How come there was no commentary track on the Better Off Dead DVD?
SS: I know. It’s because this movie is a bastard step-child. No one ever believes in it, cares about it. No one ever calls me about anything. The only time I hear nice things are when people like you tell me how much you liked it.
DS: You really didn’t have a thing to do with the DVD?
SS: Not a thing. Really. They didn’t even tell me it was coming out.
DS: That’s terrible. With the exception of Cusack, everyone would have gotten together to do commentary on it.
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So, let’s talk about Cusack hating the movie.
SS: Yeah. That was tragic. That was really sad.
I had met John when he was 17. We went to Yamashura and had drinks, which was totally illegal, and he was just the coolest guy. He was just so much fun and so funny and I was like, “You are my Lane.”
DS: But when it was all done and he was watching the final edit, he told you “I hate this?”
SS: No. It was worse than that. He actually came to a lot of the editing. We were really good friends. We had a lot of fun.
Then he went off to do some other movie, and when he came back he agreed to do One Crazy Summer. Which I had written a rough draft of, and he didn’t think it was that funny. And I just said, “I’m just gonna let you guys do your thing, and make it funnier when we get there.” And I guess they paid him a lot of money.
SS: So this is short of a shocker. but we all got up to Cape Cod, and the night before we started shooting One Crazy Summer, we screened Better Off Dead for everyone that was up there because it was mostly the same crew, and a lot of the same cast.
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So we’re all watching the Better Off Dead screening that night, and John walked out of the movie. About 20 minutes into it, he walked out, and he never came back.
The next morning, he basically walked up to me and was like, “You know, you tricked me. Better Off Dead was the worst thing I have ever seen. I will never trust you as a director ever again, so don’t speak to me.”
DS: Are you kidding?!
SS: No, it was that bad. He was just really upset. And I said, “What happened?! What’s wrong?!” And he just said that I sucked, and it was the worst thing he had ever seen, and that I had used him, and made a fool out of him, and all this other stuff.
And I was just stunned, because it was as funny as shit. And he was great in it. And he was helping me edit it throughout the summer.
How did that affect you?
SS: It made me not care about movies anymore. And I didn’t even want to do One Crazy Summer at that point. I was just gone. It was sort of like the break-up that I made Better Off Dead about. It was so out of left field, that it just floored me.
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DS: I don’t understand why he had such a negative reaction to it. I supposed that after he made it, he must have just decided it wasn’t the type of movie he wanted to be making. But it’s weird that he’d blame you because he clearly read the script before signing on. He knew what he was doing and he knew that it was being recorded on film. It’s not like you put roofies in his Diet Coke and then “tricked” him into acting in the movie.
SS: And he was at dailies every night, too.
DS: So why would his reaction be like he’d never had anything to do with the movie until he saw it?
SS: It was a little out of left-field. I have to admit. And I just don’t know if he was more mad that he was in the second movie that was way more absurd than even Better Off Dead. And what was interesting was that the dream was we always wanted to absurd kind of stuff like Woody Allen’s “Bananas.”
And it’s funny, John will never talk about Better Off Dead, and One Crazy Summer, and I read something recently where he called me “the director." He wouldn’t use my name, and he said, “the director wanted to do absurdist comedy and that’s just not the thing I like to do,” or something like that.
I feel like I let him down. And it totally surprises me so much because I have to say the most important person to me about that movie, was John. I really wanted him to love it as much as I loved it. And once he said that stuff, it was like a girlfriend who breaks up with you. You can’t fight with her. It’s like everything is so great, and then they say “I hate you!” out of nowhere. There’s really no argument you can have. I had my heart broken. That was the second time my heart was broken since that girl that Better Off Dead was about – honest to God.
It made me think, “What’s this business about? It’s no fun.” But, I will say that Better Off Dead was the happiest time of my life without a doubt.
I really thought as time went by, he might feel differently. But I read one other article that he got jailed for something. Somebody in his car had something, I don’t know what, be he got jailed for something. He said, “Jail sucked the most because everybody kept coming up to me going ‘I want my two dollars!’”