Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are strapping
ourselves into the miniaturized submarine, maybe
one like the one in Interspace, and preparing
to navigate the chaotic arteries of Hollywood.
Our guide is a director who spent his entire
career successfully infiltrating the studio system,
only to, well, kind of blow it up from the inside.
Joe Dante. That's a great way to put it. Born
Joseph James Dante Jr. back in 1946, Dante is,
yeah, a genuine master of mixing highbrow satire
with lowbrow horror. He's the cinematic equivalent
of a Trojan horse, you know, smuggling 1960s
countercultural radicalism and pure anarchic
cartoon comedy directly into the traditional
1950s B -movie structure. And that blend is just
crucial to understanding his lasting impact.
Our source material today is, well, it's a fantastic
map. his journey tracing his path from film school
dropout and trailer cutter all the way to directing
iconic hits like gremlins can't forget gremlin
the genre defining horror of the howling and
that deeply personal satirical gem matinee exactly
and for you the curious learner listening in
this dive is essential because it's really a
masterclass in compromise and resistance. We're
peeling back the layers on the operational reality
of how a singular, often really subversive artist
of vision develops, clashes with. Oh yeah, clashes.
And sometimes, just sometimes, triumphs over
the demands of the rigid, you know, profit -driven
studio machine. Okay, let's unpack this then.
Let's start exactly where his vision began. Yeah.
The foundations of the B -movie auteur. Right.
To understand the DNA of a Joe Dante film, we
have to start not in Hollywood, but back in New
Jersey. He was born in Morristown, grew up in
Livingston. And crucially, his father was an
Italian -American professional golfer, actually
encouraged him towards sports. So that created
an immediate contrast in young Joe's life right
off the bat. Right. Because while the world wanted
him to be, you know, athletic and conventional,
Dante was lost in the world of shadows and imagination.
His escape was drawing cartoon and spending every
possible Saturday afternoon at matinees just
soaking up everything from sci -fi to horror.
Yeah. And his original artistic career plan was,
in fact, cartooning. That was the goal. But he
experienced what turned out to be a profoundly
formative setback when someone dismissed his
passion by telling him cartooning isn't an art
form. Ouch. Yeah. That rejection of his first
love seems to have been the catalyst that pushed
him into filmmaking, leading him to the Philadelphia
College of Art, which is now the University of
the Arts. It's kind of ironic, isn't it, for
someone whose films are just packed with cartoon
logic. He gets rejected by the cartoon world,
but then he carries its physics and its, well,
chaos into live -action cinema. And while he
was at art school, he was already cultivating
this obsession with horror. The sources show
his foundational interests began incredibly young
-like, at just 12 years old. He was already writing
to the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland,
providing reviews of horror films for years.
That kind of fan -level, deep, almost encyclopedic
genre knowledge meant he was uniquely prepared
for his true education, what people often called
the school of Roger Corman. Ah, Corman. Right.
Corman's New World Pictures was notorious not
just for exploitation films, but for being this
rigorous, like de facto film school. It launched
careers for Coppola, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich,
so many others. And Dante's apprenticeship began
in 74, not behind the camera initially, but deep
in the trenches of post -production. He started
by cutting trailers for Corman. Yeah. Which wasn't
just grunt work, right? This was like the ultimate.
training in pace hype condensed storytelling
oh absolutely it taught him how to sell a movie
in 90 seconds flat He was handling marketing
sizzle for Corman films like Cover Girl Models,
but also, and this is really key cutting, the
American trailer for films like Federico Fellini's
Emmercord. Fellini? Yeah. So he was learning
how to market both the highbrow and the lowbrow
in the same tiny cutting room. That skill, that
blending of disparate tones into a frenetic,
energetic package, that's the hallmark of his
future directing style right there. Okay, and
here's where it gets really interesting. Connecting
his editing skill back to his early days, even
before Corman, As a student, he compiled this
project called the Movie Orgy in 1968. This wasn't
just some fun VHS mixtape. No, no, it was epic.
It was this seamless seven -hour compilation
that he edited together himself. Pulled clips
from B -movies, 16mm films, commercials, even
trailers. Can you imagine sitting through that?
Seven hours. It was essentially a curated interactive
history of schlock cinema. I have to stop you
there. Seven hours. That experience must have
fundamentally trained him to think in cinematic
mashups. It wasn't about respecting genre boundaries.
It was about taking all this disparate cultural
debris, a goofy commercial, a terrifying monster
clip, a snippet of film noir, and stitching it
together into something new, anarchic, self -referential.
Exactly. That is the birth of the Dante style
right there. Absolutely. And that foundation
paid off fast. By 1975, he moves up to directing,
collaborating with Alan Arkush on Hollywood Boulevard,
a highly empirical exploitation film. And the
backstory of this film is pure Corman. It was
basically a dare, wasn't it? Pretty much. Corman
bet he could produce a feature film in 10 days
on a budget of just $54 ,000. The cheapest film
New World Pictures had ever made. Incredible.
And Dante and Arkush hit that impossible target
by writing a story about a B -movie studio. Ah,
smart. Yeah, because that plot allowed them to
incorporate massive amounts of pre -existing
footage Corman already owned. Just pure ingenuity
to get around the budget constraints. It's the
perfect start, really, for a career def - fine
by working within the system's constraints while
simultaneously mocking it. Right. That Corman
grounding gave Dante the speed, the skill, and
maybe that inherent cynicism needed to handle
his first major break. Piranha in 1978. Okay,
Piranha. This was the one that got him noticed
outside of the exploitation ghetto, right? Exactly.
Shot on a $600 ,000 budget, it was a creature
feature written by John Sayles. Dante admitted
the shoot was chaotic, done in a rush. He was
apparently so convinced the film would be a total
disaster that he spent the editing process in
just a complete fog. Wow. But the film had a
pretty powerful guardian angel, didn't it? Steven
Spielberg. That's right. Since Piranha was such
an obvious riff on Jaws, Universal was apparently...
preparing to block its release entirely to protect
their own upcoming Jaws 2. Which makes sense
from their perspective, but what's fascinating
here is that Spielberg himself personally intervened.
He convinced Universal that Dante's film was
clearly a parody, you know, a comedic, self -aware
monster movie, and therefore not direct competition
to their serious sequel. Huh. That's brilliant.
Define Dante early on using comedy as armor.
His films could be violent, sure, but they were
also fundamentally satirical. which kind of made
them commercially palatable, or at least defensible.
Precisely. And this satirical, self -aware tone
was perfectly refined in his next major project,
The Howling, in 1981, another collaboration with
writer John Sayles. Wait, The Howling. They adapted
Gary Brandner's werewolf novel, but Dante and
Sayles injected this heavily satirical tone,
meaning the script only bore a slight resemblance
to the novel's actual plot. This is where we
see him truly define that self -aware monster
movie thing we just mentioned. And at the time,
werewolves were definitely seen as corny and
old hat, as Dante put it. So what was the strategy
there? How did he make it fresh? The strategy
was pretty brilliant marketing disguised as filmmaking,
really. He disguised the movie as a popular slasher
film, which was huge at the time, kept the focus
on the reporter character, the seedy retreat
setting. Okay. And only then did he bring in
the supernatural elements slowly so the audience
could get acclimated and not immediately rejected
as something old -fashioned. He basically slipped
the classic monster back in through the back
door of contemporary horror. Very clever. And
the film is also a benchmark for special effects,
isn't it? It featured state -of -the -art prosthetic
effects handled by Rob Botten after Rick Baker
famously left the project to work on an American
werewolf in London. That difference is pretty
pivotal. It really is. Botten's work gave us
that famous full on -screen werewolf transformation.
Replacing the old corny cutaways or quick dissolves
with this visceral, visible... almost painful
metamorphosis. Yeah, you felt it. Right. That
commitment to realism in the effects paired with
the satirical script cemented the howling's place
in horror history and really showcased Dante's
ability to demand technical excellence even on
a limited budget. So post the howling, Dante
starts getting offers for major studio projects.
We know he famously turned down Airplane, which
is just mind -boggling to me. I still can't quite
believe that one. But he did direct two episodes
of the subsequent Zucker, Abraham's, and Zucker
police procedural spoof, Police Squad. Right,
Ring of Fear and Testimony of Evil. That was
his first experience shooting anything on a major
studio lot, and it must have further honed his
mastery of visual gags and that rapid -fire comedy
style. And the Spielberg connection deepened
further when the success of The Howling led Spielberg
to bring him on to direct a segment of Twilight
Zone, the movie in 1983. Yeah, the It's a Good
Life segment. Dante directed that remake, playing
heavily into cartoon -style special effects surrounding
the omnipotent kid. And crucially, the sources
note that he also stepped in to edit George Miller's
segment. Oh, right, after the tragedy. After
Miller was understandably horrified and left
following the fatal helicopter accident during
production. That shows Dante was seen as the
steady hand, right? Capable of handling highly
sensitive, complex post -production work under
just extreme pressure. Which brings us neatly
to 1984, the year everything really changed for
him. Based on the success and the technical assurance
of the Howling, Spielberg personally offered
Dante the director's chair for Gremlins. Gremlins.
Okay, this became his definitive success. But
what's fascinating is Dante's own assessment
of the experience. He admitted the shoot was
grueling. Chris Columbus's original draft was
heavily rewritten. And just getting the central
characters, the gremlins themselves, to operate
was apparently a constant nightmare of hydraulics
and wire. Oh, I bet. And let's talk about the
cultural message there for a sec. The film follows
those three simple rules for the Mogwai, right?
Rules which are immediately catastrophically
broken. No bright light, don't get it wet, never
feed it after midnight. Exactly. These rules
are essentially laws of responsible consumption.
And when these rules are ignored by the reckless
American teenager, chaos is unleashed in that
quintessential suburban town, Kingston Falls.
It's anti -consumerism wrapped in a Christmas
bow. Pretty much. It's set during the holidays,
focuses on the pursuit of the perfect exotic
gadget gizmo and the destruction that ensues
when that cheap foreign import is mishandled.
It's a really biting satire on the desire for
novelty and the consequences of careless ownership.
That's why it hits such a nerve. And Warner Brothers
was genuinely shocked, weren't they? When the
film became the third highest grossing film of
1984, it proved Dante could achieve mainstream
blockbuster success while still remaining deeply
subversively personal. Yeah, and he sums up his
legacy perfectly with this quote. It's the movie
I'm going to be remembered for. If I get hit
by a bus tomorrow, the headline is going to be
Gremlins director hit by bus. He finds this legacy
fine, he says, because even though it's not his
favorite of his own films, it manages to express
his personality despite being this massive studio
production. But immediate success often invites
immediate failure, or at least immediate interference
from the studio, right? Oh, yeah. The larger
the budget, the less control the artist tends
to maintain. The machine demands results and
paranoia sets in. Which brings us to Explorers
in 1985. Right. Dante loved the script about
three friends who build a working spacecraft.
Yeah. It was a deeply ambitious, effects -heavy
project. But he felt the third act needed substantial
work, needed development time. And Paramount
executives flat out denied him that time. They
forced Dante and the writer, Eric Luke, to basically
improvise the story as filming progressed. Which
is madness. Cinematic madness, especially when
you're dealing with complex visual effects sequences
and child actors. Okay, here's the real heartbreak,
though. And this is where we need to linger on
the tragedy of studio vandalism, really. Yeah.
In the spring of 85, Paramount suddenly, like
without warning, changed the film's release date.
Moved it from late August way up to early July.
Oh, wow. And they demanded that Dante stop editing
and deliver a shorter rough cut immediately.
So what's the implication of that? They essentially
cut off the narrative development process before
it was even complete. About an hour and a half
of footage was just brutally excised. Hour and
a half. Footage Dante later stated is presumably
lost. This wasn't minor trimming. This was like
amputating the heart of the story. I always wonder
what was in that missing 90 minutes. That vacuum
likely contained the character development, the
thematic weight that would have anchored that
ambitious third act. The film you see today is
really the result of commercial panic overriding
artistic diligence. Yeah, Dante was devastated.
He said, the movie you'll see is not the movie
I wanted to make. It's the movie I got to make
up to a certain point and then had to stop. Still,
despite being this truncated, compromised vision,
it launched the careers of Ethan Hawke and River
Phoenix. True. And it developed a strong cult
following, which kind of proves that even a half
-finished Dante film has some real power. Definitely.
The next major studio hurdle was Interspace in
1987. He initially turned down the script, calling
it a blatant ripoff of Fantastic Voyage. Huh.
He wasn't wrong. It only became appealing after
Jeffrey Boehm rewrote it as a comedy, which...
You know, was a perfect vehicle for Dante's chaotic
sensibility. Right. Dante recalled a positive
experience making the film, especially praising
the cast. Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short.
Great combo. But once again, we see that studio
executive fear cycle kick right in. Yeah. Dante
recalled Warner Brothers executives taking him
out to lunch and trying to influence his creative
choices, telling him his work was. Not funny.
Wow. Which is just an astonishing piece of feedback
for a master satirist. And then they suggested
recasting Martin Short, describing the star as
not very attractive. Wait, wait. They saw successful
test screenings but still tried to force a change
in the central comedic player? Apparently so.
That just proves the executives were judging
the film based on these outdated notions of marketability,
not on genuine audience reaction. They were totally
out of touch with the very audience they were
trying to reach. Exactly. Dante chose to just
plow on, make the movie he intended. But despite
those successful test screenings, the film flopped
at the box office. And his diagnosis was simple
and scathing. The studio did not know how to
promote it. He pointed out that the original
poster failed even include the actors' names
or faces on it. Oh, come on. It was an unmarketable
comedy because the marketing department seemingly
didn't trust the talent or the material. Okay,
so following the chaos of microscopic travel
and executive anxiety, Dante retreated slightly
to the suburban nightmare of The Burbs in 1989,
a perfect vehicle for his black comedy sensibilities.
Yeah, The Burbs. He was intrigued by the script's
blend of that mundane, real -life suburban ennui,
you know, the struggle with the lawn, the messy
neighbor with high -stakes, almost supernatural
paranoia. Right. And for the lead, Ray Peterson.
He cast Tom Hanks, who he rightly called the
reigning everyman, a guy that everybody can identify
with, drawing that clear comparison to classic
movie star Jimmy Stewart. Yeah, perfect casting.
And the production itself was pretty unique.
Because of the 1988 writer's strike, the filming
was done entirely chronologically over 10 weeks.
Really? chronologically yeah on the colonial
street backlot at universal studios dante leveraged
the setting stressed that the action had to be
confined strictly to the neighborhood he even
noted that the entire piece could almost be a
stage play except you know for the cinematic
visual stuff they were able to inject okay now
we absolutely must turn to the ultimate act of
subversive filmmaking within the studio system
Following the original's huge success, the studio
desperately wanted a Gremlins sequel. Of course
they did. But Dante consistently refused, arguing
pretty reasonably that the first story had a
proper moralistic ending. Which it did. But Warner
Brothers tried every conceivable variation without
him. Gremlins in Vegas, Gremlins in space, and
just failed spectacularly to develop a workable
concept. Finally, they came back to Dante, basically
begging him to direct. And this is where his
artistic leverage was. at its absolute peak.
Dante agreed, but only on two conditions. The
rare promise of complete creative control. Wow.
And a budget three times that of the original.
He had clearly learned his lessons from explorers
in inner space. If he was going to re -enter
the blockbuster machine, it had to be entirely
on his terms. Good for him. And with that freedom...
He delivered Gremlins 2, the new batch, in 1990,
which is just a masterpiece of meta satire. He
envisioned it not as a conventional sequel, but
as a direct scathing satire of the original film
and sequels in general. It is arguably the most
personalized studio film he ever made. It's so
self -referential. It relocates the action from
the cozy suburb to the monstrous sterile clamp
center. This Manhattan skyscraper run by a cartoonishly
evil media mogul played brilliantly by John Glover.
There's a direct commentary on the massive corporate
conglomerates that own Warner Brothers itself.
He used that creative control just brilliantly.
There are Daffy Duck cameos, bizarre new gremlin
mutations, and most famously, that sequence where
the gremlins literally stop the movie. Yes. Breaking
the film reel. Forcing Hulk Hogan to intervene.
Dante stuffed it with his own anxieties, his
sense of humor. He even got Christopher Lee in
there as a mad scientist trying to genetically
engineer the creatures. Creatively, it was just
an overwhelming success, a true auteur work that
Dante himself claimed contained the most personal
influence. But commercially? Yeah, commercially
it suffered. It didn't perform nearly as well
as the original. The takeaway seems to be that
audiences who maybe wanted just a simple, thrilling
monster movie were confused by its intellectualism,
its hyper self -awareness. It was maybe just
too smart for its own sequel premise? Possibly.
Following that, he delivered another deeply personal,
critically acclaimed film that still struggled
commercially, Matinee in 1993. This one was set
during the high -anxiety backdrop of the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Right, matinee. It starred John
Goodman as Lawrence Woolsey, this fantastic stand
-in for the real -life cinematic showman William
Castle. Oh, yeah. Specializing in horror and
sci -fi B -movies, complete with theatrical gimmicks,
buzzers in the seats, the whole nine yards. Matinee
was clearly born of Dante's own deep -seated
nostalgia for that world of Saturday matinees,
the communal experience of the theater, especially
during a time of national fear. glowing reviews,
the film failed to turn a profit. It's almost
a confirmed pattern by this point, isn't it?
The more niche, personal, and nostalgic the subject
matter, the less likely mainstream Hollywood
audiences were to embrace it. Seems that way.
And the battles continued even in television.
His 1997 made -for -TV film, The Second Civil
War, a really sharp social satire about anti
-immigration, where states secede over immigration
policy. Which sounds incredibly relevant now.
Doesn't it? It suffered a tremendous amount of
interference during post -production from an
HBO executive who reportedly softened the ending
considerably. Ugh. And then there's the cautionary
tale of Small Soldiers in 1998, the film about
military action figures coming to life. Dante
started with a mandate to make an edgy picture
for teenagers. Okay. But once Burger King signed
on as a massive sponsor to promote the film and
sell toys. Ah, the dreaded tie -in. The tone
shifted entirely. The mandate changed to softening
it into a kiddie movie to protect the sponsor's
brand image. This led directly to scenes involving
action and explosions being cut or minimized.
Furthermore, Dante claimed 12 uncredited writers
worked on the film over five years. illustrating
the sheer committee -driven nature of the final
product. The creative vision was just diffused
by the marketing requirements. Right. Moving
into the 2000s, Dante faced perhaps his biggest
creative street jacket yet with Looney Tunes.
Back in action in 2003, that live -action animation
hybrid. Yeah, Looney Tunes. He agreed to direct
it for profoundly personal reasons, didn't he?
It was a tribute to his idol, Chuck Jones. And
it sort of served as a placeholder for his own
unmade biopic about Jones' early... years at
Warner Bros., which he planned to call Termite
Terrace. And he and the screenwriter, Larry Doyle,
were adamant that this film should be the anti
-space jam because Dante really disliked how
that earlier film represented the classic Looney
Tunes brand and personalities. Felt it favored
celebrity over character. Okay, a noble goal.
Yet, even with that specific passion intent,
Dante stated flatly that he had no creative freedom
on the project. He labeled the experience the
longest year and a half of my life. Wow. The
constant studio input apparently changed the
plot continuously, ensuring the final product
bore little resemblance to his original vision.
And the most egregious example of interference
involved the humor itself, right? Studio executives
grew tired of the film's initial set of jokes
and insisted they be changed. Get this. They
brought in an astonishing 25 gag writers. 25.
To rewrite jokes that were short enough for the
animated characters to dub in quickly. Think
about that. 25 writers hired just for quick gags,
yet Doyle remained the only credited writer.
It was an assembly line of comedy that must have
just crushed Dante's soul. That sounds like a
director whose initial passion for cartoons was
crushed all over again, only this time by the
corporate machine itself. Exactly. Following
that grueling experience, Dante returned to his
horror roots in television, directing episodes
of the acclaimed horror anthology series Masters
of Horror. Right, including the adaptation of
Alice Sheldon's short story, The Screwfly Solution.
And here's a fascinating detail about self -editing.
Dante had wanted to adapt this story for years,
apparently even starting a feature script way
back when he was at New World. Oh, really? Yeah.
But when he finally made it as a one -hour episode,
he realized the story, which is this deeply bleak
tale of human extinction triggered by a genetically
engineered virus, was... So depressing that if
he had made it as a feature film, nobody would
have come to see it at all. Sometimes the smaller
format saves a story from commercial failure
just by lowering expectations. Exactly. He continued
his genre commitment by launching the web series
Trailers from Hell in 2007. Which is fantastic,
by the way. Oh, it's a great resource, where
directors offer commentary on classic and cult
movie trailers. He also directed the independent
3D horror comedy The Hole in 2009, which actually
won an award at the VMS Film Festival. Good for
him. And meanwhile, to, as he joked, get the
rent paid, he directed 10 episodes of of the
Hawaii Five -Zero reboot between 2011 and 2017.
Okay, but here's where we get maybe the truest
measure of Joe Dante's artistic ambitions, the
extensive boneyard of unrealized projects. This
list is just a profound window into the films
Hollywood prevented him from making. Yeah, the
what -ifs. The passion project he struggled for
years to fund was The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes,
a biopic about his mentor, Roger Corman, specifically
focusing on the making of Corman's 1967 LSD film,
The Trip. Wow. This film would have seen Dante
grappling with his own mentor's controversial
past, wouldn't it? Corman, this visionary producer
who launched so many careers, but who also often
produced epically questionable Well, trash. Exactly.
They came close, apparently twice. Dante even
directed a live table reading of the script back
in 2016, starring Bill Hader as Corman, Jason
Ritter as Peter Fonda, and Ethan Embry as Jack
Nicholson. Great cast for a reading. And here
is that fantastic, morbidly practical detail
that says everything about the realities of independent
filmmaking. A cameo role featuring Roger Corman
himself was reportedly shot in case he died before
production could ever actually begin. Get out!
Seriously. They were so afraid of losing the
central figure that they future -proofed the
film's existence. I have to pause and reflect
on that level of morbid practicality. That speaks
volumes about the dedication required to birth
a passion project outside the studio system,
where the sheer length of the development process
means you genuinely risk the death of your key
subjects before you can roll cameras. It's incredible.
Despite all that effort, the project was effectively
shelved following Corman's passing and was eventually
adapted into a graphic novel instead. A shame.
And his other passion biopic, Termite Terrace,
about Chuck Jones, also remains unmade. Right.
And he was attached to some huge mainstream franchises,
too, which gives you a glimpse into what those
films could have been under his satirical eye.
He pitched an early attempt at a Jaws sequel
as a spoof titled Jaws. Three people. Zero. I
imagine that level of self -parody aimed at a
massive franchise like Jaws. Wouldn't that have
been something? And he was attached to the Batman
early on. What's fascinating about this is the
casting idea. He wanted John Lithgow to play
the Joker. Lithgow is the Joker, directed by
Dante. The very idea. It suggests a tonal shift
toward the truly bizarre, probably channeling
the original absurdism of the 1960s Batman TV
show, maybe. Could be. wild to think about. He
was also briefly attached to the early development
of Jurassic Park, which is another fascinating
counterfactual. But we also see the cycle of
interference repeating with other high -profile
projects. He was attached to direct a tongue
-in -cheek version of The Phantom with Jeffrey
Baum. Okay. But Paramount pulled the plug right
before shooting over budgetary concerns. The
subsequent version was made much more seriously
under a new director, and Dante only received
an executive producer credit. Just constant interference.
It proves that even when the talent is proven,
the studios will often revert to cautious commercialism.
Seems to be the pattern. And his extensive list
of refused opportunities confirms his selective
nature, too. He turned down directing Halloween
III, Season of the Witch, The Flintstones, Casper,
even the James Bond film The World is Not Enough.
Wow. bond. Yeah. He only chooses projects where
he believes his distinct worldview, that blend
of wit, anarchy and satire, can actually be expressed.
And that worldview is informed by just a phenomenal
synthesis of influences. Beyond Corman and Chuck
Jones, Dante cites the witty anarchy of Frank
Tashlin and Ernst Lubitsch, the grand style of
Mario Bava and Jean Cocteau, and the classic
horror of James Whale. His favorite films reflect
this synthesis perfectly, ranging from Lubitsch's
comedy To Be or Not to Be to Sergio Leone's epic
Once Upon a Time in the West and Whale's masterpiece
Bride of Frankenstein. It's a combination of
the witty, the grand, and the monstrous. Exactly.
He even admitted he frequently steals gags. from
the manic 1941 comedy, Hell's a Poppin'. A director
who steals gags from a 1941 comedy to put into
a commentary on corporate media? Like he did
in Gremlins 2. That is exactly what makes Joe
Dante such a singular voice in American cinema.
Hashtag neck outro. So, okay, what does this
all mean when we synthesize Joe Dante's career?
His trajectory is really a portrait of constant
negotiation. His infectious enthusiasm, that
deep love for B -movies, cartoons, satire, was
consistently, it seems, at war with the relentless
commercial demands of major studios. Yeah, and
that negotiation led to signature successes,
absolutely, like Gremlins. But it also resulted
in profoundly heartbreaking, truncated projects
like Explorers, where a significant chunk of
the film was just lost to a panicked release
schedule. Right. And it also led to creatively
controlled... be noble failures like gremlins
2 which was simply too honest too meta in its
appraisal of the sequel premise for mass appeal
his genius really lies in his ability to blend
comedy and horror so seamlessly that allowed
him to be a powerful social satirist while somehow
maintaining commercial appeal at least sometimes
he packaged the anti -consumerism message of
gremlins and the anti -immigration satire of
the second civil war in highly entertaining approachable
genre packaging and if the battle for artistic
integrity is the primary theme of his career,
then that extensive boneyard of unrealized projects,
from his Corman biopic to his early version of
the Batman, that might actually be the purest,
truest window into his ultimate artistic ambitions.
It shows us the path he wanted to take before
Hollywood interfered so often. Which raises an
important question, I think, for you to consider
as you wrap up this deep dive. If a filmmaker's
true passion is sometimes found not just in the
films they made, but maybe even more so in the
films Hollywood prevented them from making, what
other hidden masterpieces do we need to investigate
in the film archive of the imagination? It's
a great thought to chew on. as you maybe watch
his films again, perhaps with a new appreciation
for the battles fought on the cutting room floor
and behind the scenes. Thanks for joining us
for the deep dive.