Bonus! The chaotic making of CLUE
Clue is an iconic film with an iconic cast, iconic jokes, and when it came out, it was an iconic flop. So for this week's bonus video, I want to look at what went wrong, but more importantly, what went right and why. I think it is worth a revisit. We'll talk about the almost-cast (Carrie Fisher!!!), the golden-age movies that inspired it, and what I'm pretty sure is a false legend of Tim Curry's skateboard.
Plus! We'll be watching CLUE (and following along with the script) today on twitch at noon pacific: http://twitch.tv/mattbaume
And! More Steven Sondheim bonus videos: patreon.com/mattbaume/posts?filters[tag]=stephen%20sondheim&filters[media_types]=video
Also! I'll be at Ancient City Con in Florida with Barry Bostwick in two weeks, hope to see you there! https://www.ancientcitycon.com/
Backup link to the bonus video: https://youtu.be/8pbElDUo5ck
Comments (11)
Instead of caring about an "official" ending I think most people didn't want to re-watch the whole movie just to get the ending they'd already seen. How I felt when they added multiple endings to Star Tours.
My guess on the dart effect is a little lens tricks to make the two actors seem closer than they are. That way there is a lot more space than there appears to be between the standing actor and the table. The dart throwing actor threw the dart at the floor. The dart on the table was always on the table next to the other actor's hand. That is just a WAG though.
I saw Clue in the theater as a teenager. LOVED IT ..so...much. My friends and I adapted 2 of the lounge scenes into 1 long scene for our high school drama class. It was just a hoot.
That is exactly how I discovered Clue: as a kid, every week I would hire it from the video store and watch it multiple times each week. Eventually the tape wore out and broke! This movie is such a core part of my psyche that when I recently went to see the stage show, I couldn't help saying the lines - I thought it was being sotto voce but apparently not because Miss Scarlet gave me stank eye at least once!
I was a teenager when this movie came out, and I went to go see it in the theaters. And then after I saw it, I found out from other people that there were more than one ending and maybe I should see it again. I actually ended up seeing it three times in the theaters and because of fate I ended up seeing the same ending twice when I did it that was one of the big other downsides of this whole thought of “just see it again“ because you could randomly just end up seeing the same ending twice and not even realize that there were multiple endings. All that being said, I have been a big fan of clue for many years. i’m sure in your other video when you talk about movies that inspired this I had been recently watching a video on Nebula that talked about all the movies that inspired the Knives out film, and that Clue was definitely among them. https://nebula.tv/videos/just-write-yt-reviewing-the-10-mysteries-that-inspired-knives-out/
It is my birthday on Tuesday, so today my family got together to celebrate. My one request? We sit down and watch Clue. The timing of this is surreal.
Oh that does sound like a very pleasant birthday!
Being a Brit, when I first watched Clue as a kid I was a little confused why the characters and scenario were from Cluedo. For some reason the board game was renamed for the US but the film wasn't renamed back going the other way. I wonder if that might have hurt (or helped) it's International box office figures.
Is Clue the best comedy ever? No. But it absolutely does have an all-timer comedy performance from Tim Curry and one that he clearly put everything he could into. In this delightful video released earlier this year where Tim is discussing his roles while going over some Hollywood artifacts, he is presented with a production note from saying that he has taken to the hospital after that particular "sum up" scene was shot. As he aptly noted "I was verklempt". I'm sure that he was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3VKRQr9Img&t=2s Also, if anyone is looking for a great history of how the Clue movie was made, I would recommend checking out 2022's Who Done It: The Clue Documentary which has interviews with much of the cast and crew - and also recreated the "lost" forth ending through animation. As a huge Clue fan, I found it a great watch. In terms of the dart stunt, it seems simple enough to me Matt : The camera does not actually pan down to the dart going into the table. So, the dart was already in the table and the seated actor's hand was already in place at the beginning of the shot. The standing actor dropped the dart straight to the floor, the camera pans down to the dart already in the table and the "thunk" sound is edited in by a foley artist later.
About the Carrie Fisher thing: I've read a couple of her memoirs and she comes across as a very driven person, particularly when she was young. I think there's a strong chance that, if asked whether she wanted to play this major part while in rehab, she would have said yes regardless of whether it would have actually been good for her. And I think there's at least a pretty good chance that trying to do rehab and also shoot a film might have caused her to relapse. Maybe there's an alternate universe Matt Baume out there saying something like "If only Carrie Fisher hadn't tried to work on Clue at the same time as going to rehab, she might not have relapsed and died tragically the way she did." So yeah, I reckon that could have been one of those times when the money-men accidentally did something right!
Clue is one of my all time favorite movies.
