Sometimes, movies initially deemed “the worst ever” get reclaimed decades later as secret classics. Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate, for instance, were shorthand for “terrible cinema” in the 1980s but are nowadays considered classics that were wrongly reviled back in the day. Sometimes, though, there’s no glorious reclamation or even just a small but devoted cult following. Some bad movies just remain eternally reviled throughout the ages. There’s just not enough bold creativity within these projects to make them resonate with people, even when there’s a considerable distance from the initial, toxic reception.
Movie 43 is one of those films. An anthology comedy released in January 2013 to some of the worst reviews of all time, Movie 43 has not increased in notoriety and respect in the last decade. Though several of the actors (namely Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, and Jeremy Allen White) and directors involved have gone on to bigger and better things, Movie 43 remains a punchline. But boy, if you thought the movie itself was a disaster, just wait until you see how the whole cursed endeavor came together.
Where Did the Idea for 'Movie 43' Come From?
Sometimes, it just takes one person's vision to make an idea an actual movie. Under many circumstances, that thought is inspiring, a galvanizing concept reminding us all that anything is possible in this medium. Unfortunately, that also means that sometimes people get horrible ideas for movies and just won’t stop until they’re a reality. So it was with producer Charlie Wessler, who, per director Peter Farrelly in 2011, wanted to make a modern comedy that could harken back to classic wacky anthology movies like Kentucky Fried Movie. Wessler would later expand on these origins by noting his love for comedy variety shows further influenced the existence of Movie 43.
Since Wessler had often worked with Peter Farrelly on his comedies, being one of the men behind There's Something About Mary, Farrelly was conscripted to work on Movie 43. Wessler has also openly talked about how other satirical comedic filmmakers, namely Trey Stone & Matt Parker and the Zucker Brothers, were all set to direct portions of Movie 43, but they eventually bowed out. That wouldn’t be the only problem facing the feature, as Movie 43 eventually lost its original source of financing and had to be made independently.
How Did 'Movie 43' Get Such a Star-Studded Cast?
In Farrelly’s interview with Collider, he noted that the conceit of Movie 43 always rested on getting big-name actors together to do raunchy things you wouldn’t expect famous faces to be doing. Farrelly mentioned that, when it came to the salaries for these actors, “everybody did it for nothing.” A later interview with Comingsoon.net begins to paint a more vivid picture of how integral Charlie Wessler was to making this cast (which includes Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Chris Pratt, and many others) a reality. Wessler had been around Hollywood long enough to develop connections and good standings with a lot of people. When he asked some of those famous faces to show up for a few days of shooting on a raunchy comedy short, those bonds began to pay off. It also helped that he was able to initially secure Jackman and Winslet to shoot the film’s first segment, which functioned as a way of showing prospective cast members what Movie 43 could look like.
Farrelly also mentioned that most of the shorts were penned by people with no major writing experience, they were largely unknown comedy writers. This begins to explain some of the innate problems with Movie 43. The feature was being shepherded by less-experienced screenwriters, which explains the ramshackle nature of the gags. Many of the directors chosen (namely artists like Steven Brill and Brett Ratner) had way more professional experience under their belt, but they weren’t folks you associate with being able to liven up lackluster screenplays. Forgettable journeymen directors (save for the likes of Bob Odenkirk and James Gunn, among others) combined with largely unknown writers set Movie 43 up for failure.
'Movie 43' Had a Turbulent Post-Production
There were also weird elements of the movie that were changed in post-production. Back in 2011, one of Farrelly’s biggest selling points for Movie 43 was that it would be told through a framing device involving teenagers scouring the internet for the “mystical” Movie 43. They would stumble onto the various short film segments as they examined every nook and cranny of the interweb. These sequences were shot and put on the film’s Blu-Ray release, but the theatrical cut instead has wraparound segments involving Dennis Quaid as a desperate screenwriter holding a studio executive (Greg Kinnear) hostage. This framing device (presumably added to further bolster Movie 43’s cast) was added so last minute that the aforementioned Comingsoon.net interview notes that a publicist reached out to the interviewer to clarify Farrelly’s comments about the movie’s wraparound segments. Even a key creative figure in Movie 43 was getting confused as to what was and wasn’t in the feature!
One of the filmmakers involved in Movie 43 has openly talked about the chaotic nature of the film’s post-production. While James Gunn was bursting with excitement back at the 2011 edition of the San Diego Comic-Con for his experience shooting Movie 43, and specifically for how the producers kept telling him to make it grosser, Gunn has only expressed despair for how his segment (involving an animated cat who loves his owner too much) turned out. In 2018, Gunn noted on a Facebook Live session that control of his segment had been taken away from him in post-production and that he’d never seen the final cut of his work.
The end result of all that meddling and creative indecision was…nothing. Like with so many movies micro-managed to death, Movie 43’s attempts to make something more commercial in post-production just resulted in a movie nobody could love. It’s doubtful Movie 43 was ever a laugh riot, but the shambling and strange process of bringing it to life doesn’t seem to have done it any favors. Even these stories about the making of Movie 43, though, reflect how inert the feature is since none of them feature legendary blow-ups between actors and directors or unforgettable instances of filmmakers losing creative control. It’s just a lot of quiet messiness that resulted in a dismal movie. Beyond inspiring the existence of a transfixing clip of Seann William Scott getting interviewed at the movie’s premiere, Movie 43 really offered nothing to the larger pop culture landscape.