WHAT WENT WRONG

How does George Lucas top the most successful film of all time? He outsources the writing and directing, finances it himself, and then wonders if it could've been as successful if it had just been a little bit worse! This week, Chris & Lizzie head to Hoth to watch Irvin Kershner's cameras freeze, Dagobah to bear witness to Frank Oz create our favorite little bog freak, and navigate the asteroid field of Han and Leia's all too meta verbal sparring!

When director David Frankel signed on to adapt the novel The Devil Wears Prada into a movie, he didn’t realize he’d be up against the real Miranda Priestly herself: Anna Wintour. This week Chris, Lizzie, and very special guest Jameela Jamil discover how it took 5 tries to find the right screenwriter, why Anne Hathaway was the 9th choice to play Andy Sachs, and how fear of retribution from Anna Wintour almost shut the whole thing down. Find out why Meryl Streep went method with her role, how Emily Blunt totally transformed her character, and why a scandal brewing in Anne Hathaway’s personal life bled over onto set.

On the morning of November 24, 2014—just a few days before Thanksgiving—Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked. It was one of the most damaging business hacks in U.S. history. Some estimates put the cost to Sony at over a hundred million dollars. And when former Sony head Michael Lynton looked at what happened, he came to an uncomfortable conclusion: that it may have been all his fault.In this episode from Revisionist History, Michael tells host Malcolm Gladwell about the time thatgreenlighting a film led to an international incident. Find Revisionist History wherever you get your podcasts.Link: https://lnk.to/WWWRevisionistHistory

This year marks the 50th anniversary of 'Taxi Driver', which is somehow even more relevant now than it was in 1976. But the truth is 'Taxi Driver' almost didn't make it to the screen. This week, Chris and Lizzie break down how Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader fought to make a dark, deeply uncommercial script on a shoestring budget, that made the studio nervous from the start. Discover why the Board of Education nearly blocked Jodie Foster's controversial casting, and how Robert De Niro stepped in as her de facto acting coach on set. Plus find out how Scorsese wound up as a last minute replacement for one of his own actors, and why the production almost drove him to go full Travis Bickle on the studio execs... until Steven Spielberg talked him down.

'Taxi Driver' isn't just one of the greatest movies ever made... it's also deeply entangled with one of the most shocking true crimes in American history. In this Out of Frame episode, Chris and Lizzie welcome special guests Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire from RedHanded to examine the disturbing case of John Hinkley Jr, whose obsession with Jodie Foster spiraled into an attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Discover how the case reshaped Foster's life and career, and dive into the lasting impacts of the trial on the American criminal justice system. Find out how 'Taxi Driver', arguably an examination of toxic masculinity, became an extremely dangerous call to arms in the wrong hands. 

Let's dive into a world of pure imagination... and some pretty unsafe set pieces! This week, Chris and Lizzie are joined by Aaron Tracy, creator and host of The Secret World of Roald Dahl, and they head into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to figure out how such an odd movie came to be. From cereal financing to secret rewrites and Gene Wilder's unexpectedly edgy performance, this production's only topped by the Zelig-esque life of the man who spawned the book it's based on.