Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I recently had the opportunity to drop by the editing bay of GET SMART on the Warner Bros lot. I had interviewed director Peter Segal at Comic-Con and at that point he said he’d have us by the editing room. Well, a lot of people say that kind of thing, but it either slips their mind or logistically doesn’t work out. For whatever reason, Segal remembered the offer and asked me to stop in to show me some footage from the film. At Comic-Con I was impressed with the GET SMART footage. I didn’t expect a real deal action movie, thinking it was going to be more of a comedy with some action thrown in. The Comic-Con footage showed a real TRUE LIES like action film with Steve Carell doing his thing in the middle of it. Segal ended up showing me about 15-20 minutes of the movie in 3-8 minute chunks from throughout the movie. The first and longest clip was about 8 minutes from early in the movie… actually, they precursored the the long clip with a short one of Masi Oka (Hiro!) who’s one of the Qs of this movie, inventing gadgets for the CONTROL agents, giving Max a swiss army knife that has everything he’d need… file, toothpick, tweezers, flame thrower, grapple, crossbow… The main clip is Max and Agent 99 sitting on an airplane. The shot opens with a big swoop around the airplane and then zooms into the window next to our agents. Their cover story is that of a married couple so as they begin getting their story straight they begin bickering… falling into their roles without knowing it. 99 tells him “I like your parents, you hate mine…” Max: “Do we have kids?” “You want kids, I don’t.” “Why don’t you want kids?” which of course spins into him shooting blanks, etc, etc. Throughout this line of discussion we find out a little backstory about 99 and Max… Let’s just say they were radically different people (one in size and one in age) before they met. Their bickering is interrupted when they see one of KAOS’s henchmen played by the giant Dalip Singh. Max refers to him as Easter Island because of his distinctive jaw-line. Instead of going back to bickering Max notices a huge wad of gum on the bottom of his shoe and, being Maxwell Smart, decides to scrape it off using a pair of matches. Of course the people on the plane start screaming about shoe bombs and Max is immediately tackled by an air marshal. Cut to Max with those plastic hand-ties on. 99 takes a seat across the aisle from him and tells him they need to get on with their mission. He says he has it under control, then tells the air marshal that he needs to go to the bathroom. When he’s alone in the toilet, he digs his Swiss Army Knife out of his pocket… and, of course, instead of trying to cut himself loose he instead unfolds and loads the crossbow. He aims with his mouth, holding his hands out. He misses and the barb ends up in his foot. We get a montage of Max reloading and missing, the barb usually ricocheting off the walls and mirror and ending up piercing his ear or embedded into his face somehow. Carell does his patented slow red-faced build to screaming out single words while in pain a few times. Max pulls out these barbs as 99 checks her watch, wondering what’s taking so long. Back in the toilet Max turns a knob and the mirror slides up revealing two parachutes and sky diving suits, but his hands are still tied, so he tries one more crossbow shot. Success! His hands are freed, but the barb bounces around the room, ultimately ending up embedded in a big red button set in the smoke detector. Max notices just as the floor beneath his feet opens up and he falls. We see the pilots notice a blinking light and say, “Package one is out,” as they flip a switch and the bathroom occupied light goes out. 99 notices and makes her way to the toilet. She steps in and sees Max gone… yet both of the parachutes are still there. The next bit was an action scene as 99 dives through the air trying to catch up with the free-falling Max. Soon enough, the KAOS henchman is involved and it becomes a big action sequence as 99 battles him and tries to keep Max from pulling a Wile E. Coyote. Segal showed me this sequence, then said that he cut his teeth with the Zucker Bros and they had a trick when testing their films… something they took from the Marx Bros. The Marx Bros used to test out their comedy by doing gigs and setting up microphones secretly in the audience. Afterwards, they’d listen through the performances and hone their work. The Zuckers did the same thing when testing their films and now Segal does it, but instead of microphones he places video cameras taping the audience (all Paris Hilton green-eyed style). He said it takes out any question as they debate after the test screening… If there’s any question as to what got a laugh, they can just watch the video. He showed me the crossbow sequence again, but it was mostly a composite of a test screening audience as they munched on popcorn and watched, with a picture in picture window showing what the audience is watching. It was fascinating watching an audience watching the movie, but I can see how helpful it is in shaping a comedy. You don’t just hear laughs, but you see when people hide their faces during the action bits, see if people are shifting in their seats or checking their watches. I ended up seeing a few more smaller sequences structured around 99 and Max infiltrating a German country home, which features the same mixture of action and comedy and underlines just how incompetent Max is and just how badass (and hot) 99 is. They find they can’t get past the body guards to this party (where they’re apparently looking for a computer or hard drive of some sort), so Max pulls out his trusty Swiss Army knife again and tries to blow-dart the guards. The second he puts the contraption up to his lips he inhales and sucks in the dart, collapsing into unconsciousness. He wakes up and he and 99 are in a barn. He’s wearing a tux and 99 is in the final stages of putting on a smokin’ hot dress (lotsa leg for us menfolk in the audience) and a Maude Lebowski (or Cate Blanchett from Indy 4) type wig. Max is stunned. How did he get into a tux while he was asleep? She just smiles. They infiltrate the party and she starts seducing the playboy owner with a tango. This is all supposed to be a distraction so Max can go find whatever they’re looking for, but Max becomes jealous and the scene turns into a dance-off between 99 and the hunk and Max and the fattest girl he can find at the party (after considering the snobby rich ones). In this dance-off he and the fat girl kick ass, pulling off gravity defying stunts and getting the applause of the party-goers. 99 should be pissed, but you can tell she’s strangely flattered that Max would try to impress her. Then there’s a big espionage sequence as they patrol the rat-filled sewer trying to find the secret room. Using exploding dental floss 99 gains entrance to the room. Unfortunately it’s filled with lasers. You’ve seen a bit of this in the international trailer, I think, where Max is surprisingly limber as he avoids the lasers. Unfortunately he has a hitchhiker. A big rat clings to his back and just as he’s almost through the lasers he realizes he has a rat on his back. He keeps his cool until it crawls down his shirt and then he freaks out. Turns out the lasers aren’t alarms, but real lasers that will cut you. Max makes it out with quite a few laser burns. I also got to see some of The Rock’s scenes at CONTROL where he plays a desked agent really unhappy about not being out in the field. He’s used to fighting bad guys, now he has to put up with dickheads like David Koechner and Terry Crews. The particular scene I watched had The Rock pissed off that Koechner had jammed the copy machine. Koechner’s an asshole, laughs in his face… enjoying the fact that now that The Rock is out of the field he’s not the hot shit. The Rock points to something on Koechner’s desk. “Is that your stapler?” Koechner says it is and in one fluid movement, Dwayne Johnson flips the bottom of the stapler out and smacks it onto Koechner’s forehead, stapling the fucked up piece of copy paper to his dome. Koechner squeals and Terry Crews covers his own bald head as The Rock walks past. They showed me the audience footage thing again with this scene and when Johnson staples Koechner’s head the laughter explodes. People love watching assholes get hurt. I asked if I could see something with Terence Stamp in it and Segal’s eyes lit up. He loved working with Stamp and showed me his introduction, played mostly in shadow. It’s a pretty typical villain introduction where he gives an order in a warehouse and one of the henchmen question him. He wants the warehouse they’re in burned to the ground after they leave with their payload of missiles. One of the henchmen asks why and promptly gets a bullet for his troubles. All this played in shadow. We don’t see Stamps face until he’s driving away. The framing is seeing his reflection in the side-view mirror, still in shadow, until he hits a button and the warehouse behind him explodes, lighting up his face. What I saw I liked. It’s a big budget studio comedy, but Segal knows timing and has a knack for casting. The chemistry between Carell and Hathaway was great and gave it the extra boost you’d need to buy into their situation. Stamp looks to be having a lot of fun and Alan Arkin looked hilarious. They showed me a bit from the end of the movie, a car-chase with The Chief and Max in a car… Arkin is as sarcastic and dryly humored as always and has one line involving a swordfish that will really bring the house down. It had all of us cracking up in the edit bay. I know this won’t paint the nicest picture to a lot of you, but speaking as a fan of the balance between comedy and action in the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS movie I’d compare the footage I saw favorably to that first movie. The character casting was great, the laughs were really funny and the action was real big budget action stuff. The movie comes out in June, I believe. I’m not sure what’s around it, but I think it’s the first big comedy coming out after the double-whammy of INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and IRON MAN, so it could be a really smart move by Warners. And, yes... I saw a photo of Agent 13, who always hides in random places... and yes, IMDB is correct. Bill Murray looks like he's having a ton of fun in the part, if one picture can express that... and yes, Hiro and his fellow Q-ish partner (called Lloyd) have a conversation about how all these stupid agents will be useless when they get their robotic agent, Hymie, completed. No word if we actually see Hymie, but they at least bring him up. Thanks to Orna and Anne at WB for making this happen and thanks to Segal for having me come by and visit. Now I need to get cracking… I have so much shit piling up I’m starting to feel like I’ll never get it all done. I’m still catching some flicks at Santa Barbara FF and have some final Sundance reviews and interviews that will be hitting as soon as I can type ‘em up. Keep an eye out for those, squirts! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
