# Who greenlighted this cinematic shitshow? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [May 1, 2026, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703 "2026-05-01T18:25:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/61 "2026-05-03T17:12:55Z")
Another vote for “if it was a success, then greenlighting it wasn’t a bad call”. Debating the artistic merits of a movie is beyond the scope of this thread. I actually saw _ **Ishtar** _ in theater and while it left no impression I can remember now, I think I understand what they were aiming for: to somehow revive/ pay tribute to the “The Road To” movies of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Clearly someone was swayed by nostalgia, but they just didn’t pull it off. > [@Alessan](#): > > the concept a Popeye film; it would even have been better if Stanley Kubrick or Bernardo Bertolucci had directed. Now I’m genuinely curious what Kubrick would have done with it, being a strongly visually oriented director. Would he have gone back to Segar’s original idiosyncratic art style for inspiration? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/62 "2026-05-03T17:22:21Z")
How about _[Movie 43](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_43)_? This was a 2013 sketch comedy movie with fourteen storylines directed by well-known people and starring well-known people. Rotten Tomatoes has it at five percent. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/63 "2026-05-03T17:31:57Z")
> [@Disinfectus](#): > > > [@CairoCarol](#): > > > > _One Trick Pony._ I watched it with three friends and all of us were incredulous when it was over. "That … was … a … _movie?"_ > > Horrible movie. Great music. Yes. I couldn’t believe how bad it was. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/64 "2026-05-03T17:36:04Z")
Speaking of awful movies with great music… did _anybody_ greenlight **200 Motels** , or did Frank Zappa just bankroll and push it through with his out of control myopic ego? ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/65 "2026-05-03T17:47:41Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > How about _[Movie 43](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_43)_? This was a 2013 sketch comedy movie with fourteen storylines directed by well-known people and starring well-known people. Rotten Tomatoes has it at five percent. It made $32 million at the box office on a budget of $6m, it was greenlit by a genius. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2026, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/66 "2026-05-03T23:16:47Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > ETA on top of that, since this is specifically about green lighting of films, even if a film sucked, if it made a lot of money, it’s going to get greenlit. It sounds like you’re bending the rules of time here. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/67 "2026-05-04T00:53:12Z")
Here’s one I had blotted out of my mind, despite being there. **Can’t Stop the Music**. The (highly fictionalized) story of how the musical group The Village People got together. Only a couple of problems: - Bad timing. The Village People fell off the charts in 1978. Disco itself pretty much fell off the charts in 1979. By the summer of 1980 disco was pretty much as dead as 1950s cocktail lounge music. - Nancy Walker was hired to direct. Walker was ready to transition from acting to directing, but her resume at that point consisted of eight episodes of TV sitcoms and one TV movie that played like a sitcom. - Music group instability hit when VP lead singer Victor Willis quit the group before shooting started. His real life girlfriend, Phylicia Ayers-Allen, had been hired to play his on screen girlfriend, so she had to be replaced, as well. There will also reported bad feelings between Nancy Walker and Valerie Perrine. - Filming was jinxed by the coincidence that the Al Pacino film _Cruising_ was also being shot in New York City at the same time. Gay rights activists who were angered by gay portrayals in Cruising, mistook location shooting for CSTM and disrupted production several times. I won’t even get into the poor quality overall. Instead, let’s agree that the disco era came and went faster than a movie could be made about it. Half the movie’s $20 million production budget was spent on marketing, and it grossed just $2 million. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/68 "2026-05-04T01:12:32Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > It sounds like you’re bending the rules of time here. 🙂 Fair! ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/69 "2026-05-04T02:10:25Z")
I LOVED “Being John Malkovich.” My ribs hurt the next day because I laughed so much. Oddly, I have never had any desire to see it again, probably because I enjoyed it so much the first time. That I was working at the grocery store pharmacy and dealing with a phone nurse (who thankfully didn’t last very long) with a serious hearing impairment probably helped, or maybe didn’t help. (There was a minor character in the movie - a receptionist who was deaf.) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/70 "2026-05-04T02:14:17Z")
Probably the same kind of people who thought up things like “Lavalantula.” Ian Ziering only agreed to take the role of Fin in the first “Sharknado” movie because his wife was pregnant and he needed a certain number of hours to keep his Screen Actors Guild insurance. Little did he know! ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/71 "2026-05-04T02:17:19Z")
Speaking of 19 out of 20, who was it that said that 95% of everything is crap? ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/72 "2026-05-04T02:18:42Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > who was it that said that 95% of everything is crap? Theodore Sturgeon, though I think he said 90%. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/73 "2026-05-04T02:24:52Z")
How about the worst movie I ever sat through to completion in a theater, “National Lampoon’s Class Reunion”? Len Maltin said, “If you went to high school with people like this, no jury on earth would convict you for turning homicidal either.” ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/74 "2026-05-04T02:32:24Z")
A number of the well-known people who appeared in it said later that they were finagled into those appearances under questionable pretenses. (John Hodgman, who played the Penguin in the “Suoerhero Speed Dating” segment, told an interviewer the directors didn’t even tell him he’d be appearing in a movie at all - they just called him and said “Hey, we’re having this event where everyone dresses up like superheroes.”) ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/75 "2026-05-04T02:45:12Z")
_Zardoz_ (1974) _Quintet_ (1979) _Howard the Duck_ (1986) ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/76 "2026-05-04T02:55:40Z")
> [@Dropo](#): > > _Howard the Duck_ (1986) The answer to “who greenlit this one” appears to be George Lucas. Especially because it appears that it was initially being developed as an animated film, but as Lucas (who was executive producer) had a contractual obligation to deliver a live-action film to Universal. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/77 "2026-05-04T03:23:16Z")
OK, that plot summary sure makes _Nothing Lasts Forever_ look like a bad idea. But read the [plot summary of _Everything Everywhere All At Once_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Everywhere_All_at_Once#Plot) and it doesn’t look like it would get 11 Oscar nominations. My hubby stopped watching when the hot dog fingers appeared. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/78 "2026-05-04T04:14:02Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Why do people here continue to think that just because _they_ don’t like a film most other people do, that it was a mistake to make it? It’s a SD certainty. If someone posts “what are the worst bands?” someone will certainly say The Beatles. “What aree the worst films made?” and Star Wars will be listed. it’s inevitable. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/79 "2026-05-04T05:41:29Z")
Has anyone mentioned _ **Heavens Gate** _ yet? That was a shitshow from the beginning, all the way through production to the mind numbing 3.5+ hours it takes to watch this trainwreck. How the reins weren’t applied during production is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2026, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703/80 "2026-05-04T05:58:28Z")
I’ve seen EEAAO, thankfully on DVD. That was hands down THE. WEIRDEST . MOVIE I have ever seen, and yes, I have seen “Pink Flamingos”, “Eraserhead”, and “Gummo”, among others. As for “Heaven’s Gate” the word “grandiose” describes it from start to finish. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-greenlighted-this-cinematic-shitshow/1029703.md?page=5)