The Linguini Incident

The Industry S6 E1: The Linguini Incident

Richard Shepard: [00:00:00] I had went to college with Roman Coppola, who is Francis Coppola's son. 

Dan Delgado (Host): This is writer director Richard Shepard, and here he's telling me about his early days in the industry. 

Richard Shepard: And Roman and I were buddies from NYU, and Roman, uh, at the time was running a little low budget division out of Zoetrope called Commercial Pictures, in which they were making A series of 100, 000 movies.

And they had paid me and my old writing partner, Mark, like a thousand bucks to write a heavy metal rock and roll movie that we wrote over a weekend. And they hired a real band to be the band and the director made the movie and it was terrible. 

Dan Delgado (Host): The movie is terrible. There's only one thing to do. Rewrite and reloop the entire film.

And I mean all the dialogue. What's up, Tiger Lily style? 

Richard Shepard: So, Roman [00:01:00] hired me to do that, and at the same time, his father, Francis, hired Tamar Broad, who was doing some radio shows up there, to do the same job. So Tamar and I were basically hired. For very little money to rewrite a movie that had already been shot and to supervise the hiring of the actors and the recording of all, whatever, 1, 700 lines of dialogue or whatever.

So, in a very short period of time, Tamar and I were thrown together in an office in San Francisco, casting a movie that had already been shot, recording the ADR, and most importantly, writing off camera jokes. 

Dan Delgado (Host): And it's here that two important things happen for Richard. First, during the course of that 

Richard Shepard: six weeks, Tamar and I fell in love.

And ended up dating for six years. 

Dan Delgado (Host): And second. 

Richard Shepard: And we decided we [00:02:00] wanted to write a script on our own after this was all done. And we went to Reno where you could get a hotel room at the time for like ten bucks a night. And all you can eat buffet for like 3. 99. This is certainly before Vegas and all of the gambling places sort of had a renaissance.

And we sort of started writing. I had wanted to do a robbery movie. She had worked at a restaurant. We were both into Harry Houdini. And since we didn't really know much about anything about the movie business, we sort of wrote this script in a, um, a beautiful naivete of what could be made or what could not be made.

And that actually trickled down to the actual making of the movie because so many things happened that would never have happened if we actually knew. How the business worked, but we really didn't. So that, that was the impetus of the Linguini incident. 

Dan Delgado (Host): My name is Dan Delgado. And in this episode, [00:03:00] we're taking a look at the Linguini incident, the 1991 quirky indie comedy that would start and stall Richard's career.

And a film that 30 years later, he would reclaim as his own. Welcome to the industry.

When I spoke with Richard Shepard about the making of the Linguini incident. He described 

Richard Shepard: it as it started out as like a dream and then became like just a total nightmare because it was just such a 

Dan Delgado (Host): brutal shoot. So with that idea in mind, let's look at it that way. First, let's talk about the dream. How the film came together.

Richard had little experience in making films when he got the green light to direct a script he and his then girlfriend, writer Tamar Brott, had written together. But when I say they had written the script, I should clarify. What they wrote was was a first draft, and that first draft is what got a green light from a B level producer.[00:04:00] 

He was so B 

Richard Shepard: level, in fact, that he was willing to hire me to direct, because he didn't give a shit that, that, uh, I hadn't done anything, really. Suddenly, I was directing this movie, and in our naivete, we were like, well, who do we want for this film? And we just sort of, we were like, well, we wrote it with Madonna in mind.

And, we wanted Madonna, Sandra Bernhardt, Richard E. Grant, and then we wanted David Bowie and Mick Jagger to play the restaurant owners. 

Dan Delgado (Host): Madonna, Sandra Bernhardt, Richard E. Grant, Jagger, and Bowie? I mean, really, I have to say, they were definitely dreaming big here with this cast. I mean, it was just 

Richard Shepard: truly Crazy thinking.

And we sent the script to Bowie to play this supporting role. And we get news back that he doesn't want to play the supporting role, but he's read the script and actually wants to be the lead. So, again, this is how insane it was. [00:05:00] Rosanna Arquette read the script because it was just sitting on her agent's desk.

And she was like, what's this? And started reading it. Marlee Matlin reached out to us and was like, I want to be in the movie, can you, can you create a role for me? 

Dan Delgado (Host): And of course Richard and Tamar could create a role for Oscar winner Marlee Matlin. Can you bring your Oscar to the set, Marlee? So instead of Richard E.

Grant, we have David Bowie. And Bowie is thrilled to be doing this movie. To him, doing a quirky comedy is a great change of pace. Here he is talking about it in two separate interviews. I'd never been offered a comedy before, 

David Bowie (archival audio): and I was delighted because it's, uh, because it's fun. I mean, it is fun to do something like this.

I was crazy for it, and I love the script. I thought it was, uh, really one of the funniest scripts I'd read in a long time. And funnily enough, the way that it's transpired, it's more of a light comedy than an old Out, belly laugh type movie. But it's uh, it's quite delightful. It gave me a chance to, [00:06:00] to do something like that.

To not be a Martian, but I still get to wear aluminum shirts. 

Dan Delgado (Host): And instead of Madonna, we have her desperately seeking Susan co star, Rosanna Arquette. 

Rosanna Arquette (archival audio): It's a real experience of people, like an ensemble piece, and people really working together and doing it because they love it. And that's nice. You don't get that feeling often, especially in Hollywood movies.

Dan Delgado (Host): And instead of Sandra Bernhard, we have this delightful woman. 

Eszter Balint: This was a time of a lot of changes for me. I just moved out to Los Angeles from New York, and I've been an almost lifetime New Yorker up to that point. So, I was born in Hungary. I lived in Europe the first 10 years of my life, or 11. 

Dan Delgado (Host): This is singer and actress Esther Berlint.

And for her, getting the third lead in this little indie was a big deal. 

Eszter Balint: Anyway, I just moved out to L. A. and I got the script. I thought it was really fun. I also thought it was a little more like I know it may sound funny to you, but for the world I came [00:07:00] from, it was like a little more mainstream and a little lighter than the stuff I grew up around and had done up to that point.

Dan Delgado (Host): Esther goes in for her audition. 

Eszter Balint: And then, I didn't get the part. 

Dan Delgado (Host): Okay, so it didn't exactly go according to plan. But then 

Eszter Balint: I get a call from my agent, I think at the time, that they want you back. And so I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled, and I had a meeting, like a lunch meeting or a read through with Rosanna and David Bowie.

And that was not an audition, it was like a read through, just for, in lieu of rehearsal I think, or just to meet each other. And, you know, Rosanna was great. She was so friendly right away and inviting and welcoming and because again, I was the new kid in town. And then David Bowie, I was just floored because like, you know, [00:08:00] like everyone else joined the club.

He was the total hero of mine and, and here I was sitting with him. 

Dan Delgado (Host): See, it's still a dream, right? Between You and Me, Esther is my favorite part of this movie. The casting rounds out with Buck Henry and Andre Gregory. Not bad. And in the early days of filming, well, Richard Shepard will tell you that he did not know what he was doing.

At least for Esther. She had confidence in him. 

Eszter Balint: I think that gave me confidence in him as a director. Also, I feel like he and Tamar were kind of a team. And so that gave Them an extra like he wasn't all on his own. Um, I mean, he was the director. Tamar was the writer, but they were a couple and, and she was on set and she had, she was, I think sometimes doing rewrite last minute rewrite.

They were a team and, and that gave me confidence. 

Dan Delgado (Host): And as the movie gets going, some issues start to pop up. 

Eszter Balint: There were, [00:09:00] you know, a lot of issues with money, which that I sort of peripherally knew about, that there were issues around money and being a low budget production for how ambitious it was. 

Dan Delgado (Host): But for someone like Esther, who's done independent films before, this is all just par for the course.

Eszter Balint: This was nothing new to me, like funding issues. In fact, it was the only thing I knew and, and if anything, it was a bridge between this little bit more Hollywood world that I was entering and, and the world I had come from. It was a little bridge. Oh, this movie is still like related to my world because, well, first of all, because casting was so cool and like Andre Gregory and, um, all those references.

But also because funding problems was like such a familiar territory for me that it was, it was almost a bridge of familiarity. 

Dan Delgado (Host): So this dream is [00:10:00] still going for Esther. But for Richard, here's where the nightmare comes in. I can't even tell you how 

Richard Shepard: badly produced this movie was. We had no time. We had one camera.

We, every day was tons of extras. It was so impossible. And because Because it was a first draft. It was like 120 pages long. It should have been most scripts that you're filming when you don't have a lot of money should be 100 pages. Cut out those 20 pages. You're going to cut them anyway. So it's cheaper, better, smarter to cut them before you shoot.

So you actually have more time every day to do the stuff that's going to end up in the movie. So now, as a writer, if someone said, well, you only have, you only have whatever X amount of days. I'm like, well, let's cut the script down. So we're able to actually not be doing 8 pages or 9 pages a day. We can do 4 pages or 3 pages a day.

It's going to be much better in those situations. Is it filmmaker? You're just more relaxed because you don't have a gun to your head every hour of the [00:11:00] hour. 

Dan Delgado (Host): The producer is essentially M. I. A. and Richard feels left out to dry, dealing with a ton of problems that come along when you make a movie, especially when you're making one with not quite enough money and you have experienced film actors who have certain expectations.

Richard Shepard: Rosanna Arquette always said she loved making this movie. It was one of her most Enjoyable movie making experiences. I didn't have the same joy. I didn't enjoy making it. It was pain for me. But I was always appreciative of Rosanna. Saying she loved making the movie. But she was difficult to me when we made the movie.

She was, I think, expecting. Martin Scorsese, or someone even close to Martin Scorsese, as opposed to just like an idiot, which I was. And so, even though she was obviously very nice and all of this stuff, it wasn't a great working experience. 

Dan Delgado (Host): Richard gets through the shoot, but the problems aren't over there.

The next headache becomes the edit. 

Richard Shepard: Most movies, [00:12:00] you know, have a relatively healthy editing period. The DGA Director's Guild guarantees you ten weeks, but this was a non DGA movie. So, basically, I had five weeks to cut the movie, not really knowing what I was doing. And then, that version of the movie got released in Europe.

And the producer recut it for the American version. Which took like two years to finally make it out and be seen by anybody. But that wasn't really my cut of the movie either. 

Dan Delgado (Host): That producer's cut of the movie was released in the United States on May 1st of 1992. Same weekend as the Rodney King riots in L.

1. So, not exactly great timing. 
   
   

Eszter Balint: I was probably thinking about the, the riots. But, uh, which was so upsetting and scary and, and, um, but going to the screening, it was, it was a little bit of a hollow experience because we [00:13:00] knew it wasn't going to get a real run. It was, it was just, it couldn't have been worse timing.

Dan Delgado (Host): And maybe needless to say, but the Linguini incident is not a hit. Nor is it a critical darling. Movies are 

Richard Shepard: strange. If you have a hit movie, you tend To stay friends with the actors in some way, even if it's just a text every once in a while, if you have a non hit movie, you just go your separate ways.

It's sort of like, you don't need to be in each. I mean, I'm not talking universally a hundred percent, but in general. Non hit movies the cast and the director, you know, they'll be friendly We'll friendly if we see each other but not we're never gonna be texting like thinking of you 

Dan Delgado (Host): buddy It just doesn't happen and while that dream cast would all move on to their next projects and likely not text each other too much It wasn't so easy for Richard.

The Linguini incident had a really damaging effect on him and his career. 

Richard Shepard: [00:14:00] After the movie was taken away from me, I went into like a very deep depression. Uh, it was, it was a few years of, of true depression. And, you know, I had been given this opportunity that almost any, anyone who wants to be in the film business would have given the right leg to be able to, at age 25, make a movie, especially a movie with this sort of cast.

And I had bobbled the ball. Like, I had not done the greatest job directing it. I certainly had not done the greatest job being political and staying on the correct side of my producer. And the movie was taken away from me, so suddenly I had a movie with my name on it, but I wasn't proud of it, and it did send me into like a real dark place.

Dan Delgado (Host): Throughout the 90s and the early aughts, Richard makes a number of small budget thrillers. He goes from not knowing what he was doing with the Linguini incident, to knowing exactly what he's doing when making a movie. 

Richard Shepard: I worked my way out of it, and You know, sort of [00:15:00] got my career back. It took a long time.

The matador was, was, was, you know, a long time after that. And the, to many people, it was my 1st movie was the 1st movie they'd seen of mine, but I made these little. 50, 000 thrillers and million dollar thrillers and I had done these little movies in between and kind of got my sea legs back and got my mojo back.

So by the time The Matador happened, I actually sort of knew what I was doing. 

Dan Delgado (Host): The Matador is his 2005 black comedy starring Pierce Brosnan that put Richard back on the industry's radar. And if you haven't seen it, you definitely should. And as his career gains momentum, the Linguini incident is still there in the back of his mind.

What if you could go back and fix it after all, it wasn't even his cut of the movie that was released in the United States and 30 years after its initial release, he wants to recut it at the very least have a version of the movie out there that he feels he can authentically claim [00:16:00] ownership of. 

Richard Shepard: So one of the reasons that I wanted to do this director's cut blu ray and streaming was 30 years on, I was like, you know, I really would like to try to actually get.

Closer to the movie that I would have probably been able to make had I been given the time to do it. So, up until now, it's the only movie of mine that isn't my cut of the film, even on films that I don't have final cut on. They've always been my final cut because I feel very proud that I work well with the financiers or the studios, but, but ultimately they are my movie.

And this 1 just wasn't so it's sort of been this 30 year apatross about whether I could ever be able to sort of put it back together. And because Bowie's in it, and it is such a cultural artifact of 1990 in the film making. There [00:17:00] is, there has been a really nice interest in it and, and allowed us to do all, all of this huge three year process of restoring the movie 

Dan Delgado (Host): in order to get this done, Richard needs to get the rights to the Linguini incident and get the negatives to do a proper director's cut and both of these things turned out to be a much harder than you might think.

First, there were the rights, 

Richard Shepard: no one knew where the rights were all these companies that had acquired the movies, we had gone bankrupt or whatever. So, eventually, we found that the screen actors guild, which is the union for actors had had a special clause in the contract for Linguini incident that said that if residuals weren't paid.

On time that they could claim the copyright to the movie and since residuals were not paid because the money was so nefarious, they had claimed the copyright. So, actually, we finally found who [00:18:00] owned the copyright and it was a screen actors guilt. But the problem was that they didn't have. The film, 

Dan Delgado (Host): they just had the copyright.

Now we know who has the rights. Great. But where's the movie itself? Where are the negatives? Turns out that was harder to find than the 

Richard Shepard: rights. Let me tell you something. Some movies are made and you just know where the negative is, you know, who owns the rights. And there's a lot of movies, especially during that period of the late eighties, early nineties that were financed in with foreign sales companies and video companies.

Interim financing and it just, they just, it's impossible to find the rights to them. So they, some of them came out on VHS. Some of them came out on laser disc, but there's. Bad transfers and no good transfers and no one has a negative. And that was the case here in which we could not find. I called every single lab in America and Canada.

I called the distributors in Japan, Germany, all over [00:19:00] France, all over the places in the world that had shown it. They react theatrically because I thought maybe someone has a print. I went on all these obscure websites and there was a lots of them for film collectors, and I'm like, guys, does anyone have a printed disc?

But no one does. The search goes on and on. I went deep internet trying to find, and I started going through every revival theater in Europe whose programs were archived. And I found a theater in Austria that had shown a print of the movie 7 years ago. And I was like, oh, my God, there is a print. Like, I didn't even know if there was a print.

So I cold emailed the theater. You know, not speaking Austrian, just hoping someone, you know, could could read English. And I was like, look, I know this is a strange email. I'm the director of the movie. Do you know where that came from? And they got back to me, like, within the hour. They're like, try these [00:20:00] people.

And I tried those people. And not only did they have. But the print, but they had the negative as 

Dan Delgado (Host): if you couldn't love revival houses enough, the print from Europe arrives. And now 

Richard Shepard: I had this sort of longer version of the film, and I then started calling in favors and editor David Dean, who I'd done my movie The Perfection with and a lot of TV pilots with he came in to edit it.

We were working on nights and weekends on borrowed equipment. Um, we, we had a, a great post supervisor, Peter Chomsky. We had a great lab helping us. And we basically were able to create this sort of director's cut, because it is my cut of the movie as of now with what I had to work with. And a lot of the stuff was just tightening stuff.

Adding, you know, with 4K, The image is so clear. You can almost. Zoom in double the amount [00:21:00] of the original image. So I was able to, in a scene with only three shots, suddenly have what felt like seven shots. Because I could zoom in and move in and retighten 

Dan Delgado (Host): and reframe. So it's not exactly a true director's cut, but it's close.

So that's what we're calling it. And at this point, close is good enough. The new director's cut edition of The Linguini Incident Was released in 2024. It's available on Blu-ray, and as of this recording is streaming on the Criterion Channel. Here's what Esther Ballant had to say after seeing this new cut of the film.

Eszter Balint: I think the distance of time gave me a perspective of more appreciation. It's, it's fun, you know, and it's. It's, I think there, there might still be something about it that I don't know. There's something really lovely about it. It's, it's really about, I saw that it's about the friendship so much more than the love story, you know, and, uh, and that really [00:22:00] hit me more this time.

And I don't know if that's something that came out more in Richard's cut or that just with the distance of time, obviously I don't have a memory of the exact cut, previous cuts. So I can't quite compare. But I have just more appreciation for it, for what it is. It does, it's not like a heavy, life changing drama.

You know, it's not a exploring deep themes that have never been explored before about human nature. Um, but it's actually got the sensibility that's really fun in it. And I just appreciated it more now. 

Richard Shepard: But I'll tell you Dan, the best part about this has been the reception that the movie has gotten now, because people like it.

And we've been screening it all over the country. And suddenly, I've been going with Roseanne Arquette and Esther [00:23:00] Ballen to screenings. And it's been so fun because it's, uh, I get to celebrate this movie that for a very long time really caused me a huge amount of pain. So from a purely, like, the big circle of life, uh, to be able to finally, A, be proud of the movie, B, be, want people to see it, not, want people not to see it, and to have now been able to celebrate it in some way, because I certainly didn't celebrate it when it came out, you know, 30 years ago, so, that part has also been, Prices.

This is obviously not, uh, like the holy grail. I'm not going to make a lot of money on this. I'll be lucky if I break even, like it's going to, it's people are, people are going to see it, you know, and that, that makes me really happy. 

Dan Delgado (Host): Now, over 30 years later, Richard Shepard can finally put the incident of the Linguini incident behind him and hopefully we'll get some text [00:24:00] messages.