Tank Girl

Summary

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Podcast Summary: WHAT WENT WRONG, Ep. "Tank Girl"

Hosts: Lizzie Bassett & Chris Winterbauer
Release Date: June 29, 2026
Main Theme:
A deep dive into the infamous 1995 box office flop Tank Girl, exploring the wild, chaotic history behind one of Hollywood’s most notorious disasters—especially as it relates to female-fronted comic book movies, troubled productions, gender politics in Hollywood, and its strange path to cult status.

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Episode Overview

Lizzie and Chris dissect what went right (and mostly wrong) in the making of Tank Girl, from its subversive comic roots, production hell, regime changes, gender biases, and post-release infamy. They connect the film’s journey to broader Hollywood trends—particularly its lasting (and often negative) impact on the perception of female-led blockbusters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Initial Impressions & Film Reception

• Lizzie: Had never seen Tank Girl before. Found it "bonkers" and uneven, but praised individual elements—especially Lori Petty’s performance and the standout production design by Catherine Hardwicke. Loved the Ripper Den sequence and Naomi Watts' “movie star” presence. “It just immediately sets you in the world. It's so poppy, and... designed with the female gaze in mind.” (03:13)
• Chris: Agrees about the imbalance; sees the film’s story as basic and perfunctory, inconsistent with the anarchic spirit of the comic. Appreciates the production and costume design, and the soundtrack’s “needle drops.” Notes the influence of Lori Petty’s performance on Margot Robbie’s eventual Harley Quinn (07:41).

Tank Girl’s Comic Roots (09:38–15:55)

• Born from late-80s British zine culture, created by Jamie Hewlett (who later co-created Gorillaz) and Alan Martin.
• The comic was punk, offensive, and intentionally sophomoric: “We wanted to upset people… shitposting in a big way.” (11:39)
• Tank Girl’s anti-establishment tone led it to become a subcultural icon, particularly among young women and lesbians (including being used in protests against anti-LGBTQ laws in the UK).

Hollywood’s “Comic Book Gold Rush” (1991–1994) (17:03–30:39)

• Tank Girl optioned by Rachel Talalay after a year of perseverance and competition against studios.
• Multiple studios were pitched: James Cameron’s Lightstorm (“We already have a film with a female lead. One.” – 27:32), Amblin/Spielberg (“We’re not hip enough.”), and Disney.
• MGM/UA finally gave the greenlight and the highest budget—$25M.
• Female-led properties were considered risky—one of several persistent industry trends dissected by the hosts.

The Rachel Talalay Factor: Gender Barriers in Film (16:13–24:58)

• Talalay’s contrasting career path with male peers: despite success directing horror franchise entries like Freddy’s Dead, she was denied the kind of major action movies given to men in similar positions.
• “The three directors before me all went on to huge action films. I was not afforded the same opportunity and I feel that was absolutely to do with my gender.” (23:02)

Casting Chaos & Open Calls (37:23–43:52)

• MGM did open casting calls as a publicity stunt; lines were hours long and included future Spice Girls Posh and Ginger meeting in line (39:17).
• Madonna reportedly wanted the role; ultimately, English actress Emily Lloyd was cast as Tank Girl before being replaced.
• Notable quote: “The open casting call was a publicity.. The studio said ‘We need a name. We need Madonna.’” (40:18)

Emily Lloyd’s Tumultuous Exit & Lori Petty’s Entrance (43:53–60:21)

• Lloyd, known for “A River Runs Through It,” lost the role shortly before shooting, reportedly due to her refusal to shave her head, though Lloyd also claims differences in creative vision and a personality clash.
• Petty, previously in “Point Break,” “A League of Their Own,” and “Free Willy,” claimed to know she’d become Tank Girl even after being initially rejected.
• Petty fully committed (“do whatever you want” to her hair) and brought improvisational energy.

Production Hell & The Hardships of the Shoot (60:22–65:17)

• Filmed in Arizona and New Mexico in brutal heat—“physically hellish, working 16 hours a day in 110-degree heat.”
• Crew and cast suffered: dangerous locations (toxic chemical releases, fire, extreme weather), and extremely long days.
• Ripper actors (including Ice T) suffered in heavy Stan Winston prosthetics. “It was like each of them was wearing a couch.” (63:44)
• Naomi Watts, as Jet Girl, was unknown in the US at the time; had to audition nine times due to the studio’s desire for a “name.”

Stan Winston Studios & Special FX Triumphs (51:18–53:02, 80:26)

• Winston’s team performed “some of the best prosthetic work of the ‘90s,” making the anthropomorphic kangaroo makeup remarkably expressive and iconic.
• “It’s kind of amazing… They look like the actors that are playing them just enough that you’re able to identify the ones that you know.” (52:21)

Studio Interference & the Butchering of the Film (68:54–72:16)

• Alan Ladd Jr. leaves MGM mid-production, replaced by John Calley—“who did not understand Tank Girl.”
• The studio mandates major cuts—removal of sexual and violent aspects, certain set-pieces, and hour of footage—aiming for a PG-13 rating, but the film was still rated R.
• Examples of lost content: Tank Girl’s wall of dildos, a condom-on-banana gag, clear indications of romance/sex with the kangaroo Booga, and an original ending with the cast standing in the rain.

Hollywood Rating Bias (72:16–74:51)

• The R rating was likely unjust; similar content in Independence Day and Jurassic Park kept PG-13. Tank Girl’s F-bomb and stylized violence did not distinguish it from contemporaries, suggesting bias (possibly against female-fronted, subversive content).

Release & Reception: Catastrophe Turns Cult (74:52–78:27)

• Flopped at box office ($4M on $25M budget), pulled after 10 days, trashed by critics for incoherent plot, but some praised the style, gusto, and Petty’s performance.
• Comic creators Hewlett and Martin were disappointed with the adaptation, but admit the source material was niche.
• The film badly damaged Talalay and Lloyd’s Hollywood careers. Naomi Watts struggled for years, while Petty later gained wider recognition in “Orange Is the New Black.”
• Over time, Tank Girl gained a cult following, and was later briefly optioned by Margot Robbie’s company—possibly to avoid Harley Quinn lawsuit comparisons.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Hosts on the film’s chaotic sensibility:
  “This movie is bonkers in the truest sense... every individual part is so fun. They don’t quite work all together.” —Lizzie (03:13)

• On the gender politics of Hollywood:
  “Coming off the Nightmare on Elm Street films, the three directors before me all went on to huge action films. I was not afforded the same opportunity and I feel that was absolutely to do with my gender.” —Rachel Talalay, cited by Chris (23:02)

• On Tank Girl’s punk roots:
  “They basically were shitposting with this comic in a big way.” —Chris (11:38)

• Emily Lloyd on being fired:
  “I have tried not to doubt my own ability, but my nerves and anxiety have been debilitating.” —Emily Lloyd (45:07)

• On the production design:
  “Katherine Hardwicke… her sets immediately set you in the world. It’s so poppy, and it does feel designed with the female gaze in mind.” —Lizzie (03:13, 79:47)

• Ice T on accepting the role—after a million-dollar offer:
  “So, I’m like, I don’t… Lori Petty. And they told me Stan Winston was doing it. And when they told me how much money they was paying me, I was like…” (jumps like a kangaroo) (50:11)

• Ice T on “selling out”:
  “Selling out is when you do something that goes against your integrity… I have nothing against kangaroos, nothing whatsoever… Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to be able to do what you want to do.” (78:40)

• On the film’s eventual second life:
  “In the mid 2000s, people started coming up to Talalay and Lori Petty and saying, ‘We love Tank Girl.’ It developed a cult following…” —Chris (77:36)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:13 — Hosts’ first impressions of the film and quick review
• 09:38 — Tank Girl’s comic origins and early punk aesthetic
• 16:13 — Rachel Talalay’s background and the gender gap in Hollywood
• 27:32 — “We already have a film with a female lead. One.” (studio pitching woes)
• 37:23 — Open casting call chaos, future Spice Girls’ cameo
• 43:53 — Emily Lloyd’s casting and subsequent firing over not shaving her head
• 51:18 — Stan Winston Studios’ arrival; bringing the Rippers to life
• 63:44 — What it was like acting in the kangaroo prosthetics
• 68:54 — Studio interference and the neutering of the director’s vision
• 72:16 — The rating debacle: why an R (and its consequences)
• 74:52 — Box office & critical death spiral… and later cult revival
• 78:40 — Ice T on money, selling out, and Orson Welles

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What Went Right?

• Hosts’ picks:
  • Lizzie: Katherine Hardwicke’s production design (“She visualizes worlds and creates these sets… unique talent.” – 79:47)
  • Chris: Stan Winston Studios for “honoring the look from the comic book” and making the Rippers a highlight (80:26)

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Episode Tone & Final Thoughts

• The episode blends irreverent humor, genuine admiration for Tank Girl’s best aspects, and acute frustration at the systemic barriers women faced (and still face) in Hollywood.
• Lizzie and Chris share witty, self-aware asides and maintain outsider affection for subversive, ambitious failures—even when those ambitions are thwarted by the powers that be.

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For Newcomers: Why Listen?

This episode provides essential context on how Hollywood’s risk-averse, male-dominated system can sink a project even when there’s passion, vision, and raw talent attached—especially if it features a transgressive, female lead. The saga of Tank Girl is both a cautionary tale and a celebration of the indomitable, creative spirit behind cult classics.

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Transcript

[Jake Stauch]

Jake.

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[Chris Winterbauer]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Stephen here has not read Mistborn before. That's right.

[Jack Myers]

Hey.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Hey.

[Jake Stauch]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered

[Chris Winterbauer]

raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Stephen will e even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jake Stauch]

And

[Lizzie Bassett]

hello, and welcome back to what Went Wrong? Your favorite podcast, Full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a post apocalyptic 90s needle drop fantasma of Tanks. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett here as always with Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, what do you have for us today? That's my best Lori Petty. It's not very good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, there we go.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I need to work on it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I didn't know. We have Tank Girl, a movie that has long been requested on this podcast. And we thought with the upcoming Supergirl, a female driven comic book adaptation, we thought we could go back to one of the few littered corpses of the graveyard of female superhero adaptations that for decades, Hollywood unfairly held up as examples as to why we could never, never, ever allow women into the creation of these properties and or create properties based around women, which is obviously not true. But, Lizzie, we have to start with a simple question, which is, had you ever seen Tank Girl before? The answer, it seems like, is no. And what were your thoughts upon watching it for the podcast?

[Lizzie Bassett]

No. I had never seen Tank Girl. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I decided not to really look into this. You know, I know it's a famous bomb. I know it is a woman director, and I know we're going to get into all of that. This movie is bonkers in the truest sense of the word. We watched it last night. Look, is it the most amazing movie I've ever seen that was completely unfairly maligned? No. There are a lot of problems with this movie. That being said, every individual part of this movie is so fun. They don't quite work altogether, I don't think. But Lori Petty is wonderful. Naomi Watts looking, honestly, better than she's ever looked in this movie. She's amazing. She's so clearly a movie star. It's really fun to see her very young in this. The production design by Katherine Hardwick, I noticed, is, I think, the standout part of this movie. It's so great. It's so fun. It just immediately sets you in the world. It's so poppy, and it does genuinely feel like it is designed with the female gaze in mind, and I really appreciated that. And then, you know, honestly, when they were gonna go into the Ripper Den, I was like, this is gonna be bad. There's no way. This is not gonna be bad. And yet it was my favorite part of the entire movie.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's the best part.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's the best part.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's kind of the only part of the movie that really works, in my opinion. It does. I agree.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I was not ready for Ice T as a J up mutant kangaroo. And then when it happened, it was incredible. And I wish that had been the whole movie was them teaming up with the Rippers. Because that section is so fun. It works so well. And somehow they make a romance between her and one of the radioactive kangaroos, like, kind of work. Played by Jeff Kober, who I know from Sons of Anarchy, and also as the creepy landlord on New Girl. He has a great voice. You'll recognize it right away.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Also, the Pit, Season two of the Pit.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes, that's right. Sorry. Also the Pit. He's great. I always like when he pops up, and then I really thought that the animation in this was quite fun. I did like that element of it a lot. I have a big bone to pick with Amazon. I don't know if you watched this on Amazon, but we have refused to pay for premium. So we still get ads. They put an ad in the last, like, 10 seconds of this movie. So it broke up the final animation sequence. And then we were like, oh, there's more. It must be so much more because they put an ad right here and it comes back and it's like. And then it was just the end credits and we were like, are you kidding?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Kidding me?

[Lizzie Bassett]

So whoever did that, I know it probably wasn't a person. Whatever robot did that. You done wrong. You done wrong by Tank Girl. And I hope she comes to get you. Also, she's really bad at her job. She doesn't operate that tank super well. Seems like the tank operates itself. She's horrible at keeping watch. Anyway, Chris, what did you think?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, I will say if they had gone with Rachel Tallaway's original cut of the film, you would have more than 10 seconds to watch after that ad had played by Amazon. So we will talk about that. Yeah, I saw this at some point in high school. It was a movie that played on television sometimes. I believe we rented it at some point just because we were fascinated by the COVID of the DVD. Didn't think anything of it. Not even 100% sure we finished it. It was very, very strange.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's really slow for a chunk of the second act.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. I was unfamiliar with the graphic novel, which I did read the issues from 1988 to 1990, which were, I believe, the ones that tal before optioning this. And we'll get into that process. Yeah. Look, I appreciate, like you said, so many elements of this movie. I do think the production design is really good. The costume design is great. I actually really like that at the beginning of the movie when she comes to the weird house compound, you know, where they live. It's not bleak and windswept and everybody's depressed because it's post apocalypse. They're having fun and, you know, fooling around. And it's goofy because that's how people would act, you know, even at the end of the world, supposedly. But the anarchist tone of the graphic novel feels so at odds with the paint by numbers story that has been created for the movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I couldn't even totally tell you the story, to be completely honest.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, it's just very basic. I'm conflicted about Lori Petty's performance. I think she lays a lot of groundwork for what Margot Robbie will eventually

[Lizzie Bassett]

do with as Harley Quinn.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Harley Quinn, and I would argue, actually like Harley Quinn, who came after Tank Girl, owes a lot in some ways to Tank Girl, especially this performance, big time. And while I like Lori Petty's, if you were a fan of the comic, I could see people being frustrated by the portrayal of Tank Girl in this movie. It's very different. It's a little different than in the comic.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, it's so gratingly persistent. I would say it doesn't like Naomi Watts's performance as Jet Girl actually feels just significantly more successful. Unfortunately, I think they don't give her any nuance to play with in this.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think some of it is, as we'll get to. Rachel Tallay gave Lori Petty a lot of leash to do what she wanted, and Lori Petty did not have a lot of time to prep for this role. And so I do think, all things considered, she does a very good job in the film.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She's always fun to watch.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. It's a fun character in its own right. Yeah. I think this movie is let down by a lack of story, really, when it comes down to it. And that's really it because it has so much other fun stuff to it. And it's got a great soundtrack. As you mentioned, the needle drops are great.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, so good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I mean, the dust shower Portishead sequence is one of my favorites.

[Jake Stauch]

Amazing.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I was like, that should be the tone of this movie. Is the dust shower Portishead sequence multiple bjorks? Yes. So just give me the bjorks. All the bjorks. So a flawed but very fun movie that I do think deserved better than it received. But I don't think it's a mystery as to why this movie perhaps didn't work when it was released. But let's dive into it because it is a crazy story. It's a really interesting story, and it, I think, is a good reminder of a couple of pernicious trends in Hollywood that we've run into from time to time while making this podcast. But before we begin, Lizzie, you were about to say something.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I was gonna say this has a connection to the 13th Warrior.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Which connection is that?

[Lizzie Bassett]

That is. Graham Revell did the original score for this and he did the original score. Original. Original score of 13th Warrior.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And then before Goldsmith came in.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Interesting. All right, well, sources for today's episode include, but are not limited to tank girl, the DVD special features, Entertainment Weekly's 2020 behind the scenes retrospective of the film with director Rachel Talloway, Entertainment Weekly's interview with Naomi Watts on the difficulties of her first 10 years in Hollywood, and many, many more. Articles, interviews and retrospectives with those involved in the film. So Lizzie, how did a pseudo shitpost style comic born from the not yet fully developed brains of three British bandmates become a bit of a lesbian rallying cry and an initially ill fated feminist film that eventually found a cult following? And what went wrong now, Lizzie? In perhaps one of the funniest sections, in my opinion of Superbad, Jonah Hill's Seth recounts his youthful obsession with drawing. What?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Penises. Is that what it was?

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's exactly right. Big veiny penises.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's a very weird section of the movie. It's very funny. Jamie Hewlett, one of the co creators of Tank Girl, according to his future Tank Girl collaborator Alan Martin, had the same problem. Now, if you don't know Lizzie, Jamie Hewlett would later co create the band Gorillaz. Oh yeah. But for now, in the mid-80s, he drew, quote, huge penises on any paper he came across. It was the mid-1980s and they were students at art college in West Sussex. Martin was in a band with future comic book artist Philip Bond, and one of their favorite songs was called Rocket Girl. They met Jamie, Philip and Jamie got on famously. Martin had some penis drawing reservations, but the three started working together on their own fanzine called Adamtan. And one day, Jamie drew a grotty looking heifer of a girl brandishing an unfeasible firearm. End quote. Another friend was working on a headphone design based on the type used by World War II tank drivers. Martin snagged one of the reference photos of a combat vehicle from his room, gave it to Jamie, who then stuck it behind this grotty girl illustration and added a logo which read Tank Girl, end quote.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Now I want to see the original Tank Girl.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, let me show you an original.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, let me see.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Boom.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Grotty looking heifer. According to them, I would not describe

[Lizzie Bassett]

her as a grotty looking heifer.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Rude. So if you've read Tank Girl this year, if you were to read Tank Girl or buy the box set as I did, this all checks out. The art is fantastic. The story is very thin. There is basically no overarching story. This is extremely episodic and it definitely feels like it was written by boys. For better or for worse. As Jamie Hewlett later said, we went into Tank Girl wanting to push the limits a bit and say stuff nobody said, use words that nobody allowed us to use in comic books and get over this sort of pathetic censorship. You can't show a nipple, but you can show someone being stabbed to death. End quote. And they did show a lot of people being stabbed to death. Sure. And they tried to show nipples at every turn. And instead she has post it notes on her nipples that say, like, fuck censorship. It's funny, but it's very outlandish and sophomoric in many ways. Between getting shitfaced and lighting their farts on fire, their words, not mine, these three got Adam Tan off the ground. And in 1987, Tank Girl was born with that illustration that I just showed you, Lizzie. Now, she would end up looking pretty different in later iterations. On the one hand, Hewlett later said that he wanted to make, quote, an antidote to the usual portrayal of women in comics. Most female characters are really boring. So I wanted to shock to have someone who drinks and fights. On the other hand, Martin said, quote, we wanted to upset people. They basically were shitposting with this comic in a big way.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So Tank Girl takes a step towards Wider Distribution in 1988 with an appearance in the debut issue of British comics magazine Deadline. I would like to show you how much she's changed. In my opinion, we are much closer to what Charlize Theron will look like eventually in Mad Fury Road. Oh, yeah, that is her first appearance in Deadline.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, big time. She's got a shaved head, she's got some earrings. She does have the cigarette hanging out of her, the band aid on her forehead. But she looks very, very simplified and

[Chris Winterbauer]

I would argue younger, bigger eyes, more feminine in some ways.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Cuter, for sure.

[Chris Winterbauer]

There is a doe eyed quality that is at odds in a kind of fun way with her psychopathic tendencies. Also, as you can see, Lizzie, on the very first page, we meet the kangaroos, the Rippers.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I love them.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. Who she is dating. Booga. One of them, of course, immediately.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And I assume it's the kangaroo at the very front who has a motorcycle leather jacket on and a T shirt that says be.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, I'm not actually sure if that is Bugha.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, I love his outfit.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. But yes, he has a great outfit. I do think what's clear about these comics is that Tank Girl does not have a moral code, at least not initially. She is effectively a mercenary. She runs people over constantly, innocent or not. She is kind of good at her job, but fucks up a lot too. She always has a way out. She does drive her Tank terribly, but because it's A comic. The Tank can do absurd things like fly through the air and land on a building and blah, blah, blah. It's very absurd. It's very funny. I mean, she ends up, like, in one episode, she makes a deal with the devil and tricks the devil, you know, and wastes her wish on a giant can of beer. Like, it's very absurdist. So in 1990, Penguin Books published the first Tank Girl novel, and the Daily Telegraph described her as, quote, the trendiest cartoon character in town. Now, she's about as anti establishment as you can get, as we said, but she's part of a bigger trend. So comics geared toward adults are proving so popular that mainstream publishers are trying to cash in. And Tank Girl Lizzie is not just resonating with the man boys. An article in the Evening Standard called her, quote, the archetypal 90s girl, the new woman. End quote.

[Lizzie Bassett]

The new woman mowing down everyone left and right in her tank, as women are known to do. Why, Chris? Because women are bad drivers.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Women be crashing their cars. ID magazine ran a feature about girls imitating Tank Girl by crashing their cars. Yes. Martin and Hewlett may not have been thrilled about their new group. Hewlett told the Evening Standard that, quote, they were really horrible, really naff. The only similarity with Tank Girl was that they were bald and they drank a lot. After that, we really felt she should stay a comic character. So these guys were not exactly feminists at the end of the day.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, it doesn't seem like they like the girls that much, but it was

[Chris Winterbauer]

the fact that Tank Girl burped and farted out loud that actually appealed to a lot of women.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In 1988, a group of lesbians protesting Clause 28, or Section 28 in the UK held up a banner that included an image of Tank Girl in the message. Clause 28 stuff. Lizzie. We talked about section 28 during our coverage of V for Vendetta. This was basically a law that stated that local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, quote, shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting sexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. It was very much a response to the AIDS crisis, and it was very, very, very homophobic law that was passed under Margaret Thatcher.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Margaret Thatcher, the original Tank Girl, the Iron.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The Iron lady, the Tank Girl. Tank Girl had broad appeal. Deadline publisher Tommy Astor said, the boys love her. The girls love her. In London, there are even weekly lesbian gatherings called Tank Girl Nights. And Margaret Thatcher said, only at my

[Lizzie Bassett]

house only at 10 Downing Street.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's right. As early as 1990, Hewlett and Martin had plans for four more books and hopefully a movie. In 1991, Tank Girl lands in the United States by way of Dark Horse Publishing. And that Christmas, director Rachel Tallaway was gifted a copy by her 18 year old stepdaughter. On the one hand she thought, this is amazing. I'm hip enough to receive this as a Christmas present. That's a direct quote. On the other hand, she thought, this is me. I am Tank Girl. So on the one hand she's like, I'm not that hip. But on the other hand she's like, I'm pretty darn hip. Now Rachel Talalay isn't a beer guzzling, kangaroo boning sociopath to my knowledge, but she's definitely a risk taker. Do you know anything about Director Rachel

[Lizzie Bassett]

Tallay, L.A. no, I don't.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I did not either. She was born in Chicago but raised in Baltimore. She then studied math at Yale. Whoa. Yeah. She then turned down a job at IBM to work as a production assistant on John Waters polyester.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now this was the first Waters film to get an R rating instead of an X rating. So it's a little more mainstream than some of his other stuff, but still turning down a job at IBM and they say, what are you gonna do? I'm gonna go PA on a John Waters movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, she did grow up in Baltimore. That's the ultimate Baltimore celebrity.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So that's true. But still, that's pretty crazy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now it may as well have been the irradiated Australian outback relative to IBM. As Waters told EW in 2016, quote, she, meaning Talalay, was thrown into a world of complete lunacy that I don't think Yale had prepared her for. Yeah, probably not. It was very much an independent movie. The neighbors were calling the police trying to get rid of us. We were the only movie scary hairdressers working on it. I mean, they're doing up divine on that movie, so you gotta be prepared. But she handled it really well. Now if she could handle John Waters, she could handle Freddy Krueger.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So she applied for an accounting job at New Line Cinema. Did she know how to do accounting? No. Could she figure it out? Yes.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She went to Yale for math. Yeah, I think she's got it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. And as we all know, New Line Cinema was the popsicle sticks and glue mini major of the 1980s started by Robert Shea in New York out of his apartment. And in 1984, they released what breakthrough horror film that we have covered, Lizzie?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Nightmare on Elm Street.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Very good. A Nightmare on Elm Street. She climbs the ranks to producer and takes on A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 as a producer in 1988, she also produced Hairspray and Crybaby.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Nice.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So in seven years, basically, she's gone from PA on a john Waters film to producing, you know, B horror movies in Hollywood. It's quite the trajectory and arguably like

[Lizzie Bassett]

two of the biggest John Waters movies ever, Hairspray and Crybaby.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's right. So she marries British producer Rupert Harvey. He's best known at this time for the 1988 remake of the Blob and Critters. I would say. I think that was 1986. It's a horror B movie household.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Love it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And Talalay got her first chance to direct with 1991's Freddy's The Final Nightmare, which was the sixth Freddy Krueger film.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In seven years, which is so crazy.

[Jake Stauch]

I'm Jake Stauch, co founder and CEO of servl. We built Servil to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding password resets, access to applications. My laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work. And that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Cerval, it becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run it. We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four week pilot. Go to cervel.com acast that that's S E-R-V-A-L.com acast

[Chris Winterbauer]

what makes a leader worth following? What should you really care about in your job?

[Jack Myers]

As technology is changing so quickly, is

[Chris Winterbauer]

it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own? What would that take? What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together? These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler. Join us each week and subscribe at

[Jack Myers]

your favorite podcast platform and YouTube.

[Chris Winterbauer]

We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best, and we'll try to figure this out together. Hey, prime members, you can listen to this show ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. A couple of numbers really quickly on this franchise. Lizzie, the first Nightmare on Elm street film, as we've discussed, grossed nearly $60 million against its $1 to $2 million budget. It was an enormous, unprecedented, unexpected success. The sequel, Freddy's Revenge, grossed $30 million, also very cheaply made. The third film, Dream warriors, my secret personal favorite of all of them, grossed $45 million. The fourth, Dream Master, $50 million. The fifth film, the Dream Child, took a stumble, grossing just $22 million against the its $8 million budget. So it was the most expensive so far and made the least amount of money. And then Talalay helmed the sixth film, which cost around $10 million. But the box office performance rebounded. So her film grossed $35 million. So it rose 50% more than its predecessor. Now, most of these, besides the first couple, received pretty bad reviews, but I mentioned the box office performances to give context to this quote from Tallay. Coming off the Nightmare on Elm street films, the three directors before me all went on to huge action films. I was not afforded the same opportunity and I feel that was absolutely to do with my gender.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yep, agree.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now I want to. Again, let's support this comment because I do think it's true. At least two of those directors, that's very much the case. So Lizzy, we've discussed Renny Harlan. We've not covered one of his films yet, but like Deep Blue Sea cannot wait until we get to Deep Blue Sea, Cutthroat island, just many a bomb director of Dream Master, which was the one that came two films before Tallalays was slated to direct Alien.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Alien Cubed.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Alien Cubed, that's right. Left that film because it was taking too long and immediately moved on to Die Hard 2 with a $60 million budget. So that was his next film. Stephen Hopkins, he was the director immediately prior to Tallay.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, the one that didn't do well.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The one that was the least financially successful. Moved on to Predator 2 with a 20 to 30 million dollars budget. Now I do wanna be fair to Chuck Russell, who was the third director I believe she's talking about. He directed Dream warriors, which did do really well and I think was also decently critically received. And he went the Blob remake, which was not that expensive. And he wrote and directed it and that was very successful. And then he did the Mask, which wasn't that expensive and did very well. And then he did eraser in 1994. So his trajectory makes more sense to me. But she's totally right about Renny Harlan and Stephen Hopkins. So what's obvious is that she is operating in a world dominated by men, the action space, the horror space, very much so. At this point in time, she's effectively an internal hire for the sixth Nightmare, which is no easy task. Right? She's spent a decade working at New Line to get this opportunity and it seems unlikely, unlike with these other directors, that a studio is going to call her, to helm a big budget action franchise. They're not saying Predator 3, come on, let's do it. Put a woman in the lead role. Like, no, it's just not going to happen. So Tallalay is going to have to try to kickstart her own. Now, as soon as she read Tank Girl, she knew that she wanted to option. But what would you imagine the problem is? What do you need to option something?

[Lizzie Bassett]

She doesn't have any money.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She doesn't have any money. She doesn't have studio money. She doesn't have anybody backing her. So she's trying to option this on her own. She reaches out to Tom Astor, the owner and publisher of Deadline, the magazine which had featured Tank Girl where she'd premiered, and she spends roughly a year trying to procure this property. Now, remember, Lizzie, early 90s, Hollywood's experiencing a bit of a comic book gold rush. James Cameron's gonna direct Spider Man. It's gonna be crazy. Wesley Snipes play Blade, you know, eventually. But everybody's snapping up all of these comic book properties. We talked about how even V for Vendetta, you know, and Watchmen were snapped up at this point in time, even though they wouldn't be made for many, many, many years. So Talalay has neither the money or the muscle to compete with the studios. Tom Astor reportedly traveled to the US Several times before striking a deal with her. And Tallay said she was about to give up because there was so much competition and no decisions. And then Aster calls her up and says, we'll go with you. The reason Tale just wouldn't leave him alone.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Nice.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So he just broke down eventually and said, it's fine, just take it, it's fine, it's fine. Now comes the fun part. Pitching Tank Girl to studios. Now, she had never pitched her own project before. She's internal at New Line up until this point, and now she's trying to sell a hyper, violent, burping, farting female mercenary who fucks a kangaroo.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Great. It should sell itself.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I kind of love. Just how much of a swing it is, you know what I mean? If you really think about it, it's so fun. So there's one man in Hollywood, Lizzie. There's one man in particular that likes a tough woman with a gun. Who is it? We've talked about him a lot.

[Lizzie Bassett]

James Cameron.

[Chris Winterbauer]

James Cameron, Jimmy C and the Concrete Dudes. I mean, in a lot of ways, Tank Girl is kind of like incompetent Linda Hamilton from T2 in a very fun way.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So it makes sense you'd start with James Cameron. He loves action and he loves women. He actually has been very supportive of women filmmakers, especially his wives.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I actually think he writes female characters pretty well.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I agree. Aliens, Terminator 2. Yes. Not true Lies, but the other ones.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Elements of Titanic, I would say.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, yeah, I agree. So Talalay goes into Lightstorm, by the way, Cameron also makes sense because Cameron is very interested in, like, military machinery. You know, he has the apc, obviously, in Aliens, he ends up using Harrier jets and True Lies shortly after this. And we have Jet Girl in the comic and we have Sub Girl in the comic. And James loves a sub, as we know.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Loves it. Can't wait to go underwater.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's like, James, you got the sky, you got the land, you got the water. There's women in all three. You know, it's just really fun.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And they're all holding guns.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You can hang out with all of them, but you gotta wear a kangaroo suit. So she goes into Lightstorm, which is his production company, and she's pitching it passionately. She gets to the end and the executive looks at her and says, we already have a film with a female lead. One. A film. Can't have another one. We already have one. One's enough. We're good. Talley's crushed.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Do we know what that was?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Based on her comments, we suspect it was Company of Angels, which is a movie about Joan of Arc, which was to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow and actually was supposed to star Sinead o'. Connor.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, wow, that's.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I know. It sucks because it would have been perfect at Lightstorm.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes. It would have.

[Chris Winterbauer]

James Cameron, the technology, all of his interests. It feels like such a good fit. And also, like Bigelow could have maybe helped in some way to help mentor in. I don't.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Maybe I'm handing out too much credit where it's not due, but part of me feels like that mandate probably didn't come from James Cameron. Like, I have a hard time believing.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, I don't know, that may just have been the executive thinking, I don't want to pitch this up.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Right. That's what it sounds like to me. Because just looking at his. What he actually makes and produces, having a female lead is something that he does not seem to be opposed to at all.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, I agree. So I just, I don't know. To me, this is the road not traveled. That's the most interesting of the ones that we're talking about because it just feels like such a natural fit. But it wasn't meant to be. So Tallay goes to Amblin at Universal, Steven Spielberg's production company. The pitch goes great. The exec seems into it. He's yes. Anding like, we could do this, we could do that. And then at the end he says, I'm really flattered you think I'm hip enough for this, but we're not.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Which I think is true.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's fair.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's definitely fair. So at the end she tells this. Telet and Martin, the creators of the comic, and they apparently made T shirts that said, too hip for Spielberg.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Nice.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Which I did think was pretty charming. She moves on to the third pitch and she has a breakthrough. It's executive Dawn Steele. She loves the pitch. Dawn had a reputation of being a total hard ass, but at one point she stood up on a chair and went, I am Tank Girl. I will have this project. The only problem, Lizzie, is Don Steele is an executive at Disney.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And Tally did not trust that Disney would make the Tank Girl that she wanted to make. This is an R rated Tank Girl. This is a burping, farting, sword, stabbing, vulgar, you know, fully realized, flawed Tank Girl. So she passes on Disney. And I buried the lead though Lizzie, because she didn't have to settle for Disney. Talalay's Tank Girl received not one, not two, but apparently three offers to be made.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They end up going with MGM United Artists, who offered them the biggest budget, $25 million. This is almost exactly what Kathryn Bigelow had on 1991's Point Break for reference. And they had a real champion at the stud. So Lizzie, which maverick producer often takes risks on projects that the rest of the town won't, that we've discussed many a time. Whose dad was in? Shane?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, Alan Ladd junior.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Laddie. That's right, Laddie. So Laddie at MGM says, great, let's do Tank Roll. But things are changing for MGM and perhaps for Talalay. So in the early 90s, MGM, United Artists is in a state of flux. Aside from 1991's Thelma and Louise. They hadn't really had a major hit since the mid to late 1980s. In 1992, the studio was acquired by a French bank and the bank Quote approved its plans to move back into the big leagues of moviemaking and agreed to support its business plan calling for substantial film production. But this means there's going to be a lot of pressure on the bigger budget movies that are getting released under this new mandate. At the same time, more or less Tallay's second film, Ghost in the Machine, which there's not much information about online. It's not a film that she wrote. It was in development hell for a decent period of time, I believe. And at Fox stars Karen Allen. It is a serial killer movie with a cyber technology twist to it. It was released in 93. It flopped critically and commercially. So I believe. You know, it's tough timing in terms of her reputation as a director trying

[Lizzie Bassett]

to get Tank Girl off the ground.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Exactly, yeah. So in England, Tom Astor worried that MGM would abandon Tank Girl's humor and links with British culture. His quote, I hope they don't turn her into a bald babe with a gun. The female Arnold Schwarzenegger, end quote. Now, the studio did not want to work with the original creators, Hewlett and Martin. They wanted an established screenwriter on this movie, as studios always are wont to do. But Hewlett and Martin, Lizzie did still have a voice in the process. They sent a lot of notes, including pages of just British swear words. Just make sure you get all these in. Get them all in. I'm not going to read you them. They're very offensive. And to give an example of their influence, in the original opening sequence, Tank Girl was riding a horse and they were like, she would never ride a horse. A horse is so conventional. So they changed it to a water buffalo. And I like the water buffalo. Yeah, I think that was a good note. I thought it was fun.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I like that. But it made me so sad when it died.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I know, it was pretty brutal.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It was terrible.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The screenplay, Lizzy, would be brought to life by Teddy Serafian. Now, he's a bit of a mystery, but we'll share what we've been able to find out. He was in his late 20s and kind of born into Hollywood. His father was director, actor, writer Richard C. Serafian. He did Vanishing Point amongst many other films. And his mother was director Robert Altman's sister.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, okay.

[Chris Winterbauer]

His brother's director, actor, producer Darren Serafian. And his sister is Karen Serafian, a producer who is now a senior VP at Pixar. Wow. So he studied film in college and decided to take writing seriously. In his late teens and early 20s, he worked at a pizza shop in Westwood, where a lot of actors also worked. So we got to read several big scripts before they were made into movies. And his first opportunity was a bit of a nep o tunity as they call them. According to Teddy, his brother Darren got the rights to a book called Man Plus, a sci fi novel about NASA building a genetically altered man to live on Mars. It never got made. It sounds a little like it had a fly like body horror vibe to it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Got it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He was 21 years old and all of a sudden he's in all these big studio meetings. Next his dad says, hey, can you give me input on this project I'm working on, the opening to this project I'm working on called Solar Christ. He does, and his dad's like, you're pretty good at this, son. And so soon he search ghost writing pages for his dad that his dad's submitting as his own. And then his dad comes clean and tells the producer, hey, by the way, my son wrote those pages. So then he gets an agent, and then he writes a script called William the Magnificent, which Steven Spielberg buys while he's working on Schindler's List. Now, neither William the Magnificent nor man would make it to the screen, but in 1992, these projects are in progress. And to be clear, for all I know, Teddy Serafian was a wundikind and an uber writer. And the only. Only, you know, exposure to his work that I have is Tank Girl now. But I do think it's worth noting that his meteoric rise and his position within the industry stands in stark contrast to someone like Rachel Talloway, for example. Yeah, so he lands the job. He was paid handsomely because he'd just been involved in a different bidding war. And he was busy. He said he was writing Road Flower, which became the roadkillers in 1994, Tank Girl and rewriting William the Magnificent all at the same time. But Rachel Tallay didn't seem concerned. In fact, she said she wasn't particularly interested in the mechanics of the story. Maybe should have been a little bit more. Yeah, she'd even get frustrated with execs when they would ask her about Tank Girl's motivation and backstory. To paraphrase Tallay, if you're asking those questions, you aren't the audience for this movie. Which, to be fair, is true to the comic. It is true to the comic. That's exactly right.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's also what's massively missing from this movie. I mean, you brought up Fury Road and Furiosa and it's such a similar situation and in many ways very, very similar story in terms of trying to rescue these girls. And yet Mad Fury Road is. I mean, it's a movie, it's a

[Chris Winterbauer]

story that's one of the best action movies of the last 20 years.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes, it is. And it all hinges on Furiosa and her motivation.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think that this movie ends up in a bit of a no man's land where all of the plot points feel so perfunctory and just obligatory and that it's effectively lip service that, you know, they're paying to them. It does not feel like anyone cares about them. Including Tint Girl. At the end of the day, the

[Lizzie Bassett]

individual elements are really cool. Like, I love the device that, you know, you can use to suck all the water out of someone's body. And the idea of a holographic. The holographic head, yes. The Sakwafina.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

All of that is like so fun.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I was not a fan of the holographic.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It was a fun idea. I mean, it didn't make sense.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I was like, where's his brain? What's going on?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I asked similar questions. But, you know, like, in theory, it's very fun.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It is. I agree. I don't mind the elements. They just don't cohere. Nothing connects in a way that feels like it has momentum. I would say she was involved in the script. To be fair. There were elements of the comic that she wanted to include, but she couldn't due to budget constraints and the big omission here. Lizzie. Sub Girl. So Sub Girl's technically in the movie. So Anne Cusack's character who they visited.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Just the redhead.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The redhead, yeah. Yeah, that's Sub Girl, technically. But they didn't have enough money to represent the sub because they weren't working with James Cameron, who would insist that they this. We're going to get a submarine. We're going to get everybody submarine. Right.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I would like to film this actually by the wreckage of the Titanic, which will involve me going down in a one man submarine.

[Chris Winterbauer]

We're going to need somebody to clean out that sub when I get back to gross. She also created an email address for the movie, reportedly to stay on top of online chatter about the project and learned that a lot of Tank Girl fans were worried that she was going to be be Hollywoodized. But I do think Tal was sensitive to that fact and wanted to make something that was relatively close to the comic. But Lizzie, how could she be Hollywoodized if the studio was holding an open casting call? So can you describe what an open casting call is as opposed to, like, a typical casting call or a closed casting call?

[Lizzie Bassett]

It means that they put out a notification somewhere, often in the trades or, you know, somewhere at the.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Just on a goddamn telephone pole.

[Lizzie Bassett]

On a telephone pole they're on. What is it called Backstage? Is that what they show up on now?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, it's like Craigslist.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's like Craigslist for actors, and it just says, come one, come all. If you want to audition for this, you can audition for this. And that means you get to experience the hoi polloi in a way that I imagine is exciting and also probably exhausting for the casting directors. But it's a chance for people that are not represented by agents or managers to get in the room versus a typical casting call that is a ra by your representation. You don't get to just walk in there if you want to try out for the part.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think this is most often done especially now with child actors. So if you're looking for, you know, when they were casting Harry Potter, for example, back in the mid-90s.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Makes sense.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They do an open casting call because, you know, you don't know where you're gonna find kids. Or, for example, when they were doing Game of Thrones and they were trying to cast the kids.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's very unusual that they do a casting call for a lead actress.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Like, it is very unusual. And sometimes, yes, I think that they mean it, and they have actually found people that way. Sophie Turner on Game of Thrones, I know, was located that way. I also feel like this can sometimes be a PR stunt.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Very smart, Lizzie. Hold that thought.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. All right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So the studio suggested doing three open casting calls. London, Louisiana. New York. Tallalay said they were, quote, terribly fun. And Lizzie, people showed up. The London casting call had lines that were three or four hours long. This is my favorite. One woman came in wearing a chastity belt and took a power sander to it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Sparks flew, and security had to come usher her out because they thought she

[Lizzie Bassett]

was gonna start a fire, give her the job.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now, two Spice Girls met in line at the auditions. Did you know this, Lizzie?

[Jake Stauch]

No.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, can I play you a little. A little quick video, please? All right, let's see. Hi. My name's Victoria Adams wood.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I'm 19 I don't look at all

[Chris Winterbauer]

right for this part, but I'm an actress. Hi, my name is Gerry. Like Tom and Jerry, but spelled differently.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I'm a jack of all trades.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I've got a quirky sense of humor. The five girls finally.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wait, it was Posh and Ginger. Those are not the ones I would have guessed.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes. So Ginger and Posh met in line at the auditions for Tank Girl.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That is so fascinating. I would have guessed, you know, like, Scary Spice and Sporty Spice for sure.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think, actually, Victoria, that, like, if you look at the original Tank Girl photos, I know she says I'm not right for this part, but I don't know, I could kind of see it a little bit with any of them.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I could see baby even.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Sure, sure, baby. Yeah, definitely. Talalay jokes that Tank Girl is the reason that the Spice Girls exist.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's amazing.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was pretty fun. But the truth is, as you already sniffed out, you little truffle pig. Hey, you beautiful truffle pig.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Thank you.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The open casting call was a publicity back at the studio. Lizzie, we need a name. We need a star. We need Madonna. Tallalay claims that Madonna wanted the role. I totally believe that.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I do too.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I believe that she's like, no, I'm gonna go make this Guy Ritchie movie that's gonna flop anyway. When Lori Petty read the script, she was coming off of arguably the strongest run of films in her career. We've covered one of these movies and we just mentioned it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Point Break.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Point Break. Also a League of Their Own and hone me like the River Jordan and I will then say to thee that you will. Free Willy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Free Willy. Free Willy.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's right. She had also recently had a setback. She'd been let go from Demolition Man. She said that she and Sylvester Stallone did not work well together. Oil and water. A number of people have had some troubles with Sylvester over the years. And Joel Silver had told her or said that in full hair and makeup, she looked like a, quote, muff diver. Joel Silver, Cool guy. Cool guy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Professional cool guy.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The movie she was currently working on was not of quite the same caliber as the prior three. Paulie Shores in the army now. But we all gotta work. I've also never seen it, and I did, like, biodome secretly.

[Lizzie Bassett]

My God.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She. She thought Tank Girl was awesome. And in fact, she knew she was gonna get the job. She even covered the inside of her trailer with images from the comic she auditioned. She was like, I got this. And they reached out and said, you don't Got this. We're going with someone else. And her co stars tried to console her and they were a bit freaked out by her reaction. And she said, don't worry, I'm gonna be Tank Girl. And they said, laurie, you didn't get the part. She said, don't worry, I'm gonna be Tankrell. And he said, laurie, you're crazy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Foreign

[Jake Stauch]

I'm Jake Stauch, co founder and CEO of Cervel. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding password resets, accessed applications. My laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. It desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English and it's built.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Built.

[Jake Stauch]

No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Cerbal, it becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run it. We guarantee you'll automate 50% of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four week pilot. Go to serval.com acast that's S-E-R-V-A-L.com acast

[Chris Winterbauer]

Listen to this acast show ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. In the meantime, the role landed with English actress Emily Lord. Lizzie, do you know Emily Lloyd?

[Lizzie Bassett]

No.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You do know her. I didn't know her name either. Do you remember Jessie Burns, I believe is the character's name? And A river runs through it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Barely. Okay, I'm looking at a picture. I.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You gotta look at her from the time period. Her look changes.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, yeah. I am not super familiar, but I can totally see the Tank Girl.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes. If you guys look up Emily Lloyd in the late 1980s or early 1990s, there's a lot of photos. She was dating Danny Houston, I believe, at this time. I mean, I think she has a great look for Tank Girl.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She does.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She does a great look for Tank Girl. So I can completely see why they, you know, zeroed in on her. And even though she's not very well known now, she was a pretty big deal in the late 80s and early 90s. So. Her father was British actor Roger Lloyd Pack, best known for playing Trigger in Only Fools and horses from 1981 to 2003. But Emily Lloyd had broken out in 1987 with her turn in the film Wish youh Were Here. She was only 16 when they filmed, and she got rave reviews. She moved to the United States when she was 17 in 1989. She stars opposite Bruce Willis in the movie In Country. And according to some sources, she turned down the lead role in Pretty Woman.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow. Okay.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She then has a turn in A River Runs through it as Jessie Burns, which really put her on the map stateside. But she mentions in her memoir that she'd suffered a number of big setbacks prior to the Tank Girl auditions. She had been replaced in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives after suffering health problems. She was replaced with Juliet Lewis in that movie. And I'd like to read a quote from her memoir. She was also replaced on the movie Mermaids with Cher. One thing said scheduling problems. One said that she and Cher didn't get along. Another said health problems.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Was she the Wynonna Ryder part?

[Chris Winterbauer]

She was, yeah. Okay, so I want to read a quote from her memoir. What sometimes surprises people is that throughout my turmoil, I have tried not to doubt my own ability, but my nerves and anxiety have been debilitating. I've always known that when my head is in the right place, I am capable of producing a stellar performance. End quote. I don't know this for a fact, but it seems like there is a pattern of her getting in her own head on these productions, even when she's landed the role, let alone auditioning. That seems to create some friction with the director or perhaps a co star. And she was then replaced in a couple of instances. So as Lloyd would later write. Tank Girl, though, looked like the perfect fit on paper, wisecracks, bags of sex appeal, and a dark sense of humor. Plus a female director supportive of her ideas. So not Woody Allen. She would be the lead, so she wouldn't be answering to a bigger star like Cher, possibly. And this movie did have a producing trio, Richard Lewis, Penn Desham and John Watson, who was one of my producing professors at USC behind Robin, Prince of Thieves and Backdraft, which were two extremely successful, financially successful movies. It's based on ip. This seems like a sure thing. Emily Lloyd was really into it. She said that she wanted the character to be like Sid Vicious. She imagined his version of Sinatra's My Way as Pink Girls theme song. She really wanted the punk elements of the character to come through. I really think about kind of the Wachowskis sensibilities in something like Bound or the Matrix, for example. It feels more akin to what she's describing.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, and also Worth noting, she's British, and the British punk scene was very different and meant something. Very different Sex Pistols there than it did here.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Absolutely. So Lizzy, who's the most recognizable actress in this movie now?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Naomi Watts.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Watts, Booga. No, Naomi Watts. But at the time, she was relatively unknown in the United States. Tank Girl was going to be her first big American movie. Now, Tallay says that her audition for Jet Girl was amazing from day one, but Watts says that she had to audition nine times over two months. I do believe that Talalay loved her, but the studio wanted a name, so they kept bringing her back in. Now they wanted a name. They didn't get one for Jack Girl. Naomi Watts did get the role, but they almost got one for Sub Girl. Lizzie. Courtney Love came in to audition for Sub Girl Fun shortly before Kurt Cobain's suicide in April of 1994. So she turned down the role after some time passed. She came back to Talalay though, and asked if she could help supervise the soundtrack. And so that's why she is credited as executive music coordinator. And I believe a number of the needle drops that you mentioned were actually selected and sent to Talalay by Courtney Love.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Excellent needle drops in this book.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And Tallis had said she's kept like a bunch of the napkins and things that Courtney Love would send her with ideas scratched on them at all hours. Now, we won't talk in depth about all of the awesome rippers, but we have to talk about Ice tt's insane. Ice T is great in this movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He's great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He's so funny. This is before Law and Order, and his first movie in which he didn't play himself was New Jack City from 1991. Mario Van Peebles, Wesley Snipes. That movie co written by the father of a classmate of me and David's. It was the only person. Well, we knew two people who had parents who works in Hollywood. Matt Wright's dad, Thomas Lee Wright. Anywho, what's up, Matt, if you're out there? He says for this movie, he was paid scale. I believe he was paid $26,000 on new jack City. New Jack City made a ton of money.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That leads to a role in Ricochet with Denzel Washington, produced by cool guy Joel Silver. Ice T goes in expecting the big bucks, but when he goes into Joel Silver's office, Silver says, ice T, you've done one man, which means you're getting paid scale again. So a couple years later, he gets a call about another role, and I can't do a good ice tea impression. So let's just hear it from the man himself.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Lizzie, I would love to. I hope Coco's there.

[Jack Myers]

I'm up there, I'm getting paid. I get a call from a manager. He goes, yo, they want you to play a stripper in Arizona. I'm like, what? Hell, yeah. Yeah, I'm with that. So that night, I did like a thousand sit ups. Cause I always been kind of in shape, you know what I'm saying? So I was like, okay, I got to get my LL Cool J buffness on. Now watch this. So I'm in there trying to get swole real quick, and the next day, they send me a picture of a kangaroo. And they say the movie's called Tank Girl. I'm like, kangaroos, look at this. What kind of stripper am I? Like, what? I got a pouch? What the fuck is happening? So I'm sitting there and so I'm like, I don't. Lori Petty. This is.

[Jake Stauch]

That.

[Jack Myers]

That. And they told me Stan Winston was doing it. And I was like, okay, I don't know. Am I going backwards? And when they told me how much money they was paying me, I was like,

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, I love iced tea.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So what Lizzie's reacting to is what he says when they tell me how much money they're paying. He gets up and starts jumping like a kangaroo. Lizzie, they paid him a million dollars.

[Lizzie Bassett]

As they should. That was a worthy investment.

[Chris Winterbauer]

For reference, Emily Lloyd wrote in her memoir that her paycheck was going to be $500,000. Yeah, Ice T was getting paid double. What the lead act, he's like, sixth billed in terms of number of lines in this movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's crazy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Can I also just say LL Cool J is maybe the first actual, like, celebrity. Celebrity I ever saw in the wild.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, really? In real life?

[Lizzie Bassett]

In real life, it was.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I loved him in Deep Blue Sea as the show.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He's great. He's so nice. He was at, like, they hosted a dinner for all of the BU upcoming graduates our senior year of college out in LA with a couple of celebrities. And LL Cool J was one of them. And I remember going up to, like, the cheese table to grab my cheese plate, and I looked next to me and there was just a mountain of a man grabbing, like, a bunch of cheese. And it was LL Cool J. And I was like, oh, my God. Deep blue sea.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Deep blue sea.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Anyway, he's huge.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Don't kill my parrot. All right, they've got Iceland. And as he mentioned, they need the help of A very specific special effects and makeup artist to turn him into a kangaroo. Enter Stan Winston Studios. Now, Talley has said they couldn't actually afford Winston. I heard one story, I couldn't verify this, that she had sent out basically open letters saying, any special effects artists out there willing to help me turn these men into kangaroos, let me know. And Winston agreed to do it at half his pay. He decides to do the movie anyway, and his team's extremely bright. They're making the Rippers at the same time that they're working on Interview with the Vampire, which we've covered, and Congo, which we need to cover.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Gorilla lasers. Now, they have mechanical ears, as you see in the movie. Some of them have mechanical muzzles. And they have to make the makeup prosthetics flexible enough that you can still see the expressiveness of the actors underneath as they're doing it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's kind of amazing.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's some of the best prosthetics work of the 90s. It's so good.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I agree.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It looks amazing. They're so expressive. Like ice. T is funny because he can be deadpan in this costume.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. You can still see his face. Like, it actually is really amazing. And they look like the actors that are playing them just enough that you're able to identify the ones that you know. And there's a couple that are identifiable.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I actually think these look better than Jim Carrey looks as the Grinch in How the Grinch stole Christmas. 100%, which, that's nuts. And that was a few years later. And they did a great job with the Grinch. I just think this work is so good, I really want to highlight it. Now, they don't just need kangaroos. They also need a post apocalyptic landscape, so they need a production designer. The studio sets up a bunch of meetings with big name production designers. One day, this woman walks in bursting with enthusiasm and ideas. Two things we shouldn't let women have. Lizzie books, tear sheets, props. Who was she?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Katherine Hardwicke.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Katherine Hardwick. Now, Tallay has said that when she hired Hardwick, Hardwicke wasn't in the union yet. We couldn't actually verify this. Tombstone came out in late 1993. She did tombstone in 93. Tank girl shot in 94. I would have guessed she was union by now. It's possible that she wasn't, depending on the timing. But the point is, she's very much up and coming. And according to Tallay, one of the producers or executives threw Hardwicke's resume on the desk and basically said, how dare you insult me by choosing her over the big names that I shared with you? So Tallalay sets up a meeting with that executive and producer and Hardwicke to meet so they can get to know each other. And what also helps is that Hardwick had recently designed a statue about women in film called Four Ladies of Hollywood that had a full spread in the LA Times, which gave her more credibility. Also, she just did Tombstone in the middle of the desert. They're gonna shoot Tank in the middle of the desert. It's a great fit.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Also, Tombstone looks fucking great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Tombstone looks great. Hell, to make sure looks great.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Looks great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

As Talay's team put together the look of the movie, Emily Lloyd works on Tank Girl. According to her, United Artists hired her a personal trainer. The fitter I became, the more energized I felt. And before filming started, I began looking for other projects to line up. And at some point before filming, she takes a vacation in Mexico. I will paraphrase Lloyd's version of events from her memoir because this is where things start to get a little weird and hard to piece together together. She claims that by happenstance, she stayed at the same hotel as Teddy Serafian and his brother Darren. She insinuates that maybe Rachel Talalay had a quote thing for Teddy. To be clear, Tallay is married and may have thought that Teddy and Lloyd were fooling around because they were at the same hotel, which Lloyd has said they were not. And then she says that Tallalay was subsequently frosty when she found out that they were staying at the same hotel. She also says that maybe Tallay was just dealing with pressure. I really can't make heads or tails of this. Then when Lloyd returned to work, she claims that Tallay suddenly claimed, you need to shave your head. Lloyd asserts that when she'd been offered the part, she'd asked, do I need to shave my head? And Tallay had said no. Lloyd reportedly then met with an artist and photographer and used a latex bald cap to model some punk looks for the character. And I'd like to show you an image, Lizzie, of what that might have looked like. So this is more Lloyd's version of the character. Could you describe it for our audience, Lizzie, and we'll put this on our page.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, she's got a shaved head, you know, very dark 90s lipstick, eye makeup, and then basically just like a shock of pink mohawk that kind of goes down the side of her head like a sideways mohawk that extends into sort of a side pony braid. It's actually pretty cool looking. That being said, and I know this is just a test, but you can tell she's wearing a bald cap.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, even in the low resolution image that we have. So Lloyd claims that she wanted the character to work. She invested a lot of energy into getting into shape and was, quote, fired for a personality clash. According to Talalay and Petty, Lloyd was let go because she did not want to shave her head. In 1995, Tallalay was asked about it and said, I'm not allowed to talk about that. The lawyers would kill me. So let's jump to production assistant Carrie Bailey, who's a guy who has published some sections from his alleged journal from the production. He also supports the idea that Lloyd was ultimately let go over her reluctance to shave her head. Although I think it's a little more complicated than just that. There's a photo here from his Instagram of him with Naomi Watts, I believe from the production. So yes, he did work on the production. Okay, I'll read a couple of excerpts from his journal. May of 94. Apparently everyone wants to shave Emily's head for the part and she is reluctant. That's one entry drove Emily to MGM today for what was supposed to be a quick read through of the script. But she holed herself up with Teddy Serafian for four hours to go over the script pages. I only mention that because. Because it does seem like she was still very invested in the movie at this point in time. Early June. Emily had a bald cap on for some of the tests today and it looked awful. The hair situation is really getting out of hand. The next day went to take Emily to MGM for rehearsals. After about 10 minutes we left and I took her home. Once again, she was in tears. Apparently Rachel told her to shave her head or don't do the film. Two days later, Emily was let go for breach of contract or something like that. She didn't shave and she was gone like that. Current word has Lori Petty as taint. End quote.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Can I just say this? I appreciate that it sounds like Emily Lloyd has been honest about the fact that, you know, she has struggled with her own kind of self esteem and getting in her own head about these projects. We don't know what the deal is with them being at that hotel. I just don't see that being a reason to get rid of your lead. Especially when we know Rachel Tallay had, as you pointed out, a long and extensive career and road getting to this position. And that seems extremely unprofessional. Which makes it A bit surprising to me. I don't want to totally discount Emily Lloyd, but all I'll say is this. I can absolutely see a world in which I get the perfect star that I want. She asks, do I have to shave my head? I go to some hair and makeup team and they're like, no, we can totally try a bald cap. It'll be fine. And I'm like, great. And I come back to her and I say, no. And then you do the tests with the bald cap. It's not fine. It doesn't look right. And you have to say, I'm really sorry. We do need you to shave your head. Head. That makes complete sense to me. And I also understand Emily not wanting to do it because it seems like a lot of the roles she was getting were very sort of cute, sweet girl roles. And shaving your head could potentially cost you those. So I understand both sides of it. My guess is that this was. Sounds like it was about her shaving her head or not shaving her head. And I guess my point is it doesn't necessarily mean that Rachel Talalay was being deceptive. If she did, in fact, tell her that, she could shave it in the place first.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I agree. That's more or less the conclusion that I came to. Lloyd in the end basically says, look, we met my agent, me, the United Artists execs at United Artists. We picked out a look in Vogue that we agreed on. I was supposed to have a hairstylist come to my house to, you know, do it. And then I'll read the quote. The hairdresser arrived on time, but then she said there was a dinner she wanted to go to. I told her not to worry, we could do it first thing in the morning. When Rachel found out, she took it that I was being difficult over the whole shaving. She rang me and told me I was getting fired. And again, it's like, that may be true, but the context that's being omitted here is if this has been dragging on and we're three weeks out from shooting, Sorry, you cannot push that to the next morning. Yeah, I just. I don't fully buy it. There doesn't seem to be a full understanding of what's at stake here either. You know what I mean? I agree. The whole she's into Teddi thing, it just doesn't pass the sniff test with me either.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But I do want to mention it because it is, you know, her account of the story.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Sure.

[Chris Winterbauer]

What we do know is that the rumor about who would be replacing Emily Lloyd Was true.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It was Lori Petty.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They called her up as she had somehow known they were going to. She accepted the role, came in to get her hair done, and basically said, do whatever you want. So they shaved her head and they gave her 40 different wigs and hair pieces across the movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Which I do want to say is a lighter ask of Lori Petty than it was of Emily Lloyd. Lori Petty already had short hair as part of her look. It's something she was very comfortable with. Like, this was not a situation that was going to damage any parts Lori Petty could get at all.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. Now, according to production assistant Carrie Bailey, principal photography only slipped a couple days after the transition from Lloyd to Petty. And if his diaries can be believed, Lloyd was let go on June 11th, and they were filming two weeks later.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So they replaced their lead two weeks out. They shot through the summer in White Sands, New Mexico, at an abandoned mall in Phoenix, at a semi abandoned copper mine in Tucson and an abandoned bowling alley in la. Just everything was abandoned.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Semi abandoned is the one I have some questions about.

[Jake Stauch]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You know what that means?

[Lizzie Bassett]

I don't.

[Chris Winterbauer]

There's some secret people living down there, some old people.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Oh.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now, at the abandoned mall, Petty did at one point go to change her clothes in an abandoned store. Got locked inside for half an hour. And she said that it felt so long that she thought, well, they'll find my bones. In New Mexico, they'd reportedly get notices like there might be a test bombing tomorrow. And at the mine in Arizona, there were times when they would suddenly smell something awful and discover there had been a toxic chemical release. So they had to evacuate the area. Area. One crew member accidentally started a fire when trying to age a mobile home. I'm guessing they were using like a blowtorch on the side or something like that. Yeah, the whole thing went up in flames. And the hardest part, though, Lizzie, was the heat. Just like on Tombstone. Shooting in Arizona and New Mexico was like shooting on the surface of the sun.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Talalay later said it was hell. We spent the middle of the summer in a copper mine. It was physically hellish, working 16 hours a day in 110 degree heat. We were always filming in some filthy, dirty packages, Patch climbing some hill in the heat, trying to keep everybody together. According to Bailey, one of the accountants passed out in a Walgreens, woke up worried that she had lost bladder control and was taken away in an ambulance.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Not the worst thing that happened in that Walgreens that day, by the way.

[Chris Winterbauer]

No.

[Lizzie Bassett]

You ever been in a Walgreens? It's rough.

[Jake Stauch]

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[Chris Winterbauer]

There's nothing like the American Express Platinum card. Find out your welcome offer at after you apply, which could be as high as 175,000 points.

[Jake Stauch]

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[Chris Winterbauer]

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

Go Touch grass. You have probably heard this phrase, maybe you have even said it. But beneath the sort of light hearted nature of this meme is something very real and important. A growing sense that staying in touch with our humanity and being present in our bodies matters more than ever in today's digital world. My name is Minouche Zamorodi and I am taking over as host of TED Talks Daily this week to explore what technology is actually doing to your body and mind. In special interviews with scientists, doctors, people, parents, artists and more, we're going to dig into your physical and mental health on tech, how we think about our bodies differently now, how we relate to new innovations that are amazing but also a little scary, and how we can live a healthier life in this high tech era. Tune in on TED Talks Daily. Wherever you listen to podcasts,

[Chris Winterbauer]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. The Rippers had it the worst. I bet Talalay said it was like each of them was wearing a couch and they had a posse of people from Stan Winston Studios helping them operate their ears. Every time one of these guys walked onto set they would have two to three support people coming with them. So for the eight rippers there were 16 to 24 support people. People. They would move their ears, run their tails, put their clothes on. You find yourself asking who's Ice T's ears? And suddenly out of the woodwork, some guy with a little radio control y thing raises his hand. It's incredibly time consuming. It Also made it so they couldn't go pee because they had to take the costume off to go pee. But the good news is, even though they were drinking so much Gatorade, it was so hot and they were sweating so much that they didn't really have to pee. Yay. Their call times were often around 3am the whole dressing makeup process only took three hours, which I actually think is pretty impress.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's amazing.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Petty said the Rippers were almost always in costume. In fact, if she would see them outside of costume, you know, outside of filming, she didn't recognize them for a minute. It would take her a minute to, like, lock in and recognize them. Tallay said Ice T will tell you it was the worst experience of his life next to being shot. It was horrible. Oh, no. According to Bailey, toward the end of the shoot, Ice T did say, there's no way I'm doing a sequel. They can let someone else act and I'll do the voice. But Petty said he never complained during the shoot. And she said that people would ask him, how come you never complain, Ice? And he'd reply, better than Prince.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's great. It's true.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And he took the role seriously.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He did.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He'd push back on anything he felt didn't fit his character, including refusing to do the dance circle. He felt that his Ripper would not do the dance circle. He was the only one that wouldn't do the dance circle, which I do think works. I noticed sometimes he had to be reined in. One scene ended, and he did a frustrated improvised line. He was like, women. And Tal said, well, we can't really end this feminine treatise with you saying women that way. And he said, I don't suppose I could change it to bitches. They're like, no, we probably can't do that either.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Ice T. Honestly, I prefer that to the one Ripper that is just constantly trying to sexually assault Naomi Watts.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, the, like, weird auto hump that's going on.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. Well, speaking of Naomi Watts, Ice T was assertive, and Naomi Watts was not. Talay said that she sometimes had to physically pull her out from behind Lori Petty because she would just hide behind her and she'd say, naomi, you can be shy, but you have to be on camera. Aw. Bailey said it got to the point where Talalay, quote, walked over to her and said, you're going to have to act in this scene, and then walked away. Naomi was fine with an oh, well, okay sort of expression. But Watts says her confidence grew across the production in part Because Lori Petty was extremely confident to the point where she improvised a bit and then she improvised a lot. Tallalay said she ad libbed all the time. There were a lot of times when I would give her a martini and stick her in the tank and would say, you're fighting the bad guys, go for it. And I do think, Lizzie, unfortunately, this does kind of like add to the aimlessness of the movie. Even though it's fun, it's like she's definitely not operating this tank, you know what I mean? As she's going to through it. But there were reminders that what they were doing was dangerous. Like one time when Talalay called action, the tank driver started up too fast and Petty got knocked off the top and into the wheel well. The tank caused a lot of problems. So no disrespect to the wonderful folks who provide production vehicles, but if you've ever worked with a production vehicle, they break down at the. The minute you call action, the car won't start. That is just what happens every time. The tank in Tank Girl was clunky. It was hard to maneuver. It would get stuck in the sand and die. It moved slowly and it couldn't reverse.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And so they couldn't really do the dynamic action that Tal, she needed more action. So what did she do? What did you mention? How does the movie end? What type of sequence does it end with?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Animation.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They added some animated inserts. I love the animated inserts in this movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I do too.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Make the whole movie animated. They're so good.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I agree.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The tank in the comics does some wild stuff. As Talay said, you can't put a real tank on the pinnacle of a building or make it fly through the air or turn it upside down. Now, I saw one rumor before I started on this episode that Peter Chung, who had done Aeon Flux, did the animation. And there are some similarities in the style, I guess, but that's not true. The animation was provided by animator Mike Smith. He had been primarily a commercial animator, but broke into features with animated sequences on Natural Born Killers and here on Tank Girl. And I think he does a great job, especially if you read the comic. The animated sequences in this movie really match the tone of the comic, I think. And Tank Girl matches the tone of Tank Girl in the comic. Now, fun fact, Lizzie. He'd also spent some time on Francis Ford Coppola's vineyard in Napa while storyboarding his never made Pinocchio adaptation. Oh, I love videotape of that. Coppola shouting at him about the existential crisis of being a wooden boy. Now, Tale couldn't afford much CGI either. What you see in the movie for the most part is optical effects and miniatures. I actually think the miniatures on Jet Girl's Jet look really good in this movie they do. Some of the CGI holograms of Malcolm McDowell's CGI face don't hold up quite as well. Towards the end of production, things get a little harder. Lizzie Talalay got pretty and during production she's fatigued and dealing with morning sickness at the end of production and then she heads into post as she's going to like her second and third trimester, which is crazy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's rough. You're so tired.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And the one thing harder than battling the heat is battling the studio, especially during a regime change. So during production, Alan Ladd Jr. Left United Artists. He got replaced by John Callie, who according to Tallay just did not understand Tank Girl. It got so bad that she called her lawyer and said, I'm to going to quit multiple times. And he said, you can't. If you do, no one will fight for this movie. And she realized she couldn't just will the studio to do what she wanted. And eventually she had to start giving in to some of the things that they wanted. What may have made this process even more painful, at least according to production assistant Carrie Bailey, is he says that the studio actually liked the director's cut. Quote, the studio heads screened the director's cut of the movie today. They proclaim, we have a hit on our head. Later, Jim, the editor jokingly counters with if studios knew what a hit was, they wouldn't make anything else. Which is true and funny.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So she fought to keep the opening song. One executive thought the singer's voice was too gritty. That song is Girl youl Want by Devo, performed with singer Julia Bell and to keep Tank Girl's rocket bra. Now in the end, Talalay says Callie made her short and remove several shots including Tank Girl in her bedroom with a wall of dildos.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Ah, too bad.

[Chris Winterbauer]

During the semi truck tank chase sequence, Tank Girl puts a condom on a banana and throws it at the vil. Tank Girl being tortured by Malcolm McDowell in Sub Zero temperatures. Apparently Callie thought Petty looked ugly in the scene. Tale pushed back because the scene had tested well. A lot of people liked the scene. So instead of completely removing it, you just cut it down to the one shot at the end where they come in and she's like been tied up for a long time and she's Very cold. Which removes the effect that she's resisting.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That doesn't make sense.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Exactly.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. Because you're like, why are her eyes ice blue and her teeth are silver? Like, it doesn't. There's stuff missing. Also the eye color changes. There's a lot that seems to be missing from this.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. There were shots that more directly implied that Tank Girl slept with people, but those were removed. In fact, Stan Winston had created an entirely naked booga suit, complete with a big old kangaroo wee wee.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow, we really. We were robbed of a lot here.

[Chris Winterbauer]

We want the booga cut. Yeah, the kangaroo wee wee. The original ending featured Tank Girl, Sub Girl, Jet Girl, Sam and the Ripper standing outside as it finally started to rain. But they cut that and replaced it with the animated sequence that you see in the movie. The way that Bailey remembers it is that they had a couple of test audience screen, mostly a 14 to 24 year old audience. And the test cards weren't great, but they seemed to like it more than the test cards suggested. And then with each viewing, they changed the movie more and more to try to bid and cater to a younger crowd. So they would try to age it down. And as a result, they would cut things that might lead to an R rating in the DVD commentary. Tallay estimates there's about an hour of unused material, but the studio also added some things. So a couple of the shots when Tank Girl reveals her to Tank were not shot by Tallay. They were actually shot by another director for a promo. And then they cut them into the movie and Talalay protested. And they basically said, if you whine about this, we're gonna replace you, we're gonna fire you on this movie. One good change that came of these test screenings was that they did have Hewlett come in and do the animations for the title sequence at the beginning of the movie and the interstitial comic book stills that you see throughout the movie, which I do like that tie it into the feeling of a comic comic book. But the cherry on top, Lizzie was that even despite all of these cuts, which neutered Tank Girl in so many ways, the movie got an R rating.

[Jake Stauch]

Why?

[Chris Winterbauer]

I know this is so brutal. Tale felt this was uncalled for. And due to the fact that the film starred a woman, which I don't know about that, but what was the

[Lizzie Bassett]

criteria that got this an R?

[Chris Winterbauer]

We'll talk about it. I did a little research into this. So there's one F bomb. That's part of it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

You can usually get away with one in a PG13 though.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. Yes. Let's dive into it. So I wanted to try to compare Tank Girl with a few other movies from roughly the same time. I don't want to just go off of the MPAA rating because they're just giving a rating. I wanted to try to find a more objective measurement. So there's a website called Kids in Mind. It's not about ratings. It gives a three number score for three categories. Sex and nudity, violence and gore, language. So on those three categories, Tank Girl gets a 3 out of 10 on sex and nudity. You see a man's butt. You know, there's a sequence at the beginning where she's telling him to strip, et cetera. They're getting humped by kangaroos. You know, there's a little bit. But it's a ton. A 3 out of 10 makes sense.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, it feels PG 13 for sure.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Violence and gore. It gets a 6 out of 10. It is a very violent movie. There's stabbing, there's, you know, blood, there's sucking water out of people. It's cartoonish. But I'm just saying it's there.

[Lizzie Bassett]

All right. Five or six, Fine.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And language. It gets a five. It has an F bomb. You know, it has some swearing, it has some innuendo, et cetera. I would like to read you some other films that are PG13. So GoldenEye had a 3, 6 and 6. Jurassic Park 2, 6 and 4. I actually think violence and gore. Jurassic park should be a lot higher.

[Lizzie Bassett]

A lot higher. Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But it's Steven Spielberg. He doesn't do R. Uh huh. Last Action Hero 1, 6 and 4. I just think the violence should also be higher in Last Action Hero.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yep.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And Independence Day has the same cumulative score with a 2, 7 5. PG 13.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay. Wait.

[Jack Myers]

How?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Because I was going to say this and Independence Day actually feel like decent comps to me in terms of the violence.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I agree. To me that's the perfect comp. 275 it's a little less on the sex and nudity. It's a little more violent and it's the same on the language.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I would like to point out that there is a substantial. As we will find out when we cover Independence Day shortly, which I'm excited about. I believe there is quite a substantial striptease scene featuring Vivica A. Fox in that. And her incredible physique is on display. As much as you see of the guy in this. You see of her. So that's ridiculous.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It basically seems like Tank Girl was on the line, but but for whatever reason it got tipped into R. It's possible that the R rating killed them, but it seems like either way, Tank Girl was left in the desert for dead. It grossed just over $4 million against its $25 million budget, which is actually impressive given that Lori Petty said it was pulled from theaters after 10 days.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's crazy.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And if Box Office Mojo's to be trusted, that's true. March 31 to April 9, 1995 reviews were generally negative and drew comparisons to other films. The LA Times said watching Tank Girl is as disorienting as waking up in somebody el bad dream. They run on to draw the correlation or the comparison that you did. Lizzie distantly related to Mad Max, but without any of the brilliance, let alone the madness of that film. Tank Girl seems determined to win friends among the MTV generation. Roger Ebert gave it two stars, acknowledging the efforts that went into giving it a comic book feel. Enormous energy went into this movie. I could not, however, care about it for much more than a moment at a time, and after a while its manic energy wore me down. I think that's a fair review, I agree, but Variety I think perhaps, perhaps put it best, or as I would, and this was a generally positive review. What's missing from the mix is an engaging story to bind together its intriguing bits. The New York Times was also positive. They said Tank Girl has a likable brashness, even when breathless, pointless plotting threatens to eclipse the movie's charms. Chief among its strong points is Lori Petty, a buzz cut, fashion plate and a Prozac necklace, who brings the necessary gusto to Tank Girl's flippancy. But Hewlett and Martin, for their parts were not fans. Their contributions, including the opening titles, were added at the last minute, and they realized when they saw it that it didn't really look anything like the original comic. But even if it had, it probably wouldn't have made a difference because they're the first to point out that Tank Girl was extremely niche. Deadline was only selling 20,000 issues a month, which is just Peanuts really, and the character wasn't really well known in America. So Tallalay's mission had been to prove that female action movies worked. She thought she could break the glass ceiling, but she later said instead the glass ceiling could crushed me. I thought I'm going to make this kick ass, totally out there female action movie. We're going to show that there's a great audience for it. And instead it came crashing in on us. It was a hellish experience and after that, when it didn't sell enough tickets, people said that female action heroes were never going to work. And that was the end of it. It ruined my career. It put me into movie jail. It was a disaster. I couldn't talk about it for 10 years.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I believe that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Lori Petty created and starred in a Fox sitcom shortly after this called Lush Life. It ran seven episodes. And then she transitioned more into independent film and television. She's probably best known now, Lizzie, for what TV show?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Orange Is the New Black.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's right.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Which she's great on.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She's great on.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She's always good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She's very good. Emily Lloyd, for her part, never really recovered from the stigma of being replaced on three films. Yeah, she had health problems for many years and she moved into more supporting work. Naomi Watts struggled for another five years, even though I think she's great in this movie, until a seemingly failed pilot became Mulholland Drive and launched her into stardom. And we'll have to cover that film now. Katherine Hardwick did become a director in her own right, as we mentioned.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Hell yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And then something changed. In the mid 2000s, people started coming up to Talalay and Lori Petty and saying, we love Tank Girl. And it developed a cult following to the point where Rachel Tallaway actually explored optioning it in 2008. And at one point, Margot Robbie's Lucky Chap did option the rights to Tank Girl. But I don't think anything's to come of it, and I'm not sure if it will because it does feel very close to her take on Harley Quinn

[Lizzie Bassett]

personally at this point. Unfortunately, I think it is too close to both Harley Quinn and Mad Fury Road in order for it to stand on its own.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Again, I saw some speculation that Robbie's company may have optioned it to protect against any legal liability for plagiarism for how close Harley Quinn feels to Tank Girl, you know what I'm saying? So they own the property too. Anyway, by the mid 2010s, Tallay said she was no longer embarrassed by it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Which I. I think is great. And for her part, Lori Petty was never embarrassed by it, and neither was Ice T. Good. I would like to end with a quote of Ice T about folks that accused him of selling out.

[Jack Myers]

People like, well, you selling out. Let me tell you, selling out is when it. When you do something that goes against your integrity. I wasn't selling slaves or, you know, I wasn't, you know, the. Are you talking about? I have nothing against kangaroos, nothing whatsoever. You Know nothing. So I was like, yo, I could do the movie, and it'll pay for some things. And it allowed me to build a recording studio. See, I follow Orson Welles, and Orson Welles said he didn't like to act. He acted in order to be able to direct. Direct. So I learned from that, that sometimes you got to do what you got to do to be able to do what you want to do.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That is fabulous advice. Truly, truly fabulous advice for anybody entering really, like, any professional space. You have to do what you have to do in order to do what you want to do.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I agree.

[Lizzie Bassett]

As long as it doesn't compromise your integrity. He's completely right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, Lizzy, that brings us to the end of Tank Girl, and I have to ask you, what went right?

[Lizzie Bassett]

I mean, for me, what went right is easy. And it's Katherine Hardwick. I love watching the movies that she was a production designer on and, you know, full disclosure, like, she also holds a special place in my heart as a director as well. I grew up watching Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, and obviously there's Twilight too. But I really love the way that she visualizes worlds and creates these sets, and she has a unique talent, and that is especially showcased in this movie. It's really fun. So, yeah, I have to say, Katherine Hardwick and just letting her run wild with it, she's so great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think that's a great choice. I'd like to give mine to Stan Winston Studios and everybody on that team.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You know, when I first saw the Rippers, I thought, no, there's no.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I know.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And then they became my favorite part of the movie for a while, so I just have to give it to Stan Winston Studios. That's such an accomplishment. Accomplishment. I really think they honored the look from the comic book. I mean, it's slightly different, but that's not an easy task. And it seems stupid. Like martial arts kangaroos. I mean, they look close to the characters in, like, the warriors of Virtue. You know, they look insane. It's like a weird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vibe. It's so fun. But I liked it, and I kind of just wanted more of that in the movie ultimately, and so that's a real testament to their artistry. So I'll give mine to Stan Winston Studios.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, Lizzy, if folks are enjoying this podcast, how can they support it?

[Lizzie Bassett]

A few easy ways, Chris. You can tell a friend or family member that, hey, what went wrong? It's pretty good. They covered Tank Girl. Haven't seen it. Go watch Tank Girl. Listen to the podcast or you don't even have to watch it, just listen to the podcast. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcast you are listening to this on. It really does help us. You can also now subscribe in both Apple and Spotify. You will get at least one bonus episode every month. Usually it's more than one bonus episode every month because we're enjoying doing them so much. They tend to be reviews of movies that are are currently coming out. It's such a fun time. We love people going out and seeing these and listening to the episodes. We just did Disclosure day so if you join you can listen to that. And we will be covering Supergirl as well so you'll be able to listen to that too. Now to get everything I just mentioned and an ad free feed and the fan community, you just have to join Patreon for $5 a month. You get all of that. We love talking to people on Patreon. Yes it is us talking to you directly. We do not have money to pay for somebody else to do that. And then if you would like to take it one one step further, for $50 a month you can get a Tank Girl shout out just like one of these.

[Chris Winterbauer]

We couldn't make this show without the support of our patrons, so it pains me to have to say such horrible things to them. But in the spirit of Tank Girl, we're going to have to do something so bad that David will bleep all of it out. So without further ado, thank you so much. Adrian Pankaria, you Angeline Renee Cook, you Ben Shindelman, you gave gangly blaze Ambrose Bentley with a chainsaw. Brian Donahue, you absolute weasel. Brittney Morris, you Stick Brooke, you blithering wizard. We appreciate you. Cameron Smith, you're a true R.U. fonzie C. Grace B. Titty C.R. we love you. Chris Leal, you Womble, David Friscolanti, the sp key Darren and Dale Conkling, a co couple of muppets. Don Schaible, you can a and tell me Mzodia, how does one A Evan Downey, you're a real Felicia G. You're a cotton heady ninny muggins. Didn't have to bleep that one. Film it yourself, you bot Frankenstein, you're an butt. Galen and Miguel, the broken glass kids. What in the Easter Bunny's white fluffy the crap of the cast and crew of win a trip to Browntown. All right, let's mix things up and let's go old school half greyhound, you cockalorum James McAvoy, you are the definition of snallygoster. Jason Frankel, you little lick spittle. And J.J. rapido. Don't be a fart catcher. John D. Wiltshire, known petty fogger. And our favorite moon calf. Jory Hillpiper. Jose Emiliano, Salto Del Giorgio. Apparently the worst thing you can say to somebody in Australia is just, no worries, champ. Karina Canava, you. Kate Ellerington, I remember my first beer. Kathleen Olson, you numpty. Amy Olga Shock McCoy, kind regards. Someone on Reddit said that was offensive. I don't know. Lena lj, you trumpet lousy. Susan, you nonce. Lydia Howes, me sideways and call me the president. Mark Bertha, you absolute magnet. Mariposa's humans, you buggers. Matthew Jacobson, you flaps. Michael McGrath, my favorite canoe. Our clown, Nate Ashley. Okay, back to some old school ones to end the day. Nate the Knife, you're a bed swerver. Rosemary southward, you afternoon farmer, rural juror, you're an egg. And now, from Henry V. Sadie, you sanguine coward. Scott Oshida, you're a bacon fed knave. Soman Chainani, you mad mustachio purple hued malt worm. Steve Winterbauer, you horseback breaker. Suzanne Johnson, you bombard of sack. The Provost family, where the O's sound like O's, you are the various varlets that ever chewed with a tooth straight from the hearts of three ugly mother with faces made for podcasting.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow. Thank you, Chris.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Oh, man. Tank Girl just. That's an R rating.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Loved it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

If Spielberg had said it, it would have been G, but it definitely R2.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Hip for Spielberg.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, guys, we will see you next week for an incredibly special. Lizzy, can you tell the fine folks at home what we have coming next? Because, you know, it's been a long time coming.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Chris, let me just tell you, we will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We're gonna live on. We're gonna survive. Today we celebrate our Independence Day. I can't wait. I'm so excited. It's genuinely one of my favorite movies of.

[Chris Winterbauer]

This is the peak of Randy Quaid's life. Like, this is just. It's great.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I love Randy Quaid. Like, yeah. This movie's so insane. I definitely thought it was the greatest movie ever made.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I think it might be. We're gonna find out.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I really thought it was, like, this is the peak of political fiction. This is so good.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's peak. Goldblum. It's peak. Will Smith. It's peak, everybody.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It really is. Everybody is just batting a thousand in this movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

They are.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I cannot wait. I am very excited to cover Independence Day and a movie that continues to live on in pop culture especially, you know, through other shows like Station 11, for example. A great example.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, guys, we will see you next week. We are very excited. Thank you so much for listening.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Bye.

[Chris Winterbauer]

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post production and music by David David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by Karen Krupsoff.