So here’s what happened: in 1999 I decided to spend the fall semester of my senior year enrolled in Emerson College’s Los Angeles Program. The program required all students to work a full time entertainment industry internship for school credit. There was really only one company that I was interested in--the company that released almost all of the flicks that inspired me to pursue a degree in filmmaking. The folks who put out Pulp Fiction and Clerks and Beautiful Girls. That company, of course, was Miramax. I mean...how was I supposed to know that the Weinstein Brothers were fuckin’ assholes?? And that Harvey Weinstein was a serial rapist?? There was already some serious stank around that company way back then. My internship advisor was already like “mmm...Miramax is a tough get...maybe not the best place for you to work.” BUT! There was a producer by the name of Marty Katz who had a first-look deal with Miramax...and whose VP of Development had just started teaching at Emerson and was looking to curry favor with the school by abusing the shit out of one of their interns. Within 24 hours of touching down at LAX I had two internships in the bag: Katz...and also Tollin/Robbins productions, where I would have been given the opportunity to do some PA work on the David Arquette wrestling flick Ready to Rumble. Even though Tollin/Robbins was a ten minute drive from the fabled, bizarro Oakwoods complex where they housed us (if you haven’t had a 3-way argument with Questlove and Dan Cortese of MTV Sports over a washing machine then you haven’t truly lived) and Katz’s Santa Monica office was a 90 minute trek when traffic was light, it really wasn’t much of a decision. The self-proclaimed “savior of Titanic'' versus the director of Varsity Blues?? Sheeeit. I figured I’d bust in there like Kermit the Frog and ask for the standard rich and famous contract and find myself out partying at Miyagi’s with the P-Word Posse by Thanksgiving. What ended up happening was--the kids who worked on the Arquette flick bragged about their amazing internship experience all semester and they all went on to lucrative careers in showbiz. I got donkey punched and flew home to Boston and Boston was like “here’s an apron and a clip-on bowtie. Don’t forget to upsell the French Onion Soup or you’re fired.” And that’s where you’ll still find me today...some 21 years later!
We’re actually here today to talk about the film Reindeer Games, which I have strenuously avoided watching until now, despite knowing loads of juicy, behind the scenes gossip about the flick. I have already spilled a lot of this gossip in various Facebook posts over the years to middling interest...probably because it is gossip about the film Reindeer Games. Before I sent in my resume, I had already read that Reindeer Games was supposed to open in December of that year and finally establish Ben Affleck as an action superstar or whatever whatever. I also knew that Vin Diesel had quit the film because he had this ridiculous contract that specified that there were to be no close-ups of his biceps, as those were reserved for “Vin Diesel Pictures.” I remember reading that and thinking “no one is ever going to leave their home to see a film just because Vin Diesel is in it.” Hey...when I’m wrong I’m wrong! I figured I was gonna get to assist in the flick’s post production. Maybe even get to attend the premiere and run my fingers along Danny Trejo’s tattoos. So—Day One I cruise into work in my white Pontiac Sunfire rental, decked out in Structure drawstring cargo pants and a striped Abercrombie and Fitch sweater. I walked in all “Whaddup y’all--where’s my ho ho ho hometown homie, Affleck? Is he here!?” One of the other interns was like “Ok shithead--here’s the intern welcome packet. It is 10 inches thick. You will spend the entire day locked in the conference room reading it. If you get hungry, there’s water.” On the front page, in giant bold letters, the words “GET READY TO RUN!!!” It began with a bio of Katz: a tour in ‘Nam...a producer credit on Albert Brooks’ Lost in America followed by a stint as VP of Production at Disney in the 80’s. At some point during Titanic’s rocky production he came aboard to help drag that beast across the finish line. Katz’s contributions were so significant that Jimmy Cameron forgot to mention him in his acceptance speech when he won his Best Director Oscar. I know this because Cameron was forced to issue an apology--a fact that clearly tickled Katz as he framed the apology and hung it in his office...right above his life-sized stuffed dummy of the murdered Hooch dog from that Turner & Hooch flick (sorry if I just ruined Turner & Hooch for you). Chapter two of the intern packet...perhaps the lengiest of all chapters...contained detailed instructions about how Marty Katz’s office was to be set up every morning...right down to the number of granules of sugar that he wanted in his coffee (served black...not too hot...and not cold either. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination). His copy of Daily Variety was to be placed five inches from the bottom left hand corner of his desk and opened to Page 2. Why he could not simply turn the pages himself, we do not know. You know what else we do not know? How this Napoleonic nightmare morning scenario played out...because I never got to meet Marty Katz. By the time I showed up that September, Katz had already moved on to his next Miramax assignment: a Gary Sinise sci-fi flick called Imposter, which was shooting at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Katz was on location for the entire four months that I was interning at his namesake company. Once a week, I had to bundle up his mail and drive it down to the set. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of his arm as he reached out and grabbed the mail from one of his assistants. Dude was like the friggin’ nanny from Muppet Babies to me: heard his voice...never saw his face! It’s really a shame he never got to see me run his morning relay ‘cuz I make a mean cup of joe and turn pages like a motherfucker!
So with Katz permanently out of the picture, I reported directly to the VP, who was busy writing books on the company dime and giving few shits about anything that Marty Katz Productions had going on. I quickly learned that everyone was profoundly unexcited about Reindeer Games...and I was about to hear about it like whoa! You see, kids--there was some insane glitch in the phone system at the office, wherein you could transfer calls to Marty at the Imposter set, but only if you played the calls through the speakerphone for everyone in the Santa Monica office to hear. Most people don’t believe this when I tell them...but there are instructions on how to execute this maneuver in my employee hand bible, which I still have! To this day I still have no idea why people wouldn't simply call Marty in Manhattan Beach when they knew he was there. To this day I also have no idea why they never made me sign an NDA...but...they didn’t! So....off to the races! The first issue they had with Reindeer Games was this: it fucking sucked. Test scores in the crapper. That’s not NOT a huge problem...but Hollywood has always been in the turd polishing business. I heard they wanted to hire a different editor to recut the picture. How did I hear this? Bob Weinstein called the office and screamed it into my soul. By now all of y'all have probably read all about the Weinstein brothers and their affinity for hurling cell phones at people and putting them in headlocks. To actually bear witness to this volcanic rage is something that I will never forget. I’m 42 year-old as of this writing and I don’t think I have ever heard an adult scream at another adult like Bob Weinstein screamed at Marty Katz...and I’m from Massachusetts...where people go from zero to “Go Fahhhk Yuhhself!!” in less than one second! Brother Bob’s speech pattern vacillated between mumbling drunk Woody Allen to bear howls...often within the same sentence. Weinstein was hot because the editor that Reindeer Games director John Frankenheimer hired was “a fucking idiot with fucking Alzheimer’s.” I always thought he was just saying that to be a cock...but I looked it up recently and I think the guy (Tony Gibbs) actually DID have some sort of dementia. Either way...RUDE! Bob says they need to get legendary Spielberg scissorman Michael Kahn to fix the flick. Only problem was...dude was on a cruise ship off the coast of the Azores or some shit. Didn’t matter to these assholes! They called the ship and had someone swim out to Michael Kahn at the pool bar and tell him that he had an emergency phone call in the captain’s quarters (this being slightly before widespread cell phone use and all). About a month later the VP hauled all five of us interns (unpaid...all) into the conference room and told us no one was allowed to leave until someone fessed up to making a $200 overseas phone call. Someone figured out it was the cruise ship call and we were off the hook...but this seemed to only make the VP angrier. Sigh.
So Kahn recuts the movie...and it still sucks. The next gripe had to do with the music. I want to say there was a score in place by Jerry Goldsmith but don’t quote be on that. Someone at Miramax wants to bring in uber music supervisor Karyn Rachtman (Reality Bites, Clueless, Reservoir Dogs) to give the movie some hipster cred. Miramax hated her cuts. She blamed their dismissive reaction on the movie being inherently terrible. Katz told everyone that she was too coked up to do her job properly, leading to a disastrous phone non-apology that we were all forced to listen to wherein Katz kept apologizing but also asking her what kind of drugs she was on. By this point it’s becoming increasingly clear that they just want to bury the movie. Reindeer Games was actually produced by Miramax’s “genre division” (a nice way of saying ‘all of our black and horror movies”) Dimension Films. Miramax’s big prestige holiday season flick that year was Cider House Rules, which also starred Charlize Theron. The Weinstien’s were gonna go full court press to terrify the Academy into nominating Theron for best actress (they failed). The line they eventually came up with was that they didn’t want two Charlize Theron pictures to open at the same time. They got Affleck and Theron to refuse to loop their Reindeer Games dialogue unless they moved the release date to spring 2000. Frankerheimer, who sounded like the kind of old school cat who still called women “broads” in 1999, was hopping mad. He would call Katz and scream about how he directed Frank Sinatra in the Manchurian Candidate and had never been so thoroughly disrespected. He also mentioned his friendship with Bobby Kennedy a lot...which was admittedly an epic namedrop but one that had little to do with filmmaking. Katz was not unsympathetic. He wanted his Xmas movie to open at Xmas too. He suggested a second round of reshoots where he would expect Affleck to “actually act” instead of “sitting around grinning like a fucking pretty boy.” In the end, the decision was made to delay the film until February. So now they figure they’ve got to come up with a new title ‘cuz you can be playing no Reindeer Games in February, can you!? The VP instructed us interns to each bring in a list with potential new titles (I think I put Good Will Hunting 2 on my list because I am an unserious person). I mean...I hadn’t even seen the movie, save for some scuzzy dailies they had laying around the office on VHS. What the hell would I know/care!? One afternoon, we welcomed an unrepresented writer by the name of Sheldon Turner into the office to pitch his screenplay called The Inside Man. Everyone in the office dug it and thought the VP should kick it up to Katz to see if Miriamx would option it. After the meeting was over, the VP spoke with Katz, who immediately called Miramax and said he had the perfect new title for Reindeer Games: The Inside Man! Filthy motherfuckers, these guys. In the end, The Inside Man was directed by Spike Lee and has nothing to do with anything we’re talking about. Reindeer Games opened on February 25th and was savaged by critics and had the shelf life of a mouse fart. It never even occurred to me to try to watch it...until now!
What happens is this: we open at the smoldering ruins of a rural, small time casino. The bloodied corpses of brutally massacred Santa Clauses are strewn about the premises. “I’ve never been a fan of the holidays,” announces our man Benaffleck and the Flecktones, speaking to us from the bowels of a maximum security prison located in a frosty part of Michigan that is totally British Columbia. He tells us that his name is Rudy and that he’s doing a five year bid for grand theft auto...living among the rapists and murderers. That seems a little harsh to me. I feel like you’d only get 3 years for boosting a set of wheels, tops. I feel this way because I looked it up on the internet. I don’t know, maybe the dude had a ton of priors on his rap sheet or something. I’ll tell you this, though—the guy looks like he just stepped out of a Dolce and Gabbana ad and not at all like someone who has been in the slammer for five years. They couldn’t have at least given him some five o’clock shadow or some shit?? I will say—I did eventually meet Ben Affleck when he filmed a scene from The Town at a restaurant I used to work at...and he is shit tall. Just oozes handsomeness, that guy. Not really much you can do. Anyway, Rudy is getting sprung in just three days time...as is his bunkie, Nick...who is in jail for actual murder. Nick is particularly anxious to get outta dodge ‘cuz he became pen pals with 13 time People Magazine World’s Most Attractive Human winner Charlize Theron while he was locked up. Their jail cell is just COVERED in pictures of her. Rudy stares at pictures of his buddy’s extra long distance girlfriend (Ashley) and says “hey, want me to take her for a test drive if I get out before you?” Ahh...so it’s gonna be THAT kind of movie, eh? Nick razzes Rudy because he has a gorgeous South African Oscar winner waiting for him on the outside and Rudy does not. Rudy says all he really wants is a cup of cocoa and a slice of pecan pie. Cuz it’s Christmas, you dig? These prison scenes feel so bogus. You’d never suspect John Frankenheimer made Birdman of Alcatraz 75 years before he directed this flick.
The next afternoon, the fellas go waltzing into the cafeteria all “I can’t believe we’re gettin’ out of jail in just two days!”...which means someone is about to be die ASAP. I completely missed this during my viewing...but I guess Issac Hayes was in this cafeteria scene, which is awesome, as was disgraced porn star Ron Jeremy, which is less awesome. But hey—at least the Hedgehog got a little sneak peek at the place where he’ll take his last breaths! Maybe he’s walking the yard with the guy who executive produced this movie as I sit here typing! Before Rudy and Nick can scarf their American Chop Suey, their fellow inmates start finding cockroaches in their green jello and a food fight ensues. Food fights: fun in theory, horrible in execution, particularly in a prison setting. Rudy and Nick manage to stay below the fray and OH SHIT! Scary black man alert! Someone Rudy has beef with sees and opening and charges right toward him with a knife in his hand. Nick throws Rudy out of the way and takes a blade between the 6th and 7th rib for his BFF. Rudy cradles Nick and wails but that doesn’t really do much for Nick, medically speaking. He dies. The guards are super sympathetic to the newly bereaved Rudy. Just kidding! They pin him to the ground and offer to do butt stuff to him. He declines. He retreats to his cell where he stares longingly at the photos of his dead roomie’s hawt ladyfriend.
When release day finally rolls around, Rudy shuffles out of the penitentiary with a pocket full of frowns. Sure enough...there’s Ashley in the parking lot looking all expectant. Rudy just mopes on by and boards a bus to anywhere. But...hold up a sec: it appears that Ashley doesn’t actually know what her convicted murderer prison boyfriend looks like!? Oh what the fuck, people!? You mean she sent him thousands of pictures and he didn’t send her a single pic in return!? He could look like Michael J Pollard for all she knows!! Deep down, Rudy knows that presenting himself as his dead cellmate is sketchy as shit. Does that stop him? No sir/ma’am. He hops right off the bus and Ashley is all “are you Nick?” and Rudy is all “yep—Nick—that’s me...100%...and she’s all “great, let’s hop in my tan Sierra and drive to a motel and BALL!” So that’s what they do...and it’s SUPER graphic! I kind of had an inkling that this was coming (tee hee) because, one day while I was cleaning/ransacking the boss’s office, I read Ben Affleck’s nudity clause. That thing was insanely detailed...right down to which of his ass cheeks we’d get to see...how long we’d get to see it...and how many thrusts we’d get out of that thing (maybe four thrusts?). Dude is so stoked he immediately flushes his Rudy ID down the toilet. She seems pretty jazzed too. She tells him that most men don’t want to know what’s inside her...just want to get inside of her. Did they just have outercourse, then? Also—ick.
Ashley takes Rudy to the Z Cavaricci outlet and styles him out with some new duds. When they return to their motel room they find the following actors assembled inside: Danny Trejo, the guy who played Linc on The Mod Squad, Donal Logue of the Logue family, and ultra republican actor/”musician” Gary Sinise, looking like the lead singer of the type of Christian Rock band that plays at the post-Sunday mass social mixer (not unlike Gary Sinise’s actual band). Before Rudy can get to the “hi, how ya doin’s?” Trejo cracks him in the ribs. These dudes are part of some sort of trucker game and Sinise is Gabriel, Ashley’s brother...and he’s already super duper pissed at Rudy for trying to “get down his sister’s chimney.” Oh ho ho you didn’t! Gabriel is all “listen here, Nick--we hear you used to work is some casino and that you aren’t queasy when it comes to taking a life or two.” Rudy is all “OH SNAP! I’m actually not Nick, doe! I don’t know shit from shinola.” Gabriel says that, if this is true, they will cut him to pieces and bury him all over the place. Rudy hears this and is all “wait, did you say NICK!? Of course I’m Nick! Sorry, I got the tinnitus real bad when I was in the pokey.” Gabriel tells Rudy that he had better not be playing any reindeer games, which is the name of the movie that we are talking about (take a shot?). It appears that Ashley was just catfishing prisoners until she found one who worked at this specific casino that her brother and his trucker gang wanted to rob? Could totally happen. So that’s why she wasn’t concerned about what this dude looked like! They really should’ve cast Michael J Pollard. He was still alive back then...and watching him and Charlize Theron screw would’ve been amaze-balls! Rudy agrees to help the gang with their casino caper...but he’s wicked disappointed in Ashley. Tells her that he had better sex in prison. He man--you gotta do what you gotta do.
So like I just mentioned at the end of the last paragraph, Rudy has to help this gang rob a casino. And that’s pretty much all there is to it. What we are left with is a futile attempt to hold the audience’s attention for the next hour or so until the big climactic robbery, by which point everyone in the theater should be actively wishing death upon everyone in this movie. They bring Rudy to the casino to case the joint but make him dress up like a cowboy so his former co-workers won’t recognize him. What do we hear on the soundtrack instead of Elliott Smith or Modest Mouse? Love Rollercoaster. Karyn Rachtman—you are missed.The casino is run by the late Dennis Farina, essentially reprising his role from the far superior film Midnight Run (Sidney, I’m gonna bury that phone right in your head!). The entire casino, which is in the middle of nowhere, is smaller than a Flying J. Why don’t they just ride in there a whompin’ and a whoopin’ and get this shit over with?? Anyway, Rudy exchanges costumes with some random dude in the bathroom and attempts to escape. Gabriel immediately spots him and starts pulling an entire arsenal out of his trunk right there in the parking lot...right in broad daylight! Did I mention that this movie looks like it was filmed in a dirty ashtray that was left out in a blizzard? Well, it does. Rudy starts sprinting toward a frozen lake (to do what? Ice fish?) but Gabriel gets a bead on him...only to be knocked over by his own sister. I guess she still likes Rudy or feels bad for him or I don’t know who cares whatever. They run across the lake together but homegirl falls in! Rudy jumps in and tries to save her, even though she’s a double crossing double crosser. Now they’re both trapped under the ice but luckily one of them somehow has a machine gun? Sorry, my attention was frequently found to be wandering during this film. They simply shoot upwards, which proves to be surprisingly effective. Next time I step out for some pond skating I’m bringing a machine gun JUST IN CASE!
Now Gabriel is so cheesed off at Rudy/Nick that he ties him to a chair and throws darts at him, which has gotta hurt like a bastard! They hold him captive but Ashley keeps coming to him as a friend and keeps telling him that she loves him. He keeps telling her to get bent. There’s all of this back and forth about his true identity: is he Real Nick?...is he Fake NIck...is he Saint Nick?...is he fuckin’ Jimmy Hoffa? Big zzzz’s all around. Eventually they decide that the big heist is gonna go down on Christmas Eve...because this is still supposed to be a Christmas movie somehow. The night before the gig, they all check themselves into a slightly fancier hotel. Later that night, while Rudy is out looking for the ice machine, he passes by the indoor pool and OH SNAP! Guess what he saw!? A topless Ashley stradling Gabriel! So she’s fucking her brother then!? GROSS! Oh wait--looks like Gabriel is actually her BOYFRIEND! So this whole thing has been...a triplecross? Rudy watches for longer than he needs to, scoffs, and looks toward the camera and says “see you later, assholes!” You're the asshole who made this awful movie, asshole! Rudy considers escaping (again)...but Danny Trejo’s face. Before they check out, the front desk manager tells Gabriel that one of the fellas racked up $200 in incidentals watching pay-per-view porn. That’s the closest this thing this movie has to a joke. Ha?
The entire cast pile into a semi and drive toward their casino caper dressed as Santa Clauses! CLE-VER!!! The suspense-o-meter stays pinned at zero. Not only is every character in this flick terrible (except Donal Logue. He seems like a great dude in real life), we already learned that most of the santa’s die from the opening scene! They bust into the casino and shoot the place up like a bunch of jerk off murder santas. The casino security guards return fire but Ashley drives her tan Sierra right onto the casino floor, crushing about a baker’s dozen worth of dudes to death. They beat the living daylights out of Denny Farina and Gabriel is all “tell Nick where the secret powwow safe is!” Farina is like “Nick? Isn’t this the kid from Phantoms??” Farina says that there is a safe but it’s full of guns, which he uses to kill the entire supporting cast in one fell swoop. Until we meet again, Clarence Williams III. Now they know that Rudy is officially NOT Nick. Ashley suggests they murder him and throw his body in one of those SoCal movie car crash ravines. Her personality has also undergone a complete transformation with like 10 minutes left in the movie. She’s all femme fatale-y now. Rudy tells her that Nick really loved her. “Who wouldn’t,” she says. Touche. So they split the scene with their haul, which looks like it’s in the tens of millions, even though they just robbed a penny slot joint that didn’t even have a buffet!
Now we’re on the banks of the ravine but, before they can send Rudy to his grave, Ashley accidentally reveals that she knows some information about Rudy’s prison attack that she couldn’t have possibly known. I couldn’t really tell you what she said. My concentration --drifting like snow. All of a sudden we hear someone whistling Silver Bells in the distance and HOLY SHIT IT’S NICK!!! I did NOT see that coming! What a crazy twist! You gotta understand: this movie was in post production when The Sixth Sense opened. After that, film companies became obsessed with producing movies with twist endings. It was almost a necessity. Producer: Whaddya got for us? Writer: The Griswold’s...in SPACE! Producer: Meh. Writer: But at the end “space” is revealed to be the interior of John Malkovich’s testicles! Producer: (opens checkbook). Anyway--so now we have to sort this out. Rudy was quadruplecrossed?? Nick says that Ashley was actually his real girlfriend all along….but that her name is Millie Bobby Brown or some shit. She spent FIVE YEARS writing fake letters to her REAL BOYFRIEND in the longest, most nonsensical con since the invention of the con. While she was spending a small fortune on stamps, envelopes, and Kodak disposables, she was also living as Gabriel’s girlfriend. (I forgot to mention that Ashley murders Gabriel as soon as Nick shows up. 86 Lt Danny). Then Nick got himself stabbed for real to fake his death, but it was merely a flesh wound. I mean...dude...come onnnnn!! How were they so sure that Rudy was definitely gonna slime on his dead buddy’s girlfriend? What if he just took that bus straight to the nearest Outback Steakhouse and got shitfaced on oil cans of Foster’s? This would be a much better movie, that’s what! Real Nick and Ashley tie Rudy to the front seat of the tan Sierra and prepare to push him over the cliff. They even light the car on fire...just to be extra douchey. Rudy frees himself and hotwires the car (cuz he’s a car thief, remember??) and backs over Nick. Ashley appears before him and dude doesn’t miss a beat. He puts the pedal to the floor and takes her the fuck out! I watched about 10 takes worth of dalies of this scene back in ‘99 and it was never not going to be unintentionally hilarious. NIck is still alive but barely. He starts pleading his ass off--”come on, MAN! I was gonna kill her and save you! We’re friends till the end!” Rudy throws him in the back of the semi and rolls that thing off of the cliff. Bang meets buck...twice. The camera pulls back up to the edge of the cliff, where a shirtless Slash plays the solo from “Don’t Cry.” I mean...I wish!
Rudy slings that fat sack of cash over his shoulder and decides to ride the heel-toe express back to his family’s piece. That’s cool that he’ll have some money to help get his life back on tra...WAIT...why is he putting piles of cash in random mailboxes?? And why has no one called the authorities on this blood soaked, six foot four Santa tossing out stacks of thousands like Hershey’s Kisses?? By the time he arrives home he’s just a broke ass bum ex-con with an empty sack and the Santa shirt on his back. His folks must be so proud. They bring him inside and feed him pecan pie. He flashes his million dollar grin right at the camera. The movie ends. Santa wept.