Poo jokes and a visit from Prince – The making of… | Little White Lies

Poo jokes and a vis­it from Prince – The mak­ing of Drop Dead Fred

24 May 2021

Words by Simon Bland

Two people, a smiling woman with short dark hair and a man with bright red hair, make enthusiastic facial expressions against a pink background.
Two people, a smiling woman with short dark hair and a man with bright red hair, make enthusiastic facial expressions against a pink background.
Direc­tor Ate de Jong tells the inside sto­ry of one of the cra­zi­est and most unique stu­dio films of the 1990s.

Pop cul­ture and nos­tal­gia are often intrin­si­cal­ly linked. Our fond­ness for old movies and TV shows sure­ly stems part­ly from the fact that, while we’re forced to expe­ri­ence life’s unex­pect­ed twists and turns, the mate­r­i­al we love stays safe­ly intact. It’s rare for a movie that left a mark on you grow­ing up to age with you, let alone find a pow­er­ful new sig­nif­i­cance lat­er in life. Then again, com­ing-of-age com­e­dy Drop Dead Fred is kind of a rare movie.

The Hol­ly­wood debut of Dutch film­mak­er Ate de Jong and counter-cul­ture king Rik May­all, it’s a film with an unusu­al flavour. The sto­ry fol­lows Lizzie (Phoebe Cates), a child so trau­ma­tised by her over­bear­ing moth­er that she invents her own nose-pick­ing, dog-poo-lov­ing imag­i­nary friend, Drop Dead Fred (May­all). After Lizzie’s mum (or the Mega Beast, as Fred calls her) puts an end to her make-believe pal, we fast-for­ward to a grown-up Lizzie strug­gling to bin off her tox­ic ex. Cue Drop Dead Fred, who returns dur­ing Lizzie’s time of need to help her heal some deep wounds that link back to her trou­bled childhood.

Orig­i­nal­ly pitched to direc­tor Tim Bur­ton and star Robin Williams, de Jong and May­all were hard­ly the duo Poly­gram and New Line had in mind for the project. Although in hind­sight, get­ting a pass from two cre­atives with such broad and iden­ti­fi­able char­ac­ter­is­tics was per­haps the best thing to hap­pen to the film. With the loose Euro­pean sto­ry­telling of de Jong and the rebel­lious anar­chy of May­all, Drop Dead Fred was acci­den­tal­ly enriched with a unique brand of chaos and charm.

We were a good match in char­ac­ter,” sug­gests de Jong, recall­ing his first meet­ing with May­all. I was cer­tain­ly not as expres­sive as he was but on a polit­i­cal lev­el, I was very much in the same vein. While we were shoot­ing, Thatch­er stepped down, and he said it was a dis­as­ter because now he couldn’t make jokes about her any­more. He just trust­ed me and I have no idea why. I sup­pose he saw my Dutch movies which were very open and provoca­tive. There was no hes­i­ta­tion or shame – and I think he liked that.”

Rik said Mega Bitch a few times but we were only allowed to say it twice, so the rest became Mega Beast.

Hav­ing worked close­ly with writ­ers Car­los Davis and Antho­ny Fin­gle­ton, May­all had already made Fred his own before pro­duc­tion began. Once on set, how­ev­er, he and de Jong worked togeth­er to flesh out Fred’s world. We talked about what the char­ac­ter could and couldn’t do and how emo­tion­al he’d be,” remem­bers de Jong. A sim­ple thing we decid­ed was that what­ev­er Fred did was per­ceived by oth­ers as Lizzie doing it. So he couldn’t do some­thing she wouldn’t be able to do, like lift a fire truck. By the same token, he had an inde­pen­dence. We went with the pre­sump­tion that there is a large group of imag­i­nary friends that get assign­ments. They can have their own opin­ion that’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the opin­ion of the per­son they belong to.”

Their next job was bring­ing Fred to life by giv­ing the char­ac­ter his now icon­ic threads. The green suit wasn’t in the script,” explains de Jong, it was cos­tume design­er Car­ol Wood who came up with it. We thought, he’s imag­i­nary and, in a cer­tain way, a pris­on­er – because he’s the pris­on­er of Lizzie – so we want­ed him to have stripes like prison bars. Car­ol said it had to have ugly, yucky, vomit‑y colours – but in a pleas­ant way. That’s why it became green and yellow.”

May­all went a step fur­ther, set­ting his own rules for the way Fred might act when set loose in the real world, as De Jon explains: Rik thought that as long as he was hon­est to the char­ac­ter – which meant very ener­getic and show­ing unlim­it­ed imag­i­na­tion, like kids have – then even though he could be mean to kids or adults, nobody would blame him because kids have no fil­ter.” Was there ever a moment when May­all took things too far? New Line had a veto in the edit and cut a few things,” says de Jong. For instance, Rik said Mega Bitch’ a few times but we were only allowed to say it twice, so the rest became Mega Beast.’”

The cuts didn’t stop there. After Fred rubs dog poo on the car­pet and Lizzie’s mum catch­es an ink pot that almost spills, he bends over and slow­ly spits on her head – that had to be cut too. And lat­er when he’s in the kitchen, he flicks snot into Lizzie’s mum’s cup of tea and she drinks it. One of those ele­ments had to be cut – the land­ing or the drinking.”

Two people, a man and a woman, engaged in an intense interaction, with the woman's hand on the man's face. The image is in black and white.

Despite being known for his live-wire per­for­mance style, de Jong says that May­all con­trolled him­self dur­ing the shoot, with min­i­mal off-the-cuff moments. Dur­ing one of the flash­backs where he’s mak­ing the mud pie with Lizzie, he tears up the lit­tle box that he ends up being trapped inside and says, Some­times, when you want to fix some­thing, you have to tear it apart before it becomes bet­ter’; that’s a typ­i­cal Rik line.”

With film­ing tak­ing place at Prince’s Pais­ley Park Stu­dios in Min­neapo­lis, one of the wilder rumours sur­round­ing the pro­duc­tion is that The Pur­ple One him­self vis­it­ed the set. I didn’t meet him,” admits de Jong, but there were peo­ple who say they did and he gave them a tour of his record­ing stu­dio. There were also rumours he came to watch the shoot­ing but stayed at a dis­tance – it might very well be true.” As for what it might have been like being in a room with May­all and Prince… I think Prince would have been total­ly over­whelmed,” smiles de Jong. If Rik had met some­body like Prince – whom he prob­a­bly admired – he’d prob­a­bly be even more ram­bunc­tious to hide his admiration.”

On release, dis­trib­u­tors sold Drop Dead Fred as a kids’ movie, despite test screen­ings sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise. The analy­sis of test audi­ences dis­cov­ered these were peo­ple who either had an imag­i­nary friend when they were younger, or liked the anti-adult behav­iour,” reveals de Jong. They felt the lib­er­a­tion of Lizzie and how Fred allowed her to stand up for her­self and become an adult. It was a com­e­dy with a seri­ous theme that nev­er became serious.”

With sequels moot­ed but nev­er made (“They want­ed Rik, then Jim Car­rey, then Rus­sel Brand,” says de Jong), all we’re left with is a film that, in its own off-the-wall way, is com­plete­ly unique. Mayall’s grin­ning, wide-eyed pres­ence – com­bined with the fact that Hol­ly­wood rarely came call­ing for him again – makes Drop Dead Fred a rare nos­tal­gic treat. And with issues around abuse and men­tal health much more wide­ly dis­cussed, it’s also a film that hits hard­er than it did back in 1991.

I appre­ci­ate it more now,” says de Jong. In the begin­ning, I didn’t see its unique­ness. The lay­er I tried to put in is that child­hood trau­ma is only over­come if you accept and for­give your­self. Over the years, many peo­ple have told me they picked up on it and I’ve found the film has a very ther­a­peu­tic val­ue. Psy­chother­a­pists in Cal­i­for­nia use it as a tool in their ther­a­pies for peo­ple with imag­i­nary friends or who feel alien­at­ed from the world. The men­tal health angle was nev­er dis­cussed while we were mak­ing it. We were afraid New Line would cut the scene where Lizzie unwraps her­self from her bed in the imag­i­na­tion world, basi­cal­ly set­ting her­self free. Now, I think it’s one of the best things in the movie.”

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