My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Summary

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WHAT WENT WRONG – "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (Sad Boom Media)

Release Date: June 1, 2026
Hosts: Lizzie Bassett & Chris Winterbauer

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Overview:

This episode of What Went Wrong dives into the extraordinary underdog story behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), a romantic comedy that defied Hollywood conventions (and studio rejections) to become the most successful indie film of its time. Hosts Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer unpack the chaotic, resilient journey of Nia Vardalos—from Greek-Canadian theater kid to Oscar-nominated writer/star—while exploring how the film triumphed despite a skeptical industry, surprise obstacles, and serious Hollywood accounting controversies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Childhood & Inspiration: Nia Vardalos’ Greek Roots

• [15:36] Chris: Nia Vardalos was heavily inspired by her own big, loud, and loving Greek family in Winnipeg. Her father, Gus, really did believe in the healing powers of Windex.
• [16:14] Lizzie: The dynamic of vying for attention through humor—but never at the expense of family support—gave Vardalos enduring confidence.

The Hollywood Wall: Too Ethnic, Not Ethnic Enough

• [22:29] Chris: Neither Hollywood nor agents knew how to "type" Nia, constantly telling her she was “too old or not old enough, too ethnic or not ethnic enough.”
• [24:13] Lizzie: “It was shocking to hear that and to basically be told, yeah, it doesn’t really matter how good you are. Like, you just don’t look like what I could see fitting into any particular category.”
• [25:27] Chris: Agents even suggested changing her name and ethnicity for parts.

Writing Out of Frustration: The One-Woman Show

• [26:24] Chris: Fed up with no roles, Nia wrote a screenplay based on her family stories.
• Studios wanted to drop her as star, change her ethnicity, and even offered to retool it as a Jennifer Lopez or Marisa Tomei vehicle.
• [33:58] Chris: “She realized she had to do it herself. Otherwise, they’re going to strip the authenticity away.”

Grassroots Growth: Hand-Flyering at Greek Churches

• [31:16] Chris: Built an audience for her one-woman show by connecting directly with Greek communities—eventually catching Rita Wilson’s eye.

Rita Wilson & Tom Hanks: Champions Arrive

• [34:22] Chris: Rita Wilson (herself of Greek descent) saw the show, instantly believed in its potential, and brought Tom Hanks on board.
• [37:20] Chris: Hanks wrote a warm, personal letter to Nia, reflecting the film’s universal theme of intercultural love.

The Hollywood Money Maze: Legal Wrangling for Rights

• [39:04] Chris: Initial director Jim Milio sells his claim to the script after some wrangling, clearing the path for Hanks and Wilson to shepherd the project.

"Love the Script, Lose the Girl": Risking It All to Remain the Lead

• [43:26] Lizzie/Chris: All major studios wanted Vardalos replaced, but with HBO and indie backers, she held onto the lead role—though with the looming threat of replacement in the contract's first four days of shooting.

Casting: Keeping It Greek(ish)

• Sought as many Greek actors as possible, but notable non-Greeks included Andrea Martin (Aunt Voula, Armenian), Lainey Kazan (Maria, Jewish), and Joey Fatone (Angelo, Italian-American).
• [49:43] Chris: Michael Constantine (Gus) needed a “true negotiation” before signing on.
• John Corbett (Ian) landed the role serendipitously—literally—in a Toronto bar.

The Low and the Highs of Production

• Shot on a minuscule budget ($5 million) in Toronto over 21–30 days. Nia attended editing and was treated “like gold.”
• Community support—especially from local Greeks—was immense; food and goodwill flowed freely.

The Release: Indie Cinderella Story

• [59:17] Chris: Test-screenings scored a staggering 94%.
• IFC Films used a grassroots, church-and-community approach, not traditional marketing, to build buzz.
• [62:54] Chris: At one early screening, a woman laughed so hard she broke her hip: “He knew they had a hit.”
• [64:20] Chris: Roger Ebert praised its warmth and realism: “I relaxed knowing it was set in the real world, not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can’t get a date.”

Box Office Miracle & Aftermath

• Grossed over $350 million worldwide, outgrossing films with budgets over 10 times its size.
• Spawned sequels, a brief TV series, and ongoing legal battles over profit participation.
• [67:57] Chris: “Hollywood accounting” led to lawsuits over missing profits—even for the creators.

The Big Picture: Why This Success Can’t Be Replicated

• [72:23] Chris: Streaming, fractured attention, and new “calling cards” (e.g., social media virality) have changed the indie film pipeline.
• The era of one little film breaking big in this fashion is likely gone.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Vardalos as both writer and star:

  • (Lizzie, [05:45]) “Everyone was like, she can put a pen to paper and she can star in a movie and she looks like that. And then in retrospect, watching it, I’m like, yeah, she’s beautiful…she can do this.”

• On the tone and “cartoonish” comedy:

  • (Lizzie, [07:59]) “Everyone remains so cartoonish all the way through that it’s fun, but it doesn’t quite have the same emotional impact that I think maybe it could have.”

• On the pressure to change ethnicity:

  • (Nia, via Chris, [25:27]) “We’re going to change the spelling of the last part of your name from OS to EZ and send you out as Hispanic.”

• On the lone support for her own project:

  • (Chris, [28:44]) “Whoever told you you could write a screenplay?”
  • (Chris, [30:59]) “At first, the only people that are coming are the only people that come to all of our shows when we get started in L.A.”—her friends.

• On grassroots marketing & finding her audience:

  • (Chris, [31:16]) “She starts handing out flyers at Greek churches and community groups, and all of a sudden the audience grows….”

• On studio feedback to Hanks & Vardalos:

  • (Chris, [43:28]) “All the studios wanted Vardalos replaced. But with HBO, she kept the lead—though could have been fired after 4 days of shooting.”

• On success and its limitations (Lizzie, [72:24]):

  • “Its own kind of cage…it's such a double-edged sword…the victory has a thousand fathers and the manipulations of the profits…it's such a tricky business.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:04] Episode Start – Framing the Movie’s Cultural Moment
• [15:36] – Vardalos’ Family Roots and Early Inspiration
• [22:29] – Hollywood’s Rejections & Ethnic Ambiguity
• [26:24] – Taking Control: From Script to One-Woman Show
• [31:16] – Building a Grassroots Audience
• [34:22] – Rita Wilson & Tom Hanks Enter the Picture
• [43:28] – Studios Demand a ‘Different’ Star
• [49:43] – Assembling the Cast, Negotiating with Constantine
• [54:13] – John Corbett’s Casting Serendipity
• [57:11] – Production Details & Set Stories
• [59:17] – Test Screenings and Community Support
• [62:54] – The Release Strategy; Roger Ebert Quote
• [67:44] – Oscar Nomination & Box Office Stats
• [67:57] – Lawsuits and Hollywood Accounting
• [71:10] – Can Indie Success Be Repeated Today?
• [72:24] – When Winning Traps You: The Paradox of Success

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End Discussion: What Went Right?

• Lizzie ([76:20]): “God, Nia Vardalos…didn’t give up, didn’t sell this to people who were saying they would just rewrite it. This is a remarkable story. It shows so much perseverance and more backbone than I would ever have.”
• Chris ([77:26]): “I would like to specifically give mine to Rita Wilson…what I think a producer's job is…being in the trenches, digging through coal and shit and slime and finding the diamonds in the rough. And it's the people who go to the one-woman shows… those are really the best producers out there.”

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Takeaways & Legacy

• My Big Fat Greek Wedding triumphed not because Hollywood wanted it, but because its creator, and later a handful of powerful supporters, refused to let it be diluted or taken from her.
• Its success represented a unique moment in indie cinema: a true Cinderella story made possible by grassroots community support, creative resilience, and luck—a formula nearly impossible to replicate in today’s fractured, risk-averse media landscape.

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Next Week:
Giant (James Dean, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor) – “A Giant running time” and a look into legends and Hollywood’s complicated history.

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Transcript

[Chris Winterbauer]

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[Chris Winterbauer]

And action.

[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 movie. That said, hey, it's okay to have a big fat weird family. You can still get married. What a treat. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie, here as always with Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, what do you have for us today?

[Chris Winterbauer]

We have a family favorite of the Winter Bowers and the Lewis's My Mom's side My Big Fat Creek Wedding, I would say. And actually one of the things I really appreciate about this movie is that actually before we get into the romance subplot, it's more about her achieving her independence, which I forgot. And I actually do really appreciate for like an early Aughts romantic comedy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, they spend a long time on it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But yes, we have My Big Fat Creek Wedding. But Lizzie, we have something else that we need to talk about quickly before we talk about My Big Fat Creek Wedding.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Me too.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Because you have like been involved in this secret side project that I was not involved in and I've been just so jealous. So tell the folks what's coming their way. For any fans of Lizzie Bassett or vampires or both.

[Lizzie Bassett]

If you want to talk about secret side projects, Chris is the one with those. But we'll get to those later. I am very excited that I got the chance to host the after show companion show for Season 3 of interview with the Vampire, which is called the Vampire Lestat. The show that I'm hosting is called the Vampire Lestat After Dark and it was an unbelievably good time. It was so much fun to be able to do this. I absolutely loved talking to the cast and the creators. Really fascinating conversations. Also the show, it's really fucking good. It's really good. I watched it the entire season twice and I will watch it a third time, and you can start watching it this weekend. It premieres on June 7th on AMC. You can watch the after show, the premiere episode, at least on AMC and amc. So make sure that you go watch the vampire Lestat. It is so, so good. You know, we talked about Lestat a little bit in our interview with the vampire episode, and I said in that episode, before even getting this job, that I thought that Sam Reed was the best incarnation of Lestat, and I absolutely stand by that. And also, just what a fun guy. Very fun to talk to him and spend a few days working on this show. So go give it a watch and then make sure that you watch the vampire Lestat after dark after every episode. You can watch the after show on amc. So please go do that. And what a fun opportunity that I got thanks to this podcast. So thank you all for listening and making this possible.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, guys. And I can back up that Lizzie genuinely liked the show because she texted me saying. She said, like, thank God. This is good. After she had already agreed to do it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, well, let's dive into My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which is tonally on the opposite side of the spectrum from the vampire Lestat, but I'm very excited nonetheless. Lizzie, had you seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding before, and what were your thoughts upon watching or rewatching it for the podcast?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Of course I had seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It was for anyone who was not conscious in 2002, I think, when this came out.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes, 2002.

[Lizzie Bassett]

This was like a watershed cultural moment where it was like, everyone suddenly realized that it was okay to not be a WASP and also to openly mock the only WASPs in the movie. So y. I saw this in theaters potentially more than once. I know I've watched it since then, but I don't think I've seen this movie since I was probably, like, I don't know, 14, 15 years old. We watched it last night. I really enjoyed it. It's very fun. I will say my favorite performance in the entire movie is one that I had completely forgotten about. And it is.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Can I guess?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes, guess.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Is it Andrea Martin as Aunt Voula?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

How could you forget the Bopsy?

[Lizzie Bassett]

This is like she feels this movie.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She's so funny.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And I didn't realize how burned into my br. That scene was where she explains about the twin.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The Bopsy? Yes, the Babsy. My whole life, I have a lump in my throat. It was my unborn twin being a

[Lizzie Bassett]

twin that she then absorbed that had a spinal cord in it. It is so funny. And she really got the energy of the movie, I think, as did Louis Mandalore, who plays her brother. I really liked him a lot in this. You know, it's a little more uneven than I remembered, which is totally fine. It feels very, very cartoonish, even from the beginning, when you know, she's kind of hiding from Aiden, whose actual name is John Corbett, who is playing Aiden again, except actually a good and attractive version of Aiden.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Ian Miller.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, he's very good in this. Yeah. Aiden from Sex and the City, of course, if anybody doesn't know. But yeah, you know, I didn't remember it being so. So, like, slapstick, over the top, ridiculous. It is. Which was fine, like, once you kind of settle into that and you know what you're in for. I definitely enjoyed it and I'm excited to talk about it because I know what I remember most about this was like, can you believe that that woman, the star of this movie, also wrote it? Everyone was like, she can put a pen to paper and she can star in a movie and she looks like that. And then in retrospect, watching it, I'm like, yeah, she's beautiful. Like, she's a successful, beautiful writer and actress. Like, yes, she can do this. So I'm excited to talk about that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They do style her very specifically in the first 10 to 15 minutes to, I think, lean into a couple things.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I gotta tell you, they don't do her any favors over the course of any part of this movie. And I understand it was the 2000s.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was the early 2000s, there was a specific style happening with, like, the weird top button cardigan over things on every outfit.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, we all had it. I had it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I was gonna say it's very recognizable look.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes, yes. But she is a lot more attractive, I think, than she looks at any point in this movie. Although she does look very attractive after she goes through her own little makeover. And we were talking about this a little bit before we got on, but I really appreciate that they spend quite a lot of time of her kind of making herself over not for a man, like, not to get a husband, but because it's making her happy and because she's sending herself to school to learn more about computers and to have a care. It is really nice that it's like she actually has come into her own and accepted herself to a certain degree before Ian even comes into the picture. And that is unusual for a movie like this. So I did really enjoy that. I gotta say, though, the one problem is that there is another movie about not a Greek family, but a big Italian family that is more burned into my brain. And I couldn't help comparing the two over the course of this. Do you know what it is?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Probably the Godfather.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Not the Godfather, no.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Which one are you thinking of?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Moonstruck.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Sure. Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It felt like it borrowed a lot from Moonstruck. But the thing that it misses that for me, Moonstruck doesn't, is that Moonstruck has these moments of real clarity. And this movie doesn't really ever give you that chance to breathe or really see these people as humans, I guess. And that's potentially my one complaint about this, is that everyone remains so cartoonish all the way through that it's fun, but it doesn't quite have the same emotional impact that I think maybe it could have. But I'll stop there. Chris, what's your experience with it?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Don't necessarily disagree with anything you just said. My sister wanted to remind me that Nia Vardalos has said in the beginning of the movie, it's just what she looks like when she wakes up. To which I also say. But also they give her the clothing of brown burlap sax at the beginning of this movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

They put her in like a David Byrne once in a Lifetime style suit at one point in this. That just looks insane.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Anywho, so I saw this movie when I was. It was December of 2002, so I would have been 13, almost 14, in Dallas with my mom's family. My mom is Puerto Rican and my dad is Ian Miller. And so it was.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, true.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was really, to us, I think, and my sister can attest to this too. It felt like such a mirror. My family's not quite as exaggerated as what we're seeing on screen, but they're. Oh, that person's just like this uncle, like this, you know. And I do think that that element of we all have that big, loud, boisterous. Either half of our family person whose family is that right. Like through a friend or something like that in our lives. It's so recognizable, it's so fun. And it feels, I think, in comparison to the other films at the time that were coming out of Hollywood, the other romantic comedy films. I don't disagree that something like Moonstruck does ultimately feel a little more grounded despite having many exaggerated, you know, elements including one handed Nick Cage and whatnot.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It is my favorite Nicolas Cage performance of all time. I think it's amazing. We will cover it at some point.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, and I agree it wasn't as quite as smooth as I remembered when I rewatched, I still loved it, but I do think it in part was so successful because this was so quenching a thirst that we had in the early 2000s. If you look at what else was being released for something that felt even remotely recognizable and human and real. And we'll get to the review by Roger Ebert, who really calls that out. But I saw this movie at least two times in theaters during that one December trip in Dallas with my mom's family. I've gone back and watched it a few times rewatching it. Certain moments just continue to make me laugh. Andrea Martin is amazing.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She's the best.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I actually think Nia Vardalos gives an excellent, like, more grounded performance than a lot of the other characters. And I do think in part, there's a conscious choice being made to have Lainey Kazan and Michael Constantine go bigger so that then Nia and some of the other characters feel more realistic around them. I'm assuming that was a choice, but I just love, like, you know, you're going to get baptized in the Greek church tomorrow, you know. And then he says, yeah, and he goes, your lucky day. Nikki going to be a godmother. You cut to Nikki fixing her boobs shirt, and then she's rubbing him down with oil in the kiddie pool in the Orthodox church. There's just so many fun jokes. The Nick, Nick. Nick. The joke that all the family members have named their kids the same thing, which in my family, actually, on my dad's side, on the white side, it's like, Andrew, Andrew, Michael, Michael, Chris, Steve, Andrew, Michael, Steve, Chris. It's just the same thing.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And your name is Christopher.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Andrew it is. I know. And my uncle's name is Andrew and my brother in law's name is Andrew. And my uncle's name is Mike and my father in law's name is Mike. What I love about this film is, yes, it's My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but you could also call it My Big Fat American Wedding, which I think is what really makes it so universal. But let's jump into it because it's a really interesting story.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I'm very excited. And there's one thing I want to say too, to clarify, you know, this is one of those movies like you're talking about what was available at the time. And Absolutely. This was different culturally, which was important. But the other thing that, you know, we kind of touched on saying, like, it's a bit ridiculous that Nia Vardalos is painted as this extremely unattractive woman. It was not ridiculous at the time. And I think when you're talking about the other offerings that were available, I mean, and this is what we grew up with, and, you know, this was the time of the gossip blogs starting to really generate content. And she did look markedly different from what was being pushed to young women, teenagers. And I do remember that standing out to me. And it was important, and I am glad that she was able to do this, even though it's ridiculous that it was even a question if she could, you know.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. And let's get into some of the other options that were perhaps floated for this movie because they're illustrative of that point that you're making.

[Lizzie Bassett]

How white are they?

[Chris Winterbauer]

No, actually not.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay, okay.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But also not Greek. And we'll get into that as well. This is a really interesting. It's a nuanced story. I'm really excited to talk about it. The focus today, guys, is very much on the development of this movie, which is fascinating. And then the release of this movie. There's a little bit in production. But the reason I wanted to talk about this movie, aside from the fact that I really love it, is that I think in many ways it's a movie. It's not that it couldn't get made now, but it's just that it would never happen in the way that it did in 2002, because so much has changed with the way movies are released and the way that they're marketed, and our attention is divided. So let's dive into one of the craziest stories behind an independent film ever made. So My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a 2002 romantic comedy film directed by Joel Zwick. It was written, as we've mentioned, by Nia Vardalos. It was produced by Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman. It stars Nia as Tula Portacalos, John Corbett as Ian Miller, Lainey Kazan as her mother Maria, Michael Constantine as Gus Lewis, Mandalore as Nick, Andrea Martin as Aunt Voula, and many, many more, including Joey Fatone of NSYNC as Angelo.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's pretty funny.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, he's good. It premiered on February 22, 2002, had a limited release on April 19, 2002, and platformed wide beginning August 2, 2002. This had a very interesting release schedule that we'll get into. It was distributed by IFC Films, produced by HBO Gold Circle Films and playtone. And the IMDb logline reads, A young Greek woman falls in love with a non Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity. Pretty good sources for today's episode include, but are not limited, Instant Nia Vardalos 2013 book, her 2025 interview on the Don't Kill the Messenger podcast with Kevin Goetz, her 2014 interview as part of the dialogue series, the Ringer's great coverage of the release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and many, many more articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film. All right, Lizzie, because it's My Big Fat Greek Wedding, we have to start with the fact that every word comes from a Greek word. The word cinema comes from the French cinema, which is a shortening of cinema toggraphe, coined by the Lumiere brothers to describe a device which projected a series of photographs in rapid succession so as to produce the illusion of movement. And you'd say, but that's not Greek. Of course it is. It all goes back to the Greek kinema, meaning movement, grafine, meaning to write, draw, or record. And it's a bit ironic. That would be a moment in Nia Vardalos life that she perhaps hoped to forget, that would be recorded forever in cinema history. It's the early 1980s, and Nia is 20 years old when her father turns to her and says, you better get married soon because you're starting to look old.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Sorry, 20.

[Chris Winterbauer]

20 years old.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She told her mom, who told her dad to apologize. And he doesn't. He just says, hey, kid, someday you'll laugh about it. And one day she would. She'd also get married. But let's rewind for a moment. So Nia was born Eugenia Antonia Vardalos in September of 1962 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father's name was Constantine, but everyone called him Gus. He immigrated from Greece and eventually moved to Winnipeg, where he met his future wife, a Greek Canadian named Doreen. And yes, Lizzie, he did believe in the healing powers of Windex after seemingly cured a wart one time.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She had three siblings and 27 first cousins. And her family was very big and very funny. But to be clear, it wasn't exactly the family we'd see on screen years later. Here's her. In our family, everyone is funny. That's the way you got attention. But we were never rude because preserving the family was more important than being funny. We were all very, very supportive of each other. And growing up in that comfort zone, that bubble gave me an inordinate amount of confidence later. So Nia grew up watching a few Very funny women in particular. Gilda Radner on snl, Andrea Martin on Second City tv, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and Monty Python. But she wanted to be a serious actor, and she had chops. She earned a scholarship from the Manitoba Theatre Company, which gave her the opportunity to attend Ryerson University in Toronto. But, Lizzie, that would mean moving to another province, from Manitoba to Ontario. What do you think? Her dad said, absolutely not. Why you do this to me? Yeah, I started crying. And she said, but, dad, this is such a prestigious program. They only chose 27 people out of thousands. And he says, no. And she says, but I'm going to be an actor. And he says, no. And so she finally says, but, dad, I'm the only Greek they accepted. At which point he swelled with pride and started telling people, my daughter was the only Greek accepted into this program. So she moves to Toronto. She studies Shakespeare and trains to be a classical actress. She graduates, and that protective familial bubble bursts. She gets a whole lot of, you're just not what we're looking for, and a fair share of, you're too fat. She said she worked enough bad dinner theater for several lifetimes. And everything changed when she went to an improv show at Second City in Toronto. She said, I saw people become anyone or anything they wanted to be, not held down by physicality. So Nia starts taking classes at Second City. The cast is full, so she works a job at the box office. And every night that there's a show, she takes tickets, then takes the phone off the hook and goes and watches the show. And one night, one of the cast members gets sick and is rushed to the hospital. The stage manager runs to the box office and says, nia, call an understudy. And she does, while secretly praying that they don't answer the phone. They don't. So she goes to the stage manager says, they didn't pick up, but I can do it. And the stage manager says, okay. And she did it. And the next day, the producers made her a cast member.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In the early 90s, she moves to the U.S. she starts working for Second City in Chicago, where My Big Fat Creek wedding will end up being set. And it's there that she meets fellow actor Ian Gomez, who Lizzie, you may recognize in this film as Mike, Ian Miller's friend that we meet, you know, early on. One of his fellow teachers.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, he's in a ton of stuff, too. Wasn't he on, like, the Drew Carey show forever? He was, yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes. He's a prolific character actor. He's done a lot of television work. He is handsome, talented, funny, Jewish, Puerto Rican, definitely not Greek. So her family at first didn't want to meet him. Eventually they came around because he was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, which they were married in in 1993. They then moved to LA. They start to work in TV and movies. And as you mentioned, Lizzy, Ian is the one who finds steady work. The Drew Carey Show, Felicity and I think this is really important. This is where somebody like Ian, I think has an advantage in that he has a very specific look, right? He's already bald. He's got kind of a cherubic face. He's very funny. So he looks different than a lot of other folks. But he very obviously slots into a character type, right? The funny male friend. We know what he is and he starts working very quickly. Whereas NIA's opportunities were far more fleeting,

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[Lizzie Bassett]

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[Chris Winterbauer]

So casting agents were constantly telling her she was either too old or not old enough, too ethnic or not ethnic enough. And perhaps a part of her wished she were blonde and slim. But as she later said, said on the same day that she was dropped by her agent because he couldn't get her work because she didn't look like anybody else in la. Quote, my blonde, slim friend was also dumped by her agent who said to her, I can't get you work because you look like everybody else in la.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I may have told this story before on the podcast, but the way that, and, God, I hope this is different now, but the way that women who are trying to enter the professional acting field are treated was shocking to me as someone who was going to college to try and be a professional actor. But we had a professional actress, a very famous person who was a graduate of our program, come to the school and in our senior year and do, like a class, a seminar for all of the senior acting students. And part of it was we would, like, do a monologue. And then afterwards she would tell us in her professional opinion, you know, like, the types of parts we should be looking for, essentially upon graduation. And everybody got up there and, you know, there's obviously a lot of, like, very beautiful ingenue types in my class. I was not one of them. I also, you know, maybe looked a little older than I was. Didn't look sort of like a typical ingenue at all. And after I did my monologue, she looked at me and she said, yeah, look, the reality is you're just not gonna work until you're 40. So just be prepared for that. And then, you know, you'll probably start to come into your own a little bit then. And I'll never forget it again. This was a very famous person.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Just bleep the name. It's boom. Love it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Blacklisted.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, look, she probably wasn't wrong. Like, in all honesty, she was probably trying to be kind. But it was shocking to hear that and to basically be told, yeah, it doesn't really matter how good you are. Like, you just don't look like what I could see fitting into any particular category. You know, basically, you're not young enough, you're not old enough, you're not pretty enough, you're Also not quite ugly enough. So we just don't know what to do with you until you're old.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I mean, you and Nia. I think she was running into the same problem. I also think she also, to me, looked a little more when she was young. A little more mature is the way I would describe it, and I think a great way. But it's again, it's. If you don't fit a preconceived type, that's the thing. The failure of imagination will shock you, as it did there for you, Lizzie. Now you will clearly start. You'll transition from podcasting into acting in only three years. So I gotta take advantage of it while I can.

[Lizzie Bassett]

My dream.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes. But, you know, the other thing that was working against Nia is that agents seemed to be confused by her Greek heritage as well. So it was not just the fact that she didn't fit into a conventional type, just holistically. It was also, well, what minority are you on top of it?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, that was not a problem I had. But, yes, definitely.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Right. There was one agent who had claimed to have handed out her headshots left and right to no success, who once asked her, again, according to Nia, what are you Latina? And I said, no, I'm Greek. And she said, well, that's the problem. We're going to change the spelling of the last part of your name from OS to EZ and send you out as Hispanic. And Nia said, I don't think I want to do that. And the agent said, I don't want to represent you, and dropped her.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. By the way, this continued happening. I'll keep this brief as well, but one of my very good friends is ethnically very ambiguous, though. She's of Japanese, Italian, and German descent. And there was a long period of time where her agents kept sending her Native American parts, and she finally just had to be like, guys, I can't do this. I understand that. I look because she does. She looks like she could be Native American. Absolutely. But to her eternal credit, she started turning them down and just said, this is like, I can't. I can't do it. And she lost a lot of parts.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, Hollywood was not letting Nia transcend her physicality in the way that Second City had. But there also weren't a lot of Greek roles available for her, so she decided to write one. So she sat down at her kitchen table and she wrote out all the family stories that she'd been telling for years. And it sounds like around this time, she started taking these Stories on stage at open mics, because her friend, another writer in la, told her, hey, don't do that. Don't tell your idea out in la, land of stealers and liars and thieves. That's the official slogan. You should register it. So she calls up the Library of Congress, and they're saying, you can't register ideas, but you could write a screenplay and register that. Now, she'd written sketches for Second City, but she'd never written a screenplay, which is a blessing in disguise, because she later said if she knew how hard it was or the chances of it getting sold, she never would have written it. But she borrows a friend's laptop, which has a copy of Final Draft, which is the industry standard screenwriting software, and it just basically makes sure that you're formatting everything properly. And she gets to work. She doesn't go out. She barely sleeps. Three weeks later, she has the first vomit draft, we'll call it Of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Sometimes when she tells the story, it's two weeks, sometimes it's six weeks. No matter which version or how long it took, she says she hated it. She put it in a drawer. She didn't look at it for months. And when she finally did, she realizes, oh, my God, there's way too much exposition. She decides to read a bunch of old film scripts, learn about scene craft. She does a rewrite, and she says, okay, this thing is ready. And she sends it to her managers as well as various studios with a very modest goal. I'd say she doesn't want to be the lead at this point. Or perhaps she does want to be the lead, but her goal is maybe they'll make it and maybe I could play one of the bridesmaids. Oh. I mean, I'm thinking, like, is she thinking maybe Cousin Nikki would be a reach? You know what I mean, at this point?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So then she waits to hear back. The studios send back their copies unopened. Now, that's not really a negative reflection on the studios. If you send an unsolicited script to a studio, they have to send it back unopened to prove that they did not read your script, because there is always a chance they could be working on something similar. And then later on, there could be an issue with Chain of Title, and there could be exposure to legal liability in some way.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. There's also, like, safety risk with, you know, opening. I worked at the front desk of a major management production company, and we were not allowed to open that stuff either.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. So after three Months. She does work up the courage to ask her managers, who theoretically should be reading her script.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Indeed, yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

About it. Now, things were not great with her managers. She hadn't booked any of the auditions that they'd lined up for her and they had not been able to convince an agent to took her on. She said, I knew I was a disappointment to them because they told me. She went in and her manager grabbed the script from the floor behind her desk, pushed it across the table and said, you're an actress. Whoever told you you could write a screenplay? So Nia fired them. Whoa. Yeah. The studios, the agents, the managers, they were all one big dead end. The only person who seemed to believe in this idea was Nia. So she said, what if I made it into a show starring the one person who believes in this idea? What if I make it into a one woman show? She was inspired to write something like Julia Sweeney's God Said Ha or Jeff Garland's I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. And it does seem like she had one important connection that she could leverage, which is the HBO Workspace. So according to some coverage from 1998, the HBO workspace was a 67 seat theater in Hollywood that was designed to provide young comics a place to hone their material. Now, this was not done entirely out of the goodness of HBO's heart, right. The space is provided free of charge, but the real kicker is that at the end, HBO execs theoretically could come down and watch it. And then if there's something good there, right, they have the opportunity to pounce on this material without any competing bids from anywhere else. So she said that HBO Workspace knew her work through Second City, so she had some sort of in there. She gets to do it four times in front of an audience. She gets notes, feedback, a chance to improve. And this is so valuable. I mean, even something like a table read, hearing your dialogue, and then learning where the laughs are and where to time things, It's a really invaluable experience. And obviously though, what she's really building toward is this opportunity to run it for these HBO executives. But she says that there was a regime change at HBO while she's workshopping it, and none of the executives show up on the night of her big presentation. So it ends up being great learning experience, not going anywhere there. She also does an early run version at the Acme Theater and eventually she and Ian Gomez decide to screw it. Let's scrape together a bunch of money. Rent the Hudson, which is a 99 seat theater in LA. And she started performing the show once a week for $10 a ticket. And at first, the only people that are coming are the only people that come to all of our shows when we get started in la.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Her friends.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, her friends from Second City. Exactly. But then she did something really smart. Lizzie, where do you think she could go to start finding an audience for this show, which is my big fat grand Greek wedding?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Greek restaurants around Los Angeles, basically.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She starts handing out flyers at Greek churches and community groups, and all of a sudden, the audience grows until one fateful day, a famous face appears in the crowd. Former Golden Girl Rue McClanahan. Oh, her assistant comes up, Tanya. And says Rue loved the show and she'd be honored to have you over for dinner. She's thinking, this is it. This is the big break I've been waiting for. The assistant says, Rue wants to throw a Greek dinner. She asks for suggestions of what groceries to buy. The night of the dinner party arrives. Mia and Ian Gomez show up at Rue's house, and Rue's assistant directs them to the kitchen. She'd been invited to cook Greek food. Lizzie's face is, no. Yeah. She's so surprised. And she's too polite and probably terrified to say no. So she and her husband cooked dinner for Rue and her friends. And as they're leaving, Rue says, wait. And Nia thinks, oh, finally she's gonna say something about this being some sort of misunderstanding. And then Rue says, can you give Estelle Getty a ride home? Oh, my God. Yeah. It's a heartbreaking dead end. But there's good news, which is that Rue aside, the show is doing well. The show's doing very well. In fact, she was starting to get approached by production companies that wanted to turn it into a movie, but it wouldn't be her movie. She said, the first thing that they tell me is that, no, they didn't want to read my screenplay. They just wanted to buy my story and have a real writer write the script. They also didn't want her to act. They didn't even want to keep her on as a bridesmaid, let alone the bride.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Guys, read it. It'll take you two hours. Somebody just read it, Lizzie.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They didn't even want to keep it Greek. They said, let's do it Hispanic with Jennifer Lopez. Okay, let's do it Italian with Marisa Tomei. She said it was really hard to say. No one production company reportedly went as far as offering her $50,000 for the rights. If you are a struggling artist in

[Lizzie Bassett]

LA, yeah, it's a lot.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In 2002, turning on $50,000 would be tough. But she was in a meeting at one of these production companies when the, quote, writer in the room pitched her some openings for their version of the movie. And she said, I think I've seen that before. And he said, yeah, it worked in. And then he listed three films. And that's when she realized she had to do it herself. She also said there was a very funny moment there where she said, I'm gonna do it myself. And they said, you've never written anything. And then she looked at the writer and says, have you written anything? And he said, I've assisted on many scripts and had not written anything.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Bye. But she realized that she has to do it herself. Otherw they're going to strip the authenticity away. In the meantime, she decides that she needs to try to expand the show's audience to earn an income from it. So she spends $500 on an ad in the LA Times. It's 2 inches by 2 inches. And it catches the eye of another actress of Greek descent, Lizzie Enter. We talked about her before the show started.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Rita Wilson.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Enter. Rita Wilson.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Aw.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Born Margarita Ibrahimoff. I believe her Greek heritage is on her mother's side. Wow. She got her start in TV back in 1972 with a guest appearance on the Brady Bunch. She was only 16 years old, and in 1981, she met who on the set of Bosom Buddies.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Tom Hanks.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Thomas the Tank Engine Hanks.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Better known as the father of Chet Hanks.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes. And Rita Wilson as his mother.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She broke out with 1985's Volunteers, which she co starred in with Hanks. They married in 1988. They had two children, Chet in 1990 and Truman in 1995. She continued to work, but generally speaking, she'd been taking fewer acting roles to focus on raising her kids, and she had not yet produced any movies.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I just want to say briefly, Chet Hanks. Pretty funny and running Point. Anyway, continue.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Chet Hanks having quite the comeback from White Boy Summer. Gotta say, I know he's very charming.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He is very charming. He's pulling it off.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Did you listen to him on the Z Way interview that he did?

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, I haven't.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She gets him. Like, she gets him with some good. And he's pretty good. Like, he takes it well.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I've come around. All right, let me play you this clip of Rita Wilson on how she discovered My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

[Rita Wilson]

It really was because I go to see a lot of off Broadway theater when I'm in New York. And many years ago, I thought, why am I seeing so much theater in New York and not really focusing on the theater in Los Angeles? Louisiana's got great theater too. So I opened up the newspaper one day and there was this little tiny ad about that big that said, neil Vardalis is my big fat Greek Wedding. And I just thought, being of Greek heritage, that is a very funny title. I will go see this play. And it was at a 99 seat theater. I took my mom, who was alive at the time, and my sister and my nieces, and we saw it. And I thought it was literally one of the funniest things I'd ever, ever seen. It was just truthful about families and particularly about Greek culture. So I asked to meet Nia at the playwright after the play was done, and she came out and I said, nia, this would make an amazing movie. And she said, I have a script.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So I don't know if you caught the end there, Lizzie, but yeah, she said, I have a script, right When Rita Wilson came up to her.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And is Rita Wilson going to be the only person who says, I can

[Chris Winterbauer]

read more on that in a second. Now, Nia knew that Rita Wilson was coming because the box office phone number on that newspaper ad, that was Nia's home phone number. Oh, no. And the box office attendant answering the calls, that was Nia doing voices. So when Wilson told her it should be a movie, Nia says she handed her the screenplay so fast her hair flew back. And the next day, Nia got another call at the home box office we'll call it. Wilson was sending some more family to check out the show. Her father, her brother, her son, and Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks. Whoa.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That would be so crazy.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The show starts and no one's looking at Nia on stage. They are all looking at Tom sitting in this roped off section. She hits the first punchline and Tom Hanks laughs loud and hard before a scomp like, ha ha, like laugh. A couple days later, she gets a letter from Hanks. And I'd like to read part of it. I'll paraphrase. Dear Nia, I know you. You are one of those Greek girls who come into the lives of men like me. Men who are not Greek, non Greek men. We see you, then we work up the courage to speak to you. Then we fall in love with you and ask you to marry us. Then you do in one of those big fat Greek weddings where you walk around a table three times, and then us non Greek men live happy forever. P.S. i look Greek. Nia would apparently call her mother every few weeks and read the letter. And her mother would cry.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Aww.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She says in her book she would have been happy if the story ended there. But it doesn't because there was another party interested in the script. And he claims that he was in the audience the same night as Tom Hanks. And that's director Jim Milio. Now, Nia had recently acted in a 1997 film called Men Seeking Women, which I have never seen and got kind of panned with Will Ferrell.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, I've heard of that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Directed by Jim Milio. Now, Milio claims that when Nia met up with Wilson after the show, that that first night she actually introduced him as the director attached to her script. Now, she denies saying this, but this is where things get a little tricky. Here's what we know. Around this time, Rita Wilson told Nia to do the show as a full theater run with Rita Wilson producing it. So Rita Wilson put her name on it, they rented a bigger theater, and she started doing the show five nights a week.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In an interview from early 1997, Nia says that she gave Jim Milio the second draft of the script and that she then didn't hear from him for weeks, assumed he hated, but then found out his production company, mph, needed time to drop a budget so they could make an official offer. Here's her quote. I had an option agreement with them, meaning Jim Miyo, mph. Right now, a bigger company is trying to buy it from the smaller company, meaning Jim Milio's company as the smaller company are my friends. I don't want them to get shafted. We're negotiating, trying to find a solution favorable to everybody. I'm hopeful we'll have an agreement shortly and shoot it sometime this year. Here's my best guess as to what happened. I'm just putting some pieces together. These are my assumptions. At some point, Nia shared the script with Milio because he was perhaps the one feature director she knew, or at least knew well, since they'd worked together. He optioned it because I'm sure he thought it was good but didn't buy it. Then Wilson and Hanks get interested. The bigger company she mentioned moments ago was probably Playtone, which is Tom Hanks production company that he'd formed with producer Gary Getz, which. Lizzie, do you remember what the play tone name is from Playtone Records?

[Lizzie Bassett]

That thing you do?

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's right. My guess is that Nia realized the likelihood of the movie getting made with Hanks was a lot higher than getting made with Milio. Milio said that he and Vardalos had a number of heated exchanges because he felt that he had a business stake to protect. She felt that he was causing her to miss the opportunity of a lifetime to work with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. So eventually MPH sells the rights, basically the option for $200,000, co executive producer credits and 3% of the film's profits. So I'm guessing they had demonstrably done some amount of work on either the script or shopping it around because I don't know how they would have gotten that, you know, without that. But we can't know.

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[Chris Winterbauer]

Let's go back to the phone call with Hanks. He calls Nia up. He's read the script. He says, I want to make your movie. And Nia decides to take a shot. She figures none of the other big Greek actresses she knows are available. They're either busy or pregnant. Jennifer Aniston is shooting Friends. Melina Kanaka Raedes is pregnant. Tina Fey's on snl, but she hasn't broken out yet. Angie Harmon is best known for Law and Order. Maria Menounos isn't going to get going until the early 2000s.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So she asks Tom Hanks if she can play the lead. There's a tiny pause, and Hanks says, yeah, of course. Now, Hanks, for his part, says he never hesitated. She's the one who says there was a tiny pause.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And then I bet there was a tiny pause.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Either way, she says she was shocked. And then she waited for 18 months. Because what she didn't know is that when Hanks and Wilson shopped the project to several studios, the feedback was basically, love the script. Lose the girl.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, no.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now, could Tom Hanks really take the role from her? She'd written the script. It was her life. But Playtone still had a card to play Lizzie. HBO's theatrical movie division had already passed on the script when Gary Goetzman calls up HBO exec Chris Albrecht. And according to Albrecht, I really want to do this. If I can get half of the $5 million budget, will you put up the rest? Albrecht hadn't read the script, but he said yes. Maybe because HBO owed Tom Hanks. He had done the miniseries from the Earth to Moon with them. It's a docudrama about the Apollo Program. Every episode features Tom Hanks. And what big World War II show would Tom Hanks develop? Put his name on Bring to Life.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Band of Brothers.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Band of Brothers, which was given immense credibility by him and Steven Spielberg, given that they had just done Saving Private Ryan.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So eventually, Gold Circle Films, which is founded by Norman Waite Jr. One of the co founders of Gateway Computer, puts up the initial two and a half million dollars, and HBO puts in the matching two and a half million dollars. And by August of 2000, Variety's reporting that Playtone is producing and Joel Zwick is going to direct. Now, Joel Zwick was an established TV director with a Tom Hanks connection. Which television show did he direct several episodes of back in the early 80s? Lizzie, Buzz and But Bosom Buddies. Now Zwick's reaching out to Hanks. He's trying to transition into indie films. He sent Tom a script, and Tom says, hey, what do you want to do with this? And he's like, well, I want to direct it. I want to do indie films. And Tom says, well, I've got a script I want you to direct. And he sent him My Big Fat Creek Wedding. And Joel Zwick said, I would have directed the phone book if he had asked me to, but the script still needed work. About a year before filming begins, they do a table read, and Nia says it is a rude awakening hearing it read out loud. She takes three months to revise it, and then she takes it to the people who had inspired it, and she reveals it to her parents. She didn't want to offend them, but she says, you know, people are gonna think this is real. A documentary of her life. And I'd like to play you a clip of Nia talking about explaining to her father the character of Gus in the film. Before we shot the movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I sent it to my parents just to make sure that they were okay with it, because I wanted to make

[Chris Winterbauer]

sure that I wasn't gonna offend them. People are gonna think it's a documentary.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And, you know, I said to my dad, you know, I'm naming the main character Gus. People are going to think it's you.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And he went, but I know it's not me.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And I said, but you do actually change every word into a Greek word. And he went, every word is a Greek word. And I was like, okay, so he's fine.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He's fine with it. Now, the low budget comes with some perks. HBO and Gold Circle have no input on the script or casting. But it also comes with some caveats. Specifically, there is a provision in Nia's contract that she can be fired and replaced within the first four days of shooting if they are unhappy with dailies.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Jesus.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Let's talk about the rest of the cast and get back to that. Okay, who from Moonstruck could have maybe been in this movie?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Danny Aiello.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Not Danny Aiello.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Sorry. Olympia Dukakis.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Olympia Dukakis. Danny Aiello, too. Could have been great.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He totally could have been in this movie. Olympia Dukakis. I actually, when this movie started, I was like, is she in this?

[Chris Winterbauer]

She's not. But Nia talked about wanting her to play the mother.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And. And she also wanted Rita Wilson to play cousin Nikki.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, fun.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now, Wilson took a role in a play called Dinner with Friends, which left Nikki to Australian Greek actress Gia Caridas, who's very funny, and she really nails the role. Now, they did try to find as many Greek actors as possible, and a lot of the secondary roles and many of the extras are local Greek actors. But they actually found Nia's father Gus, right in their backyard. Michael Constantine was in his early 70s and happened to be visiting his sister in LA. He's the son of Greek immigrants, and he'd been acting in TV and movies for 40 years. He was an Emmy winner for his role in the sitcom Room 222, which ran from 1969 to 1974. Created by James L. Brooks. He plays a high school principal. He had a wide swath of credits. I mean, the Hustler with Paul Newman. He was in Mel Stewart's if it's Tuesday, this Must be Belgium, which we just talked about on Willy Wonka. And he'd just been in the Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin thriller the Juror, which has my favorite tagline I have seen in forever, which is, there is no defense. That's it. That's the whole Dagline. Now, he'd actually played very few Greek characters throughout his career. He played Russians and Frenchmen and Italians and Germans and, quote, even an Okinawan. And maybe that's why Constantine said he wanted to read the script before auditioning. He was leery. He didn't know who Nia was. And he said that he was anxious about somebody writing about Greeks. But he sits down and reads the script, and he said, yes, this person obviously knows Greeks, end quote.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, well. Well, there was not a lot of content featuring Greek people, if any. Like, it actually is pretty crazy. And anything that could have potentially been played by Greek people, whether it's, you know, Alexander or Troy, I know that's after. But, like, they're not played by Greek people.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. I just think be it like he said, like, Russia, Eastern Europe, Greece, Italy, the Balkans, Armenia, like.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's all. They're all just like, ah, yeah, just throw them in there. We won't know. And, you know, I will say, for most of my life, I did not notice. And so, you know, they rely on the lack of education of Americans, on the diversity of people beyond the Americas. So Constantine says he auditioned three times before getting an offer. But Zwick says Michael Constantine walked in for a reading and he didn't say three words, and he was cast. Now, Nia backs this up. She says Tom slapped the table and said, we're done. After Michael left the room. I do think. I think Tom Hanks loves slapping tables. I just have this idea, that's right. It's a deal. We're done. Like, I would love to work with Tom Hanks. I think it'd be an absolute dream.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He's popped up in a couple of movies and things that we've talked about, and he's just never sounded not delightful. There's never been a thing that's been wrong with him.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But also, I've read very smart Very thoughtful, a real student of history. Very interesting man. Now, my guess is that Constantine read for the casting directors first. I'm guessing he did audition three times, but by the time he hit the producers and the director, they realized, oh, okay, this is our guy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Either way, Constantine turned the role down. The casting director offered him the part, told him the pay, and said, take it or leave it. Clearly, she wasn't Greek. Constantine said, where's the negotiation? You can't say take it or leave it to a Greek. According to Konstantin, a producer then stepped in and quote, then we did a true negotiation. In the business, that's standard operating procedure. A week later, I was playing the role, end quote. For all I know, it was the exact same amount of pay. He just needed to have the negotiation in place. But I do think it is a sign of respect, and especially for somebody who's been in the business for 40 years, take it or leave.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's a little rough.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's a little tough. Now, I also, though, understand it from the casting director's perspective. They're probably saying, I have a mandate to keep my budget very low, so. But sometimes the Kabuki theater can be important to the folks involved.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

A couple more fun casting notes. So Nia wrote the role of Aunt Voula for Andrea Martin because she'd grown up watching her on sctv. Now, Martin is Armenian.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

She is one of the non Greek cast members. She'd been in TV and movies for 30 years. She'd also won a Tony for her Broadway debut. In My Favorite Year, Joey Fatone filmed his scenes at the same time as he was recording the album Celebrity with nsync.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, he's definitely a bit of a stunt casting in this movie. Also, I believe he is of Italian descent. He's also not Greek. One quick fun story I heard separately years ago, but I looked up again about Fatone. Cause he seems like a cool guy and he doesn't get a ton to do in this movie. So before fellow NSYNC member Lance Bass came out, he was like, at his house. And he said, quote, my boyfriend at the time, my very, very first boyfriend, was sitting on my lap. And at 3am, Fatone wakes up looking for Bass, and he, like, comes into the room and Bass's boyfriend is straddling him. And Bass is like, surprise. And Fatone's like, oh, please, I don't care. And then he just goes back to bed and didn't tell anybody until Bass came out in 2006. Which, that was a very nice Story.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, that's nice.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. Slowly he's like, oh, please. What do you think I give a shit? Now, there's one more crucial Greek part that went to a non Greek actor, Lizzie. Who?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Lainey Kazan.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Lainey Kazan as Tula's mother, Maria. I did not know this. Do you know where Lainey Kazan got her start?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, I did at one point, but no, I can't remember.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was on Broadway. And she was the understudy to a singer and actress that we talk about a lot on this show.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Barbara.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's right. Barbra Streisand. So she had famously or infamously been Babs understudy and funny girl.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, that makes sense.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And she didn't go on for 18 months because Babs refused to miss a show, no matter what. It's my role. I'm gonna do it every night. Finally, at some point, Babs couldn't do it, and so Laney got the chance to do it. And people loved her. You know, she was a real force. I think she did the show, you know, a number of times.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Also, have you seen pictures of a young Lainey Kazan in the 60s? Because holy smoke show.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Have you seen her Playboy spread from the early 70s? Because holy smoke show. Nope.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Looking at.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. So Lanny Kazan, you know, she'd worked with Francis Ford Coppola when she was at Hofstra. She'd been in Playboy. She headlined yes, Lizzie's Face. She'd headlined Playboy jazz clubs. She has a later quote where she says, no man I've ever met has not tried to sleep with me. I believe was what I saw. She had guest starred on the Dean Martin show dozens of times. I mean, she is like the consummate stage jazz triple threat performer. But she was probably at this time, Lizzie, best known in the 90s for her recurring role as Aunt Frieda on the Nanny, the Fran Drescher sitcom. Yeah. Are you still looking at her Playboy spread?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah, sorry. There's a picture of her boobs. I'll stop looking now.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. Lizzy, come on. Wildly inappropriate. Now they're four days out from production. They are missing one key player. Lizzie. What role have we not talked about yet?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Ian Miller.

[Chris Winterbauer]

There's a million of these guys, right? The white boy, the white bread, the milk bread.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It's a white boy, Summer.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's a white boy, summer. The obvious choice would seem to be Nia's real life husband, Ian Gomez. Right. But she didn't want to cast him in the role. She says you can play Ian's friend Mike, her Dream choice was John Corbett.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Was he already playing Aiden?

[Chris Winterbauer]

He was playing Aiden, yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Okay. Yeah. I mean, listen, it makes a lot of sense.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He wasn't available. He was actually shooting Serendipity now. He'd broken out with the role of Chris Stevens in Northern Exposure. And as you mentioned, Lizzie, he'd taken on the role of Aiden in Sex of the City. Kind of the good guy to Kris. Noth's big bad guy.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. Although he ends up being a drip anyway.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But, yes, yes, I know they don't love the way they wrote him in the end, but I do think Corbitt has a very charming, easygoing disposition, at least on screen. That really lends itself well to this character who ultimately is just a good partner to her, you know, throughout the movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, and also, he's obviously very attractive,

[Chris Winterbauer]

but they feel like a good match.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. And he looks like a real person. Like, he's.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He does look like a real person.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He is a leading man. Absolutely. He's very attractive. He's very charming. But he doesn't look like someone that you wouldn't see, you know, at your table at the restaurant.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. I mean, would he be the most handsome person at the table at the restaurant? Probably. But he totally fits in this world. He got those slutty little glasses when he's teaching his class, and he's very charming. And I think his height actually works really well opposite her family in a lot of ways.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. He's super tall.

[Chris Winterbauer]

There's a fun humor to. When they, like, all rush him and he's just this super tall Statue of Liberty white guy being impressed by all these Greeks.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I will say, to quote Bridget Jones, I do think he should rethink the length of his sideburns, but that is my only critique.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, let's talk about the hair for a second. So Nia and the team had spent six months combing lists of actors and could not find the right guy. They couldn't find their John Corbett, who wasn't John Corbett. She says that there was, quote, a bit of a conflict in that there was a guy that some of the producers wanted, and I just didn't want him. I can't remember his name. Nia, you are classy for not sharing, but there is no way you do not remember his name. You will remember that name. That'll be the last name you say before you die. Now, I do wonder if at any point Lionsgate, the distributor, or, you know, Gold Circle, said, why doesn't Tom play the role? I'm guessing he was Busy and also think he would overwhelm the movie. The movie would have to be.

[Lizzie Bassett]

He's too old as well.

[Chris Winterbauer]

He was probably too old. And the movie would have to be about him.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

You know what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense. So they go to Toronto, where they're shooting the movie. And Nia heads to a bar with producer Gary Getzman. And she looks across the room, and there's John Corbett, because that's where he's been shooting. He hadn't been available, but their shoot dates had recently been moved back two weeks. So they sidle over to the bar. Now, John does not know who they are. Right. They know who he is.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Right.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And they eavesdrop on his conversation with the bartender. This is according to Nia, so take it with a grain of salt. But Nia claims that the bartender asks Corbett, what are you going to do after you wrap your movie? And he's, I don't know. But I just read this script in my room called My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and I want to be in it. At which point Gary says, hello, sir, My name is Gary Getzman. I'm a producer. And he offers him the role. And Corbin says, are you telling me if I shake your hand right now I have this role? And he says, yeah. So he did. With one caveat. He had to keep his long hair, which he'd grown out in part for his role in Serendipity, a musician with long hair. So that was a stipulation of the My Big Fat Greek Wedding production, was that he had to keep the long hair. I do think the hair creates a great opportunity for it. Subtly introduces conflict and also humor. So Constantine Gus's disapproval of him, I think, is, like, subtly reinforced. You know, who is this guy? He's got long hair. He's coming into my house. Yeah, it makes him a little more interesting. Cause he is very like. His whole joke is, I was boring until I met you. Right. But you can tell he doesn't want to be boring, which I like. And also then the joke of Andrea Martin, which we'll get to. Running her hands through his hair is so funny. And then also when he gets baptized and the hair is all in his face is very funny as well.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

So shooting kicks off in Toronto in May of 2001. Different sources say 21 shooting days to 30 shooting days, which, by the way, is a big difference. 21 would be crazy fast. That's how many days, basically, I had on my first feature. And just from experience, I can say it's crazy fast.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's what, like four weeks?

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, that's four weeks almost exactly. With a Saturday and then 30 feels more doable to me. That feels probably more accurate. They shoot most of the movie in Toronto. The bulk of the Chicago footage is just stock photography of the city they built. The interior of Dancing Zorbas, it's built not on a soundstage. It's built inside a supermarket. And of course, Lizzie, Nia is terrified that they're going to replace her, but she just has to make it for four days. So one of the first scenes they shoot is when Tula asks her dad if she can attend night school, and he says no, and she cries. And she said, that was easy. I just imagined I was getting fired from the movie. And she started crying. But four days come and go, no word. She's safe. And then her confidence takes a hit when she hears an extra on set ask another, what's this movie about? And the extra explains the plot and then points to Nia saying she's the romantic lead. And the first extra was like, that's her end quote. But they had a lot of supporters. The local Greek restaurants rallied around the movie. They're like, this is our movie. And they started sending food to set. And she had some great performers, like Andrea Martin, whose SCTV background came in handy when she forgot her line and improvised Let me touch your hair and grabbed his hair. One of my favorite parts of the. They shot the opening scene of the movie last. Tula and Gus driving to the restaurant. And Nia and Constantine felt genuinely sad that the experience was coming to an end.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Aww.

[Chris Winterbauer]

But little did they know the end was just the beginning. Now, in most instances, Lizzie, the writer is not invited to editorial, speaking from experience. But Nia sat in on editing, and she says every once in a while she'd say, could you just go to a close up on me? And she said they did. And she said, quote, they treated me like gold and I know it will never happen again again. They trimmed some scenes. They considered ending the movie with the wedding instead of the jump forward in time to them living next to her parents. They were not prepared, though, for the test screening. Reactions. Lizzie, how do you think people reacted to my Big Fat Creek wedding in their test screenings?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Extremely well.

[Chris Winterbauer]

People loved this movie.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

As of last year, she was still carrying around a top line sheet from one of the first test screenings at AMC. They scored a 94, which means 94% of the audience ranked it in the top two categories, meaning they definitely recommend it to somebody. And I believe 60 plus percent of the audience gave it an excellent, which is the highest rating they can. It's an extremely high score for a movie that people were worried was too specific to resonate with general audiences, but it didn't seem to matter. Everybody kept saying, we don't know how to market this. It's a very specific story. There are no big name actors. And then their original distributor, Lionsgate dropped out. She'd written a great script, found a great producer, made a great movie, audiences loved it and it didn't seem to matter. In the end, they turned to a very new kid on the block, IFC Films, which had just been formed and was trying to get into the indie film market. And it turns out IFC had exactly the man they needed for the moment.

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[Chris Winterbauer]

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Yes.

[Chris Winterbauer]

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[Chris Winterbauer]

Now we discussed Bob Bernie, distributor maestro, a bit in our episode on Memento Lizzie. Yeah, he was instrumental in getting that movie distributed. When he first screened My Big Fat Creek Wedding, a woman apparently fell out of her seat because she was laughing so hard and broke her hip.

[Lizzie Bassett]

She didn't need that hip.

[Chris Winterbauer]

They had to pause the movie so she could get medical attention. And everybody stayed. He knew they had a hit. He knew that there was demand. But he also knew that they couldn't compete with the bigger movies at the box office, like Spider Man. So they decided not to. So 50 of the Vardalos family members fly out for the premiere in February. They stay at the same hotel. And to Nia's relief, they laughed when they watched the movie. Because her biggest concern was she didn't want them to think, if you remember our quote from the beginning, we're not mean to each other. She wants to make sure they're not thinking that she's being mean to them. They definitely don't think that. And it seems like this family vibe is the vibe that the distribution team very smartly tried to recreate in rolling out this movie. So they start with screenings at Greek Orthodox churches. Then they move on to cities with big Greek populations, always making sure that they can sell it out, keeping it small, special, limited. They do promotional screenings, not director driven interviews or reviews. They know that the audience is going to sell the movie for them if they can just get them in the theater. Here's a quote from Bob. We would get church groups or Greek groups to band together and buy out a first show. Not only did that help the actual initial grosses of the film, but we had instant ambassadors for the film coming out of the screening. They also had some unexpected help. Gary Getzman, who'd worked as a composer and music producer, I believe he co wrote some of the music in that Thing youg Do Lizzie, oh had helped put together this quote, dog and pony show around America. He got Nia on local radio. They handed out T shirts, Frisbees. They made a deal with Windex to donate money to a Greek foundation in Chicago. So In April of 2002, they do a limited release in 108 theaters. Chicago, Dallas, Detroit. Cities with big Greek populations. It makes $600,000 its first weekend. And the reviews, Lizzie, are pretty mixed. So the New York Times praised Nia's writing and acting. They said she was very natural, but criticized Zwick's pedestrian direction and the performances of both Kazan and Constantine. They pointed out exactly what you did is that they felt that a lot of the characters were too broad for the material. The LA Times said that it would, quote, make passable television eventually. But I think Roger Ebert is the one who nailed what audiences would feel. He gave it three out of four stars. He said, five minutes into the film, I relaxed knowing it was set in the real world, not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date. Yeah, this movie is warm hearted in the way a movie can be when it knows its people inside out. Audiences were aligned. They expand to 150 theaters, then 250 theaters. And the box office receipts keep growing. 800,000. 1.2 million, 1.6 million by mid July. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was made for $5 million and the biggest actor involved is John Corbett, is on 500 screens and is approaching $30 million.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh my gosh.

[Chris Winterbauer]

At the box office, that would have been fantastic. And then it released wide. According to Bernie, once The movie hit 1,000 screens in August, it stayed there for most of the remainder of its nearly one year run. They had to record a voicemail message specifically for theater owners who were calling for more prints, telling them to call back next week. But they never expanded too wide. He has another great quote where he talks about how they decided even when they were starting to succeed, they would never allow themselves to get out ahead of their schemes. They always wanted to keep the demand in check with the supply. So the box office receipts peak over labor day weekend in 2002. It brought in $15 million that week alone. Oh my God. 20 weeks into its run, second only to Signs and beating out XXX with Vin Diesel, which had been in theaters for 16 fewer weeks than My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Now, I didn't see My Big Fat Greek Wedding until December of 2010. And then we saw it twice in theaters. At this point, it had been nominated for two Golden Globes, Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy and Best Actress, Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Nia Vardalos. Lizzie, do you know what film beat it in both categories?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, Chicago.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes, very good.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's tough competition.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It is. I know.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Chicago's great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Godspeed to My Big Fat Creek. Wedding, I think well deserved. Chicago.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Now, Nia was nominated at the 2003 Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. She lost to Pedro Almodovar for Talk to Her. The awards were held on March 23, 2003, and my big Frat Greek Wedding was still playing in 36 theaters. I would like to read you, Lizzie, a list of the top ten highest grossing films of 2002.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Great.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In order. The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Spider Man, Star Wars, Episode Attack of the Clones, men in black 2, die another day, Signs, Ice Age, My Big Fat Creek Way, Minority Report. Wow. The next lowest budgeted film on that list cost over $70 million to make.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Was it Signs?

[Chris Winterbauer]

It was Signs.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

My Big Fat Greek Wedding ended its run with a global haul north of $350 million.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, my God, that guy got 3%

[Chris Winterbauer]

of that, or did he?

[Lizzie Bassett]

Uh, oh.

[Chris Winterbauer]

In 2003, MPH, Sous Vardalos, HBO, Gold Circle, and Playtone, claiming they were still owed 3% of the profits. Accounting statements apparently showed that the movie had lost more than $20 million. MPH's attorney said, quote, my clients gave up practically everything to help get this picture made. And all they asked for in return was a small share of the real profits and proper credit. What they received was a big fat Greek tragedy. They also claimed they were excluded from awards ceremonies, festivals, and press releases.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, they didn't work on it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

To be fair, it seems like Nia Vardalos, Tom Hanks, and Rita Wilson didn't have anything to do with this Hollywood accounting, because a few Years later, in 2007, they also sued Gold Circle, claiming that they'd underreported revenues from the film by over $100 million.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, my God.

[Chris Winterbauer]

The complaint, which alleges breach of contract and fraud, seeks unspecified monetary damages. And in accounting, plaintiffs claim the participation statements have been vague and inadequate and their attempts to conduct an audit have been thwarted. They dropped the suit in 2008. So we do not know if there was any fraud committed or what Hollywood math may or may not have been engaged in. Now, there was a TV show that was made, My Big Fat Greek Life, almost in conjunction with the movie. To be fair, this was basically the result of a contractual agreement that Nia had from. She had taken the show to the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, and then she agreed to turn it into a series. And then they wrote the series while she was promoting My Big Fat Greek Wedding in Europe without her. And so I think one of the reasons that the show Ultimately was not very well received.

[Lizzie Bassett]

I like, vaguely remember that. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Was that. It just did not have the personality that the movie did in this. Because she probably wasn't as involved. Now, Joel Zwick directed two more movies, both in 2004, and then he returned to television. Mia, of course, returned to My Big Fat Creek Wedding in 2016 with its sequel, My Big Fat Creek Wedding 2, and then My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 later on. Both of those films received poor reviews, although My Big fat Greek Wedding 2, I believe it made $90 million at the box office and the third one still made 35 or 40, which is pretty amazing. But, Lizzie, the truth is, few indie films, if any, have been able to replicate the box office magic of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. A couple examples I was able to come up with Little Miss Sunshine took its VW bug to about $101 million at the box office on a budget of 8.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes. Although one big difference there is that that had very recognizable name actors in it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Absolutely. But still, quirky family indie film. You know, it's got similar vibes. Then you have other films that, yes, technically they're independently financed, but they have huge names involved, or they're based on ip. Passion of the Christ would be an example. Right. Which made an incredible amount of money. But come on, guys, it's the oldest IP in the world.

[Lizzie Bassett]

No, there's older.

[Chris Winterbauer]

That's true.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Please, Chris. Christopher Nolan's adapting something older anyway.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes, he is. Daddy. Everybody's upset about the use of the word daddy in the trail. Maybe something like the Untouchables out of France from 2010. I'm not sure if you saw that movie with Omar Sy, but that movie made an incredible amount of money without huge American names involved. Very big French names. To me, the movie that's come the closest in the last 10 years, Lizzie is the Big Sick.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Oh, yes. I mean, there's one that we've covered that keeps coming up as an example of a truly independent film that made enormous amount of money with no name actors in it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Well, Blair Witch Project. Yeah, but that was before My Big Fat Creek Wedding. Yeah, but yes, absolutely. Another example, the big SEC made 56 million against a $5 million budget, to be clear.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Wow.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And so, you know, in concluding this episode, I think what's so interesting about My Big Fat Creek Wedding is that it represented kind of the highest moment of independent film, in my opinion, in terms of what you could accomplish on the global stage with a smart release strategy and a good, although perhaps not great, movie. A Very charming movie. But then, you know, as we slowly transitioned into streaming and whatnot, in a more fractured media landscape, we entered a world where I don't think it's not that this movie couldn't get made, it's just that I don't think this movie would ever happen culturally in the way that it did in 2002. And so I think it's such an amazing time capsule for that moment, you know, for that reason and many others. And I do think it's also interesting that the movie was such a success that instead of breaking NIA out to other bigger opportunities, it became in a weird way, the high point.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Its own kind of cage.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, its own kind of cage, so to speak. I don't want to overstate that. I think she's had many opportunities since then and she co wrote Larry Crown with Tom Hanks and she's had great success on Broadway, et cetera. But it's such a double edged sword, you know, that just the victory has a Thousand fathers and the manipulations of the prophets and it just, it's such a tricky business. Everything eventually broke, right? And yet still it's not the fairytale ending that you think it's going to be. But that concludes our coverage of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. So, Lizzie, I have to ask you what went. Right.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, before I answer that, I have a little bit of a question, which is, was this kind of the last, you know, when I said Blair Witch Project, you were like, well, that came before. Was this period of the early 2000s sort of the last dying breath of what like a truly successful, truly independent film could be? Because when I'm thinking, yes, the Big Sick does come later. But like everything else I'm thinking of is around that time you mentioned Little Miss Sunshine, there's Napoleon Dynamite. I just wonder what happened because it seems like we had this period where discovering a truly independent film and bringing it to this kind of massive blockbuster success was something that we collectively as an audience really enjoyed. And I can't think of anything in the last 10 years really that has achieved that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

No, I mean, I think there are two things happening. You have fracturing at the top, right? Which is our culture is not as monolithic as it once was in terms of dominating the attention of the public via a box office run. Right, right. We are in an age where the box office runs, even of successful films are a fraction of what they were previously because we are competing with television and streaming and social media platforms. And then I think the other side of is, well, why do you make an independent film? You make it as a calling card. But as we've seen, actually, there are more effective vehicles for making a calling card now, which is developing a social media following, which is making content on YouTube, which is becoming successful on TikTok. I think we just talked about Caleb Heron showing up in The Devil Wears Prada 2. Caleb Heron's a wonderful performer. He's very funny, and I know him just from appearances on video podcasts that I've been served through YouTube shorts. Caleb Heron, you know, I believe that was one of his first mainstream acting roles. It may have been his first big one. You know, for all I know that he was cast out of. You have someone like Kane Parsons, who directed backrooms for a 24. He taught himself Blender. When he was 14, he made a series of creepypasta YouTube videos, and they become a web series. And now he's been moved into a. I mean, you could call it an independent film. I would call a 24Amini major studio, you know, so 20 years ago, Kane Parsons would have made that as an indie film and taken it to Sundance, and now he's gonna make it and put it online. So I think that part of the issue is that the pipeline is just different now. And I don't think that that's inherently bad. I think it's somewhat tragic only in that it's so fun that we all had the same touch point with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was so lovely.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. And we had these moments of, like, collective discovery, kind of like there was so much excitement around these types of movies and finding something that you knew was small and being part of. Of the audience that made it hundreds of millions of dollars. And I just. We don't get that anymore.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah. I agree to your point, Lizzie. It's not the last example of a movie that seems to have captured the zeitgeist, despite being, you know, it's the little engine that could. But I do think it's the last biggest example I can think of. You mentioned Napoleon Dynamite. At least for me, that really captured the moment, too. And that was 2004. That was a couple years later. So I think this era from, you know, I think once Judd Apatow's comedies kind of came into the fore in the 2000s, a lot of these smaller indie comedies were crowded out a little bit.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yeah. Also a smaller box office for Napoleon Dynamite, but also a much smaller budget. It's worth mentioning.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Maybe we'll cover it at some point.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yes. But, Lizzie, what went Right.

[Lizzie Bassett]

What went right? I mean, God, Nia Vardalos, like, the fact that she didn't give up, the fact that she didn't sell this to people who were saying that they were just gonna rewrite it. This is a remarkable story. It shows so much perseverance and more backbone than I would ever have. I think, you know, it is so hard to turn down the money, B, you know, the opportunity thinking, like, this may be my only chance to get this thing made. And the fact that she had the power to say no that many times is amazing. I mean, that deserves so much credit. And it's such a good reminder that it is important to say no and that that is sometimes the greatest power you have.

[Chris Winterbauer]

I think that's great. You stole it from under me. But I would like to give mine. So I will give one what went righteous to the whole cast, who I really. It's also rare that you get a movie where so many people in the ensemble just make you laugh. I mean, yes, when they're, like, casting huge names and whatnot, but this just goes to show you, there's so many talented people out there who are so capable of delivering such great performances. So kudos to the entire cast and Joel Zwick, the director, but I would like to specifically give mine to Rita Wilson.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes. Good.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And one of the reasons is that, okay, I know she said that she wanted to go see this play, this One Woman show, because she had Greek heritage and she had not been seeing theater and music, but this actually reveals, like, what I think a producer, half of a producer's job is, obviously, getting a movie made is truly being the midwife of this movie from script to screen. But the other half is being in the trenches, digging through coal and shit and slime and finding the diamonds in the rough. And it's the people who go to the One Woman shows. It's the people who, you know, read the scripts on the weekend, who check out that weird short film. I think those are really the best producers out there who find the really incredible material. And then as Hanks and Wilson hopefully were able to participate handsomely, financially in the success of those things. But I just am impressed that she went and she said, this is great. This should be a thing. I'm gonna make it a thing. You know what I mean? I'm gonna put my name on it. She'd never produced anything before.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That's awesome.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, it's great.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And also, like, she could so easily have slapped her name on so many things at this point, being both who she was. And also being married to Tom Hanks, like it would have been. So I think that this is.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And the sense I get is they really let it be what it was.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Well, they were. They're good at that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Bassett]

And they would continue to be good at that, I think. Well.

[Chris Winterbauer]

And it does help that they also just made a movie about losing who you are artistically through the process of working with a big record label. It's very fortuitous in many ways, which,

[Lizzie Bassett]

by the way, this year is the 30th anniversary of that thing you do. So perhaps if you all are interested, we might cover that.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Yeah, do it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That thing you do. Wow. It's really hard to sing together.

[Chris Winterbauer]

It's never aged at all. It's crazy. All right, Lizzy, thank you so much for joining me at this big fat Greek wedding. Please tell folks at home how they can support this podcast if they happen to be enjoying it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Listen, if you like this podcast, you

[Chris Winterbauer]

can go to a Greek Orthodox church, tell people about it.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Seriously, that would probably help. If you like this podcast, tell a friend. Tell a friend at a Greek Orthodox church or anywhere. Just tell them that you like this show.

[Chris Winterbauer]

What went wrong?

[Lizzie Bassett]

You should give it little a listen. You can leave us a rating on whatever podcatcher you are listening to this on. That really does help us. You can go a step further. And you can subscribe on Apple or Spotify. You will get at least one bonus episode every month, but honestly, probably more than one. That's how it's been shaping up lately, because we're enjoying doing them so much. And then if you want to go even a step beyond that, and by that, I mean you have to actually click off of the platform that you're listening to it on. I know it's hard, but if you do, you can go to patreon. And for five days, only $5, you get everything. I already mentioned bonus episodes, plus an ad free feed, and a fan community that is really delightful. We love talking to all of you on Patreon. And then if you want to just go even one step further, if you

[Chris Winterbauer]

want to be Gus buying his daughter a house for her wedding, this is the equivalent.

[Lizzie Bassett]

That is, by the way, my worst nightmare in terms of a wedding gift is to be your dad's.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Just plot you in a little piece of land right next to his in Maine. Oh, my God, Chip, we love you.

[Lizzie Bassett]

We love you.

[Chris Winterbauer]

We need some distance.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Yes, a little bit. If you would like to go one step further. For $50 a month, you can get A big fat Greek shout out, just like this.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right. For this week's shout outs, I thought we would embrace the idea that every word comes from a Greek word. Obviously, I say all of the following in jest. We really appreciate your support, Adrian. Pankorea. From the Latin name. Hadrianus or Hadrianus Annas, meaning from Hadria, a city in northern Italy, which would have been better if it was in Greece. Angeline Renee Cook. From the Greek Angelos, meaning messenger and archangel. Very good. Beatrix Earhart. Beatrix from the Latin name. Beatrix, meaning voyager or traveler. You should travel to Greece. Ben Shindelman. From Hebrew. The right hand, but the wrong origin, not Greek. Blaze Ambrose. From the Greek Blasios. No idea what it means. Brian died. Donahue. Probably old Celtic, meaning high or noble, but not Greek. Brittany Morris, meaning from Britain, not from Greece.

[Lizzie Bassett]

Brook.

[Chris Winterbauer]

Like a little river or a stream. Greece has great rivers. Cameron Smith. Scottish for bent nose. In Greece, our noses are straight. C, Grace. B, from the Greek word Charis, meaning grace, kindness and life. Well done. Chris Leal. From the Greek. Christopho. Christ bearer. Jesus is in your soul, at least in Greece. Daniel P. Daniel. Hebrew. God is my judge. He judges you for not being Greek. David Friscolanti. Again, Hebrew. Beloved or friend. Not to the Greeks. Darren and Dale Conkling. Darren from the Greek, Doron, meaning gift. But Dale maybe from the Norse meaning valley. I will take the gift. Don Scheibel from the Latin Donatus. Gifted for a non Greek. M. Zodia. We love you. Couldn't figure out where that name comes comes from. Evan Downey. Could be a shortened version of Evangelos. Meaning good messenger. Very Greek. Let's go with that. Felicia G. Latin. Felix Lucky. Not lucky enough to be Greek. Film it yourself in Greece. Good tax incentive. Frankenstein. German, but based on Prometheus. Very Greek. Galen and Miguel, the Broken glass kids. Galen from Galene, meaning serene or tranquil. But Miguel from Michael Kyle, who is like God, not you. You are not Greek. It's Hebrew origins. Same with you. Michael McGrath from the cast and crew of. Win a trip to Browntown. Maybe next time win a trip to Greece. Half greyhound. Argus Odysseus, Faithful dog, believed to be a greyhound. Very Greek. James McAvoy. Sir. You are Scottish. Jason Frankel. Could be Greek, meaning healer. JJ Rapido. Send us your first name. John D. Wiltshire. From the Hebrew Yohanan. God is gracious. He lets you live even though you're not Greek. Jory Hillpiper. From the Greek. Georgios, meaning farmer. Very good. Jose Emiliano Salto del Giorgio. From the Hebrew Yasaf to add. Need to add a little more Greek. Karina Canaba. From the Greek Katharos maybe meaning pure. Pure Greek. Ignore the Latin version. Same goes for Kate Elrond Warrington and Kathleen Olson. Amy Olgashagar McCoy. Latin for beloved. Not in Greece. Lena. LJ from the Greek. Helena from helios, meaning shining one. Lousy. Susan. Not so lousy. Maybe from the Greek. Susanna Way. Actually from the Hebrew Shoshana, meaning lotus or lily. Close enough. Same with you. Suzanne Johnson. Lydia House. From the Greek meaning what woman From Lydia. Great place. Mark Bertha. Maybe traces back to the Roman God Mars, who's really just a copy of Aries. You are now Ares Maripos is humans. Lots of Latin here. In ancient Greek it would be Psyche Anthropos. Much better. Matthew Jacobson. Matityahu. Ancient Hebrew. Gift of God. Maybe a gift not Greek. Nada. Ashley. Nate the knife. Hebrew again. Nathan, meaning gave. Rosemary southward. Latin. Rosemariness, dew of the sea. Rural juror. Two words with Latin roots. Sadie. Just Sadie. From the Hebrew. Sarah, wife of Abraham. Not Greek. Scott. Oshida. Scott. Scottish. Go hang out with James McAvoy. Somanchainani. Sanskrit meaning moon. Or in Greek would be Selene. Steve Winterbauer. From the Greek Stephanos, meaning crown. You're the king, dad. And the Provost family. From Provost's Latin origins. The O's may sound like O's, but they are not Greek. All right, thank you so much to our Full Stop supporters. I hope you enjoyed that perhaps somewhat accurate exploration of the origins of your names, which are all wonderful. We are coming back at you next week. Lizzy, what do you have for the fine folks at home?

[Lizzie Bassett]

I am so excited. We are covering Giant, which is one of James Dean's only movies, not his most famous, although I would argue one of his best performances. And it was obviously a huge movie for Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Really, really fascinating episode. I'm very excited to dive into it. It is a long movie, I'm saying.

[Chris Winterbauer]

A Giant running time.

[Lizzie Bassett]

It is a giant running time. So, yeah, you know, maybe anticipate splitting it up over two nights or, you know, make a day of it. But it is a great and I think important film. So I'm excited, very excited to talk about it and to talk about these, particularly these two male leads who I think have loomed large across Hollywood for different reasons. So we will get into it.

[Chris Winterbauer]

All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. We will see you next week with Giant. What went wrong is a sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Jesse Winterbauer and edited by Karen Krupso.