Runaway Bride

Oh, man.

Wasn't he in The Runaway Bride? Was that him? Yeah.

Oh, man, is he handsome in that one.

Mm-hmm.

He also liked to have on-set writers.

So later in my dad's career, after we'd moved to Martha's Vineyard and I was maybe in middle school, he did a lot of on-set writer work on Gary's movies like Runaway Bride and Princess Diaries 1 and 2, Raising Helen, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, all of those holiday movies.

Could you explain to the writers out there who might not know what on-set writing means?

Yeah, so it's a little non-traditional.

Yeah, Paul.

How about these Julia Roberts? Notting Hill, My Best Friend's Wedding, Runaway Bride, Steel Magnolias.

You'd love that.

No.

[laughs]

I like Runaway Bride.

All right.

But I felt bad for Richard Gere.

And you got to take some time to think about what that means and go get to know yourself.

You know, go watch Runaway Bride and see how long it took her to figure out what eggs she liked.

You know, it takes time.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the idea of getting to know yourself will help you create clarity when you have that tension.

Okay, The Rock is in that.

Runaway Bride.

Okay.

And the Blair Witch Project.

Uh, we are discussing a very famous commercial dud from 1999 that's often cited as one of the year's best movies, uh, the 78th highest grossing movie of the year, and the feature directorial debut of Brad Bird, who would go on to direct landmark Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille, and now serves in Pixar's senior creative team.

It was released on the highly competitive first weekend of August, coming in at number nine behind The Haunting, Inspector Gadget, Mystery Men, Deep Blue Sea, The Thomas Crown Affair, Runaway Bride, The Blair Witch Project, and also debuting that weekend, the box office behemoth The Sixth Sense, going on to make just $23 million on a budget of 70 million.

[lip smacks] Written by Bird and Tim McCanlies, based on the book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, produced for interesting reasons by The Who's Pete Townsend, and featuring a beautifully Americana score by the late Michael Kamen.

Starring Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Cloris Leachman, Christopher McDonald in the James Woods role, John Mahoney, M. Emmet Walsh, along with Eli Marienthal, who made another mark in 1989 as Stifler's brother in American Pie, as the protagonist Hogarth Hughes, and Vin Diesel as The Giant.