. And she's not interested in him. She's the first woman it seems that he's run into who he can't woo. And eventually, she had had a very messy affair with Gary Cooper, and when that fell apart, he was the love of her life, she would say, and she described sex with him as an act of God, basically.

Speaker 2:
[23:16] With Gary Cooper?

Speaker 3:
[23:18] With Gary Cooper, yeah, who was 20 years older than her. And when that fails, Dahl eventually wears her down, and she realizes, I want to have kids, and Dahl would produce good-looking kids. So, okay, and they get married. And so begins a relationship that I think without that relationship and the tragedy that follows, you do not get Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his children's books in a lot of senses. But let's save that for a moment, because I want to get back into our film timeline, and we will return to Mr. Dahl in a second, because I want to tease it out across the episode. So Mel Stewart has been working with a producer named David Wolper, who is big in the documentary space. And Mel Stewart is the artist, and David Wolper is a salesman through and through. So it's literally in his blood. His father is Irving Wolper, who actually worked with Donald Trump. And here is a quote from Trump, the art of the deal, who described Irving as quote, one of the greatest bullshit artists I've ever met. I mean...

Speaker 2:
[24:11] It's a high compliment from...

Speaker 1:
[24:13] Wow, I did not know that.

Speaker 2:
[24:14] Yeah, wow.

Speaker 3:
[24:15] So David Wolper, like his father, was interested in sales of all kind and the entertainment industry. He'd started a TV distribution company called Flamingo Films. So after he started Flamingo Films, Wolper shut it down, ended up working at a bank. And when he was there, he started working on divorce hearing, which was kind of a predecessor, or as he described it, a predecessor to Jerry Springer and like not great reality TV. And then he ran into somebody on the street that he bought Russian cartoons from. So this is the Wild West, right, of distribution. Anybody can start up their own little distribution outfit. And this guy says, look, you like those Russian cartoons? I got some Russian space footage. You want some of that? And so he makes a movie called Race for Space. Stuart had worked on it, but he didn't like it. And he told Wolper, you know, he didn't like it. And Wolper thought, well, this guy's smart. So we hired him and they started working together. A decade later, Mel Stuart tells Madeline, okay, I'm going to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He does. It's not quite his style, but he likes it. And he decides, I want to make it, but I want to make it in a more realistic fashion than the book. So, Aaron, you talk about this on your show in like the last episode, especially. But Willy Wonka is very much a cipher. He's this enigma in the book. It's hard to parse. It's hard to even figure out who he is. He seems like he darts in and out of view. He's never really described in great detail. And I think Stuart wants to ground the story much more than the heightened version that will exist later in Tim Burton's world. So Stuart saw a business opportunity here as well. Basically outside of Disney, the market for family films was slim. And this is very much true. So at the time, there are very few non-Disney children's family films being released. This is the late 60s, early 70s. In fact, one exception was written by Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl. Aaron, which one would that be?

Speaker 1:
[26:06] Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Speaker 3:
[26:07] That's right. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The book was written by Ian Fleming and then Roald Dahl would write the screenplay. So Disney was entering the Dark Ages. Walt passed away in 1966. And so Mel Stuart has this opportunity. There's a bit of a vacuum. They consider making it as an animated film, but Stuart doesn't want to do that. He wants it to be realistic and grounded. And he doesn't want it just to be for kids. He also wants it to appeal to adults. So he tells Wolper about the idea. And as you talk about on your show so well, Aaron, Wolper sees an opportunity for synergy. So David Wolper is working on a TV special about endangered species called Say Goodbye, which would be nominated for another Oscar, best documentary feature. And they had a sponsor, Quaker Oats. So Ken Mason, the director of advertising at Quaker Oats was actually very against Saturday morning cartoons and wanted to sponsor more serious fare for children. Hence something like Say Goodbye. And this is kind of at the height of advertising, targeting children through television. And all of a sudden, there's a lot of pushback on these ads. There's all of these conferences about food and nutrition and health and people are saying maybe these cereals products are not actually as good for children as we have been saying before. And so there's an opportunity here for Mason and Quaker Oats to attempt a different form of advertising than traditional television advertising. And so Ken Mason, who once defended Cap'n Crunch by saying, a banana has more sugar than a serving of my sweetened cereal, which I don't know if that's true.

Speaker 2:
[27:32] Seems like it's not.

Speaker 1:
[27:34] I don't think that's true.

Speaker 3:
[27:36] Sinks up with David Wolper and he produces this documentary Say Goodbye. And Wolper says, all right, you guys are interested in making a chocolate bar. What about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? And we do a little product tie in. We don't know how the conversation went, but here's how Wolper described it. While it was highly unusual for a cereal company to finance a feature film, Quaker Oats decided to name their candy the Wonka Bar and bought the rights to the name from the author. So there are obviously a lot of product tie-ins nowadays with movies, and there would begin to be in the 1980s. I mean, some big examples like Reese's Pieces and ET., although obviously Reese's did not finance that film. BMW and GoldenEye, which we covered. GoldenEye has an incredible amount of sponsorship in it. Or AOL, I did not know this Lizzie, they paid to have the title of You've Got Mail be You've Got Mail.

Speaker 2:
[28:26] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[28:27] Now, we should be clear, we don't actually know the details of the deal between AOL and the studio. It's entirely possible that no money exchanged hands, and in exchange for the product placement, AOL provided promotion through its online properties. But we do know that You've Got Mail was originally called You Have Mail, and AOL was involved in shaping that film. The point is that all of these deals pale in comparison to the Quaker Oats, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory deal, in which Quaker Oats is the sole financier responsible for providing the entire budget for the movie. And Aaron, as you mentioned, this is so unusual because the book is a critique of, to a certain extent, American capitalism and also advertising to children in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2:
[29:14] And Quaker Oats is like, what better way than to advertise our chocolate bar to children?

Speaker 1:
[29:18] Yeah, we should stop and just really sort of dive into how insane this is that a serial company funded a studio movie. You're right. Everything you said is right. That makes no sense. That did not happen before. And you mentioned earlier that Dahl hated this movie. I mean, Dahl hated this movie. Let's just say it flat out. He wrote the screenplay, but he was incredibly unhappy with it. And like I said, I love this movie. And so I disagree with Dahl about it. But I am very much on Dahl's side here because Dahl wrote Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Because Quaker Oats came on to fund the movie and they wanted to make a Wonka bar, as you said, they completely shifted the focus. And they called it Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. So that's not just a title change. That really is a gigantic change. I mean, I think I can talk a little bit about what I noticed the other day about the structure of the movie, which is so incredibly weird. But I think it really does shift focus to Willy Wonka starting at the end of act one. And that is not what Dahl wanted. That is not the story he wrote. That is not the message he was trying to get across. It undermined his themes. So I'm on his side here that they sort of screwed up his version of the story.

Speaker 3:
[30:31] Well, let's talk a little bit about how he got involved and then maybe how he got edged out. So I think one of the reasons this thing actually happened, Wolper definitely had not read the entire book and maybe had not read any of it when he pitched the idea to Quaker. So Stuart had read the book. He told Wolper about it and it seems like Wolper just thought chocolate, factory, Quaker, great. Let's stick it together. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2:
[30:56] By the way, it may be worth mentioning because I didn't realize this, some of the brands that Quaker was behind in the 60s and 70s, in terms of the types of cereals, because they did life, right? They did life and they have Cap'n Crunch and something called Qwisp. But yeah, some of the biggest, sugary-est character-driven cereals, right?

Speaker 3:
[31:18] Very mascot-driven, brand-driven, very much aimed at children. Again, as we'll discuss later, Ken Mason of Quaker actually seems to have had decently mixed feelings about this, and was hoping to do something a little bit more substantive for children in terms of the entertainment that was being provided, which is actually like Dahl. He did not like television. Dahl does not like television. If you reach Harley in the Chocolate Factory, which I did, and you get to the Mike TV section, you can see when the Oopa Loopas do their poem about Mike TV, you can see Dahl's thoughts on television very clearly. It seems like though, Aaron, at first this is actually going to be a great situation for Dahl, because unlike a traditional studio setup, it's being financed by a private corporation, and so therefore it seems unlikely that they're going to get the level of notes that you'll get through a studio executive, for example. In theory, Dahl should have more control in this situation, and you could surmise or imagine a version of it like that. So Wolper calls Dahl's agent, and he negotiates a deal to buy the rights to the book for $200,000, and the agent has one condition, Dahl has to write the screenplay. At this point, that actually seems like not a big deal, because as you discussed in your show, Aaron, Dahl had written not only Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but You Only Live Twice, the James Bond film. He'd also written for Alfred Hitchcock on his anthology series, and we're years removed from his failed attempts to adapt his story about Gremlins with Walt Disney, which had been his kind of rude introduction to Hollywood. So it's a deal. Ken Mason calls Wolper back, Quaker Oats is interested, and Wolper proposes the plan that would go into action. Quaker Oats is going to put up the money, they're going to make it for two to $3 million, and then afterwards we'll shop it around for distribution. And Wolper's like, this is going to give us the best financial results, which really just means Wolper the best financial results. He will be paid no matter what, there is no risk involved in this. Now, as you mentioned, Aaron, the title change seems to come from Quaker. That's the general consensus we will get to. Mel Stewart actually offers a different reason later on, but I think it makes perfect sense that they're going to be promoting the Wonka Bar. It needs to be called Willy Wonka. We need Wonka in the title and it can't be called Charlie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. That doesn't make any sense. So by August of 1969, The New York Times had reported that Wolper and Quaker Oats are going to produce this children's story. They also note that Wolper also took out an option on James and the Giant Peach. That would not obviously come to pass. Now, the movie was already being described as a musical, which Mel Stewart wasn't really nuts about. So he actually wanted to have the characters chanting poems and basically rapping instead of singing songs, which would have been really interesting.

Speaker 2:
[33:58] Arguably what some of the children in this movie do anyway, because they did not cast the greatest singers.

Speaker 3:
[34:04] They didn't cast singers. No. Isn't that Sabrina Carpenter in here?

Speaker 2:
[34:08] No.

Speaker 3:
[34:09] But Wolper seems to be the driving force behind wanting this to be a musical, because he's using musicals to sell Quaker Oats on the idea. He's saying The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, Oliver, just a few years before in 1968.

Speaker 2:
[34:20] I love Oliver.

Speaker 3:
[34:21] These had made a ton of money. And so Stewart gives in, but he's like, it's not a musical, it's a movie with music. And David Wolper had a really good idea of who he wanted to come in to write the music. Lizzie, Aaron, any guesses? He features prominently in 2025's Blue Moon.

Speaker 2:
[34:39] Richard Rogers.

Speaker 3:
[34:40] Richard Rogers of Rogers and Hammerstein. Oklahoma, The King and I, Sound of Music. He says no. Then Henry Mancini, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Pink Panther. He also said no, said he was busy. And finally, Wolper calls his friends Anthony Newley and Leslie Brickus, who are not also rands in this conversation. These are two of the biggest composer lyricists of the era, and Newley was very much a performer as well. So Newley is an actor, comedian, singer, composer. He'd had a string of hits in the UK in the late 50s and early 60s. Lizzie, we talked about Anthony Newley briefly in our episode on Dr. Doolittle, which he acted in and was abused by Rex Harrison in that movie.

Speaker 2:
[35:18] As was everyone on that set.

Speaker 3:
[35:20] Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Scrooge. And again, they had some doll overlaps. So Newley and Bricus had done the Bond song for Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.

Speaker 2:
[35:30] Oh, Goldfinger is my favorite Bond song of all time, Shirley Bassey.

Speaker 3:
[35:35] Yeah, that's Newley and Bricus. So they'd won a Grammy in 1963. And the point is, they're not some sort of consolation prize. These are two of the greatest living musical men in the world right now. And so Wolfer says, read a few songs for the movie and they say, I'm not really sure. And they sent them Roald Dahl's first draft as a guide. And let's talk about this first draft. So Aaron, Roald Dahl tried to make it as a screenwriter for a long time. Can you tell us a little bit about the high that he started on entering Hollywood and how quickly he fell off?

Speaker 1:
[36:02] Yeah, you're right. And I think that those two things are very much tied together. It's not a coincidence. When Dahl was just 26, he wrote a story called The Gremlins, which he referenced, which was kind of a propaganda piece about American and British cooperation. And it got passed around DC and it got into the hands of Eleanor Roosevelt. And she flipped for it. She absolutely loved it. It was basically a children's story. And she gave it to her grandkids. She would read it to her grandkids and she wanted to meet the author. So she invited 26-year-old Roald Dahl, who, by the way, was a British spy at this point, to the White House to hang out with them. And it went well. Just like, you know, you mentioned Dahl is like Zelig or, you know, for scump. I mean, Dahl just like charmed everyone everywhere he went. Eleanor and Franklin invited him up to Hyde Park to spend weekends, which is just like huge for a 26-year-old spy. Like making friends with a White House intern would have been giant, but Roald, and this is just the way his life went, was becoming friends with the First Family. And so it was such an exciting book that Eleanor fell in love with that either she or someone in her circle got it to Walt Disney. And Walt Disney fell in love with it, and Walt Disney was absolutely at the peak of his powers. I mean, all the big movies we can name, Dumbo and Pinocchio and Bambi, they had all been made in just like the handful of years before this. He loves the book as much as Eleanor does, and he flies 26-year-old Roald Dahl to Los Angeles, puts him up at the Beverly Hills Hotel, hires a driver for him, throws a giant party for him that Charlie Chaplin attends and everyone attends.

Speaker 3:
[37:32] Where he's like welcomed by Charlie Chaplin. Is Charlie dressed as a gremlin? I can't remember. I know a lot of people are dressed as gremlins. Yeah, it's so wild.

Speaker 1:
[37:39] Charlie and all the other guests are dressed like gremlins. Yeah, I mean, can you imagine for Dahl to just walk into that?

Speaker 3:
[37:46] He just met the president who then set him up with Walt Disney.

Speaker 1:
[37:51] It doesn't make any sense. It's insane. And they start a writer's room, and Disney shows Dahl the ropes. This is how Hollywood works. This is how we are going to adapt your story, and he hires a director, and he hires animators, and kind of a whole crew, and they get going, and Disney even puts out ads for The Gremlins, the movie, before they finish the screenplay. But Dahl is just not at a point yet where he can compromise. He has a very strong vision for what his story is, and he doesn't want it corrupted. He doesn't want it changed at all. But of course, moviemaking, screenplay writing is all about collaboration. That's what Hollywood is. So for that reason and for other reasons, the film falls apart. What I talk about a little bit on the podcast is, Dahl could have, we might not have ever heard of Dahl, because so many writers like him, novelists, prose writers, went to Hollywood and just failed. People like Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Aldous Huxley and so many others. Fitzgerald drank himself to death in Hollywood, and that absolutely could have been Dahl because he just had one disappointment after the next. His next movie he wrote, it ended up actually going into production with Gregory Peck starring but it was called, Oh Death, Where's Thy Sting-a-ling-a-ling? The reason you've never heard of it is because after a few days of filming, the head of the studio canceled the whole production, didn't like what he saw and canceled it. It's like Dahl was just having so many disappointments in Hollywood. But then he hooked up with Albert Broccoli, the producers of James Bond, and he was given the opportunity to write the fifth installment of the James Bond series, which was as much of a guarantee as exists in Hollywood. The first four were giant, giant hits. Dahl was also a spy for MI6, so he was able to bring his own experiences to the project. He was actually friends with Ian Fleming, who created James Bond, so it was like the perfect situation for him, and it became a giant, giant hit.

Speaker 2:
[39:48] Was it public knowledge that he had been part of MI6 at this point, or is that something that came out later?

Speaker 1:
[39:54] He definitely did not talk about it much, he didn't boast about it. So I think most people probably thought that he was just part of the British Embassy working in New York and DC. He didn't go around advertising it.

Speaker 2:
[40:03] Got it.

Speaker 1:
[40:04] But certainly the producers of James Bond knew, and were very happy for him to bring his own experiences to the project.

Speaker 3:
[40:11] And then of course, Dahl cannot help himself, but put down the project, or put down James Bond right throughout this process as well. He needs everybody to understand that this is beneath him, even as it is his first success within Hollywood and within screenwriting. And eventually when he gets into children's books, he feels the need to assert that actually writing children's books is the most difficult thing any writer can do. And look at all the great authors who have completely failed at this endeavor. And what I am doing is threading the needle in the way that almost no one else can do. There's a really interesting, delicate ego to Dahl. And it's also interesting to imagine he's failing at screenwriting, he's struggling at writing these short stories, he writes a play that doesn't land at all. And at the same time, his wife, Patricia Neal, is nominated for an Oscar, and she wins for HUD opposite Paul Newman. And it's just, she's the breadwinner, and she's having multiple children. And there are some really interesting elements to this marriage. Again, we don't have time to get into here, listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl. But at this point, I think what we can say about Dahl as a screenwriter is he does not take notes very well. Like he very much likes to work by himself. He doesn't like to work in a writer's room necessarily. And I think what happens with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and we don't need to dive into this too deeply, is this is a book that he had been writing for quite some time. There's like an unnamed first draft from as early as 1961, basically. And the story went through a lot of different variations. And in fact, as you mentioned on your show, Aaron, in the earliest versions, Charlie's black, actually. And the story would have had a very different tenor, would have been something completely different. And then obviously he's at the behest of his agent and others. You know, he changed his Charlie to white. You know, at first there are ten children and ten golden tickets and the Oompa Loompas change in various ways. And he revises and revises and we eventually get to the version that we more or less recognize now with five golden tickets and Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka and whatnot. So the point is, when he writes this script, he sends it in to Wolper and Stuart and they basically say, look, this is just a transcription of the book. And I think the problem is that Dahl had been staring at this book for so long and he'd already figured everything out in the novel form that he's not going to bring something new at this point. There's very little showing, there's a lot of telling, there's a lot of time in Charlie's home. Aaron, you mentioned earlier how we pivot to Wonka very quickly in the movie once we get to the factory, and that's, I think, very much intentionally.

Speaker 2:
[42:36] Not fast enough, somewhat, aren't you?

Speaker 3:
[42:39] But the other thing is, with this book, there is no main conflict, right? The book does not actually have a main conflict. It is effectively, it is a tour. Children are picked off one by one, and then in kind of just a weird happenstance turn, Charlie is announced as the, quote, winner at the very end. You know, it just kind of plods along, and that's what happens, and it's very fun as a child, but it's not a movie. And it was also very expensive. He'd written these extremely elaborate Chocolate Factory scenes, and they have $2 to $3 million of Quaker Outs money. So they fly Dahl to Los Angeles, and they do a bunch of script meetings, and recaps of these meetings are mixed. You know, Stuart says Dahl was very professional, Wolper says he won't change anything, I'm inclined to believe Wolper. They send Dahl back to England, he starts working on the second draft, and they just start casting. They do not have a shootable script, but they start casting. So they start as early as January of 1970, and they were considering a very different Willy Wonka. So they gathered in the Plaza Hotel in New York with a list of potential names, and one of those names was American actor Joel Grey.

Speaker 2:
[43:38] Oh, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 3:
[43:40] So do you guys remember Joel Grey? He won Best Supporting Actor for Cabaret in 1973. And so he was already known for this role from 1967, from the Broadway production.

Speaker 2:
[43:50] Right.

Speaker 3:
[43:51] In a lot of ways, he actually really fits the doll version of Wonka. He's five foot five. He is small, like Wonka is very short in the book. It may have been very faithful, but as Stewart put it, you don't want a short, pointy bearded guy as a cinematic leading man. And this I think speaks to Mel Stewart and his collaborators seeing Wonka as the lead of the movie, not Charlie as the lead of the movie. And Stewart did have a practical concern. He was worried that with Joel Grey, one of the kids might have a growth spurt and end up taller than Grey while shooting. Which Lizzie, that happened on The Sound of Music, if you remember.

Speaker 2:
[44:27] Yeah, it did.

Speaker 3:
[44:28] The children started growing at different rates and all of a sudden the heights started getting really wonky between all of them.

Speaker 2:
[44:33] I mean, I understand what they're trying to do here and it feels like it's kind of all coming from a marketing place of they're trying to push Wonka with this. I will say, I don't think Joel Grey is a bad choice for Willy Wonka at all. Obviously, I love Gene Wilder. I think he is Willy Wonka, but Joel Grey is wonderful and has a very sinister quality to him or can. So I think he would work pretty well too.

Speaker 3:
[44:54] That's true. Well, it sounds like a lot of people wanted the part. Anthony Newley, who was working on the music, pushed for it hard. His agent Sue Mengers, who also represented Barbara Streisand, calls Wolper up and she goes, I want Newley as Wonka. I want him to sing two songs. And here's the quote from Wolper. If I gave the role to Newley, she carefully suggested, or maybe I interpreted, that she would get me a date with Barbara Streisand. So I hung up the phone and never thought about it again. End quote.

Speaker 2:
[45:20] Yeah, I don't know if you want that date.

Speaker 3:
[45:22] Well, Anthony Newley also rallied hard for the Candyman role, and also Sammy Davis Jr. apparently rallied for that role really hard. Both were turned down.

Speaker 2:
[45:29] Doesn't he go on to record Candyman?

Speaker 3:
[45:31] Yeah, he does. He records it later. It becomes a hit for Sammy Davis Jr. later. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[45:35] Because I was going to say, I know the song. That was one of the moments in this movie where I was like, this is from this movie. I did not put those two together because I remember Sammy Davis Jr.'s version of it so well.

Speaker 3:
[45:46] Fred Astaire is often mentioned as someone who was being considered for Wonka. Basically, Wolper and Stewart said they did not know about his interests until afterward. He would have been too old. He was in his 70s and probably too expensive. And a couple of other names that are interesting include Peter Sellers, who would end up having a brief or at least romantic relationship with Roald Dahl's daughter, Tessa Dahl in the 1970s. So that's unusual.

Speaker 1:
[46:09] When she's 18 and he's 50.

Speaker 3:
[46:10] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[46:12] Why do they have to do this? I love Peter Sellers. God.

Speaker 3:
[46:15] Spike Milligan and all six members of Monty Python. And reportedly, Spike Milligan is who Dahl wanted for the part. So they're weakened to auditions, as the story goes. Gene Wilder walks in. Now, I assumed growing up that Wilder was already a huge star because I also grew up with young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Silver Streak, you know, stir crazy with the Richard Pryor stuff.

Speaker 2:
[46:35] No, he's all the 70s.

Speaker 3:
[46:37] Exactly. I didn't not realize this. This is after Willy Wonka. Those were all after Willy Wonka. This is technically after the producers, which came out in 67.

Speaker 1:
[46:45] I think the producers did something for him.

Speaker 3:
[46:47] That had flopped.

Speaker 1:
[46:48] Oh, really?

Speaker 3:
[46:48] It was kind of buried.

Speaker 2:
[46:50] It's not a big hit.

Speaker 3:
[46:51] It was not a big hit. And so let's talk briefly about Wilder. So he was born Jerome Silberman in June of 1933, and he was a very accomplished theater actor before he transitioned into film and TV. So his first big role was, if you guys remember, he plays one of the hostages in Bonnie and Clyde. In Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. He's in the back seat. He was actually, he's 34. He's four and seven years older than Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in that movie, which is crazy because he's got such a baby face. So he's nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1969, for the producers, even though that movie did not, it wasn't like a huge breakout hit, which obviously was one of his many collaborations with Mel Brooks. And then you mentioned this on your show, and what fun fact Brooks' wife Anne Bancroft was very good friends with Roald Dahl's wife, Patricia Neal. And Aaron, which movie did Patricia Neal turn down after suffering a stroke that went to Anne Bancroft right around this time?

Speaker 1:
[47:41] The Graduate.

Speaker 3:
[47:42] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[47:43] Yeah, Mrs. Robinson.

Speaker 3:
[47:44] That's right. So the point is when Wilder auditioned, he was known, but he wasn't a household name. And it didn't matter. Stuart thought he was perfect. He read from the book with just the right inflection. He had, quote, a sardonic, demonic edge that Stuart was looking for. And according to Stuart, the minute Wilder walks into the room, he turns to Wolper and says, that's Willy Wonka. And David Wolper, ever the deal maker, says, shut up. We can't let him know how much we want him. We got to get him for cheap. And Stuart says, totally. And then when the audition's done, he chases Wilder down the hallway, cuts him off at the elevator and says, you're going to do this picture. No two ways about it. You are Willy Wonka. But the only problem is Wilder isn't sure he wants to. And this is a story that I had heard before, and I'm sure you guys have heard before. Lizzie, have you heard this story before about what Gene Wilder's one condition was for taking on this role? Are you familiar?

Speaker 2:
[48:30] No, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[48:31] Aaron, would you like to share? I'm sure you heard this one. Through your research. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[48:35] And I think I even, I put the clip in my podcast, actually. He said that he would only do the role if he could have that amazing entrance where he walks out of his Chocolate Factory with a cane and you don't quite know if he's very feeble, if he's got an injury or what's going on with him. And then the cane gets stuck in a crack and he somersaults and jumps up and shows that he's actually kind of a trickster. And from then on, you have no idea what to make of him. It is a completely brilliant entrance.

Speaker 3:
[49:03] So he says, this is my stipulation. And Mel Stewart says, you're not going to do the movie if you can't do that. And he says, no. And he says, okay, well, fine, deal. So they get Wilder. He's paid $150,000, according to Stewart, to play the part. And then to cast the kids, Stewart apparently turned to the illustrations and descriptions from the book. And what's interesting is Charlie's Hat, for example, is not in the later publication that I read as a kid, the later illustrations. But if you go back to the Schindelman illustrations, it is a part of the costume that Schindelman had done originally. So they hire multiple casting directors to read kids across the world. You've got Marion Doherty in New York, you've got Bodie Baker in London, and Renata Nucle in Munich. And given Quaker Oats' roots in Ravenna, Ohio, it's perhaps fitting that they'd find Charlie Bucket in Cleveland. So they considered hundreds of actors from children's theaters across the country, including the Children's Theatre at the Cleveland Playhouse, where Joel Grey and Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, got their starts.

Speaker 2:
[49:58] Oh, wow.

Speaker 3:
[49:59] So she asked the Playhouse to suggest actors who would be a good fit for Charlie, and they suggested Peter Ostrom. His dad was the General Counsel of Ohio Bell Telephone. Shout out to kids with dads who are lawyers. That's me.

Speaker 2:
[50:10] And David.

Speaker 3:
[50:11] Yeah, and David. According to Stewart, Peter was the pride of the children's branch of the Cleveland Playhouse. He'd been acting for three years and he auditions in early summer of 1970. He's 12 years old. They fly him to New York for a screen test. He reads from the book and they don't have any of the songs written yet, so he sings My Country Tis of Thee. And they say, Peter, your acting is great. Your singing is terrible.

Speaker 2:
[50:31] And so he is 100 percent tone deaf, which like I don't care because he's very cute. He's very charming. But my God, when he started singing.

Speaker 3:
[50:39] Yeah. He has a quote here where he basically says, don't worry, we're not going to use your singing voice anyway. And they just reduced his singing part across the production. Like every time he opened his mouth, they're like, well, no, we can lose that song. Let's just move on. And they just kept what they needed. And here's where it gets a little dark. So just before he goes up to summer camp, they say, look, Peter, we like you for Charlie. There's one problem. Charlie's really skinny. We're going to need you to lose some weight. So he went to summer camp, quote, riding horses and hiking and climbing and doing all the things you do at summer camp, trying not to eat because I wanted to lose more weight.

Speaker 1:
[51:10] Bummer.

Speaker 3:
[51:11] This pies in to a really gnarly thread in all of Dahl's writing that I'm sure we're all aware of, which is there is very much a fat phobia through all of Dahl's work. I think at the end, we'll get to some of the ways in which his work has been revised and you could argue censored and specifically that way. Yeah, you should never ask a 12-year-old to lose weight for a movie, obviously.

Speaker 1:
[51:31] Yeah, it's awful.

Speaker 3:
[51:40] Peter Ostrom was officially cast in mid-August of 1970. He had 10 days' notice to move to Munich for five months of shooting. For Veruca Salt, Mel Stuart wanted to cast someone that was like the, quote, spoiled children of Beverly Hills, but they wanted her to be English. Enter Julie Dawn Cole. She's 12 years old, like Peter.

Speaker 2:
[51:57] She's great.

Speaker 3:
[51:58] She's so good. She's attending a performing arts school in London. Casting agents come to her school, they line all the girls up. No, no, you. No, no, you. She comes in, she meets Stuart and Margulies. She hasn't read any of the Dahl books, so she has a school bus driver drive around town from bookstore to bookstore until they can find a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. During the audition, Stuart just kept saying, be nastier, be brattier, and she nailed it. In later interviews, cast members would say that of all the actors, she was the least like her character in real life. She was extremely sweet and she did not have a doting father. Her dad had actually left when she was six years old and she never saw him again. They spoke on the phone one time before he died. Some tragic stories around these kids. Couple more notes on casting. Denise Nickerson, thrilled to get the part of Violet Beauregard because she get to work with other kids. She'd been acting since she was two in a commercial in Florida, but she'd only done at this point like Broadway and TV, and she was only acting across adults. She just thought, this is going to be great until they shoved her into a giant blueberry Styrofoam costume.

Speaker 2:
[52:55] She's also great.

Speaker 3:
[52:56] She's great. Paris, who plays Mike TV, was 11 years old and he was apparently the most difficult child on set.

Speaker 2:
[53:04] That tracks.

Speaker 3:
[53:05] So let's play this video clip of Gene Wilder talking about working with the children on set, and let's see if we can guess who he's talking about here.

Speaker 4:
[53:15] How do you like working with the younger generation?

Speaker 3:
[53:18] Who do you mean by the younger generation?

Speaker 4:
[53:20] You mean the kids, the five kids? The little tiny ones, yes.

Speaker 5:
[53:24] Four of them are fantastic. The other one, I'm going to shoot in the head tomorrow.

Speaker 2:
[53:30] No.

Speaker 3:
[53:31] I think based on our research, we can assume that that was Paris. Julie Donkohl later said, many years later, he admitted he was a bit of a troublemaker during the production. Again, he was very young. Michael Bollner played Augustus Gloop. He lived in Munich, not far from the studio, and his mother just saw an ad in the paper and brought him in to audition. He didn't really speak a lot of English, which Stuart did not care about. The kids are all fantastic. There's one actress they really wanted for one of the parent roles they didn't get that is an interesting what-if, which is Mike TV's mother. That actress was Jean Stapleton, and she had an offer for a TV series at the same time. Mel Stuart was saying, don't do TV. TV always falls apart. Do a movie, it's a sure thing. Lizzie, Aaron, any guesses as to what TV show that was that she decided to go with?

Speaker 1:
[54:17] All in the Family.

Speaker 3:
[54:18] That's right. Edith Bunker, All in the Family. Jack Albertson, they snagged for Grandpa Joe. He'd actually just won an Oscar. Best actor in a supporting role for the subject was Roses in 1968.

Speaker 1:
[54:28] Starring Patrician Neal.

Speaker 3:
[54:29] Oh, wow. Yeah. I've not seen it. He's really good in this movie. I think he's very well cast. Stuart and Margulies cast the movie and Wolper is scouting. He needs a location that's big enough for the factory and the Chocolate River, but it needs to be way cheap compared to Hollywood. They can't use Hollywood. In April of 1970, he goes to Europe. He goes to Ireland, he checks out the Guinness Brewery, looks the part, lots of tubes, doesn't work for technical reasons. He checks out Spain. They had a bankrupt chocolate factory that looked perfect, but the ownership was under legal dispute, so he skips that. He hits up breweries in Germany. None of them are quite right. And then he goes to Italy and he meets with one of my favorites on the show, Dino De Laurentiis, who is saying, you have to come to Italy. Everybody does an offensive Italian accent when they talk about Dino De Laurentiis. I'll refrain. And he's pushing him. Come shoot at Cinecitta Studios. It's Hollywood on the Tiber, Ben Hur, Cleopatra. They all shot here. And Wolper believes that Laurentiis has a financial incentive to try to bring him over here. It's also possible that Laurentiis was trying to get him to shoot at Dino Citta Studios, which was Dino De Laurentiis' knockoff Cinecitta, 25 kilometers down the road from Cinecitta. We can't be sure. But regardless, we got to share this story. They go to dinner and Laurentiis shows up with three or four beautiful Italian starlets. He's really whining and dining, Wolper. They're eating at a restaurant that De Laurentiis insists has the best steak in the world. Wolper orders a steak medium rare. They bring it out and it's well done. Laurentiis says, how is it? Wolper says, it's a little too well done. De Laurentiis picks up the steak, throws it into the street, screams at the waiter, and tells them to bring him another one. They bring out the next one and Wolper is so scared that when De Laurentiis says, how is it, he just says, it's the greatest steak I've ever had. Then he says, Italy is a no. So they choose the Bavaria Film Studios in Munich, and they're using the Munich Gas Works as an exterior. Actually, Alfred Hickshock, his first film, The Pleasure Garden, was shot at Bavaria Film Studios in Munich and along with scenes from The Sound of Music, Paths of Glory, The Great Escape. So construction begins in mid-June, shooting scheduled to begin at the end of August. Art director Harper Goff comes in. He is basically drawing from Dahl's original words and the illustrations by illustrator Joseph Schindelman, which we can post on our Patreon. He's very experienced. He knows how to stretch a dollar. I mean, he had worked on Errol Flynn's Captain Blood at Warner Brothers, Casablanca. But his best work was known at Disney. Some Disney historians described him as the second Imagineer, Walt Disney being the first. He did a lot of the early concept work for Disney's Mickey Mouse Park, aka Disneyland, specifically Main Street USA and the Jungle Cruise. He's actually credited with convincing Walt Disney to make 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a live-action film. He designed The Nautilus for that movie. He did another submarine, The Proteus, in the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, and both of those movies won Oscars for art direction and special effects. Now, another key crew member was construction manager Hendrik Wynans, and we should talk a little bit about the candy world. A lot of people say it was not edible, including the Chocolate River, but the Chocolate River almost was edible. So the original plan was to mix 150,000 gallons of water with powder that's used to make chocolate ice cream. What might be the problem with that?

Speaker 2:
[57:37] Sticky.

Speaker 3:
[57:39] Stinky! When you leave it out, it produces bubbles and it starts smelling like the Bog of Eternal Stents from Labyrinth, so they added chemicals like salt conditioner and the special chemical that was used to control the foaming element in shampoos, which made it cold, dirty and not edible. Now, another rumor online, they say that the flower teacup that Wonka sips from and bites is made from wax, not candy. That's actually not true. The original version was wax. And then when Stuart saw how Gene had to spit it out during rehearsal, they replaced it with one made from sugar. And we should also mention special effects technician Logan Frayes, who brought all of these designs to life. But let's get back to the script, because we don't have a script and there's a new problem, which is really an old problem that anybody involved in this movie should have seen from the first time they read the book. Aaron, the Oompa Loompas, how were they originally described in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Speaker 1:
[58:34] Yeah, they were African pygmies.

Speaker 3:
[58:37] That's right. They were described basically as very small black people. And there was a suggestion by a number of black actors that read the script made to Mel Stuart that this suggested a plantation-like scenario where Willy Wonka was engaged in slave labor.

Speaker 1:
[58:53] Definitely.

Speaker 3:
[58:53] So Mel Stuart says he only cared about Mr. Wonka's chocolate being made by a group of mysterious candy-making elves. So in our research, it is suggested that Mel Stuart pitched green hair and orange faces, which seemed to assuage the concerns of the actors who would come forward. Now, this is interesting. So Aaron, Stuart also claims that this is partly where the title change came from. He claims that there were really three reasons why he wanted to change the name to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The first reason you already pointed out, which is that the story now really revolves around Willy Wonka. After we get through Act 1, Willy is the one who goes through the change. The second reason was that he didn't want audiences to be confused with the shorthand that they would use if they were going to recommend the movie to a friend. It would be much easier to say, I saw Willy Wonka as opposed to I saw Charlie. On top of this, one of the other issues that some of the black actors who had read the script raised with him, was that Charlie could be used as a pejorative term when speaking of an oppressive white man. So it reinforced this idea in the book that Willy Wonka is engaging in slave labor. I don't doubt that all of these things are true, but my guess is that ultimately this was a Quaker Oats decision at the end of the day, and that it happened much earlier in the process than this laid into the scripting.

Speaker 1:
[60:12] Yeah, I don't buy it.

Speaker 3:
[60:14] I only mention it because Stuart said it, but let's dive into the script. Dahl agrees to change the Oompa Loompas, and Aaron, as you know, the next publication of the book, I believe the 1973 version, the description of the Oompa Loompas has changed, and they are just knee-high and given very little description beyond that, insofar as the color of their skin, etc. But in the meantime, Dahl is writing, and Stuart and Wolper and Margulies know they're in trouble because Dahl is not changing his script beyond the Oompa Loompas. They need another writer, they want it to be bigger, they want it to be funnier. They want to add a worldwide search for the golden tickets. So this is a big part of the movie that's not a big part of the book. So they hired Robert Kaufman, who had just written the totally kid-friendly Elliot Gould sex romp, I Love My Wife that Mel Stuart had just directed.

Speaker 2:
[61:03] Kids love it.

Speaker 3:
[61:04] Now, to be fair, he was an Oscar nominee in 1967's Divorce American Style, and he came up with some great scenes, including Stuart's favorite scene that didn't make it into the movie, and I want to read it to you guys. So there's this craze for Wonka bars, and an English explorer climbs a holy mountain to beg a guru to tell him the meaning of life. Here's the description. There is snow and ice everywhere, as the explorer with torn clothes enters a cave and kneels at the feet of a guru. The explorer says, oh, great, guru, I've been climbing for days, my party is lost, I'm hungry, freezing and exhausted, but I need to know what is the meaning of life. And the guru says, you have Wonka bar? And explorer says, yes, yes, I do. It's my last bit of food. You can have it, but please tell me, what's the meaning of life? The guru opens the Wonka bar and discovers there is no golden ticket. In disgust, he throws it on the floor of the cave. The explorer says, no, oh, guru, tell me, what is the meaning of life? And the guru says, life is a disappointment. That's great.

Speaker 2:
[61:54] Amazing.

Speaker 3:
[61:55] It's a really good scene. So Dahl turns in his second draft in June. To be clear, Dahl does not know that they are engaging with another writer. Dahl believes he is the only writer on this project. Two months before shooting is about to begin, Stuart says that this draft is an improvement, but it still needs work. So Dahl goes back to start on a third draft. In the meantime, Wolper, Stuart and Margulies bring on another writer. This time, they hired 30-year-old David Seltzer, who had never written a screenplay before. I think that they got him because he was free. So he'd worked for David Wolper, writing for the Oscar-winning documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle, and he'd also rewritten Arthur Schlesinger's script for The Unfinished Journey of Robert Kennedy, another documentary. He wanted to write a real screenplay and he was very creative. He'd written some wacky dialogue that was actually fictional for some of these documentaries. So Wolper calls Seltzer and lays it out, look, we don't have a script. This is not working with Roald Dahl. I'm sure he's basically revealing, he cannot afford somebody big to come in and rewrite this. If this fails, he will have failed at bringing Roald Dahl's book to life, he will have failed at transitioning into narrative film. So he says, Seltzer, can you write this movie? Seltzer says, yes, I'm your man. Wolper says, great, here's the deal. I can't pay you, I can't give you credit. I can't even reveal that you are doing this. But if you do it, I promise I will produce your first screenplay. And Seltzer says, fine, I'll do it. He starts working on the script in secret. And the way that they're doing this is that Seltzer would come up with concepts and then they would pitch them to Dahl as if it was their ideas. Like Stuart and Wolper being like, hey, we came up with this idea and they would pitch it to Dahl and they would try to get Dahl to add it into the script. But this is only going to get them so far. So they finally, after Dahl submits his third draft, they fly Seltzer to Munich to polish Dahl's work. They lock him in a hotel room and Seltzer described it as a baptism by fire. The hardest, most frightening work I've probably ever had to do in my life. And by the way, he's doing it on a German typewriter. There is no final draft. There is no copy, find and replace. Like he is taking existing pages and rewriting them by hand. So let's talk about some of the changes. So the everlasting gobstopper test that becomes the final turn of the movie. That was Seltzer. So that was obviously not part of Dahl. He beefed up the part with Mr. Slugworth, made him a double agent and a villain, which was obviously not Dahl. He added the scene where Grandpa Joe and Charlie disobey Wonka by drinking the fizzy lifting drinks. And he changed Faruqa Salt's punishment. So in the book, it's squirrels with walnuts and the squirrels throw her down a tube. They can't do 100 squirrels doing that. They would do it in the Burton version. So he changes it to Guy slaying the golden eggs. I assumed he also did the teacher in the classroom. That was Roald Dahl. That's not in the book either.

Speaker 2:
[64:37] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[64:38] Seltzer has said, it's not really mine. It's Roald Dahl's. I did some patchwork on it.

Speaker 2:
[64:42] Those are some pretty massive patches, though. I mean, he provided the things that literally...

Speaker 1:
[64:47] Those are big structural changes.

Speaker 2:
[64:48] Yes. I would agree they are good ones.

Speaker 3:
[64:51] Those are the things, candidly, that make it a movie.

Speaker 2:
[64:54] Yes, exactly.

Speaker 3:
[64:55] They give it some conflict. They give it some narrative tension.

Speaker 2:
[64:57] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[64:58] I think very smart ideas. And they were not easily won. So the script is not done, but they have to start shooting. Principal photography begins on August 31st, 1970. The budget is $2.9 million. They cannot go over. There's no studio backstopping this. This is Quaker Oats. Quaker Oats is not going to just give them another million dollars. They also had a Quaker Oats representative on set, which I just like to imagine is the guy on the Quaker Oats logo on set at all times. According to Julie Dawn Cole, one of the ways that they kept costs down was by paying the child actors 60 British pounds per filming week. Per week. This was $10 more per week than Jerry Marron, child actor had gotten on The Wizard of Oz decades earlier.

Speaker 2:
[65:44] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[65:45] The children recorded demos of their songs with composer Walter Sharf, and these were obviously played back during filming for lip syncing. The songs may have been done, but the script was not done. They are on set and David Seltzer is writing while they're in production. He is writing on set and so he's writing out of order because they're not shooting chronologically. At the beginning of the day, they'd say, okay, here's what we're shooting today, or here's what we're shooting this week, and he would start working on those pages. Early on, this meant he had to write new dialogue to get in and out of the musical numbers that they had already recorded. Because they had written Pure Imagination and The Candyman before the movie was written, he then had to come up with what's the scene that's going to lead into this and how are we going to get out of it in every case. Then Roald Dahl finds out that he's being rewritten during production. Aaron, how do you think Roald responded to finding out that he was being rewritten? Not only was he being rewritten, he was being rewritten by a 30-year-old without a single screenplay credit to his name.

Speaker 1:
[66:41] I don't think he liked it very much.

Speaker 3:
[66:42] So he calls up the production. This may have been when Seltzer was on set and he says, I know you're rewriting me. I am disturbed by this fact. I want you to come to my house on the outskirts of London and bring the script with you. So that weekend, Mel Stuart flies to London, drives to Dahl's house and hands him the script. And Dahl asks him to wait there while he reads it. Let's bear in mind, Roald Dahl is six foot six inches tall. Also worth mentioning that David Wolper says it was David Seltzer who went to Dahl's house with the script. But that would have been very unusual.

Speaker 1:
[67:17] No, in Hollywood, usually the rewriter never meets the original writer.

Speaker 3:
[67:20] No. Oh no, like never the twain shall meet. There is a final draft is dropped in an anonymous box somewhere, you know what I mean? And then it's given away. It's like spy work. Yeah. So a couple hours later, according to Stewart, Dahl came down the stairs. He handed the script back to me and said that he agreed with the changes. I went back to Munich and that was that. It's really interesting. So Wolper says that Dahl was really upset, but he didn't fight the changes. And I wonder, Aaron, if even though he was dissatisfied with the movie, I wonder if he recognized that these changes were kind of necessary to give it the dramatic structure it needed to be to be a movie.

Speaker 1:
[68:00] Yeah, that might be right.

Speaker 3:
[68:01] I'm just curious what you think, because you know Dahl better than I do.

Speaker 1:
[68:05] I think that there's also a chance that he was just done with Hollywood. Sure. At this point, remember, he was fully writing his children's books and was becoming a giant hit, you know, incredibly successful, way more successful than he ever was in Hollywood. So, I think there's a chance he was just like, you know what, I got other fish to fry, you know, I'm doing my thing here, you guys just go make this movie.

Speaker 3:
[68:25] I also wonder if he was feeling still somewhat optimistic about the film because of how it was looking. And so, one thing that everybody on this production says is that basically art director Harper Goff was working magic with no money. When you think about The Chocolate Room and how much they made this for, it's actually a really impressive accomplishment. Like, this is a set with flowing water and a boat and edible scenery filling up an entire sound stage or studio space made for almost nothing. Everybody thought it was incredible. In fact, Julie Dawn Cole says that their first reaction when they walk in to see The Chocolate Room is the one that's used in the movie and it was real. They hadn't seen it before and they filmed them coming in to see it for the first time. And somebody that actually agreed is Roald Dahl. He did not like the screenplay, but he actually was really impressed with the production design. And I want to play a brief clip and this shows Dahl on set. He did visit the production while they were filming.

Speaker 4:
[69:24] In a book, one can imagine these different rooms, just as large as one wants to. There's a limit to how big and marvelous you can make them. But within those limits, he's almost gone beyond them, I should think. He's built the most marvelous and enormous sets filled with every kind of ingenious gadget and beauty as well. I think he's a very clever man.

Speaker 3:
[69:49] I actually think that's pretty high praise coming from Dahl, speaking of Harper Goff.

Speaker 1:
[69:53] It is. But also let's remember, Dahl was a good businessman.

Speaker 3:
[69:57] That's true.

Speaker 1:
[69:57] And he knew that if he was saying terrible things about the movie before it came out, that it would hurt the business. And so not only might it detract from the title, but also he's going to get royalties since it's his name on the screenplay. So years later, he's going to do nothing but trash the movie. But right now in the marketing phase, yeah, he knows how to play his role.

Speaker 2:
[70:18] And also production design doesn't infringe on his creative arts the same way that the screenwriting changes do. So maybe this was a bit easier for him to be like, yes, beautiful, great job.

Speaker 3:
[70:29] Well, and also Harper Goff was treating the text as pretty faithful, something sacred to be followed, right? As opposed to Stewart. Regardless, it seems like Goff and his sets, and his production design was kind of like universally appreciated right off the bat, whereas Mel Stewart, the director, was a bit more of an acquired taste. Now, over the years, he became known for having a bad temper. Director David Vassar would later describe this temper as legendary. Here's the quote, in the most retold of Mel Stewart's stories, he was on location in Africa with a small documentary unit when he wandered into quicksand. While he was slowly sinking, so the tale goes, his crew discussed the merits of pulling him out or letting him slowly slide under the mud. With the sand up to his neck, they threw him a rope. I think that this was a difficult production for everybody given the budget, but I would imagine it was not made easier by having a director who was a perfectionist and did not seem to have a lot of warmth for his actors. Julie Dawn Cole later said he had little tolerance for mediocrity. There were many hurt feelings when a performance wasn't up to the caliber he desired. She said she had memories of him screaming god damn it across the set. And it seems to Mel Stuart's, you know, maybe not credit, but to give him some defense, he was under an incredible amount of pressure and he knew that there was only one chance to get this right. So they were following immediately behind schedule. They did not have the staff or the infrastructure to light the enormous chocolate room. So every time they changed the perspective of the camera, it took a reset that was just eating and eating up so much time. They were trying to shoot with a boat, which is always a nightmare because it just keeps moving and you can never get your camera set. He did a lot of takes. He was more like Stanley Kubrick than he was Clint Eastwood. Rusty Goff said it took 60 to 70 takes to capture the scene in the TV room where the Oompa Loompas are doing cartwheels and headstands. It took 40 takes for when Augustus Gloop falls into the river. It took 20 takes for Mike TV's dad to perfect the line, not tell your 12 son, which is a line that doesn't even need to be in the movie really, if it's going to cost you too much time.

Speaker 2:
[72:28] Yeah, that's exhausting.

Speaker 3:
[72:29] This set, unfortunately, was not a safe set because it was being made so cheaply. The white substance spewed by the Wonka Mobile was fire extinguisher fluid. It gave everybody a rash. Most of the Chocolate River was dangerously shallow. It was just two feet deep. They actually dug a hole where Michael Bollner would jump in as Augustus Gloop. But if he missed it, it would have been like jumping into a shallow pool.

Speaker 2:
[72:51] Oh my God.

Speaker 3:
[72:52] Julie Dawn Cole had split ends that the hairdresser didn't like, so they burned them off every morning, which is why if you watch carefully, her hair actually gets shorter throughout the movie.

Speaker 1:
[73:00] The 70s, man. It was a different time. Filmmaking, that would not fly today.

Speaker 3:
[73:04] No. Well, and also not being shot in the United States, I think away from the prying eyes of any studio or OSHA, Peter Ostrom references. Nickerson who plays Violet Beauregard said it was very scary and sometimes painful to get rolled around in the big blueberry contraption. There's basically an inflatable version and then there's a styrofoam version for rolling her around. And it took her so long to get into the styrofoam one that she couldn't break for lunch because it would take her too long to get back into it. So during lunch, they would have a grip, feed her through a straw, and then they would have to roll her a quarter turn every 15 minutes to keep the blood flowing evenly throughout her body. And she said the worst part actually wasn't that, it's that she had to pick her nose on screen, which she didn't want to do because she had a big crush on Peter Ostrom, her co-star, and she thought it was going to gross him out, which was very sweet. And then Julie Donkohl said that they actually became very close friends, she and Nickerson, but there was some tension because they both had crushes on Peter Ostrom while they were filming. Now let's talk about the scariest scene, which is the tunnel scene, which is so weird. Lizzie, can you describe some of the imagery that we see on the walls during this scene?

Speaker 2:
[74:07] I don't even know. It's just, it's horrifying. It's dark. The colors are really dark. It's very like MK Ultra-y, where there's just things flashing at different times. You do see Slugworth's terrifying face. You see a chicken at one point or-

Speaker 1:
[74:22] Did you see a chicken get its head cut off?

Speaker 2:
[74:24] A chicken's head being chopped off. Yeah, that's the one. It's not for kids.

Speaker 3:
[74:28] Yeah. What's interesting is that specifically that Millipede shot was actually the suggestion of writer Waylon Green. Are you guys familiar with his credits? Waylon Green, writer of The Wild Bunch and Sorcerer. He had worked on The Hellstrom Chronicle with Mel Stewart. When Mel Stewart called him, he's like, I need some grotesque imagery to make this nightmare sequence. He said, what about, he actually pitched a centipede going across a person's face. That's actually Waylon Green's face with the millipede going across it.

Speaker 1:
[74:55] How interesting.

Speaker 3:
[74:56] Some of the kids actually thought Gene Wilder had gone insane while shooting that scene. His performance was so convincing.

Speaker 1:
[75:01] Yeah, the images are nothing compared to what Gene Wilder is doing.

Speaker 3:
[75:04] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:05] He's so scary in that scene.

Speaker 2:
[75:06] Yeah, that's the thing. I actually remember him more in that than I do the images.

Speaker 3:
[75:11] You really think maybe we're going to hell right now with this guy. It's a big difference, I think, between him and the depth performance as well. But we should mention to you that the Oompa Loompas, I think, had a really hard time on this project as well. This was an international cast. Rusty Goff later said, there were basically five little people working in the business in London at the time. So they expanded their search to Munich and Malta and Turkey. They had 10 actors whose age ranges were from their 20s to their 70s, and the lead role went to English actor Rusty Goff, and Stuart hired him because he performed Shakespeare, but he'd never been in a movie before. This was his first film. They had to learn these dance numbers, which again, some of these actors are 70 years old. This is very physically demanding, and there's also a language barrier. They don't all speak English, so Stuart's directing them with hand signals, and they have to lip sync English words for all of these songs. So I just want to really emphasize the difficulty that they were pulling off here. So the production is heading into its final stretch, and the problem that Stuart has is that the ending of the movie that Dahl has written isn't great. The ending of the movie is Grandpa Joe saying, Yippee! That's the last line of the movie in Roald Dahl's script, and Mel Stuart hates it. So he calls for David Seltzer, and the production says David Seltzer has gone home. He says, What? David Seltzer had been working 20-hour days for a month, so he left the production and went to a log cabin near a lake in Maine. He was about to go fly fishing and the phone rings. By phone, I mean there is one pay phone, and if it rings, whoever's near it is supposed to answer, and then take a message for whoever it's for. He goes and answers the phone, and it's the worst call ever. It's Mel Stuart calling from Munich. Here's Stuart. What are you doing? Seltzer. I'm on vacation. I know you're on vacation, but I'll tell you what. I'm here, and there are dozens of people, and we're spending a lot of money, and we can't finish the film, and I want the end line of this picture. Seltzer. Well, when do you want it? Now. I want it now. Like in the song, I want it now. I want it now. Apparently, Stuart gave Seltzer five minutes. Seltzer came back, and he said, Mel, this is really lame, but how about this? They go up into their spacecraft, looking down on the Chocolate Factory, and Willy Wonka is telling Charlie all the wonderful things he's going to have, and he looks at him very seriously, and he says, But Charlie, do you know what happened to the man who got everything he always wanted? And Charlie fearfully says, What? And he says, He lived happily ever after. And there's a long pause. And David Seltzer goes, Mel, are you there? And Stewart just goes, Fantastic! That's it. And that's how you got the end of the movie. It's something that David Seltzer came up with in five minutes. And I'm so curious if you guys have any interpretation. I have no idea what to think of those last lines of this movie. I find them weirdly confusing. Is it intended to be sinister? Is it intended to be reassuring? You know what I'm saying? I'm just not sure what to take with it.

Speaker 2:
[77:55] It played very sinister to me, I'll be honest, because it's such a weird tonal shift for him to take at that point. And the way that Gene Wilder plays it also feels like manically sincere. I don't know, Aaron, what did you think?

Speaker 1:
[78:09] I mean, I think it sort of reinforces the idea that they think of this as a fairy tale. And so that's a sort of a classic way to end a fairy tale, right? Live happily ever after, but with a little bit of undermining, which, yeah. So I think it works well.

Speaker 3:
[78:22] So they go into post-production. And to be clear, they have not shot all of the search for the Golden Ticket scenes. They've really just shot the Munich portions of this movie. They start editing the movie. David Seltzer comes back on to write some more of those, you know, search for the Golden Ticket scenes. And there are two scenes that Stuart loved that audiences didn't. One of them stayed in the movie. And this is the Argentinian man who cheats and finds the fifth ticket, right? This is not in the book. In the book, there is a Russian character very early on briefly mentioned who apparently falsified finding a ticket. The photograph, do you guys know who the photograph is of when they play it on the news? This Argentinian man in the movie. I do not know this. That is Martin Borman, who was Hitler's aid in his final days, who had escaped to Paraguay, according to legend. And they thought it would be a funny joke that like, what if a secret Nazi found the golden ticket? Wow. Nobody understood it. Nobody ever understood it. Nope, Stuart was like, nobody understood it at all. And the scene that did get cut that Stuart loved was the scene with the guru on the Holy Mountain. So they shot that scene and they played the test screening and nobody laughed and Stuart was stunned. He thought this joke was amazing. So he invites a psychologist friend to the next screening to help him understand. And do you guys have any guesses as to why the psychologist believes nobody was laughing at that joke?

Speaker 1:
[79:41] No.

Speaker 3:
[79:41] He said, you don't understand, Mel. For a great many people, life is a disappointment and that it maybe just was too close to home for audiences. So Stuart cut the scene. So they hire a special effects company to come in to do the final Wonka Vader shot in the air. And when they did this, it didn't include Grandpa Joe. Because the FX team thought that in the footage they had been sent, Jack Albertson was a crew member making adjustments on the set and not a character in the movie. So they had to redo the miniature with Jack Albertson inside of it. They also did them with the fizzy lifting drinks as well, that composition. So David Wolper has a movie in the can and he goes to Paramount. And they get a 7 year license on this movie. Revenue is first going to go to Quaker Oats until they recoup the budget. Then the profits are split 50-50. The Wonka Bar is just Quaker Oats. And maybe this is part of the problem. Nobody seems to have a full stake in this movie. So like a lot of the children in Roald Dahl's books, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was kind of left to fend for itself. Paramount didn't have a strategy for selling it, according to Wolper. Stewart says that they vetoed an offer from Radio City Music Hall to showcase the film and give it a single city run, which may have built buzz. In modern film, maybe platforming a movie. Instead, they just opt for general distribution, and Willy Wonka's lost in a crowd of summer films. So it premieres in Chicago on June 28th, 1971, and it's dominated across the summer by Love Story. Anybody remember? Ryan O'Neill, Ellie McGraw.

Speaker 1:
[81:08] I like that movie.

Speaker 3:
[81:09] There's a bunch of genre films that beat it out too, like the original Willard, the Andromeda Strain, the Omega Man, Clute.

Speaker 2:
[81:15] Oh yeah.

Speaker 3:
[81:16] Now, maybe like Dahl's stories, it would do better in the UK. So it premieres in London in December of 1971, and Princess Margaret attended, in aid of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which wasn't a great look because a lot of people said, this movie is so cruel to children.

Speaker 2:
[81:33] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[81:34] So according to Mel Stewart, Willy Wonka was an enormous flop. It was number 53 on the box office chart for 1971. It grossed roughly $4 million domestically. It played for only three days in one theater in Munich, which sold out one night thanks to Michael Bollner's family and friends. The reviews didn't help. Variety called it an OK musical fantasy. The New York Times said children have so few good films to claim as their own. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is not one of them. Gene Siskel gave it two stars. But Roger Ebert loved it, four stars. He said, it's delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and most of all, a genuine work of imagination.

Speaker 1:
[82:07] That's great.

Speaker 3:
[82:08] Well, the newspapers didn't care. They misspelled Willy and the Wonka bar flopped. Aaron, what is one of the reasons that the Wonka bar flopped?

Speaker 1:
[82:15] Yeah, I'm sort of forgetting, but didn't they screw it up so that it melted in the package before it was opened?

Speaker 3:
[82:21] Yes. Unlike Willy Wonka making ice cream that never melts, they made a chocolate bar that always melts. Oh no. It flopped. The Wonka bar was a flop. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a flop. Gene Wilder was convinced he was only going to be in flops. He'd been in a string of them, so he left for California to do Woody Allen's, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but were afraid to ask, hoping that it would resurrect his career. Dahl would later disown the movie in many ways, and James and the Giant Peach would never be made with David Wolper. In a weird twist of fate, it would eventually be what studio that would make James and the Giant Peach?

Speaker 2:
[82:56] Is it Disney?

Speaker 3:
[82:57] It's Disney. That's right. Now, Wilder was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as Willy Wonka. His career turned around swiftly. Willy Wonka was nominated for an Oscar song score by Leslie Bricus and Anthony Newley. It lost to Fiddler on the Roof. Okay. But for whatever reason, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[83:15] That's an amazing score.

Speaker 3:
[83:17] For whatever reason, the movie stuck around. Especially after being released on VHS, it became a cult hit. I think some people think it was when Wilder became a superstar, that people started going back to his earlier work. Some people think that it was an audience that grew into this type of material that was meant to be somewhat edgy for children. Lizzie and I talked about this recently, Aaron, with movies like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, even something like Goonies or Temple of Doom. There was a darkness to a lot of the children's stuff made in the 80s, and especially in the 90s, that I think wouldn't quite have fit the 70s in quite the same way. But I think part of it is that over time, we've actually grown to appreciate the movie for what it is and for its lack of polish and not hold it against the movie. I would imagine if a movie is coming out in theaters and you go see it and it feels a little janky and it doesn't feel as big or imaginative as the book that you've read, it might feel like a disappointment. Whereas if you stumbled across this movie on TV or on VHS and you just see Gene Wilder's unhitched performance, and it's clear that they just threw themselves headlong into this without actually having the resources to make it, that maybe that would be endearing as opposed to a turnoff. But I'm really curious what you guys think. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[84:27] I mean, I don't think it needs all those caveats. I think it's just actually a really good movie. I think Gene Wilder, yes, he gives one of the all-time great performances. It's just so confident. I love how much it feels like he's about to break the fourth wall. He's almost going to talk directly to the audience and into camera, but never quite does. So you're on edge every time he opens his mouth. I also think the structure makes absolutely no sense. I mean, it's so weird that it starts off as Charlie's movie, and it's like any great myth of the hero where he's going to go on an adventure and triumph. But as soon as Act 1 ends, we are now in Willy Wonka's point of view. And it's Willy Wonka who actually does the changing. Charlie doesn't change at all. And Charlie wins at the end by giving the Gobstopper to Willy Wonka and showing that he's not going to betray him. That's something Charlie would have done in the first five minutes of the movie. It's Willy Wonka who becomes a better man through the course of the movie, which is a really kind of cool, strange structure that I can't remember seeing before. So no, I also love Slugworth. I loved all of those little interludes of seeing each person find the golden ticket. I thought those were terrific. Yeah, the movie has so much going for it. I guess I'm not shocked that it wasn't a hit when it came out, just because it was so probably unexpected, the darkness and specifically Wilder's performance. But yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all that it's become a classic.

Speaker 2:
[85:51] Yeah, I think that this movie does what the best and most enduring quote unquote kids movies do, which is that it's very entertaining to watch as a kid. I think that the weird structure, to your point, Aaron, actually helps with that. There's something about this that is very childlike, the journey that you're going on, and you get to know Charlie, you get to like him as a kid, then you're along for the ride once he shows up at the factory, which I think is very enjoyable as a kid. But then this movie is an entirely different movie for adults. And so it's one of those movies where kids will watch it, they will be entertained, they enjoy it, and then adults will also watch it and be horrified, be laughing, be confused, be entertained. It is genuinely something that I think every one of every age can take something out of this movie. That's very hard to do. And I think a lot of the times, as we've seen on this podcast, those movies that achieve that don't necessarily do that well at the box office. Some of them do. But especially when they're darker and they're like kind of hard to pin down in that way, I feel like they end up having much longer legs.

Speaker 3:
[86:57] Yeah. Well, unfortunately, Quaker Oats did not participate in the long-term financial success of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. So in 1977, David Wolper sold his company to Warner Brothers, and he convinced Quaker Oats to sell its 50 percent stake in the movie for $500,000. I'm guessing that Warner Brothers didn't just want 50 percent of that movie. I'm guessing if they were going to buy Wolper's company, they wanted everything outright. Warner Brothers then turned around and made a fortune on the VHS of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In fact, on its 25th anniversary, they re-released it in theaters and then they did a new release of the home video VHS at that point. Now, I should mention Ken Mason, who had been the Quaker Oats representative, who Wolper was working it with at the time. It doesn't seem like he minded. He'd quit Quaker Oats after a brief stint as president and COO in the mid-1970s, and he did spend his later years writing passionately about the effects of advertising corporations and television on children in an odd, dolly intern. Now, some of the child actors continued working, but they all eventually left the movie industry. I will say, despite candidly what seemed like very unsafe conditions, on this set, it doesn't seem like anyone was hurt, and they all speak fondly of their adult co-stars and their experiences on this movie. Roald Dahl died in 1990. This was a few years after giving an interview that revealed a virulent anti-Semitic streak. If you want to learn more about that, please listen to Aaron's incredible coverage in, I believe, the seventh episode of his podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl. It's a really complicated history, and I think especially then in the eighth and ninth episodes, when you discuss the fan's dilemma and how do we engage with work created by people who have moral failings or believe things that we do not agree with. It's a really wonderful conversation, and I felt very illuminating as we talk on this podcast about directors who have problematic histories and whatnot.

Speaker 1:
[88:47] Yeah. Thanks. I'm so glad.

Speaker 3:
[88:48] Yeah. Roald Dahl's works were purchased by Netflix in 2021 for a reported $1 billion. And at that time, his family did issue an apology for his anti-Semitic remarks that remains online that you can go see. And of course, most recently, his works have been adapted by, I think perhaps most successfully, Wes Anderson, who seems to be an oddly perfect fit for the Dahlian sensibilities and seems to be able to give it a quick-witted life. So Gene Wilder gives, I think, Willy Wonka the energy that he needs to exist as a character. And I feel that that's completely absent from Johnny Depp's interpretation of the character in 2005. Even though Burton seems like an obvious fit and Wes Anderson seems like a great mix of the two with, he's an incredibly heightened visual stylist, but he also has that kind of energy and warmth that you need to bring Dahl's kind of dry British sensibilities to life. Now, let's end with Gene Wilder, because in 2002, he said, I don't want my gravestone to say Willy Wonka lies here. Dr. Frankenstein, I wouldn't mind. Gene Wilder did die in 2016, and as one of his biographers put it, every single obituary highlighted Willy Wonka. I did pull up the New York Times obituary, which did say, star of Willy Wonka and young Frankenstein. I just do think it's funny that you do not get to choose the thing that you are remembered for. And in a sense, like Roald Dahl, who resisted children's stories for so long, and Mel Stewart, who resisted making a children's movie, Gene Wilder too, was trapped in the legacy of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So, Aaron, we end with a segment called What Went Right, where we pick at least one thing from the movie that for us, in particular, went right when so much often goes wrong. And Lizzie, perhaps you would like to go first. What went right on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?

Speaker 2:
[90:33] I'm going to say what went right here is the unsung hero of the screenplay, it sounds like David Seltzer. You know, the changes that you said that he made are pretty major structural changes to this that make it have some kind of story arc. Without that, it really doesn't. I mean, that's amazing. I didn't know that those changes were not original to Roald Dahl. So I have to give it to him. He was in an impossible position, and he seems to have done a pretty incredible job here.

Speaker 3:
[91:01] I agree. I think he made subtle yet crucial changes, and those are the hardest. And Aaron, you're a screenwriter. You can speak to this. I mean, I think it's really hard not to try to re-conceptualize something from the ground up sort of structurally, and to be able to go in surgically and say, I'm just going to add this, this, and this, and that's going to give it a completely new valence is very impressive.

Speaker 1:
[91:23] And to do that while they're shooting, so it's $30,000 an hour or whatever, and he's got to just come up with all of these solutions on the fly. Yeah, that's an incredibly hard job.

Speaker 3:
[91:33] Aaron, how about you?

Speaker 1:
[91:34] I'm going to give it to Mel Stewart. I was kind of shocked after watching the movie looking up the director, and I had never seen another of his movies. I've almost never heard of another of his movies, which is bizarre because this is actually a really good directing job. This is a hard directing job. The movie goes through so many different tones. It easily could have fallen apart. It could have fallen into horror. It could have fallen into fantasy. It could have fallen into just a saccharine kids movie. But he's balancing all of those different kinds of tones, which is really, really, really difficult. So I'm curious about Mel Stuart. I don't quite understand. I mean, the movie obviously was a flop, and so that's probably why he didn't work again outside of the documentary world. But I was really surprised that he hasn't directed a handful of my other favorite movies.

Speaker 3:
[92:19] I wonder how much he wanted to direct narrative film in the sense that it seems like he would get frustrated with the pace and with working with actors based on the stories that I read. It seems like with documentary, there's a lot more, a lot of the documentaries he did were working with existing footage and then adding in talking heads, you know what I mean, and narration and whatnot. And so I wonder if there was just a level of control with documentary that was preferable to him creatively. I agree, you know, obviously with that flop and it's made outside the studio system, I'm sure that Hollywood wasn't, you know, knocking down his door, trying to get him to direct another movie. But you would imagine that he could have gotten another movie made. But I agree, he did an amazing job with the movie. I'm going to give mine, well, so somebody should give theirs to Gene Wilder.

Speaker 2:
[93:03] So we can all give ours to Gene Wilder.

Speaker 3:
[93:05] Okay, we'll all give it to Gene Wilder. I'll give mine to Brickus and Newly, because that damn song, Pure Imagination, I could have sung that melody ever since I was a kid.

Speaker 2:
[93:14] And the Candyman.

Speaker 3:
[93:16] The Candyman. Yeah, they wrote some great music. And this movie, it's odd that it has such good music in a sense, outside of, again, the traditional Hollywood system. So I'll give it to them. That brings us to the end of our coverage of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Aaron, I just really want to reiterate, what a pleasure it was to listen to your show.

Speaker 1:
[93:32] Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[93:33] And what a treat it was to have you on, as an expert on Roald Dahl and all of this material. It's so illuminating and it's such an interesting story. Please plug your show, tell the folks where they can find it and anything else that you have going on that they should check out.

Speaker 1:
[93:48] Yeah, it's called The Secret World of Roald Dahl, and it's on Apple, it's on Spotify, it's wherever you're listening to this, you can listen to it. We just aired our ninth episode, but we've got another one coming up, and then we've got some bonus episodes, and hope to do a whole nother season. Probably not about Roald Dahl, but another interesting profile of someone who has a bit of a secret life. I just want to thank you guys so much for having me on. This is a great show. I'm a giant movie buff, and I love these very completist, very research heavy episodes that you guys do.

Speaker 2:
[94:20] Thank you so much, and thank you so much for being here. This was really fascinating. Now, you've got me thinking about who else could you cover in another wonderful season of The Secret World?

Speaker 1:
[94:29] Send me ideas.

Speaker 2:
[94:30] I feel like you've got one, and you'll have to tell us often, and we'll know, and then you'll all have to wait until season two comes out.

Speaker 1:
[94:36] I got a few ideas.

Speaker 2:
[94:38] All right. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3:
[94:40] Guys, if you're enjoying this podcast, there's a few easy ways to support us. Lizzie, can you tell the fine folks at home how they can keep this Chocolate Factory churning?

Speaker 2:
[94:49] I sure can. You can tell a friend or family member about this show. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcatcher you are listening to this on. You can give us a shout out or you can follow us on social media at whatwentwrongpod on Instagram and TikTok. You can subscribe to this show in both Spotify and Apple, and if you do that, you will get one bonus episode every month, at least one. Honestly, it's probably more than that at this point. We did a whole bunch for the Oscars and we really enjoyed it. We're going to keep doing a minimum of one bonus episode every month behind the paywall for you subscribers. And then if you want to go the extra mile, you can subscribe to us on Patreon. And there you get everything I just mentioned. Plus you get access to newsletters, polls, extra credit, the fan community, and an ad free feed of the show. And if you want to really turn it up to 11, you can for $50 a month become a full stop patron and get a shout out at the end of every episode, just like one of these.

Speaker 3:
[95:48] So since we've done a lot of songs recently and impressions, and David opened this episode with an amazing Oompa Loopa song, I thought we could mix things up a little bit. I'll read everybody's names and then I have selected Candy from Willy Wonka's Factory for the heroes of every one of the movies that we've covered thus far this year. All right. So the full stop shout outs go to Adrian Pang Korea, Angeline Renee Cook, Beatrix Erhart, Ben Shindleman, Blaise Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, C. Grace B., Chris Leal, Chris Zocca, David Frisco Lanty, Darren and Dale Conkling, Don Scheibel, M. Zodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G., Film It Yourself, Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, the cast and crew of Win A Trip to Brown Town, Grace Potter, Half Gray Hound, James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, JJ Rapido, Jory Hillpiper, Jose Emilano Salto del Georgio, Karina Kanaba, Kate Elrington, Kathleen Olsen, Amy Olgislager-McCoy, Lazy Freddy, Lena L. J., Lydia Howes, Mark Bertha, Mary Poses-Humans, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate the Knife, Rosemary Southward, Rural Juror, Sadie, Just Sadie, Scott Oshida, Soman Chainani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, The Provost Family, Where the O's Sound Like O's and Tom Christen. Okay, so here are the candy shout outs. For Lawrence of Arabia as he crosses the Nafud, ice cream that never melts. For Sarah in The Labyrinth, fizzy lifting drinks so she can always see her way out. For Derek in American History X, stick jaw for talkative parents so he'll just shut up a bit. For Akira Kurosawa's crew, hot ice creams for cold days when shooting the Seven Samurai climax in the rain. For Forrest Gump, everlasting gobstoppers for his runs across the country. For Rick in Casablanca, square sweets that look round because it is possible to be two things at once. For Sean Connery in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, magic hand fudge. When you hold it in your hand, you taste it in your mouth, and this way his hands will be occupied. For Bob Evans in The Cotton Club, a machine with white powder spraying out of it because you get it. For Miles in Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, rainbow drops, suck them and you can spit in six different colors. One for each spider person. For Seth Rogen in the interview, exploding sweets for your enemies. For the cast of Game of Thrones, cavity-filling caramels so you don't die of dental disease and westeros. For Florence Pugh in Don't Worry, Darling, lickable wallpaper. For Leonard Shelby, chewing gum that never loses its flavor, you endlessly searching gum shoe detective. Lizzie, can you tell the folks at home what we have coming next week?

Speaker 2:
[98:39] Well, we have a really uplifting, happy movie that we're covering next week, very much in the same genre as today's children's movie, and that is, of course, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. But this is very important. We are going to have a bonus episode airing on Friday that will be covering the stalking case that happened to Jodie Foster kind of as a result of Taxi Driver. It will be an important precursor to listen to that before you listen to the main episode. So come back to this feed on Friday for a special out of frame episode on that case featuring, Chris, do you want to reveal our guests?

Speaker 3:
[99:14] The hosts of the incredibly popular Red Handed podcast who joined us all the way from across the pond and shed a lot of light into this unusual situation.

Speaker 2:
[99:27] That's right. We have Hannah Maguire and Saruti Bala on the show. They were wonderful. So please come back on Friday. Listen to that out of frame episode first and then on Monday, we will be back with Taxi Driver. See you then. Bye. Bye.

Speaker 5:
[99:41] To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple, or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website whatwentwrongpod.com for more info. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Boman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krepsa.