Random Bizarre True Story Behind Weirdest '90s Movie (13 items)

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  (#1) Whoopi Goldberg Was Forced By Law To Be In This Movie

  Whoopi Goldberg did, at one time, want to be in Theodore Rex and agreed to play the lead for $5 million and a share of the profits, but she quickly changed her mind and tried to back out (good instincts, Whoopi!). Goldberg had to learn the hard way that it’s just not that easy to simply walk away from expensive movies starring talking dinosaurs (a lesson we all could learn from). Because she had agreed to do the movie, the producers sued her for $20 million when she tried to back out. After an answering machine recording of Goldberg surfaced where she said she was "100% committed" to the project, she was forced to choose between appearing in the film or paying out the nose for a dinosaur detective movie that she agreed to appear in. There’s a famous saying in Hollywood: “The only thing worse than appearing in a terrible dinosaur movie is paying $20 million NOT to appear in a terrible dinosaur movie,” so Whoopi opted to appear in the terrible dinosaur movie.
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  (#2) Whoopi Hated Literally Everyone Involved in the Movie

  While she was sort of forced by law to star in the film, there’s no law saying she had to enjoy it or anyone she worked with! After litigation, she took to referring to producer Stefano Ferrari as "motherf*cker" every time she saw him and eventually banned him from the set entirely. (Fun Fact: Ferrari eventually came to call the movie “an actual piece of sh*t.”)

   

  Richard Abramson, another producer, also suffered Whoopi Goldberg’s wrath. When Goldberg and Abramson met with mediators and lawyers to discuss their legal issues, the first thing Goldberg said was: "Just for the record: I hate your guts. Maybe in ten years, you and I can have a cup of coffee and laugh about this. But you’ve made my life a living hell and I hate your f*cking guts.”

   

  But producers weren’t the only ones to get chewed out by Goldberg. She also went after the puppeteers, but she had good reason... 
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  (#3) The Animatronic Dinosaurs Barely Worked

  We're no budget experts, but if you're spending $33 million on a movie and your star is only getting 5 of that, the rest of your budget better go to a dinosaur that freaking WORKS. Unfortunately, the team at Theodore Rex disagreed.

   

  In an interview with Slash Film, the movie's head puppeteer Bruce Lanoil admitted that the animatronic dinosaur he was piloting didn't work and when Whoopi found out, she was pissed.

   

  He said that on the first day of shooting, nothing was working and the producers were "just yelling at me to keep going. So Whoopi looks right at me and she shouts: 'IS THIS F*CKING THING GONNA WORK?' She’s staring right at me and I just wither and say 'we’re trying.' And she goes: “IT BETTER,” then she storms off the set."

   

  So Whoopi hated everyone and most people didn’t enjoy working with her. That’s a lot of headaches that could have been avoided, especially considering...
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  (#4) Whoopi Was Never Supposed To Be In This Movie

  If you've watched Theodore Rex, then you know that Whoopi Goldberg plays the tough as nails detective. (Also, if you've watched Theodore Rex, what on earth is wrong with you and where did you find a working VHS player??) Originally, the part was written for someone with a little more machismo. Someone who was used to getting into Big Trouble and dealing with The Things while Escaping from New York. That's right, before Goldberg took on the meaty role of Katie Coltraine, the producers wanted Kurt Russel to take the part.

   

  Unfortunately, before the producers were able to nail down the '80s action daddy, they came to the conclusion that a bigger star would help them increase the budget. Ferrari told Slashfilm, "We were thinking of someone like Kurt Russell. But then the budget for the film grew a little bit and what happened was Richard realized that in order to really raise the money for this film, we needed to get a star. And eventually he came up with the idea that Whoopi Goldberg would be very good for this.”

   
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  (#5) The Funding For This Movie Was... Pretty Shady

  It might seem hard to believe, but no one in Hollywood wanted to film this futuristic dinosaur buddy cop movie that also featured robots. Without an option to get proper funding, writer/director Jonathan Betuel and producer Richard Abramson had to seek out international funding, which they found through the son of a pharmaceutical magnate, Stefano Ferrari. The Italian-born Ferrari didn't love the pharmaceutical life so he moved to Hollywood to be a big-time film producer. (Eventually and as a direct result of the failure of this movie, Ferrari left the film industry to return to his roots in pharmaceuticals, where he’s been very successful.)

   

  We don’t necessarily want to make any direct references to the mafia or anything, but in the great oral history of Theodore Rex over at SlashFilm, whenever the topic of funding comes up, producer Richard Abramson just ominously refers to "the Italians." When discussing Theodore Rex's infamous court case with Whoopi, Abramson says "at this point, the Italians weren't happy with me because I was the guy who had gotten them into this thing." So the law is forcing an angry Whoopi Goldberg to make this movie and the vaguely menacing Italians are angrily pressuring the producers. That's the formula for a great movie if we ever heard one!
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  (#6) It Was So Bad It Set Records

  There's no wrong way to set a new record, right?

   

  (There are, actually, there are several and Theodore Rex did a few of them.)

   

  As far as failures go, Theodore Rex can at least say that it's one of the biggest failures that ever existed. The overall cost for this buddy cop film set in an alternate future where dinosaurs are both a) alive and b) occasionally detectives, was a cool $33.5 million, the most expensive budget for a direct-to-VHS movie at the time.

   

  Not content with setting just one bad record, Theodore Rex was also the first (and as of this writing only) direct-to-VHS movie to be nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award, the awards dedicated to truly horrible moments in film.
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  (#7) The Script Was Being Rewritten On The Spot

  There are always going to be changes when a film is in production, but at the very least a director should go into their film with something that they're confident shooting. That didn't happen with Jonathan Betuel. According to people on set, he was incredibly insecure in the film's script - which he wrote - so he would continually rewrite scenes as the film progressed.

   

  Bruce Lanoil, the film's head puppeteer, told Slash Film, "[Betuel] would think up lines and then I’d run up to the actors and give them the latest material. I remember one time, Armin [Mueller-Stahl], who played the villain, he replied, 'Hey Bruce, how about we try the lines as they were written for once? Please.' Because the changes, they kept coming and coming. Jonathan was in way over his head."
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  (#8) There are a TON of Unanswered Questions

  Most movies require some suspension of disbelief, but when you're making a movie set in an alternate future with talking dinosaurs, you should at least have to TRY to explain yourself. Jurassic Park didn't just say "there's a magical island where dinosaurs exist;" they went to great lengths to walk the audience through the intricate fake-science that went into the cloning of dinosaurs.

   

  Theodore Rex did no such thing. Here's what the audience knows: a man named Elizar Kane has cloned dinosaurs. That’s pretty much it. Bruce, the puppeteer, says it best:

   

  "Why are [the dinosaurs] talking? Why are they dressed as humans? Why are they dying? Why are they not fighting back? Why doesn’t [Teddy Rex] eat meat? Why does he want to live in an apartment? I mean, so many whys. Why does he wear a ring? Why is he driving in a car? And why is he with Whoopi Goldberg? And nobody could figure any of that out, and nobody has since."

   

  The film doesn't explain any of this. This could have been solved by having any character say something as simple as "Boy, life sure has been different ever since dinosaurs gained sentience via cosmic rays and won the right to vote via protest and diligent lobbying," but no one ever says that. You just have to accept that dinosaurs are back and some of them want to be cops.

   

  Speaking of unexplained, unexplored, dinosaur-related phenomena...
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  (#9) All Dinosaurs Share A Psychic Connection

  This detail is something that comes up twice and it's never discussed again. The film begins in a dream that informs Theodore that one of his dino-brethren has been murdered. He then goes on a Dale Cooper-esque hunt through the city to find the person that committed the "dinocide."

   

  After initially mentioning the psychic connection to Goldberg's character early in the film, it's not mentioned again until Molly Rex (voiced by Carol Kane!!!) also brings up the dream of the dino-death. But then that's the end of discussing the psychic connection between the dinos. There are moments in the film when the characters could actually use their powers to communicate with each other, but instead the film simply devolves into screeching and third act horseplay.
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  (#10) Theodore Rex Looks Like It Was Filmed On The Set Of Batman Returns

  Despite taking place in an unnamed metropolis Theordore Rex feels incredibly claustrophobic. According to the film's production designer, Walter Martishius, he wanted to drape the city in"purples and blues and yellows" to "dull the sci-fi edge." Unfortunately, the softening of the film's sci-fi edge makes the movie feel like it was filmed on unused sets from Batman & Robin and the Super Mario Bros. movie.  In an alternate reality, the crew snuck onto the unused sets in the middle of the night to save money. Unfortunately they actually spent money on this faux-Blade Runner nightmare. 

  Additionally, because Teddy Rex had a non-detachable, five-foot-long tail, every single set needed to be designed with that tripping hazard in mind. Every interior needed to be big enough to accommodate the tail and whenever a scene called for Teddy to sit in a chair, Walter would have to build a new chair with a hole for the tail. It's easy to see how production can spend $33 million when every chair is a custom build.
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  (#11) This Movie Is A Tonal Mess

  It never feels good to tear down a piece of art, but it's hard to imagine that there's anything good buried inside this melange of family friendly science fiction tropes. First of all, the film doesn't just look bad - it's as if you asked 20 different people to describe the meaning of "dystopia" and made that into a stylistic choice. On top of the film looking dreadful, the acting choices are all over the place. It's never clear how anyone is supposed to feel or if they're even in the same movie. Theodore is an overly sincere character that was described by a producer as "idiot-like" while Goldberg's Coltrane waffles between being dismissive and malicious. 

  The film may have begun as a gritty science fiction film about cloning, but the addition of a talking dinosaur, a series of extended fart jokes, and a clothing montage managed to turn the film into a kaleidoscope of unnecessary details.  
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  (#12) No One Has Fond Memories of this Movie

   

  Unsurprisingly, no one looks back on this movie with anything resembling affection. We already know that producer/financier Stefano Ferrari thinks it's "ac actual piece of sh*t" and Whoopi never seems to bring it up in interviews, but let's check in with the rest of the team!

  Richard (Producer): "You know, I meant to take my name off this picture, but by the time I got around to it it was too late.... the movie is in my view unwatchable."

  Jonathan (Writer/Director): "I don't remember much. I have no short-term memory for sad things."

  Walter (Production Design): "I didn't think anyone knew this movie existed."

  Bruce (Puppeteer): "What a strange, strange movie. It was the germination of a crazy idea that should have just been left as a crazy idea."
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  (#13) A Quick Round Up Of Things That Happen In Theodore Rex

  Not everything in Theodore Rex warrants a mental breakdown in paragraph form, so here's a bullet point list of some of the things that happen in this fever dream of a film:

  • Theodore Rex has a pet dog named "Zippy"
  • Whoopi Goldberg's character makes a Blade Runner reference when referring to herself as "more human than human." 
  • There are Jewish dinosaurs
  • There are also Southern Baptist dinosaurs
  • The film's villain lives on a replica of the island from Jurassic Park
  • Whoopi Goldberg's character is revealed to be a robot in the third act
  • Bud Cort from Harold and Maude plays a third tier henchman named "Spinner" and it's super depressing
  • Theodore Rex works in police PR
  • Whoopie Goldberg's character spends the entire film in futuristic bondage gear
  • The movie literally ends with the words "See ya."

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