Jan 12, 2016
Space Cop commentary
https://www.twitter.com/redlettermedia/status/687027406251622400
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https://www.redlettermedia.vhx.tv/products/space-cop-movie-extras

MIKE:
Hello, and welcome to the Space Cop commentary.
I'm Mike.

RICH:
I am Rich.

JAY:
And I'm Jay.
And I'm very excited to be doing this commentary, because it means the movie is done.

RICH:
Oh, look at that building in the background.
Isn't that special?

JAY:
That was the future, uh, police headquarter building.

MIKE:
Oh, my god.
Look at all these amazing things in the future...

JAY:
Oh, jesus.

MIKE:
Just floating around.

JAY:
There's too much stuff to keep track of.

MIKE:
That's the future, everybody.

JAY:
Who built that model of the moon?

MIKE:
I did.

JAY:
Oh, my god.

RICH:
He built the model of the moon.

MIKE:
Oh.

RICH:
I built the fucking moon.

MIKE:
Rich built the moon.

JAY:
Okay.

MIKE:
The model is a upturned, uh, uh, nacho dish, or whatever, like a, um...

JAY:
It's like a sampler platter.
Like an appetizer-type platter.

MIKE:
Uh, yeah, at the center...

JAY:
From a dollar store.

MIKE:
From a dollar store.

RICH:
Can we talk about these great special effects?

MIKE:
Oh, my god.
There's too much to talk about already.

RICH:
I know.

MIKE:
Colin, our friend Colin from Canada, just did those effects where the car shoots off into the sky.
He, he...

JAY:
He does the future Milwaukee, uh, background.

MIKE:
The future Milwaukee background of the Star Wars:
Episode II, cars flying in the background, uh...

RICH:
And, and Jim did the, the Space Cop headquarters, right?

MIKE:
Yes.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
That's a physical model.

MIKE:
That's a physical model.
Him and Colin worked on that together.
Jim built it last year, or a year before, and then they kind of rebuilt it.
They, uh, upgraded it.

JAY:
They aged it.
They added detail to it.
It looks great now.

MIKE:
For the original shots, a couple of summers ago, uh, Jim wan-, he, he kind of had to make it quickly, and he always wanted to add more detail to it, so they did.
Um, and then this is the moonbase opening.

JAY:
Which wasn't the original opening.
We, we sort of, it's sort of, the way it ended up, there was almost two opening reveals of Space Cop, so we ended up cutting the first one, which I believe you will see in the deleted scenes.

MIKE:
Yeah.
It opened with Space Cop buying a hot dog from a robot hot dog vendor, and then heading up to the moon base, but we figured we, uh, his entrance of blowing the door up and stepping through was more of a grand entrance.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
So we modeled it kind of after the opening of Robocop 2, when the, the punks are running amok, and Robo-, you only see Robocop driving around, um, in his car, and you don't see him until, I think they blow his car up with a rocket, and then he steps out of the debris.

JAY:
It's kind of pointless to make a Robocop, like, a reveal in Robocop 2.
We've already seen him.

RICH:
Yeah, it's fine.

MIKE:
Robocop 2 is awesome.
Anyway, back to Space Cop.

RICH:
What's funny to me is we filmed that hot dog scene twice...

JAY:
Yes.

RICH:
And used it zero times.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah.
The first time, we tried to film it downtown, and it was, we were rushed, we didn't get the shots we needed, and it just looked bad, so we redid it, uh, near our studio, and then it just got cut anyway.

MIKE:
But, um, here are two wonderful actors from Milwaukee:
Rick Pendzich and Tim Higgins.
Um, you probably recognize Tim from other...

RICH:
I, I don't count as a wonderful actor?

JAY:
No.

RICH:
I'm in this scene...

MIKE:
There's me with a mask on.
And Jack.
Obviously, that's Jack.

JAY:
Wait, the co-director of the film is, is hidden under that mask?

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
Why?

MIKE:
Because we needed a body...

JAY:
Yep.
We did try to do a bit here, uh, where Space Cop...

MIKE:
Oh, I don't want to talk about that...

JAY:
What?
The, the reaction to the head explosion?

MIKE:
We, we, yeah, we tried, we, we, we got an air compressor, which is how we did this, uh, head ex-, uh, this, um, head shot, where, uh, Rick's brains go all over the wall.
And it's a high-powered air compressor, so, the first attempt at it shot the blood and guts up on the ceiling...

JAY:
Yeah, it was too powerful.

MIKE:
At, like, 500 miles an hour.

RICH:
The ceiling, the ceiling is, like, 30 feet high...

MIKE:
Yes.

RICH:
In the studio.

MIKE:
Um, and so, we're like:
"Oh, my god."
Like, I wasn't prepared for that kind of force, so, I, the thing...
But then we got it right the second time.
And then we had the stupid idea of trying to make my character, uh, spray vomit out of his mouth.

JAY:
Yes.
In reaction to the head...

MIKE:
In reaction...

JAY:
To the head being blasted off.

MIKE:
Right.
Which just happened there.
And, uh, I was holding the, the little nozzle inside the mask, and then, um, and then the force was so powerful that it fell inside the mask and exploded.
And I, I thought I was gonna drown...drown.
I thought I was gonna choke to death.
Um, because I, the mask was so, like, tight on my head.
And I was like:
"Get it off!"
"Get it off!"
And thank you for not putting that in the outtakes, Jay.

JAY:
I did not put that in the outtakes.

MIKE:
Uh, because that was...

JAY:
Well, it wouldn't be funny unless you were there.

MIKE:
It was frightening.

JAY:
Yeah.
Frightening for you.
Funny for everybody else.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Here's Space Cop having a one-liner because he thinks he actually accomplished something.

RICH:
He did accomplish something.
He shot a man.

JAY:
All the innocent people that were killed were just, you know, that's what you have to do sometimes.

RICH:
That happens.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
That happens.
It's just another accomplishment.
These things happen, Jay.

MIKE:
It's a fine establishment of the Space Cop character.
Rich, you did a fine job on that moon.

RICH:
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.

MIKE:
And, um, here is our, our CGI opening brought to you by our friends from Canada.
Colin had purchased, uh, a model, a CGI model of a Ford, um...
What is, that's, it's a Ford, um...

JAY:
That's a Crown Vic.

RICH:
It's a Crown Vic.

MIKE:
Crown Vic, yeah.
And, uh, then he created the details, um...

RICH:
They look great.

MIKE:
I like that, like that, the, the exhaust, which I th-, I believe is just, like, an air duct vent thing that we painted and...

JAY:
On the real car, you mean?

MIKE:
On the real car, yeah.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
But he created the CGI versions of 'em and made this little, uh, and then the scuff marks, on the bumper.

JAY:
Yeah, it's very detailed.
It's very accurate to the actual Space Cop car.

MIKE:
And all this, all this kind of con stuff is his concept.

RICH:
It's, it's the new bean factory.

MIKE:
The new bean factory, um...

RICH:
What are all the jokes?

MIKE:
Joke two.
This is the, um, Rainbow's Remedy, uh...

JAY:
Bereavement.

MIKE:
Bereavement Center.
And then Lo Blo's Fireworks Emporium, and we all remember Low Blow from the film Low Blow.

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
Um, the film where the guy has the giant hand.

JAY:
He doesn't have a giant hand.

MIKE:
On the cover.
Low Blow...

JAY:
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there's already a lot of references to, uh, Best of the Worst movies in this, and that just upped it, just that opening credit sequence.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Upped it by three.
This is another Colin shot.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
Um, the first time I saw this, I, I, I L-O-L'd for real.
When, when the car does this and knocks the two...

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
This is the first time I saw that.

JAY:
Yeah, this is all, all Colin's concept.

RICH:
That is a good bit.
Good work, Colin.

MIKE:
And now we cut to our buildings, that we made.

JAY:
Which are tiny little styrofoam buildings with, uh, squares cut out with light blowing behind 'em.

RICH:
I did a fantastic job.
Fantastic.

JAY:
You know what?
They look fine, for what they are.

RICH:
Now here's a question.
Why, why did we want me to make fake buil-, we could have filmed actual buildings, but we wanted me to make fake buildings.
What was the reasoning?

MIKE:
Um, I, I think I wanted that, that dolly shot, and that's something I couldn't, I could just get a static shot in real life.
I like the, the movement...

RICH:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Well, if we were to try to do a dolly shot of a real building, it would be, you know, three feet...

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
As opposed to this pretty sweeping move...

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
That you see with the...

MIKE:
Exactly.

JAY:
With the model.

MIKE:
So it, it kind of needed to be in miniature.

JAY:
And this is the second appearance of the Sharper Image, uh, remote control...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
That has been spray-painted.
First appearance was, uh, on the table in the Moon Mayor scene.

MIKE:
Right.
That's the device Jack reaches for.

RICH:
There's Star Wort.

MIKE:
Yeah...

RICH:
Get it?
Do you get it?

MIKE:
Do you get it, Rich?

RICH:
Yeah, it's a beer thing.

JAY:
Oh, that sweatshirt right behind Rich there is the HO HO HO I HAVE A MACHINE GUN sweatshirt from Die Hard.
And I think the Horse Ninja comic from an old Half of the Bag episode is on the ground, but I don't think you see it.

MIKE:
This film is filled with...
Oh, the "HOME SWEET HOME" is from the Plinkett house.

JAY:
That's from the Plinkett house.
Uh, the picture right next to Rich's head there is, uh, Mr. Plinkett...

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
Hot air balloon.

MIKE:
His, his ballooning days in the 1900's.

JAY:
Always save your props...

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Because you will reuse them over and over.

RICH:
This is our celebrity cameo, which...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Is it really, is it really a cameo if you're in every scene, Rich?

MIKE:
Not Rich.

RICH:
Oh...

JAY:
Oh...

MIKE:
He's talking about Patton Oswalt.

RICH:
I'm flattered.

JAY:
Rich, what was it like to work with Patton Oswalt?

RICH:
I have no idea.
I've never worked with Patton Oswalt.
You guys, you guys went out to LA to film him.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Yeah, it's a crazy story about how he got involved with this film.
But, we set up a Twitter message saying, hey, will you be in our movie?
And he said:
"Okay."

RICH:
Were you floored when he said okay?

JAY:
And that's the story.

MIKE:
He's like:
"I only have five minutes..."

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
But I'll do it.
It, it almost, it feels like, um, a thing where he just filmed it himself.
Like, that's the unfortunate part.

JAY:
Yeah, or he had someone else film it out there.

MIKE:
Yeah, we had someone do it, or, or like, you know...
It's, I guess it's not Skype quality, but the, the, the equivalent thereof.
But, uh, we actually went out to LA and filmed his scene at the Funny or Die studios.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Um, because Jack used to work for Funny or Die, and they were kind enough to let us use their green screen room.

JAY:
And all their gear.
The only thing we brought was the camera, I think.

MIKE:
Yeah.
We used a light, and I don't know if we used their microphone.
I, it doesn't really matter, but, um, yeah, and, and Patton knew, like, exactly where that was, and it wasn't, like:
"Come to this shady hotel room."
Like, he's like:
"We're go-, we're shooting this at the Funny or Die studios."
So it's legit.
And, um, yeah he showed up and we film-...
We had him for about, I'd say about 45 minutes, from beginning to end.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Had him put on...

JAY:
He's a busy guy, so...
Our time was limited.

MIKE:
That's the, uh, the same coat.
They're both wearing the same Space Cop coat.
I added, I added rank pips to his collar that were, that were little batteries, like, uh, giant Next Gen rank pips.
But I don't think you can see them, really.

JAY:
You, you see 'em at one point when he gets up, when, when he's, like, peeking his head back in, I think you see 'em.

MIKE:
Yeah.
So, but we put blue on him to signify, like, uh, a higher rank than gray, and that's the only difference.

RICH:
I gotta ask.
How did he react to the wazzup joke?

MIKE:
Oh, it was funny.
Like, I sent him that.
I sent him the script, of course.
And I don't even know if he read it ahead of time, or if he was just, like, winging it.
But, um, we were all worried about that because I just wrote this terr-...
It's not so much as I explained it to everyone, it's not so much a joke.
The "wazzup" is not the joke in itself.
The joke in itself is that dated humour has come back around.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
Like doing Borat is now popular again in 2058, so that was the joke.
And I think I tried to explain it to Patton.
And he, and he was just, like, silence for a second.
And he goes:
"Yeah, I get it."
I was like:
"Okay!"
Um, but he, uh, he sold it.
He made it, he made it funny.

JAY:
Yeah, I was, the entire time when I read the bit, I thought it, this wasn't gonna work.
When we shot Rich's angles, I thought it wasn't gonna work.
But then, once we shot Patton's angles and put the whole thing together, it's, it's, it was funny.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
I think.

MIKE:
Because he knew what to do.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
He knew, he knew what the bit was.
He, he, he knew what it was, so...

JAY:
Do you remember how this came about?
The whole is-the-screen-off thing?

MIKE:
I think he just started ad-libbing.
We told him what the scenario was, and I think we told him that it was supposed to end with Rich just staring at him, which is the way we shot it.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And then he just started rolling with it.
And then, um, Jack started ad-libbing with him as, like, a tech guy, off to the left.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And, um, and then, you know...

JAY:
And it went on and on.

MIKE:
And it went on and on and on.

JAY:
And we kept it all in.

MIKE:
Because it's Patton Oswalt, and it's funny.

JAY:
And it's funny, yeah.

RICH:
You don't cut good jokes.

JAY:
Exactly.
Well, sometimes you do.

MIKE:
And you stretch your celebrity cameo as long as you possibly can.

JAY:
If it was awkward and unfunny, we'd be in and out of this scene quickly, but...

MIKE:
Sure.

JAY:
All this, all this, like, because it's so weird, too.
It's such a weird joke.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Like, the idea that Space Cop is just watching this happen, and just staring and not doing anything.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
It's very bizarre.

MIKE:
It, it, there's a little element of strangeness to it.
And also, it's just, like, I don't know if the police chief is also grossly incompetent, too.

JAY:
Yeah, that, that's an important part of the movie, is that this is the way the police force works in the future.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Everybody is so dependent upon the technology...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
That the technology runs the people.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm, yeah.
We're making social commentary here.

JAY:
Would you say, Rich, that this movie is as intelligent as WALL-E, in that regard?

MIKE:
Oh, yes.
Every bit as much,

JAY:
Okay.
Oh, and this joke here with the book.
That's inspired by..

MIKE:
Oh, right.

JAY:
Patton Oswalt's improv line about reading a holo-book.

MIKE:
Yeah.
Hover novel.

JAY:
Because originally we were gonna have him reading a newspaper, or watching a TV show or something.
And then, uh, we added the holo-book because...

MIKE:
Hover-book, Jay.

JAY:
Hover-book?

MIKE:
He says holo-book in a, in an outake.

JAY:
Oh, holo-book was the outtake.
Right.
Hover-book.
Yeah.
But we added that's after the fact.

MIKE:
Yeah.
It was supposed to be a, there was supposed to be a holographic old-time newspaper.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
Like, just like a redundancy, like...
But, um, ended up being a, a hover-book.

RICH:
Now, these ships look great.

MIKE:
Yeah, these are all, um, little models.

JAY:
Did we hire a team of people to make all these for us?

MIKE:
Nope.

JAY:
Who did it?

RICH:
It was me and Mike.

JAY:
Oh, my god.

MIKE:
That's why it looks like crap.

RICH:
No, no, that mothership turned out better, far better than it had any right to.

MIKE:
The mothership is, is a work of art, Rich.

JAY:
What was it made of?

MIKE:
Uh, two sleds.
Two plastic sleds.

RICH:
With some holes drilled in them.

MIKE:
Yeah, I ran across them and, like, Target or something.
And I was like:
"Hey!"
Because we were looking for something, like, the right size and shape.
And I was like:
"Hey, this sled is great."
And then, um, what really sold it, though, are those side panels that you added, Rich.

RICH:
Mm-hmm.

MIKE:
Like those, um, sections, those things.
Because those were cut out of some kind of other plastic.
So, that's just a bunch of...

RICH:
We bought, like, four sleds.
This panel, you talking about the panels on top of the windows cut in them?

MIKE:
Not...
Yeah.
Those and the, the little side sections.

RICH:
Okay.

MIKE:
The large sections on the side that jut out.

RICH:
I think I just made the side sections out of...

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Just whatever material I can find, but this, the one's on top, those are just from another sled.

MIKE:
Oh.

RICH:
Because they'd match the contour.

MIKE:
Oh, right.
Yeah.

RICH:
So, yeah.

MIKE:
Yeah, it's basically, uh, just junk from model kits.
Like you buy a bunch of battleship models.
And then you have all these tiny parts.
And it's pretty much how they did, like, the Star Wars models and stuff, was taking apart kits and reusing little tiny pieces.
Although, much worse.
Much, much worse.
And then the cop car's a little cop car with a little tiny man in it.

JAY:
It matches the full car pretty well, though, as far as, uh, a miniature goes.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
All the details on it are the same.

RICH:
I think I just glued some pen caps on the back.

JAY:
For the rockets?

RICH:
For the rockets, yeah.

MIKE:
But they, they worked well.

RICH:
Yeah, yeah.

JAY:
What were the full-size rockets made from.
Do we remember?

MIKE:
They, they were, like, air ducts.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
No, not the, the back.
The, or not the rockets, the, uh, the guns on the front.

MIKE:
The guns on the front?

JAY:
The cannons.

RICH:
I don't know what they're supposed to be, but we found them at the Science and Surplus.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Was that what it was?

MIKE:
I think, I think...

RICH:
It was in the, the military, kind of like, where they had the helmets, and things like that.

MIKE:
Yeah, the tip of it is a toy, um.
And then the main body thing, it was some kind of, like, tube for like a bazooka...

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
A shell, or something strange.
But it was like a really hard plastic or resin, and, but then I had some other things glued to 'em.

RICH:
We glued a laser tag toy on the front of it.

MIKE:
Some kind of toy, yeah.
Um, which is the same toy that I turned the motor on it to make the noises for the villain at the end.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
It had some kind of servo, plasticky servo mechanism.

JAY:
Yeah, that's right.
That was at one of the thrift stores.
And there was, like, five or six of them, right?

MIKE:
There was a ton of 'em.

JAY:
There was a bunch of 'em.

MIKE:
So, yeah.

JAY:
We bought 'em all.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
I think they're glued to the walls of the alien ships later on.

MIKE:
Right.
Parts of them are all over this movie.

JAY:
I think this is...

RICH:
Oh, there's some right there on the dash.

JAY:
That was them on the, uh, on the dashboard.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Those are halves of them because they came, and we unscrewed them all.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And this is the set from Doc of the Dead, right?

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
From our, our never-seen, currently-unseen, uh, Plinkett bits from Doc of the Dead.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
We, uh, which I don't know what the status is of currently, but we built a set, and we shot some zombie stuff for Doc of the Dead.
I think you see, like, one shot of it in the final version.

JAY:
Yeah, they cut out a lot.
But that's why there's wood, you know, hammered into the window there.

RICH:
Basically there's, there's a, a little mini-Plinkett review unseen by almost everybody that is out there, that we don't have the rights to show.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah, maybe someday.

MIKE:
Someday it might appear on a different version of Doc of the Dead, so keep your eye out for it.
We're not sure about that yet, but this is the set from that.
I think we used it for one episode of Half in the Bag, maybe...
Right?

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
Wasn't that the Odd Couple episode?

JAY:
The Odd Couple episode, yeah.


MIKE:
And then, um, and then we tore it down, and, uh...

JAY:
Was this before we started building...
I guess it would be, right?
Before we started building the spaceship sets?

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
Mmkay.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
Basically, every...

RICH:
These are the walls we used.

JAY:
Yeah, that's right.
We had hired somebody, we actually hired somebody instead of doing it ourself, to construct all these walls that we could repurpose over and over.
Um...

RICH:
He did a great job.

JAY:
He did a great job.
They're solid walls, and they look great, uh...
And they're sturdy.
And we used them for this.
And then we tore this apart.
And we started building our spaceship sets, which every room on the mothership that you see is the same walls...

MIKE:
Mm.

JAY:
Just reorganized, reshaped, so, like...

MIKE:
No, really?

JAY:
So we had to...

MIKE:
You're gonna amaze people with that fact.

JAY:
Point being, we had to shoot everything for each room, and then tear that down, rearrange the walls, shoot everything, like everything in the, uh, in the control room, everything in the, uh, the lab...just filmed it all at once.

RICH:
The moon base.

JAY:
And then, oh yeah, then we ended up using them for the moon base at the beginning of the movie.
So, just, yeah, constantly reusing, repurposing all these walls because we had limited space.

RICH:
So what was the deal with this location, that was some guy's...

MIKE:
There there was some company in this building.
And I, I found it on Craigslist.
And they were moving locations.
And they were offering the building to rent.
And, uh, and I just emailed the guy, and I'm like:
"Hey, we want..."
"Can we just use this building for a day?"
And he's like:
"Sure, I don't care!"
And I'm like:
"Okay."

JAY:
No, we used it for three days, right?

MIKE:
Uh...
Maybe two?
I thought we shot everything in one day.

JAY:
No, no.
I wanna say it was three days.

MIKE:
Okay.
Well...

JAY:
We, we shot all the Sammy stuff on one day.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
We shot the police chief on one day.

MIKE:
But the nice thing about it was that, um, they were planning to move in a month or so, so all the stuff was still there.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Like the dividers for the cubicles and this guy, this is this guy's office.

RICH:
Yep.
This is just some guy's office.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
The only thing we did was put the Ronald Reagan picture up in the background.

MIKE:
Yeah, yeah.
Who were like:
"Just move anything that, you know, you don't want to be seen in the movie, and shoot in here."
So it kind of works as just a little office area.

JAY:
And this is Dale Jackson.

MIKE:
Dale Jackson is amazing.

JAY:
He was the first person cast for the movie.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
He showed up to one of our early auditions, and we said:
"You're hired!"
And then we shot with him, like, two-and-a-half years later.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
We should point out that's, uh, because, uh, this movie took us a while to make.
Not that long in the grand scheme of things.
About three years total.
Uh, but the first year was pre-production.
And one of the big setbacks we had was just, as we always have, which is finding actors.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Especially for this movie, because there's so many specific types of roles you need.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Uh, and we, we always have trouble finding people in Milwaukee.
It's, it's tricky.
So we had multiple rounds of auditions.
We even went to Chicago, twice I think, to try and cast people.

RICH:
Why don't any of the good actors come to Milwaukee?

JAY:
Well, they're here.
We just, it's just, you got to find him.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
And, uh, so I think we had five or six different audition sessions throughout the course of a year, and then finally our friend Jocelyn set up the, a, a, the last one that we did, and it turned out to be the last one, because she brought all of her good actor friends.
So most of the people that are cast in this are from that last round of auditions.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
I guess if you're a good actor, and you see an ad for a film called Space Cop, you don't show up to that audition.

JAY:
Some people did, though.

RICH:
We should have said we're auditioning for Terms of Endearment.

MIKE:
Terms of Endearment 2:
More Endearment?
Yeah, that's true.
And then there's so many shit productions here in Milwaukee that, that they don't get finished, or just complete hackjobs...I'm sure a lot of local actors have been burned by, like, being in crap.

JAY:
Yeah.
There's lots of good theater actors, and that's most of the people we cast were, I think, primarily theater.
And they might be hesitant to do more...

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Film productions.

MIKE:
Like, um, Zach, and, um, whoever played his, his wife...
I forget her name.

JAY:
Alison.

MIKE:
Alison.
Um, and then Rick Pendzich, one of the cops, they're all, like, very theatrical.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And very good at ad-libbing, I might add.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.
And we just passed over a, uh, a Jim matte painting.

MIKE:
Oh, beautiful, beautiful job.

JAY:
Wonderful matte painting.

RICH:
He made a tiny room look like a giant room.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Yes, as he does again later in the movie, which you'll see.

MIKE:
Yeah, so helpful with, uh, expanding the size of these sets.
One and, one here, the cryo lab, and then on the spaceship later.
We'll seeit later.
Two on the spaceship, actually.
One outside the spaceship.

JAY:
Yes.
And, yeah, we tried to expand the, uh, the look of this room ourselves, too, with just the angles we got and the way we shot it.
Because we only had two cryo tubes.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
So every angle you see, we're constantly moving those things around to make it look like there's more.

RICH:
We had more than two, we had...

MIKE:
No.

JAY:
No!
We had two!

RICH:
I thought we had three.
We only had two?

JAY:
We had two.

MIKE:
We only had two.

RICH:
Oh, my god.

MIKE:
Those, those...

JAY:
There's a couple shots where it looks like there's three because we're using half of one.
We'd split one in half.

MIKE:
Right.
Those things are, like, it's, I think two on top of each other, or three?
Three.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Um, they are the, the things that, when you have a basement, um, and you have a window, it's like a sub-basement, and the windows in the ground, and it's like that half-circle thing that, that your windows looks out into.
I have no idea what it's called, and if you know what I'm talking about, you know I'm talking about.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Um, and they're expensive, and...

JAY:
So there's three, yeah, but there's three stacked up...

MIKE:
Three stacked up.

JAY:
To make half of a cryo tube.

MIKE:
So six total, twelve total for two cryo tubes.

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
And that, that was, like, the biggest chunk of our whole budget.

JAY:
And that was a visual effect shot, where you saw more in the foreground there.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
That was just duplicating them.

MIKE:
Yeah.
So if it was a locked down shot, we would, we'd film it, scootch them down, film it, scootch 'em down again, and then, uh, composite them all together.

JAY:
Yeah, that's the first shot you see after Jim's matte painting is that, where it's just, there were two of them standing next to each other, and then we moved 'em over, and then we moved 'em over again, and then just did split screens.

MIKE:
Now, now this is important, too.
They, we had no way to open them up, um, and our, our original attempt was to do a stop-motion, where they *tch-tch-tch* opened, uhh...

JAY:
Which looked great!

MIKE:
Oh, uh-huh.

JAY:
It looked fantastic.

MIKE:
Are you being sarcastic?
Uh, it looked terrible...

JAY:
It looked bad.

MIKE:
and it, and we didn't consider the tops, either.
So we're like:
"Uh, I don't know."

JAY:
Well, I don't think it was like we didn't consider it, so much as there was absolutely nothing we could do, so we were like...

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Whatever.
We'll just have it outta frame, maybe?

MIKE:
So, um, our friend, Colin, once again came to the rescue, and I think created CG versions of the, the door halves, uh, and then does this, where he moves it and then flips the lid open.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And then added a glow and a seal, and all that, and...oh, my god.

JAY:
Made a big difference.

MIKE:
Made a big difference.

JAY:
But here's another actor where it's, it's just a couple lines, but you need someone very specific

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
So it's, like, you can't just cast one of your friends...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Or some nobody that can't act.
Like, it's very, you need very specific people for all these tiny roles.
And that's the thing with this movie, is there's so many, so many little characters that pop up.

MIKE:
Like that character right there.

JAY:
Like that guy.
He w-, he, he, uh, showed up to one of the auditions.
He was alive at the time but the movie took so long to make...

MIKE:
It was actually...

JAY:
That by the time we shot it, he was dead.

MIKE:
It's actually, uh, uh, a return performance from Karen Carpenter.

RICH:
Ow.
Karen Carpenter burn.
Audience confusion confirmed.

MIKE:
Audience confusion confirmed.

RICH:
The original joke with a skeleton was going to be, when the cryo pod opened, that the ghost of the skeleton was gonna come out saying, I am free!

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
And then a laser blast was gonna hit, and...

JAY:
It was gonna ricochet and kill, kill the ghost, kill the...

MIKE:
Which was a, a joke we stole from our film Oranges:
Revenge of the Eggplant, which no one should ever watch, because it's terrible.
Um, where, yeah, but it worked much better there.
It, for here, it just did not work.
And you'll see in the, uh, deleted scenes, it just was not funny.
At all.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah.
It didn't quite work.

MIKE:
Some things don't work, and you don't know why, and some things work, and you don't know why.

JAY:
And some things don't work, and it makes it funny, like the the nitrogen tank there.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
Where we pictured it, you know, big bursts of, you know, nitrogen coming out, and it's just this tiny little puff, and you guys are reacting like it's...

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Like you're being covered in it.

MIKE:
I think I was, like, blowing, like, powder through a tube, or something.
We were just desparate.
We wanted to get this done.

JAY:
Well, I think we also, we were like:
"Well, we can enhance it later if we want to."

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And then, but it just seemed funny that it was like so pathetic and tiny.

MIKE:
We probably could have put in a, like a canned effect of, like, smoke or something.

JAY:
Sure.

MIKE:
But it would've looked fake, and, you know, and we all laughed every time we saw that little puff of smoke come out.
So this film is all about the laughs, whether you're laughing with it, or laughing at it.
As long as we get the laughs.

JAY:
And there's Mike again, as an alien.

MIKE:
Yeah.
Yup.
Those masks were wonderful, um, but also frightening at the same time.

JAY:
Yeah.
Very, very claustrophobic wearing those.

MIKE:
The ones without mouthfuls, um, it was, like, yeah, putting your head in a suffocation device.

RICH:
Can we, can we talk about those getting made?

MIKE:
Yeah, uh, umm...

JAY:
Well, there, there'll be a little featurette, as some people maybe have seen it on YouTube, but there's a feature out about, uh, Dale, is his name, who made these for us.

MIKE:
Yes, from Rich Evans' concept drawings, he made the masks.
Uh, they are original masks, not, not store-bought or anything.
Made it from a mold and everything.

JAY:
Yeah, he sculpted 'em, he molded 'em, he painted them.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
And he did a great job.

MIKE:
He was a big fan of, like, movie props.
He made his own replica movie props.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And I remember his basement, with all of the Killer Klowns stuff.

JAY:
Yeah, that you don't see in the behind the scenes, because his basement is full of replica Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and some original, masks from the actual movie.

RICH:
And if you think the Killer Klowns and themselves are a little bit creepy, imagine an original Killer Klown mask that is now rotting...

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
In somebody's dark basement.

MIKE:
And you can actually see Dale in the film, uh, as one of the cops.
He's the, uh, bigger guy with the bald head.
He's a cop.

JAY:
And this is Jocelyn and Chike.
We haven't mentioned Chike yet.

MIKE:
Yes, he was awesome.

JAY:
He, he was a savior for this role.
We just could not find anybody.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
He's, he's great.

MIKE:
Yeah, it was a real hard role to cast.
And Chike's actually a, uh, he's been in a lot of stuff.
He's, was, uh, he was in Orange is the New Black as a guard in a couple of episodes.
He threw, um, Taylor Schilling in the, in the clink.
The, hyeah...

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
No, not the clink.
Uh...

JAY:
The hole?

MIKE:
The hole!
Whatever, uh, solitary is.
Uh, he was in The Machinists.
He said...
Last time we talked with him...

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
He chased down, um, Christian Bale, as a cop.
Uh, and then he does a lot of theater work, as well.
Perfect role, perfect actor for this role.

JAY:
Yeah.
Because we were...
I remember auditioning people, and they were doing, like, the 50's B-movie thing.
And, yeah, it was, like, nobody, just play it straight.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
And Chike plays it straight great, where he makes everything funny because he's so serious in this movie.

MIKE:
Yeah.
And Dale Jackson is whacky.

JAY:
I think this is what he did in the first audition.
We were like:
"That's great!"
"Just do that!"

MIKE:
Have you seen Samurai Cop?

JAY:
In, in an ideal world, this role would be Cameron Mitchell, but I don't think that's possible for a lot of reasons.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
Mainly because he's dead.

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
Best reason...

JAY:
Do you think if he is still alive, we probably could get him.

[Mike mumbles]

JAY:
He probably would have been in our movie.

MIKE:
Maybe, maybe.

RICH:
He'd be so old now.
I don't know.

MIKE:
Well.
we're, we're saying in a theoretical sense if he were, say...

JAY:
If he, yeah, if, if he was still alive...

RICH:
Okay.

JAY:
And he was doing the type of movies he was doing when he was still alive, we could probably have gotten him.

MIKE:
But we do have a lot of booze here, so...

JAY:
That's true, that's true.

MIKE:
There's incentive.
That star.
Stupid star.

JAY:
That we ma-, I, I made that star from a mold.
We, I remember we had trouble getting it to stay attached for the longest time.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
It kept falling off.

MIKE:
It was too thick of rubber to, um, sew because the arm, arm, little arm things are sewn on to the vest, so those won't come off.
The shoulder, rubber shoulder things.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
But that star is too thick.

RICH:
It was, like, the original, original star...
Wasn't it from, like, some kind of Power Rangers toy, and we were afraid it was gonna be, like, a recognizable thing?

MIKE:
I think so.

JAY:
Yeah, we just wanted our own...

MIKE:
We wanted to make our own, our own symbol.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
It's a wonderful little effect.

JAY:
The sandwich here is The Boss.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
The famous Boss from Pick-and-Save grocery stores.

MIKE:
This is the boss of you?

JAY:
No one's the boss of me, Rich.
There's Dale, who made the masks.

MIKE:
Yes, there he is.

JAY:
Next to Mike.

RICH:
Thank you, Dale.

JAY:
And there's Rick Pendzich again, as Officer...Cunningham?

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
Which is a reference to our friend, Colin.
But that's his second role in the film.

RICH:
He's a distant relative.
Makes perfect sense.

MIKE:
Yeah, Rick was the, um, the hostage taker.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And, yeah, we repeated...
We were so desperate for actors, we repeated several of them.

RICH:
"Well, this guy can act, why don't..."

JAY:
"You're good!"
"You're good!"
Let's reuse you!
We make it in the, with Tim Higgins, though, who plays the mayor at the beginning.
He makes a reference of his great-great-grandfather being a bartender, so when he shows up as a bartender, it just seems like a, like a clever joke.

RICH:
With his mustache, it would have been way too recognizable otherwise.

JAY:
Well, the other option would have been to cast somebody else, but...

RICH:
That wasn't gonna happen.

JAY:
That wasn't gonna happen, because he's good.

MIKE:
We can't find good actors anywhere!

JAY:
We, we got lucky to find the people we did for this movie because, like I said, there's so many real specific types of roles.
And we ended up getting them.
But it was, it was tough.

MIKE:
Yeah, there's no real bad performances in this.

RICH:
Well, I'm in the movie.

MIKE:
Other than Rich.

JAY:
Well, and you.

MIKE:
And me.
Yeah, I guess.

JAY:
So our two leads are terrible.

MIKE:
Our two leads are terrible.

JAY:
But, you know.

RICH:
I was super nervous about starring in this.

JAY:
No, you're great!

RICH:
You keep telling me that.
But I mean, you know, I'm, just from my point of view, which is, I gotta, I gottaa carry the movie while also being monotone and dull.

MIKE:
Well...

JAY:
It, it, well...
You have to carry the movie by not caring about anything that's happening.

RICH:
Yes, yes.

JAY:
So it works.

MIKE:
You're almost like the straight man, in a way, you know?
And all the weird whacky stuff's going on around you, like, you...
I don't know.
It's like you're...
You yourself are not funny in your performance, it's...

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
I don't know.
It's a weird thing.
Again, my character is more whacky, which is, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't work.
It shouldn't be that way but...

RICH:
It's reverse!

MIKE:
Uh, yeah.
The, the, the incompetent cop from the future should be more whacky, and I should be more straight and narrow?

RICH:
Mm-hmm.

MIKE:
Instead, I'm like, I act like a psychopath the whole time.
I think it was just, like, just ad-libbing, and just being, trying to be funny.

JAY:
Yeah.
Well, that, that's, you, you have to have...

MIKE:
Also, not caring.

JAY:
Well, well you have to do that, because it's like, if you were both playing it straight...

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
It wouldn't work, like...

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Rich has to be straight, because he's Space Cop.
But the joke is that, you know, he's always fucking up...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
While thinking he's a badass, so...

MIKE:
Yeah, he's oblivious.

JAY:
He's oblivious.
So, like, you need someone in the duo to be funny.

MIKE:
And that's neither of us.

JAY:
No, no.
This scene, this scene especially, like, and all the times we've shown this, the rough cuts to various people, everybody thinks this is the funniest scene.
And this is the scene, I think you thought most of this was just gonna be on the cutting room floor.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
This is, like, outtake material that I kept in because it was funny.

MIKE:
Yeah.
There's like, there's like a point where, I think, I...A
After doing, like, for, we would do, like, ten takes, just to, just to get the lines down.
Because I'm, I'm really bad at remembering lines, and I have most of them.
Rich, Rich just kind of mumbles a couple things here and there.

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And I have a lot of longer lines, and I, I can't, I, I have a bit of trouble remembering them all.
So we do, like, ten takes.
And by the time we get to take thirty, I'm sort of, like, uh, wired or, or crazy.

JAY:
You lose your mind a bit.

MIKE:
I lose my mind a bit.
And then at that point I could remember the lines.
But I've done them so many times, I feel, like, tired of doing them, and so I started doing them in a, like, almost in a sarcastic way, just to be funny.

RICH:
Oh, we got the movie camera bits.

MIKE:
And then, but then...

RICH:
So it was all worth it!

MIKE:
Yeah.
"Wanna be in my rap video?"
And that's, like, of course I didn't think any of this would make it in the movie.

JAY:
Why didn't, why didn't you stop me from cutting it out of the movie?

MIKE:
I c-, I don't know.
Because once I saw it, it's like:
"Hey, that's funny."

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
I don't remember that.

JAY:
Yeah, I mean, that's the nature of improv.
You just, you know, you do a bunch of random shit, and make it work in editing.

MIKE:
There's so much stuff from the outtakes that I just don't remember.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
I don't know why, why that was a moving shot of you going in the building.

JAY:
What do you mean?

MIKE:
The, the cam-, like, the camera angle is moving from the perspective of the video camera.
I guess we were driving and following you?
Was that the implication?

JAY:
There was, there was more to that, where you guys were driving around, so it, it, it tied in with that.

MIKE:
That was, this was all around the time where, there was a whole sequence included...
Oh, my god.
Like, I think in the three years making this, we rewrote the script, like, ten times.

JAY:
Yeah, we kept reworking it.

MIKE:
This bar sequence was originally supposed to be a hidden underground illegal gambling establishment...

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
That Jay's character was running to, to steal money from people to fund their operation.
And the original idea was, um, uh, we followed Jay into a back alley...

RICH:
Oh, wait.
This is the Moon Mayor.

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.
This is Tim Higgins, the Moon Mayor.
And, uh, Jay went into this building, and we followed him in, and this is where the...

RICH:
And this is, this is a DC comic book artist, Freddie Williams.

MIKE:
That's right.

RICH:
Who is currently drawing the Batman vs the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover.

MIKE:
Oh, my god.

JAY:
Oh.

MIKE:
Yes.
Freddie came out, and this was the same time we filmed the Best of the Worst episode with him.
And, uh, he has a small role here.
Um, what was I saying?

JAY:
Before you were so rudely interrupted?

MIKE:
Well...

RICH:
I had to point out these when they were happening on the screen.

JAY:
Yeah.
No, the gambling hall.
It was a gambling hall, and you guys follow us in.

MIKE:
I was gonna tell the story about when people called the police on the Space Cop car.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.

RICH:
That's coming up.

JAY:
No, that already happened.

RICH:
Oh, did it happen?

MIKE:
That, we cut that stuff out.

JAY:
There's, there's one shot where the car, the camera is, is, it's like a two-shot of you guys in the car, and the camera is, like, mounted to the car.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
That was, like, a half a day of shooting of you guys driving around.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Uh, and while we were driving around...

RICH:
What happened?

MIKE:
Well, we, we're, like, Jay was walking and we're kind of, like, slowly following behind him, and that's the scene.
And then you start, you see that we're following you...

RICH:
A few blocks away from the airport.

MIKE:
Well, yeah.
And, but, but the, it wasn't related to the airport.
We were, like, in an industrial park, and there are people working, and then someone's like:
"The real cops showed up."
And then they're like:
"Someone called the cops."
And they said there's a Arab man with bombs on his car driving around.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
Driving around the airport.

MIKE:
Driving around the airport.

JAY:
Yeah.
So, so that means that somebody saw the car, decided that the, the plastic cannons on the front were bombs.
And then further decided that if that's the case, then they must be, you know, Arab.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
So they called the cops.

MIKE:
Because if somebody looks like an Arab, it's Rich.
And, uh, so they called the cops and then, like...

RICH:
They probably thought the Space Cop helmet was a turban.

MIKE:
Maybe.
Maybe from afar.

JAY:
It looks, it looks very similar.

MIKE:
Yeah, from afar, who knows.
But, um, yeah, then the real cops showed up.
And it, which was like a mistake, like, amateur hour mistake number one, uh.
But, you know, you should either get a location release or call and let people know.
But they, they showed up, and thankfully there wasn't, like, the FBI there or anything...

JAY:
No...

MIKE:
Considering the tip that was called in, but real the cops showed up...

JAY:
The, the cops laughed it off when they saw it.

MIKE:
They laughed it off.

JAY:
Like, as they pulled up, they saw the car, and you could see 'em laughing.

MIKE:
Yeah, and then the one actually took a photo with Rich...

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
As Space Cop, and then they're like:
"Okay."
They're like:
"Basically, next time, call the police department and tell them you're going to be driving around in a weird ass car..."

JAY:
Yeah.
Which we did.

MIKE:
Which looks like there's bombs on it.
And then after that, we did.
We're like:
"Hey."

RICH:
This is the worst teleporter I've ever seen.
It's got a range of one foot.

JAY:
Well, you know, they got limited means, these aliens.
This isn't their original plan, so they're kind of winging it here.

RICH:
What's, what's our official reason to why Chike can't just buy the gold with his company's money?
It it just that, that...

MIKE:
He bankrupted the company making the Chromatanium.

RICH:
Okay.
I don't wanna stray, because people are gonna ask these things.
No they won't.
They don't care.
They might.
I just want to be clear that we have an answer.
Is that the Iron Man shot?

JAY:
Here's our Iron Man sequence.

MIKE:
This, this bit was more so going to be, uh, like a play on the Iron Man stuff, how Iron Man has so much stuff going on in his helmet, that it, it literally blocks his view, and he falls down.
And then it turned into, um, spam somehow.
I don't remember how, but...

JAY:
Well, when we originally...
Like, because this, the, the shots of Rich were done, like, two years later.
The actual chase scene, I think that, I think we made that up on the day, the idea that his helmet would start getting all this shit.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
I think it was just gonna be, you guys just chase me for a bit, and, uh, the, the main thing was the, in the backyard, when, you know, you tackle me, and then Rich shows up.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
But all this stuff with the helmet, I think we improved that on the day.

RICH:
Gotta have jokes!

JAY:
And then we, yeah, and then two years later we got the, inside the helmet cam stuff to tie it all together.

MIKE:
Yeah, we had put a GoPro on the helmet, uh...

JAY:
In the helmet, yeah, so it's his point of view...

MIKE:
In the helmet.
So it's actually cut with the other angle of him falling down, but then, the inside, the helmet stuff, of course, is done in the, in the studio.

RICH:
Is...
Ooh, that was a horrible scene for me because I have to do boobery, but I'm in an alley.
There's nothing to do boobery with.
There's, like, three garbage cans.

JAY:
Yeah.
I think that's why we started, or why we...

RICH:
I think that's why we added the ads in, eventually.

JAY:
That's why we, yeah, we...

RICH:
There wasn't enough joke.

JAY:
We played that up more to, to make it work.

MIKE:
I remember, like, looking at some of the backyards and, and just imagining this, like, really long comical scene where he's, like, knocking fences over and going through people's houses, and all this, like...

JAY:
Oh, sure.

JAY:
Elaborate stuff that we obviously couldn't do.

RICH:
Because we can't go through people's yards.

MIKE:
Yeah, it would have been something much more...
That's a problem with, with...
When we make a movie, it's like, we'll have a script, but then we just keep adding things and taking them away, constantly, to where the final thing is, like, completely different than how he started.

JAY:
Well, that's, that's what I always say is, low-budget filmmaking is just an endless series of compromises.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
The worst part about making a movie is making the movie.

MIKE:
Yeah.
Making the movie is a gigantic pain in the ass.
It really is.
It's like everything is working against you.
Every, every time.

JAY:
Yeah.
Well, before we started shooting this, I was really, like, down on doing it just because we have so many failed auditions, and...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
While that was happening, we were also, like, putting the Space Cop car together.
And it's, like, everything was just, like:
"Ugh, is this worth it?"
And then, I think it reached a certain point where we were just, like, not having any luck with casting that, I think we just kind of said, like:
"Okay, let's just start shooting."

MIKE:
Mm.

JAY:
Like:
"Let's just start shooting whatever we can, and we'll continue to try and find people as we go."
And that's ultimately what ended up happening.

RICH:
Would you say the biggest challenge of making this movie was just finding people?

JAY:
Um, I think so, because the actual shooting was, like, like this stuff is in the studio, and it's a controlled environment.
And we can, you know...
And, and we're not shooting, like, like, 20 days in a row, you know, like a regular scheduled movie.

RICH:
Yeah.
We were shooting so sporadically here and there that the scenes we did shoot, we could take our time with.
Um, for certain stuff, especially interior stuff.
But, like, we mentioned the, uh, that chase outside.
Obviously, we had limited means, because we're out in public and, you know, whatever.
But, yeah, most of the actual shooting was not that bad, which is usually my least favorite part.
That's usually where I'm, like, stressed and I hate everything.
But...with this movie, I think the most challenging thing was just trying to get people that would work for the parts.

MIKE:
Yeah.
Well, it's that and, um, the secondary challenge was the fact that it's a sci-fi movie...
A sci-fi comedy.
And, so, unlike, like, filming, I don't know, just...
Terms of Endearment, I guess, where it's, like, just people in, in locations and stuff...
Here you have lots of props and sets...

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
And miniatures.

JAY:
Yeah, there's so many spec-...
Like this scene here, it's just one shot of you guys talking.
But it's, like, we need all these police uniforms.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
We need all this background action.

MIKE:
Well, I mean, this, this is not the best example.
Alien spaceship is, is, is a good example.

JAY:
Sure, but I mean, it's every little detail, like...

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
Like those wanted posters on the wall.
Like, we had to make those.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
You know, every detail on all the...

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
The police uniforms, we had to get all that together.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
So it's all stuff that, like, if you're watching it, you're just like:
"Oh, there's, you know, police uniforms."
You kind of take for granted that, like, we had to do all of this ourselves.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Every, every little element.

MIKE:
Yeah, I wanted to get the cop uniforms good because that's one, one of my biggest pet peeves.
Mainly, if you've seen the movie, um...

JAY:
Are you talking about Suburban Sasquatch?

MIKE:
Suburban Sasquatch.

JAY:
Those, those are great.
Those are great costumes.

MIKE:
Yeah.
A lot of times, like, I don't know, I mean, we're talking a different level of low budget, but...
It's like:
"Go to the, order police patches, get the utility belts, get all this, get all the gear, and put it all together, and make it look as closest to reality as you can."
The only thing I screwed up is, actually sewing the patches on.
I did them on the wrong shoulders.

JAY:
Oh, god.

MIKE:
Cop patches are on the left, left arm.

JAY:
Oh, god.

MIKE:
And so that's one detail that, uh...
There's Josh, aka The Wizard.

JAY:
This is The Wizard talking to Freddie Williams, and there's Rich.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Rich is an extra in, in the bar.
But, yeah, here's another one where it's, like, you need someone specific to be either a newscaster, or a talk show host, and luckily someone showed up to the auditions, Denise here, who was a talk show host.

MIKE:
Currently is.

JAY:
Currently is a talk show host.

MIKE:
I saw her on TV.

JAY:
Okay.

MIKE:
She's on Mil-, um, Miwaukee...
I can't remember what it is, but I was like:
"Oh, hey, look who it is!"
"It's Denise."
"She's on TV!"
At the time, she was trying to, like, get into a different kind of acting, and, um...

JAY:
So we cast her as a talk show host.

MIKE:
She mentioned she, you know, wanted to do acting, but that she has experience as a newscaster.
Okay, we need a newscaster.

JAY:
We, yeah, we used her as a newscaster in, uh, Doc of the Dead as well.

MIKE:
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, she...

JAY:
A lot, a lot of crossover between those two with actors.

MIKE:
There's that whole, like, post-apocalyptic war scene in Dock of the Dead.

JAY:
Yeah.
That was great.

MIKE:
I forgot about all that.

JAY:
Maybe someday people will see it.

MIKE:
Maybe someday you'll see it.
All that was amazing.
Contact Exhibit A Pictures, and ask them where it's at.

JAY:
Oh, god.
We haven't mentioned the plant yet.

MIKE:
Oh...

JAY:
That plant is the biggest star of the film.

MIKE:
Yup.

JAY:
It's, it has the most roles in this movie.
Keep an eye out for that plant.
It shows up everywhere.
The plant that's behind Denise there.

MIKE:
Right.
Yeah, that's, uh, that might be a good drinking game for people.

JAY:
Every time they find the plant...

MIKE:
Drink when you see the plant, or, or when the plant is in a scene.
But, yeah, this was, this was a...
There's the Best of the Worst screening couches.
The classic Best of the Worst screening couches.
Um, I, I like that, that, that, um, whole sequence, the TV, um, Diggity D and the gold, all this was, was a very late addition to the movie.

JAY:
Yeah.
Was that replacing something, or...

MIKE:
I don't remember, but...

JAY:
I can't keep track of all this shit.
I guess you never finished talking about the, uh, the gambling hall.

MIKE:
Oh, I was just gonna...

JAY:
We decided to change that.

MIKE:
Yeah, I was bain-, mainly bringing that up because it reminded me of that, that's the time when we were shooting the stuff where we were tracking you...

JAY:
Oh, sure.

MIKE:
When the cops came.

JAY:
Yeah, I, I think, at least my biggest problem with that whole gambling hall sequence is that there just weren't really any jokes in it.
Wasn't there just, like, Space Cop doesn't know how to play cards?

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
That was kind of it.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
It was sort of bland, so it somehow, things got changed around to where I became a gold thief.

MIKE:
Yeah.
My character was at a different poker game.
And I was, like, trying to get information.
And Space Cop was, like, playing poker, but asking, like, dumb questions.
I, I don't remember what was going on.
It, it ended up becoming convoluted.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
Convoluted and stupid.

JAY:
So we got rid of it so we could have a scene of endless, uh, gay jokes.

MIKE:
And this, they're sex puns.

JAY:
Sex puns, I guess.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Gay sex puns.

MIKE:
Gay sex puns, yeah.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Not quite gay panic, but...

JAY:
No, no.
It's, it's, uh, it's the classic, uh, you know, uh, someone walks in the room...

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
And mistakes what they're talking about.

MIKE:
Yes.
What they're saying sounds like something completely different.

JAY:
But I, I believe the idea is that it goes on so long, and that's the joke.

MIKE:
I'm not sure about that.

JAY:
Is that not the joke?

MIKE:
I have no idea.

JAY:
Okay.

MIKE:
I think it's just mostly...

RICH:
I think it's just juvenile.

JAY:
I was, I was...

MIKE:
Juvenile and terrible.

RICH:
I felt horrible doing this.
I was a big supporter of cutting this scene out.
In fact, some of the earlier edits, I did cut it out, uh, but then we did, uh, hold a little screening where we showed a bunch of people this sequence, and I was, I was voted against, that it should stay in.
People thought it was funny, so...

MIKE:
I love the puns.

RICH:
Democracy in action, folks!

JAY:
That's, yeah, you know, you gotta make compromises.
There's...

MIKE:
It's the cutting to the waiter.
It's, it's, it's a pretty standard comedy setup:
cut to somebody listening to the conversation not, not understanding what it's all about.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
It's, it's...

JAY:
And that waiter, uh, Joe is his name.
He's another one where, like, visually, he sells that bit.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
It's like, you need, again another specific person.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
That was an amazing effect there in the car coming around.

JAY:
It's just hanging there.

MIKE:
These are charming effects.
We'll call them charming.

JAY:
Yeah, I mean, that was, that was kind of the goal, was just to have all these real classic low-budget effects.

MIKE:
There's the plant.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.
There's the plant again.
Should we point out the plant every time...

RICH:
Yes.

JAY:
Or let people discover it for themselves?

RICH:
Umm...

JAY:
Because I want to say there's another plant in the movie in one scene.
I can't remember where it is, but it's gonna confuse people.

MIKE:
There is a part, the part which we just saw, where Rich stumbles into the bushes, we actually use that plant during Foley to...

JAY:
That's true.

MIKE:
To recreate the rustling of leaves because it was too windy outside to do it.

JAY:
So that's an audio cameo by the plant.

MIKE:
That's an audio cameo, correct.

RICH:
It's looking really sad these days.

JAY:
Because it's been beat up so much?

RICH:
Half the leaves have fallen off of it.

MIKE:
Rich took all the leaves off.

RICH:
It's still in our lobby area, there, right by the door.
You walk in, there's the plant.

JAY:
It's a constant reminder of Space Cop.
Did we shoot this scene twice?

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
I think we reshot the first half of it, not the whole scene.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Because originally you guys were on the ground.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
And you were, you were, yeah, you were on the ground, and you were on a stakeout for me.
I'm trying to remember wh-, how this all went together.
I think it came right after the interrogation scene.

MIKE:
Yeah, there's some clips in the outtake reel, um, or the deleted scenes reel where, where...

JAY:
It's in the outtakes.

MIKE:
It's completely different, yeah.
Or outtakes, whatever.

JAY:
It's unfortunate it got cut, too, because I think, especially in your guys's close-ups in that, it's probably one of the best lit night scenes in the movie.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Where, where was the scene we had to redo because of the dogs?
Which, which bit was that?

JAY:
I think that's everything.
That's half the movie.
Constant barking dogs.
Oh, actually, no.
That was the gambling hall bit.
That got cut anyway.

RICH:
Oh, they got cut anyway?

JAY:
That was when they were insane, yeah.

MIKE:
Yeah, I think we were gonna ADR it.

JAY:
But then we just changed the entire storyline in the movie instead.
And I think this was all improv wasn't it, Ri-, uh, Space Cop talking about the story of...

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.

RICH:
Oh.
Yeah.

JAY:
After his, his wife's killer.

RICH:
One of those rare times I improv and it's good.

JAY:
Yeah, no...

MIKE:
You fall down the stairs.
Your head gets stuck in the banister.
You step on a rake.
You know, there's some good, good little dialogue bits between us in this film.

RICH:
I fell down the stairs.
It took three hours.

JAY:
Yeah, it's kind of crazy, because I think that was the entire idea was, you know, team you guys up, we'll do lots of improv, it'll be silly.
And then it ends up with this big plot and, like, tons and tons of visual effects.
Ugh.
Like, endless visual effects.
This movie was like a giant puzzle piece.

MIKE:
Mm.

JAY:
Or giant puzzle.

RICH:
That's life!

JAY:
All these little pieces you got to fit together and make work.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
This is what happens when you expect Rich Evans to improv in your movie!

JAY:
Well, no, the improv doesn't have anything to do with it.
It's just, like, the, that was the initial idea was to make this, you know, low-budget sci-fi comedy, but...

RICH:
To crank something out was the original idea.

MIKE:
No, no...

JAY:
It was never, not to crank something out.
That was the idea with Feeding Frenzy.

RICH:
I'm kidding.

JAY:
But, uh, no, this was meant to be a little more planned out, but the idea was that it would be, you know, uh, a comedy where you guys could play off each other.

MIKE:
There's enough of that.

JAY:
Which it, no, it is that, but it's in the backdrop of endless special effects.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Endless visual effects.

MIKE:
Well, you know, when we're talking about the movie, it's like, what, what do you want in a Space Cop movie?

JAY:
Sure.

MIKE:
And then one of the things that came up was Space Cop needs to try to pull someone over and chase them, you know, and then that leads into the alien plot.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
Aliens need to be involved.
It's outer space.

RICH:
We need a flying car, a flying ship, spaceship, and he flies it.

MIKE:
A spaceship, and then you start adding things.
You need, you need this scene where, where they go and they play good-cop bad-cop, and you need the scene in a strip club.
Like, all the, all the other tropes of cop movies.

JAY:
Yeah.
You need the cranky boss.

MIKE:
You need the cranky, cranky boss.

JAY:
Which we got.

MIKE:
Exactly.
And, uh, all that kind of stuff.
This lady was great, too.
Was her name Deborah?

JAY:
Yeah.
Yeah, we used her on an episode of Half in the Bag as well.

MIKE:
That's right.
She was the...

RICH:
Oh, the overlord, wasn't it?

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
Yeah, she's good, and that's...I keep, I guess I keep repeating it now, but, like, you need the receptionist role.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
It needs to be very specific.

MIKE:
Right.
You need the cranky receptionist who's, who...

RICH:
You can't have your neighbor reading lines poorly.

MIKE:
Right.

RICH:
He...would...like...to...see...you...now?

JAY:
The unfortunate thing about this sequence, is this is a great lobby area, this was, we rented this place, right?
There's like a building downtown where you could rent rooms, and we rented the lobby area for this stuff.
And then they go into Chike's office, which he's the CEO of the company, but it's this, like, comically small, little room.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
So we tried, we rented that room, and of course, I don't think we knew how small it was gonna be until we got there.

MIKE:
Well, yeah, there was like two options.
There's this, and then, like, uh, I think there's a bigger office option, but it was a ton of money.
This is, like, a fake company building where if, like, you're a fraud, and you need a temporary office to make it look like you're successful, you rent this place.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And, uh, they actually, we didn't rent the lobby area, but I said:
"Can we just shoot in it when it's closed?"

JAY:
Oh, is that what it was?
Okay.

MIKE:
They were like:
"Yeah, after 5:00, no one's there, go ahead."
"Don't make a lot of noise."
We were like:
"Okay, great."

JAY:
Oh, that's right.
We had to shoot her on the cleaning crew.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
They were, like, coming down the aisle, like, it was like a horror movie.
It's like:
"They're getting closer!"

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Keep shooting, before they get here!

MIKE:
Yeah.
But we rented, we rented the office, um, and I remember the door slam part was, like, we kept slamming the door.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.

MIKE:
We did take after take after take, and, uh, I was like:
"Oh, god."
"We're gonna disturb people in the next room."

JAY:
So the justification is that this is just a little meeting room.
If someone comes and wants to meet with, with Agnon, this is the little meeting room, which is why there's Muzak.

RICH:
He's an alien.
He doesn't understand why a CEO would be in a big office.

JAY:
Oh, sure!
That's it.

MIKE:
Maybe, maybe it's not, uh, like, a huge company, you know.

JAY:
I guess not.
It could be a smaller company.

MIKE:
He likes a small office.
He likes the intimacy of a small office.

JAY:
He doesn't even want a computer.

RICH:
They're a Fortune 500-thousand company.

MIKE:
Oh.
499,999.

JAY:
Another setback with the scene is when we got there, we realized that there was air conditioning blasting, just making tons and tons of noise.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
So we, we tried to shoot as much as we could with the natural sound, but we ended up having to strip it all out and have all improv.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
Or, not improv.
Uh, ADR.

MIKE:
ADR.

JAY:
Which was tricky because the scene was all improv.

RICH:
There was improv, just not when we did the ADR.

JAY:
There's a ton of improv, and that's what we cut the movie together with, and then, that's tricky.
ADR is tricky, in general, but replacing, you know, improv with ADR is even more tricky.

RICH:
This whole Space Cop's name thing just happened, and...

JAY:
Oh, yeah, the famous Holden MaDickey scene.

RICH:
Nobody could stop laughing...

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
While you were doing this.

MIKE:
Yeah, you'll get a sample of the actual audio in the outtakes.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
How the quality of it...try to do as little ADR as you need, as possible because it's a big pain, but...

JAY:
It's, yeah, it's a pain to get it to match up, but you need that clean sound.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
It's better than the alternative.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Which is horrible echo noise, or...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
You never want that.

JAY:
Air conditioning blowing, or whatever.

MIKE:
There's still a couple of questionable scenes in this movie that I would have wanted to ADR, but...

JAY:
There's nothing distractingly bad.
Like this scene was distractingly bad.

MIKE:
The, the, the moonbase scene has a little bit of an echo for me, but...

JAY:
Well, there's, there's scenes where there's an echo, where it feels okay, you know?

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Where it sounds like it could be natural.

MIKE:
Right.

RICH:
Now the Holden MaDickey name, that actually, actually came from my fiancee.
We used to like to go to the minor-league baseball games.
We had season tickets, and they had some kind of contest thing where you could, like, win a free ticket and they would announce your name over the loudspeaker.
And we already had season tickets...

JAY:
Oh.

RICH:
So we would join the contest, but we would put in, like, fake names hoping we can get him to read, like, Holden MaDickey over the intercom.

MIKE:
Hmm, that's great.

JAY:
Where did the, the other name, we had two possibilities...

MIKE:
Cornelius McOpenfly.

JAY:
The other one was Cornelius McOpenfly.
Where did that come from?

MIKE:
I think I just made that up.

JAY:
Okay.

MIKE:
I don't know.

JAY:
Oh, and that plate that's behind you guys is the same plate that's behind, uh, Chike there.
We just kept, we moved it depending on the shot.

MIKE:
Oh, is it?

JAY:
Yeah, because that table was empty and it was such a bland background.

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that little plant.
But, yeah, there's that, you talk about details, there's a little family photo.
It's like, ugh, you gotta make that.
And then there's the Chromatanium, like, science magazine.
Like...

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Which was an insert that we shot later, but...
And this, he's got a print out...
I gotta remember all your props.
I think we, did we bring the M&M's?

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Like...

JAY:
Yeah, we bought those little candy dishes at, like, the dollar store.

MIKE:
So the intention of him, like...

JAY:
And then we brought the bags of M&Ms.
Yeah, this was the intention was that he would start, like, throwing this up in the air, and...
I don't remember why, that's a weird thing that we would think to do ahead of time.

RICH:
I think it was my idea because I was, like, reading this scene before we did it, and I was, like:
"Space Cop, like, does nothing..."

JAY:
Oh, yeah.

RICH:
"In this scene."
"I gotta, I gotta be doing something."

JAY:
Okay.

MIKE:
I think I remember you saying that, yeah.

JAY:
That makes sense.
And now we have a fart joke.

MIKE:
What?

JAY:
Mike, would you like to talk about the fart joke?

MIKE:
I don't remember what the fart joke was.

JAY:
Oh, yeah you do.

MIKE:
Yeah, I don't even know...
I, I don't know why this is in here.

JAY:
You don't remember what your creative process was when you were writing the script and you put in Space Cop farts, for no reason?

MIKE:
Because it's funny.

RICH:
I came up with the because of poop line.

JAY:
That's true, that was a Rich improv.

RICH:
That's my contribution to this schlock.

MIKE:
So here's one...

RICH:
And here's my accidental contribution to the schlock right here.

JAY:
Yeah, this was not supposed to happen, when the thermostat case falls off the wall.

RICH:
What perfect timing.

JAY:
It's a great, yeah.
Well, I think you were just slamming that door so hard, and that was probably, like, the cheapest thermostat, you know, money can buy.

RICH:
For their fake offices?

JAY:
For their fake offices.

RICH:
For people who like to pretend they're successful?

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
Where they're conning other people?

JAY:
Yup.

MIKE:
Rent an office!

JAY:
Chike gives the best reaction to a fart you possibly could give.

RICH:
Okay, now we talked about, like, difficulty in finding people and the difficulty in making this movie...

JAY:
Oh, god.
This scene.

RICH:
Here's, here's, here's the thing:
when we filmed this scene, we, we let it, we let the word out, all right, STRIP CLUB - FREE BEER.
Four people showed up.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Well, that's not entirely true.
let's talk about this.
This is, this is Milwaukee's finest strip club, The Airport Lounge, um, and, which is coincidentally right next door to the bar.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.
The Landmark Bar that you see a few times.

MIKE:
The Landmark Bar, which is Milwaukee's oldest bar, uh, the first bar in Milwaukee.
These two places are right next door to each other, which was convenient for us.
But, um, the guy at the Milwaukee bar, like, you know, we paid him to use his location, and then we're like:
"Oh god, you know, the strip club's gonna cost us a lot to rent it, and all this."
But the, the, the family that owns it was, were very very accommodating, and very nice.

JAY:
They were awesome, yeah.

MIKE:
They were just like:
"Oh, that sounds great, you know, come on in."
And we're like:
"Okay."
"Well, you know, do you want any money?"
And they're like:
"No."
I said, so, compromise was, we'll open a bar tab, and do that, and, um, we're, we could not find extras for the life of us.

JAY:
Well, we, we had a few people lined up, and then the day of, we got there in the morning to start getting things set up, and then around the time that people were supposed to show up as extras, they just didn't come.

MIKE:
Yeah.
And, well, they, they had said, the owner, owners had said they would get dancers who worked there to be in the scene because, you know, we didn't want actresses to do this, and, and, uh, with the day of, they're like, oh, no.
They, no one's gonna show up.
They're like, these girls just sometimes don't show up.

JAY:
Yeah...

MIKE:
Great, you know.

JAY:
It's like, we don't have, uh, we don't have dancers, and we don't have patrons.

MIKE:
We don't have dancers or patrons.

JAY:
So we don't have a scene, basically.

MIKE:
We have about...

JAY:
Yeah, I was kind of panicking this morning.
This was one of the rougher days.

MIKE:
It was, it was a little frightening at first.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And then, then the owners are like:
"Well, we have friends that could come."
And so they, a bunch of people showed up.
And then all of a sudden, it was just, like, it worked.
Like...

JAY:
Yeah, we ended up with two dancers.

MIKE:
Um...

JAY:
My friend Jesse showed up.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
Which is great.
He has a prominent role as the making-it-rain-guy.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
You may recognize him from the Phantom Menace review.

MIKE:
Yep, he's, uh, he's on the famous still.

JAY:
That's true!
He's in the thumbnail for the Episode One review.

RICH:
He's also eating ice cream im Gorilla Interrupted.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.
That's right.

MIKE:
He goes way back.
Um, yeah, and then, um, a couple of, uh, uh, re-, reused extras, and, yeah, the people sitting at the bar were, like, friends of the, the club owners.

RICH:
Yeah, basically a big thank you to the Airport Lounge.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Yeah, they were great.
They were awesome.
They were really accommodating.
But, yeah, that morning, ugh...

MIKE:
Yeah, when nobody was showing up.

JAY:
Nobody was.

MIKE:
Especially when they said that the, the dancers that they had asked to do it...

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Um, weren't calling them back, we were like:
"Great."
But it all worked out.

JAY:
It ended up working out.

RICH:
How, how hard was it to, like, frame these shots?
Like, just making maximum use out of the people that we did have.

JAY:
Well, we reused some people.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
Like, the guy directly behind Mike there, in the reverses, when Jocelyn walks in, he's there, too, in a different hoody.
So, move, move your people around to, to maximize the frame.

RICH:
And there's the plant.

JAY:
And there's the plant.

MIKE:
From, from its much younger days when it had many more leaves.
Um, but this is not, this was not shot on location at the Airport Lounge.
This is a set that we built later.

JAY:
Yes

MIKE:
Clearly.
Because it looks like crap.

This is our Nicolas Winding Refn scene.
I think just bathed in red.
It looks like only God forgives.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
And that's the Samurai Cop wig, isn't it?

MIKE:
It is.

JAY:
From when we shot our interview with Matt Hannon.
And we did a gag where he wore the wig, because that's obviously the famous Samurai Cop thing.
And then we reused it for, for this.

MIKE:
Does she wear it the whole movie?

JAY:
No, she just wears it in the strip club stuff.

MIKE:
The strip club scene.

JAY:
That's, that's part of her stripper disguise.
And that, oh, that's something to mention is that, yeah, she's wearing, like, this, this awkward Flashdance-type outfit.
And originally, the original idea going way back years before we had any sort of script or even started putting the movie together, was that the aliens, their intention was to travel back to the 1980's.
That's when the scientist was going to be there.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
And they, you know, travel back to the wrong time, like it is now, but they, they don't understand that they're not in the 80's, so they're wearing, like, bad 80's clothes.

RICH:
Everything they brought with them...

JAY:
Lots of dated references.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Was in preparation for the 80's.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah.
That's what it was.

JAY:
They were studying the...

MIKE:
Yes, they had studied and, and, and had clothes to match the time.

JAY:
Yeah, so there's gonna be lots of jokes about them, you know, dressed like, like 80's attire, and...

RICH:
Basically been reduced to that.

JAY:
Yeah, now it's just that she doesn't understand things, so she's wearing a Flashdance outfit.

MIKE:
Well, I think, I think we also, like, it's not like they just land the ship and get off right then and there.
There's a, there's a time gap...

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
There's a time jump from 2007 to present day, and we're like:
"Well, they, they probably would have figured things out, and it wouldn't make sense for them to still be wearing their 80's clothes."

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
So we kind of cut that whole gag.

JAY:
We, we nixed that, but for the sake of yucks, we still have the, uh, the Flashdance outfit.

MIKE:
Yeah, well, it also works in the fact that, it reminds me a little of, um, Mars Attacks, when the, the aliens are...

JAY:
Oh, yeah.

MIKE:
trying to walk like human females.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MIKE:
And they, they walk all strange.
Jocelyn's, like, uh, dance, stripper dance is, like, bizarre and awkward.

JAY:
She, yeah.

MIKE:
She, she doesn't quite understand...

JAY:
She doesn't get it.

MIKE:
And so she also doesn't quite understand how a stripper would dress.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
That would wear some kind of weird Jane Fonda outfit at this age.

RICH:
That's the mating dance where people do.

MIKE:
Right.

RICH:
I forgot what we called those aliens.

MIKE:
Gabutnu.

RICH:
Obutnu.

MIKE:
Gabutnu.

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
I think we just made that up.
A Kabutnu Class Science Destroyer.

RICH:
Science Destroyer.

JAY:
So the stuff here, the rain, is our friend Jack on a ladder with a hose.

RICH:
Which, I'm kinda pissed off.
We had to film this twice.
First time, I, we did the hose on Mike, it was, like, perfect.
Just spray the hose directly up into the air, and the water all comes down.
It looks like rain.

JAY:
Right.

RICH:
For some reason, when we did my shots, he thought it would be really great just to spray the hose directly down on me.

JAY:
Is that what happened.

RICH:
Yeah.
Yeah.

JAY:
Oh, I don't even remember that.

RICH:
I'm like:
"Are you sure that looks good?"
"That, that's gotta look like crap."
And, and it was freezing outside.

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.

RICH:
And I've got this cold water drenched on me, and then like...

JAY:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
We're, we're done.
Take a look at the footage, and it's obvious...

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
That there's, like, a spotlight of water that's just going on me.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Did we reshoot it?

RICH:
And we had to redo it.

MIKE:
Yep.
I remember that.

JAY:
Did we redo it that night, or did we, like, do it the next day?

RICH:
It could have been the next day.
I don't really remember, but we had to redo it.

JAY:
All right.

RICH:
And I was cold and wet, twice.

MIKE:
I think it was that night.
I think we went and looked at it.

JAY:
Okay.
I, I don't remember at all.

RICH:
Damn you, Jack.
Damn you!

MIKE:
Here's the, the flesh, flesh, um, creating...

RICH:
The Fleshlight.

MIKE:
The Fleshlight.
There you go.
The flesh-creating machine in the, the smaller laboratory set that, that you'll see on the outtakes, from the deleted scenes.

JAY:
Yeah, there's a massive destruction scene.
This was the last set we had to build for the, uh, any of the alien spaceship interiors.
So we just added a scene for the hell of it where it gets completely trashed.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
But it's not the movie, but it's in the outtakes.

MIKE:
We, we laughed so hard when Rich throws a dummy through a wall later that you'll see that we just said:
"Let's do more stuff with the dummy."

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And then yes took it too far.

JAY:
We went too far in a few places?

MIKE:
We went too far in a few places.
He's throwing the dummy all over the place, and then just trashing the set.
And it's almost, like, at one point the whole set wall falls over.

RICH:
I, I pull it down.

MIKE:
He pulls it down.
And it's just...

JAY:
You see, like, a ladder behind it.

MIKE:
Yeah.
It just, it just messed with the whole, like, um, momentum of the movie at that point.

JAY:
Yeah.
At that pointm you wanna keep things moving.
And here's Rich's second role in the film.

MIKE:
Uh-huh.

RICH:
Third.

JAY:
Third?

RICH:
I was an extra.

JAY:
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, you're an extra in the bar.

MIKE:
So, this is the same door that we just came out of, in the rain.

JAY:
Just, yeah.
Rearranged.

MIKE:
There's Rich's bottle of, uh, not Jack Daniels that he drinks in his car later.

JAY:
Oh, and, uh, Freddie Williams is in the background over Rich's shoulder there, uh, doing actual work.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Actually drawing a comic book right there.

MIKE:
I want to say he said he was working, I can't...

JAY:
It's Thor.
He's doing a Thor book.

MIKE:
Yeah.
Yes.And he sent us a copy of that.

JAY:
But that's, yeah.
He's actually, uh, doing double-duty.
He's working as an extra, and he's working at a real job.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
That's how you do it.

JAY:
That's, yeah, yeah.

MIKE:
Aw, Tim Higgins.
He was in the first, very first episode of Half in the Bag.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.
That's right.

MIKE:
Very...

RICH:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
Very first episode.

MIKE:
Played one of Lucas's henchmen that come in and smash up the, the house.
We go way back with Tim Higgins.
Quality, quality, quality.

JAY:
Always reliable.

MIKE:
And he played the hipster in the hipster, uh, the VCR episode.

JAY:
The hipster trilogy episodes.

MIKE:
Yeah.
He only wanted to pay with, uh, tons of, uh, JFK half-dollars.
And he signed with a quill pen.

JAY:
Because he doesn't support the big pen industry.

RICH:
He's done a lot of work with with Jack, too.
His pass-me-a-beer videos.

MIKE:
Oh, that's true, yeah.

JAY:
I think, yeah, that's how we met him, I believe, was through, through Jack.
I want to say this was one of the first...

RICH:
The first thing.

MIKE:
It was the, one of the, the very...

JAY:
No.

RICH:
The very first thing we shot.

MIKE:
No.

JAY:
No, no no no.
It wasn't.
The first, the first thing we shot is the last shot of the movie.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Well, actually, it's the first thing we shot with Space Cop.
The very first thing shot for the movie is the girl undressing on the TV during the Snodgrass scene.

RICH:
You're right, I forgot about that last scene.

JAY:
We shot that, and then we shot, uh...

MIKE:
That was the first...thing?

JAY:
What?

MIKE:
With the, the girl on the TV.
You shot that?

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And that was the first thing?

JAY:
That was the very first thing.
That was, like, a few days before we shot...

MIKE:
I remember that, that...

JAY:
With Rich.

MIKE:
Yeah, you were doing that, like, mid-production.

JAY:
No, no.
That was super early.

MIKE:
Okay.
Yeah, then we filmed Rich in the door, and then, then kind of, this was the first major scene.

JAY:
Did we shoot the crowd scene before this?

MIKE:
No.

JAY:
No?

MIKE:
That was, like, the next summer.

JAY:
No, was it?

MIKE:
Or year.

JAY:
That was, like, September of 2015.

MIKE:
I remember this being the very, one of the very first things we shot.

RICH:
I thought it was *the first*, but you're right.
We did do the, this one at the end.

JAY:
Oh wait.
You know what, this was first, because this is when we didn't have the costume quite together yet.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Like, you can see he doesn't have his little insignia...

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
On his collar.

MIKE:
Yes.
And the star kept falling off.

JAY:
And the star kept falling off, yeah.
I think the star kept falling off, though, because he was, kept pouring booze on his shirt.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
So it kept loosening.

MIKE:
I think we just had it on with, like, duct tape at this point, and that's why it kept falling off.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah yeah.

RICH:
Because we're smart!

JAY:
And this, this scene is not, uh, crucial to the plot, but it's like a scene that you could cut if you're trying to get the running time down, but...

RICH:
I would riot.

JAY:
It was, yeah, this, this is one of the, the funnier concepts of the movie.

RICH:
This is, uh, I think this is officially my favorite scene of the movie.
Space Cop drunkenly, drunkenly chasing after an eight-year-old boy.

MIKE:
Trying to murder him.

RICH:
He's trying to murder him.

JAY:
Trying to murder him, while the kid's trying to get away on his bike.

MIKE:
And, and...

RICH:
But it makes perfect sense.
He's saving his wife.
This is a noble thing.

JAY:
But, we learn at the end of the movie, it's a causality loop.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
That intentionally causes the death of his wife.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
I think it's good that there's some time travel paradox...

JAY:
There's a little bit, yeah.

MIKE:
In a time travel movie.

JAY:
Now this is a great touch here.
The guy that did, uh, this effect, he made the bike go flying up into the air.
So, uh, here's another shot where we only had two tubes, two cryo tubes, and we had to move them around and do split screens,

RICH:
You can see the paint coming off the one that was, like, green.

JAY:
Don't point those things out, Rich.

MIKE:
They're gonna ruin the magic of the movie.

JAY:
You're gonna take people out of their immersion.

RICH:
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

MIKE:
This guy was good.

JAY:
This is, yeah, this is Bo Johnson, who, we, this stuff we kept pretty much to the script because it's, like, exposition city.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
So we didn't do a lot of improv.
And then I found out after the fact he was a member of The Dead Alewives, which was a famous, uh, comedy troupe in Milwaukee.
It's like where Dan Harmon got his start, and Rob Schrab, and, uh, and he was a part of that group, which was an improv group.
And had I known that at the time we shot this, maybe I would have tried to get him to do more improv, but...

MIKE:
Should've done your research.

JAY:
He just plays, he just plays scientist man.

MIKE:
But his acting is good.

JAY:
But that, yeah, it's okay because you can't have a lot of jokes in this part.
At least on his end.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Like, you're, you're the comedy relief of these scenes.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
But he's got a lot of information to get across.

MIKE:
Right.
And I just ask questions and, uh, we have a little bit where I'm pouring chemicals into a glass, and it's, you gotta do stuff...

JAY:
You gotta, you gotta break up the exposition with that stuff.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, people get bored during exposition, so you have to kind of distract them.

RICH:
Throw M&M's in the air, and try to catch them with your mouth.

MIKE:
Right, right.
Those are good gags, though.
I thought I do a spit-take at one point?

JAY:
That's the, the second time you drink chemicals.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
But this is, yeah...

RICH:
So that's a shot specifically before this.
That wasn't just, like, a part of your personal collection?

JAY:
That was a part of my personal collection, yeah.

MIKE:
Pervert!

JAY:
But that's, you gotta get that.
Like, it's a one-second joke.
Uh, he has pervert tapes, so you got to shoot that, and then you have to shoot the inserts of the TV with that on the TV, which we did not shoot with him there.
So it's, like, all these pieces.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
All these elements.

MIKE:
That's, like, your shoulder or something, right?

JAY:
Yeah, that's my shoulder, is the, the stand-in.

MIKE:
Why didn't we do that with him?

JAY:
Because we didn't have anything ready.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
We didn't want to have to worry about hooking up the VCR, and getting the tape cued up, and all that stuff, so...

RICH:
Okay.
Okay.

JAY:
And it's like, it's like, let's get everything we need him for.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
And then you get those inserts later.

MIKE:
Yeah, you could have him stand there, and have him film his shoulder with the TV in the background, but that...

JAY:
It's like a waste of his time.

MIKE:
You gotta light it, you gotta set it up...

JAY:
Yeah, exactly.

MIKE:
It takes twenty minutes, half an hour.

RICH:
That's the kind of thing that, on a bigger film, they call second unit.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
All the, the shots of Space Cop's car driving through downtown Milwaukee.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
All that stuff, you could have somebody else shoot, but...

MIKE:
Close-ups of people holding things in their hands.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
That's...

JAY:
Generally, that stuff is...

MIKE:
Most of the time, it's not the same actor's hand.
They don't care.

JAY:
Yeah.
Right.

MIKE:
I think the, the, uh, the outfit here, the hoop earrings and the ponytail to the side is our very, very pathetic attempt to make it seem like this is the same lady from the 1980's.

JAY:
Yeah.
That's the remnant of that.

MIKE:
It's still you!

JAY:
Although, it ended up getting reworked where they're not trying to travel back to the eighties.
They're trying to travel back to 2007.
So, it doesn't really make sense that she would be eighties anymore, but I think that changed, like, mid-production.

MIKE:
Hmm.

JAY:
After we shot that, so...

RICH:
Wait, there were...

MIKE:
I thought...

JAY:
I'm sorry.

MIKE:
They were, they were always trying to go...

JAY:
They were trying to travel back to the 80's.

MIKE:
It is supposed to do that.

JAY:
It ended up in 2007.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
Oh, god.

MIKE:
Because Space Cop's lasers messed up their time travel equipment.

JAY:
I can't keep track of these things.

MIKE:
So the, the scientist was killed in 1985.

JAY:
Right.

MIKE:
So that is supposed to be, so why it's the same lady, who looks the same, is beyond me.
I guess it's her mother.

JAY:
No, it's, it's just her.

MIKE:
It's just her.

JAY:
It's just her.
It's fine.

RICH:
Aged incredibly well.

JAY:
Sure.

MIKE:
What?

JAY:
Classic what.
Now these walls for this little set are also the, uh, alien spaceship walls.
I think this was shot first...

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Because those walls are clean.

RICH:
Two of them are real walls.

JAY:
Well, yeah, the brick walls are real, but then we had the, we only have one fake wall here, but on the outside of that room stuff, there's two.

RICH:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
And that was, they were brand new, they were smooth, they were clean, so we shot this stuff before we started, like, gluing shit to 'em for the alien.

RICH:
Now when we film, like, the outside of this room looking in, too, I mean, that's the same walls flipped around...

JAY:
Yes.

RICH:
Because we had to repaint them.

MIKE:
Right.

RICH:
Because the back, you just see the wooden frame.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I guess we would have done that that same day, because we shot them outside of that room in the cryo lab area.
MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And then we, we must have told them to go take five or something.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And then we just flipped the wall around.

MIKE:
I remember.

JAY:
That's, that's an easy change.

MIKE:
We only worked with him for one day.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
Wasn't he gray on one side?
No, I'm wrong.
I'm wrong.

JAY:
No, no.
And this is the remnants of the phone booth gag.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
If you're wondering why he's in a phone booth.

MIKE:
I, I, I like it now better.
It's, it just feels appropriate, like, that's how my character would contact Space Cop.

JAY:
Sure.

MIKE:
You know, and, but originally, I was supposed to run up to, like, a kid who was, like, um, all tech, tech'd out with an iPad and headphones and, you know, and I say:
"Kid, where's the nearest phone booth?"
And then the, you know, it's an obvious setup for him to go:
"Uh-what?"
But really, he just knows exactly where one is.

JAY:
It's a, yeah, it's a, it's a double joke.

MIKE:
Yeah.
It's a bait-and-switch, uh, more or less.
And then, um, we shot it, and it didn't quite work.
There was something about it that, that didn't work.

JAY:
I, yeah, I don't think the joke came across clearly, or something.

MIKE:
Yeah.
We really needed, like, three kids, and we needed them all to be super into it.

JAY:
Yeah.
Everybody's on their phone...

MIKE:
Everyone's on their phone, or playing this game, and it's, and then, um, it just didn't read, visually read.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And so we cut it.

JAY:
And that airplane was just a model airplane.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Just a plane on strings.

RICH:
Where'd you get these clouds?

JAY:
Uh, that's, uh, I shot that myself.
I went up in a, I rented a helicopter for the day, and I went up and shot that.
Coming up, we have another Colin shot.

MIKE:
Yeah, the, uh, plane debris landing.

RICH:
Yay!

MIKE:
The, the funny part is he was working on that shot literally on 9/11.

JAY:
Oh, that's right, yeah.

MIKE:
And, and, it, it just was coincidence that he happened to be working on that shot on that day.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
And people in his office were, like:
"What are you doing?"

JAY:
"I'm a sicko!"

MIKE:
Yeah, like, it just, just just happened to fall on that day.

RICH:
That's, that terrible.

MIKE:
It is terrible.
This is the only time all three characters are together, right?

JAY:
Yeah.
Only time in the movie.

MIKE:
Now then, you don't have any scenes with Jocelyn, right?

JAY:
Uh, other than this, no.
Oh, wait, no.
I have the, the, uh, the first, uh, cryo lab shootout scene.

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
it's me and her.

MIKE:
That's right.
I just forget that because you're wearing masks.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
It's you're only scene...
Well, no, you got that other scene with, too.
Nevermind.

JAY:
Yeah, we're all in scenes, uh, just not all together.
It's, it's two of us in any given scene, except for this one.
Do you remember what that, the, the golden cortex thing was made of?

MIKE:
Rich found it.

RICH:
It was an ice cream maker I found at a thrift store, and then I just glued a whole bunch of shit to it, and spray painted it gold.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And then to make it spin, I just connected it to a drill, and just spun it in front of a green screen.

RICH:
Oh, is that you did it?
You just had it on a drill?

JAY:
Yeah.
Oh, my god.
It's the famous head melt scene.

MIKE:
Yeah, um, Jay had, you had found a Taco Bell cup topper from the Phantom Menace, or, from Episode Two, of Mace Windu.

JAY:
No, it was Episode One.

RICH:
Oh.

JAY:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Oh, yeah, he's in Episode One.

JAY:
He's in that.
But that, yeah, it was, uh, a Taco Bell promotional tie-in with Episode One.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
I found it, uh, shortly before we were planning to do that effect.
We were talking, we weren't sure how we were gonna do it.

MIKE:
Yeah.
Rich had made a full-scale clay head.

JAY:
Yeah, that was, at one time we were gonna try and melt a head.

MIKE:
He used the wrong clay, and it started to crack and fall apart.

RICH:
I used the right clay, but we waited too long.

MIKE:
Okay.

RICH:
And what happened was the styrofoam I built the head on top of, I built it on top of a, like a styrofoam mannequin head.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
That sucked the water out of the right clay.

MIKE:
Sucked the moisture, yeah.

JAY:
Oh, is that what happened?

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
Okay.

MIKE:
Um...

JAY:
But, yeah, and then I just happened to find in my parents basement this old cup that had been down there since 1999.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
And we said:
"Hey, let's melt this!"

MIKE:
Actually, it was my idea to melt it.

JAY:
Okay.
But it worked great.

RICH:
But I sculpted a really nice head.

MIKE:
You showed up with it, and you're like:
"Isn't this funny?"

JAY:
Oh, that's right.
I just said like:
"Hey, look what I found!"

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And then you had the idea to do it.

MIKE:
I was like:
"Hey, let's use this."
"This looks just like Chike."

RICH:
This is another, um, uh, Jim extended.

MIKE:
Oh, yeah.

JAY:
As is this, yeah.

RICH:
This, too.

MIKE:
That's amazing.

JAY:
It really helps, because the set was so small.
It's supposed to be this big engine room, and it's just this tiny set.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
So these, these extensions, they help establish the room a bit more.

RICH:
Imagine that, that shot zoomed in four times.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
That was the original shot.
That was the engine room!

MIKE:
It's roughly this.
But, um, yeah, and that's our engine, that's our biggest thing we could make.
I think we were talked about having some kind of thing where, that there was like a glowing ball of energy.

RICH:
Mm-hmm.

MIKE:
And it was that, like...

JAY:
Oh that's right, yeah.


MIKE:
A post-production effect would make it look bigger, but we found a bunch of crap at a thrift store, and we're like:
"Ehh, let's just make some kind of device."

RICH:
Wasn't it, like, if we did a glowing thing, I think lighting would have been an issue.
Was that it?

MIKE:
Eh, I don't remember.

JAY:
And it would have created yet another visual effect.

RICH:
All these visual effects that are science fiction movie.
Ugh.

JAY:
Hey, you're not the one that had to do all of 'em.

RICH:
I'm not blaming you, I'm just...

JAY:
Like, the last year of my life has been painstakingly trying to do this crap.

RICH:
You don't complain when your peanut butter tastes like peanut butter, Jay.

JAY:
What?

RICH:
I don't know.

JAY:
I don't make the peanut butter.
I'd complain if I had to make the peanut butter.
I can go to the store and buy peanut butter.
And then I can go to another store and buy a sci-fi comedy that I didn't have to make.

RICH:
Would you ever make another sci-fi comedy?

JAY:
Um, not if I knew that I would end up having to do most of the visual effects.
And I think, I don't think when we were shooting we realized how much it was gonna be, either.

MIKE:
Can we talk about the control panels for a second?

JAY:
Oh, god, yeah.

MIKE:
Rich did a...

JAY:
Which is an epic tale unto itself.

MIKE:
Rich did a wonderful job making those control panels.
The tops of them, um, making, like, a little glowing buttons and all that.
But those control panels were old CD racks, um, at this, this store in Milwaukee had posted on Craigslist FREE, you know, CD racks.
Like, hey, great.
Those are great.
They're, like, the perfect size and shape.

JAY:
They were at, like, a comic book store, right?

RICH:
They were at a comic book store.
I forget what they were called.

MIKE:
World of Wonder?

RICH:
Yeah, yeah.
World of Wonder.

MIKE:
It was, it's next door to Science and Surplus.

JAY:
That's right.

MIKE:
And, um, so we rented a truck and took it over there, and then we picked one up, and it was about 900 pounds.
They were extremely heavy, um...

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
And it took, like...

MIKE:
Eight.

RICH:
Fifteen of them?
We took a ton.
Ten?

JAY:
Maybe ten at the most.

MIKE:
I thought it was ten.

JAY:
Eight or ten, yeah.

MIKE:
And, and it took us, like, six hours to load them into the truck.

JAY:
Ugh.

MIKE:
Oh, they were so heavy, and, uh...

JAY:
And awkward.
Like, they were hard to get onto a dolly properly.

MIKE:
Right, right.
Um, and so I think you had to gut them.
Right, Rich?

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
You gutted them up with a saw.

RICH:
I, I, I gutted them with a hammer and a saw, and then, um, originally I wanted to put, like, styrofoam on top, but that was just too light.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
And anything you put on it would have caved in.

MIKE:
Right.

RICH:
So then I just, I took some plywood, and I, I cut holes in it, and then I put hole, I put, uh, uh, styrofoam things with, with gel cutouts on top of that.

MIKE:
Yeah.
But, and then...

RICH:
Foam board.
Foam board and, and, and film, and light gels.

MIKE:
Yeah.
And then we threw them in the back of our studio to rot.

RICH:
And then, basically, inside that CD case is just, like, a big giant, like, ceiling florescent light.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Yeah, that's right.

MIKE:
Take a look.

RICH:
Lights the whole thing up.

MIKE:
So here's one of the most epic scenes in the film.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie, um, with another celebrity cameo.

JAY:
Yeah.
Yeah.

MIKE:
And hopefully you're not watching the movie with the commentary track first.

RICH:
Nobody does that.

MIKE:
I don't think people do that, right?

JAY:
Nobody ever does that.

MIKE:
All right, yeah, this is our...

RICH:
If you, if you're dumb enough to do that, we're gonna spoil that Len Kabasinski makes his cameo here.

JAY:
What?
You just spoiled it for me, Rich.

MIKE:
The epic showdown between Rich and Jay, and, uh, the insert Len Kabasinski as Rich's obvious stunt double.

JAY:
Not only the stunt double, but also the fight choreographer.

MIKE:
Yes.

JAY:
And he did a great job.
I mean, if you look at, like, me and Rich, like, we don't know what the fuck were doing when it comes to fighting, but there's a couple moves that are somewhat convincing.

MIKE:
Yeah.
It's a fun action-packed scene.

JAY:
He was telling, yeah, he's telling us like specific angles to shoot it from to sell, like, I think it's when he kicks me in the stomach, and...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
All those little bits, that, that was completely Len.

MIKE:
But this is another scene that basically was completely silent.
Um, no usable audio whatsoever.
And it's all, like, Foley and ADR.

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
And sound effects.
So it's, like, Rich and Jay were on microphones, like, imitating their moves with their clothing, making grunting noises and adding punching sounds.
I think it all worked out pretty well.

JAY:
I think, I think having that, because for the longest time, we would watch this scene over and over with just the, you know, the, the scratch audio.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Once you put that in and you hear, like, Rich's voice coming out of the shots of Len...

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
Like, that, that sells it a lot.
That's funny.

RICH:
You know, I don't think I've seen this with the, the ADR yet.

JAY:
Oh.

RICH:
Unfortunately, we're watching this on mute right now, so I still haven't seen it.
But some day.

JAY:
Some day I might show you the final movie, Rich.
Some day.

RICH:
Do I get a copy of the movie?

MIKE:
No.

JAY:
No.

MIKE:
Well, you gotta buy one.

JAY:
Oh, and here's a dummy.
Could you tell?
That was a pain in the ass, too, that dummy.

MIKE:
Oh, my god.

JAY:
Trying to get it to prop up properly.

MIKE:
It was, it was very, like, awkward, and you had it on a wooden stick.

JAY:
I had a wooden stick shoved in the ass.

MIKE:
And I...

JAY:
So I, I was puppeteering that, and you were up on a ladder.

MIKE:
Yeah, I had um, the, like, the upper torso, um, held up with, like, fishing wire, and I think I, I dropped it to, and to have it go limp, and then you pulled it.

JAY:
Yeah, so it almost looked like it was collapsing.

MIKE:
It coll-, yeah, collapsing, and then standing upright and then collapsing and being pulled to the left.
And it was just something that was, like, really hard to do.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
Here we have Mike's character arc where he, he learns to listen to a woman.

JAY:
Yeah.
He learns to let a woman repair a car.

MIKE:
Yep.

RICH:
And Space Cop's arc is that he has no arc.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
Yes.

RICH:
Space Cop learns nothing in this film.

JAY:
Well, the, the, yeah, the joke is, you know, Mike's character keeps trying to put it in your head that you need to use your wits, you need to use intelligence to solve a case, and, and, uh, the end of the movie you save the day by just punching something.

RICH:
Dumb, blunt force.

JAY:
A dumb, blunt force.
It's, it's an anti-arc.

RICH:
Yay!

JAY:
And this, yeah, we, we, that was the second take.
The first take, it didn't go all the way through.
The head fell off, and everything went wrong.
That second take, it flew through there perfectly.

MIKE:
And, uh, many thanks to our three aliens here, uh, Jack, Jeff, and Jessi.
Um...

JAY:
Yeah, Jessi again from the strip club scene.

MIKE:
Yep, um...

RICH:
Does circuits?

MIKE:
Yep.
All, all, um, willing to have firecrackers taped to their bodies with, uh, with, uh, condoms and green blood.
Although, those, those chest things are, like, padded.

JAY:
Yeah.
Those are meant for, like, bike riders.

MIKE:
Yeah.
But still, like, and, and it was nice, that backlight, you can see a little tip bleeding in from the top.
It's all backlit, so the blood spurts really show up nicely.
Same what the smoke.
This is all nice-looking stuff.

RICH:
These mid-hallway pillars, they really...

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Help hide the fact that it's just these same walls.

MIKE:
Right.

JAY:
Yeah, those helped quite a bit.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And you made those, right, Rich?

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
Yeah, you did a nice job with those.

RICH:
Thank you.

MIKE:
They really make it look sci-fi.
I mean, but, yeah, this movie is basically made of styrofoam, duct tape...
Styrofoam and duct tape.
There's really nothing else.

RICH:
The head came off.

JAY:
That's fine.
That's great.
Was that spine, was that the remnants of that full skeleton that we had at one point?

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
That's all that was left.

MIKE:
There's our head and brain in the jar.
It's adorable.
Although, this robot, I remember your original robot, Jay.

JAY:
Oh, yeah.
I don't think I had quite in mind what we intended to do with the robot, so my original robot was a, uh, a turned upside-down, uh, uh, tote.

MIKE:
It was like a plastic bin.

JAY:
Yeah, like a plastic bin, and then I glued a bunch of shit to it.
It didn't have a head, like, you know, we've got the brain in the jar.
I don't even think it had that.

RICH:
It was like, it was like a plastic bin on, like, a computer chair.

MIKE:
Yeah.
It was like, it was like...

JAY:
Oh, no, you know what it was, it was, I don't remember, I think we got it at a thrift store, it was like a, like a beauty salon hair dryer thing on wheels.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
And so I took the wheels part of it, and I put the bin on top of that.

MIKE:
We eventually...

RICH:
And it was, it was, it was, it was three feet tall.

JAY:
It was, it was very small.

RICH:
My original, like, I, I drew it out and kind of mocked up what it should have been, and it, like, would have required five puppeteers.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
It was comical, and it would've failed.

JAY:
Well, I think we had five puppeteers for this thing, at some points.

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
I remember...

JAY:
There was, there was one shot that's not in the movie here where we had everybody, there was no one running the camera, because everybody was doing something.
We had the actors in the shot, and then everybody else was puppeteering the robot.
So we had absolutely nobody even to man the camera.

MIKE:
Yeah, we needed, like, two, either two people or four people, holding sticks with strings for the tentacle arms.

JAY:
This shot isn't in the movie.

MIKE:
Yeah.

JAY:
But, it was, it was, yeah, it required everybody.

RICH:
I just remember, I originally wanted these big, giant, vulgar, pummeling arms.

JAY:
Yeah.
Yeah.

RICH:
That just beat the shit out of Space Cop.

MIKE:
Well, unfortunately, Stan Winston's dead, and none of us are up to the task.
This is the best we could do.

RICH:
Oh, that's fine.

JAY:
This works in a schlock comedy way.

RICH:
Yeah.

JAY:
Just a brain in a jar.

MIKE:
That's a fine villain.
It's fine.
Good enough.
The movie's about terrible jokes.
It's a common...

JAY:
Yeah, it would, it would be a completely different story if we were trying to make a serious, you know, dramatic sci-fi film.
But the comedy comes first, and sometimes the comedy comes from the cheapness of the way everything looks.

RICH:
Space Cop almost killing everybody by rushing into this room.
He never would have had the gun.

JAY:
Yeah, that's true.

MIKE:
Yeah, we solved the problem, and then you just made it worse.
Uh, Jocelyn's, uh, this has a 90% chance of working.

JAY:
I don't like those odds!

MIKE:
I don't like those odds.
I don't know what that means.

JAY:
What?

MIKE:
There's a Mr. Spock reference.

JAY:
What's the Mr. Spock reference?

MIKE:
The, the little, the thing he looks in on the Enterprise.

JAY:
Oh.

RICH:
Is this is the only shot we use those lights in the gun for?

MIKE:
I think so.

JAY:
I think so.
Aside from Colin's opening credits scene, there's a close-up of them blinking.

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
That's because it's in, like, super power mode.

JAY:
Yes.

RICH:
Yeah.

MIKE:
He's draining the power core, uh, completely.
I put a little blue light in there and everything.
I don't even know if it shows up.
Does it show up on, yeah, okay.

JAY:
Yeah, you can see it.

RICH:
Oh, the, the eye thing?

MIKE:
Yeah.

RICH:
Yeah, I saw it.

MIKE:
Spent a lot of time making that.
That's a Mr. Spock reference, goddamn it.

RICH:
Now everybody does it.

MIKE:
Good.

RICH:
Is Spock always the one that's losing his temper and beating people up?

MIKE:
Yes.
Right.
I want Spock dead, now!
Yeah, Spock, Spock's that enraged violent, violence-mongerer.

RICH:
Because I saw the movies, I know he's the one that's always beating people up and choking them.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
Timing on this was perfect.

JAY:
And you can't even see the strings.

MIKE:
Sure you can.

JAY:
What?

RICH:
It's fine.
It's fine.

JAY:
So here's our epic crowd scene.

RICH:
Oh, my god.
Look at all of those people, and thank you people for showing up.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah.
Thank, thank you everybody that showed up for this.

MIKE:
There, there's...

JAY:
It was like, it was like twelve years ago now, but we appreciate it.

RICH:
People came from my comically far places.

MIKE:
There, there were two guys that drove from New Jersey, so a special thank you to you two guys.

RICH:
So you can sit on a bench for an, for a couple hours.

JAY:
Well, we made it very...
I made it very clear in the email to people, like:
"We're shooting a scene."
"This isn't, like, some sort of, you know, meet-and-greet where we're gonna hang out."
"Like, we got work to do."

MIKE:
Yeah, we had to...

JAY:
So everybody understood that, and everybody was, was great.

MIKE:
Well, yeah, I mean, we still talked to people afterwards and stuff, but, um...

JAY:
I mean, really this scene should be, you know, downtown Milwaukee, hundreds of people, but...

RICH:
It's fine.

JAY:
You do what you can do.

MIKE:
I, I think I looked into renting, like, larger locations.

JAY:
I, I remember we were looking at some place downtown.

MIKE:
Yeah, and one place said no.
I looked at some place on the Summerfest grounds.
They said no.
They wouldn't get back to me.
They just kept blowing me off.
So, whatever.

JAY:
Oh, and there was Sammy holding the you-owe-me-five-bucks sign, which, this was the first thing shot, he wasn't even cast in the movie at that point.
He just showed up to this.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

RICH:
The first thing shot with him, not the first thing we shot.

JAY:
Yeah.
That's what I mean.
The first thing shot with him, and he's holding up that you-owe-me-five-bucks sign, just because we thought he was funny.
He had, like, this sour look on his face.
And then, uh...

MIKE:
I wanna say he was yelling things, too, that were kind of funny.

JAY:
Okay, maybe.
I don't remember.
But then we ended up using him as Space Cop's partner, Officer Partner, which I don't think we say his name in the movie, but, and so we added a line where he says, Space Cop says, I bet you five bucks this is another false alarm.
So we would set up

that sign.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.
And this, the you-owe-me-five-bucks thing was just a random gag.
Now here's the very, one of the very first scenes.

JAY:
This is the first thing shot with Rich as Space Cop, uh, and it's a recreation of a shot from the old original Space Cop.

MIKE:
Thankless fucking job.

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
True.
And there's an alternate ending where Space Cop just throws the key to the city on the ground, and says, whatever.

JAY:
Yes.

MIKE:
But thankless fucking job after thousands of people said thanks is, is, is more, uh...

JAY:
It's appropriate for Space Cop.
But you know what, the movie's not over yet.
So here we have our, our Marvel mid-credit sequence where we reveal that little Timmy is gonna grow up to kill Space Cop's wife.
And we know that because of the scar on his face, which Space Cop mentions earlier.
Yeah.

MIKE:
And he's crippled.

JAY:
And that's, that's Mr. Plinkett's wheelchair.

MIKE:
Yep.

JAY:
It actually is a child-size wheelchair that we just use because that's what we got originally.

MIKE:
Mm-hmm.

JAY:
So, for whatever reason, Plinkett has a tiny wheelchair.

RICH:
It was very horrible to fit in.

JAY:
Yeah.

RICH:
For me.

JAY:
Uh, but that Space Cop...do you remember, do you remember when we had to get the vending machine, that we didn't even use in the movie?

MIKE:
Oh, my god.
That's a whole 'nother story.

JAY:
And speaking of heavy things we had to move, there was gonna be a scene where Space Cop punches through a vending machine to get to the, the chips inside.

RICH:
There was gonna be whole gas station shootout.

JAY:
There was gonna be a gas station shootout at one point.
That got replaced by the hostage taker.

MIKE:
Yes.

RICH:
Which is probably a better scene on the whole.
It's funnier.

JAY:
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the, the, the, that scene would have been just mindless destruction, which sets up Space Cop as a character, too, but as it is now, it works.

MIKE:
Yeah, because there's, like, uh, obviously the moon scene parallels the hostage scene in the past, so...

JAY:
Right, right.
Well, that's the end of Space Cop.
I feel like we haven't even touched the surface of, of all the things that went into making this movie, but thank you to everybody that helped make the movie, and thank you to anyone that has watched the movie.

RICH:
Oh, you're welcome.

MIKE:
Not you, Rich.

JAY:
Oh, my god...

RICH:
But I helped make the movie.

JAY:
I guess.
Goodbye, everyone!

MIKE:
Thank you.

RICH:
What?