The premiere of ‘Super Mario Bros’, the new animated adventure starring Nintendo’s plumber has broken many box office records, but it is not the first film about the character. Last month, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel They went to the cinema to see the adaptation that they directed 30 years ago and that they had not seen since. In a new interview in Variety they have explained their ordeal with a happy ending, thanks to Quentin Tarantino.
The 1993 live-action film, starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo as Mario and Luigi, was a box office flop and entered several “Worst Movies of All Time” lists“, however it has since developed a passionate cult following. But for its directors, ‘Super Mario Bros.’ it was so reviled that it left an indelible “black mark” on their careers, according to Morton himself.
“Hollywood abandoned us after ‘Super Mario Bros'”
Story of an abandonment
Over the years, hatred of the film was fueled, the actors complain about the rewrites of the script or that the directors insulted the crew, Leguizamo went so far as to write that Morton served an extra hot coffee, an incident which Morton says was exaggerated in the press. In a 1992 Los Angeles Times article detailing the chaos on set, Dennis Hopper said: “Do directors not give interviews? That’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard from them. That’s the only smart thing they’ve ever done.”. The day after the article was published, CAA fired Morton and Jankel.
“It was the end of our movie careers.”
And all this without the film having been released. When it did, it failed to recoup its $48 million budget and was panned by critics. But what hurt all of that the most was that the cast itself never defended it. Decades after its release, Hoskins said that ‘Super Mario Bros.’ It was the “biggest disappointment” of his career, calling the production a “nightmare” and the directors “fucking idiots”. And although Leguizamo has claimed that he is “proud of the film” over time, Hopper continued to attack Morton and Jankel in 2008.
“It was a husband and wife management team who were control freaks and didn’t speak up before making decisions.”
Years later, Morton co-founded the production company MJZ and focused on television commercials. Since then, the company has won the Palme d’Or at Cannes Lions, the festival that celebrates creativity in advertising, nearly a dozen times. Meanwhile, Jankel has directed 24 episodes of the musical docuseries ‘Live From Abbey Road’ and directed the 2018 romantic drama ‘Tell It to the Bees’. But now, a midnight screening held at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema on March 11 ha “erased the stain“.
tarantino to the rescue
Morton explained his experience to Variety:
“I thought there would be 10 or 20 people there, but it was packed. There were people lining up around the block to buy more tickets. Throughout the movie, the audience was laughing and clapping in all the right places. They weren’t doing it ironically; it was genuine.”
Jankel added, surprised that dozens of fans approached her to ask for autographs and selfies:
“It was like being at a film festival. It was vindictive. It took 30 years of bad feelings for them to suddenly disappear overnight.”
The screening came after Tarantino will praise Morton and Jankel on his podcast, ‘The Video Archives Podcast’, in which he and Roger Avary review classic movies and VHS gems. On the show, the director applauded Morton and Jankel’s first feature film, ‘Dead on Arrival’ (DOA 1988). According to Morton:
“I think Quentin Tarantino understands where we’re coming from, creatively. It’s a certain whimsy that didn’t sit well with the Hollywood scene at the time. Super Mario was a painful experience. But now it’s become a really joyous experience that has found its place in the annals of history.
Despite admitting that the film is a disaster, structurally, Morton considers most hate to be “unwarranted”:
“Our achievement was to create something really original, even though it was based on a video game. It was fun, it was science fiction, it was fantasy, it was a love story. And I think it succeeded in all of those elements. And the performances of many of the actors were great. I am proud of the film and I support it.”
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