John Hughes’ teen comedy, Weird Science was released 30 years ago today! To celebrate, we’re looking at some totally awesome facts you need to know about Weird Science.
Prolific writer-director John Hughes cranked out the script for Weird Science in two days. It took me longer than that to write What the Hell Happened to Kelly LeBrock! This pace was not uncommon for Hughes. He also wrote The Breakfast Club in two days and the first draft of Sixteen Candles over a single weekend. Hughes turned out scripts so fast that he sometimes used pseudonym. He wrote all five of the Beethoven movies under the name Edmond Dantes.
Model-turned actress and Steven Seagal‘s future ex-wife, Kelly LeBrock, initially turned down the chance to play Lisa, the perfect woman that Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith create using a computer. According to LeBrock:
I had actually turned down ‘Weird Science’ initially because I was in the South of France with Sting. I was with my first husband, he was doing a movie there. I was like, ‘work or play with Sting?’ and I decided not to work.
Thanks to the allure of Sting and France, Rod Stewart’s girlfriend, Kelly Emberg, was cast as Lisa.
Fortunately, LeBrock decided she’d had enough of hanging out with Sting in France. “They gave the role to somebody else, but three weeks into filming they had to dismiss her because she wasn’t right for the role. They called me and within a couple of hours I was on a plane from France to Chicago.” 4. Due to the last-minute change, LeBrock wasn’t fitted for wardrobe. “They were in really big trouble. They’d filmed for three weeks with someone and they couldn’t use any of the footage. We didn’t even time to change the wardrobe and she had a completely different body type to me. They had to slice the clothing in the back to let my body fit into it.
Robin Wright and Demi Moore both auditioned for the role of Lisa.
Anthony Michael Hall dropped out of National Lampoon’s European Vacation in favor of starring in Weird Science. As a result, European Vacation director, Amy Heckerling, decided to recast both of the kids in the Vacation sequel. Dana Baron who played Audrey in the first Vacation remembers being bummed out by the news:
Anthony Michael Hall was doing very, very well in different films at the time, he was about to film Weird Science… so he said no, which made me so sad because I basically had my bags packed, waiting by the door and then the director at the time said ‘Well, just get two new kids, we can’t have an old kid and a new kid, it’ll look strange’… So I was waiting and waiting and waiting by the phone and they went on and filmed without me…
Hall’s decision not to return for the Vacation sequel started a trend of recasting the kids in each of the Vacation movies released in theaters.
At fourteen, Ilan Mitchell-Smith got carried away while filming a kissing scene with LeBrock. After Mitchell-Smith tongued the married super model, she warned him, “If you ever do that again I’m going to kick your ass!” Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying. He was never going to get an opportunity like that again.
Robert Downey Jr. defiled LeBrock’s trailer. Downey denied it at the time, but later confessed: “I defecated in her trailer, much to the chagrin of Bill Paxton and Robert Rusler. It was a real bad scene. Joel Silver freaked. I never admitted it. Joel said, “Downey, did you do it?” and I said I wish I had. Because I’d been threatening everyone that if they didn’t treat me right, I was going to take a dump in their trailer, or that I’d go take a shit in Joel’s office, on his desk or something.” LeBrock described Downey as “a little shit, he was definitely a little bit different.” All things considered, I think she is being more than fair.
Weird Science is actually a comic book movie. The title comes from an anthology series published by EC Comics in the 50’s. The magazine was the sci-fi equivalent of EC’s horror anthology, Tales From the Crypt. The plot is very loosely based on the story Made of the Future by Al Feldstein. The title of that story is exceptionally punny. You see she is made from futuristic comic book science. And she is also a “maiden of the future”. Or a “maid of the future”. It was a lot funnier 60 years ago I imagine.
Like a lot of John Hughes movies, Weird Science is set in the fictional Chicago suburb of Shermer, Illinois. Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles were all set in the imaginary town. Hughes based the town on his own experiences growing up, “The whole notion of Shermer came out of that heterogenous kind of society, very extreme – I mean, at one point I went from a school with 1100 students to one with thirty. I remember this one kid, an eighth-grader, who had his teeth rotted out. Eighth grade. It was likeDeliverance. But then at the same time, you’d have the richest kid in town in your school as well, so even in this tiny set-up, you had both ends of the economic spectrum, real extremes.”
When it comes to movie bullies, it’s hard to beat shotgun-wielding Chet. Bill Paxton improvised one of his more famous lines from the film. According to Paxton, his dad used to say “How about a nice, greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray” whenever his son was hungover from too much partying the night before.
This one might be a heartbreaker for some of you. But LeBrock was not actually naked during her famous shower scene. Showering is still real fun though.
If the post apocalyptic mutant who crashes the boys’ party looks like he walked right of the set of a Mad Max movie, that’s because he did. Actor Vernon Wells more or less reprises his role from The Road Warrior.
LeBrock’s character was named Lisa after an early Apple computer. The computer was named after Apple co-founder Steve Job’s daughter. So indirectly, LeBrock’s character was named after Lisa Jobs.
How 80’s is Weird Science? It’s so 80’s that “Where’s the beef?” pitch-woman Clara Peller filmed a cameo appearance that was ultimately cut from the movie.
The movie was successful enough to inspire a TV show which ran from 1994-1998. Vanessa Angel stepped into LeBrock’s role. John Hughes claimed he had no idea the show even existed until he saw a commercial for it while channel surfing. “I was sitting at home, watching TV, and this commercial comes on for this new show. I’m watching it, thinking “Jesus, they ripped me off. This looks just likeWeird Science.” Imagine my surprise…”
Today Ilan Mitchell-Smith teaches computer science at Cal State-Long Beach. No, not really. But how perfect would that be? He actually teaches English. But hopefully it’s Weird English. He quit acting in 1991 and got his doctoral degree from Texas A&M in 2005. Today, he publishes on the subject of chivalry in the Middle Ages.
Joel Silver has been talking about a remake or a reboot in recent years. But it has yet to happen. The Funny or Die gang came up with their own parody sequel which will have to be enough for now.
Kelly Emberg, who replaced LeBrock and then was replaced by her when she got tired of being on vacation, only has two credits on her imdB page. I searched her on Youtube and came up with this Cover Girl makeup commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWcRlled6gM My first impression was that while she was much more of an all-American girl than LeBrock, that didn’t necessarily make her ‘wrong’ for the role of Lisa. Her delivery in the ad, however, suggests that her acting abilities might have been sub-par. While being “right” for a role is even more important than many laypeople understand when casting… Read more »
Check it out. Stick it out through the intro and you’ll see what I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw-SERyg6X8
I’ll do some more digging and see if there is some explanation.
As it turns out, the song from the Cover Girl commercial is just a variation on a song written by Lew Spence and Alan Bergman and first recorded by Fred Astaire back in 1957. Here’s a video of Astaire performing it on a television show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bctAxWwvBhE
Mel Torme and Frank Sinatra Jr have also recorded versions of it.
I’ve looked around but have yet to find any reference to the similarity between the Spence/Bergman song and the Mel Brooks penned tune. Perhaps they are both different enough and using well-worn approaches that nobody either noticed or minded much.
I am thumbs-upping your investigative reporting. I doubt anyone else has looked into the Cover Girl-Weird Science-Mel Brooks connection!
both songs sound somewhat derivative, in different ways.
derivative of something specific…?
Nothing specific comes to mind, sometimes you hear something and it reminds you of something specific but you can’t put your finger on it.
I see you clarified that the Cover Girl ad did use a popular song from back in the day. It’s entirely possible that whoever composed the song for “The Producers” was influenced by the same song?
She’s pretty, but i like how things turned out with the role of Lisa.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in LeBrock’s turn of a phrase here. It’s just Hollywood speak for “can you believe they cast someone else in MY part after I turned it down!” Both Emberg and LeBrock were models. It turns out LeBrock had at least the minimum required acting ability to play a teen boy’s fantasy in a cheesy sex comedy and apparently Emberg, while having the look, lacked that bare minimum talent required. The thing I find funny is that Hughes passed on two actual actresses (Moore and Wright) who had more than the minimum required talent and… Read more »
Both Wright and Moore were beautiful young actresses at the time, but I don’t know if either was actually a Va-Va-VOOM created-by-a-teenage-boy-on-his-computer kind of beautiful. Wright was kind of Waif-y in the mid 80s while Moore was sort of a tomboy. Supermodel looks were what was called for. The phrase variations on “right for the part” are used in different ways. Young actors often don’t understand that their level of skill does not always entitle them to play whatever role they want. It is a phrase often used to softly explain to them why they got beaten out for a… Read more »
As an old acting coach of mine used to say, “It is possible to create the illusion of Va-Va-VOOM with the proper application of underwire and tube socks.”
Okay, no one ever said that. But it’s still true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R-UKYA2k4c
I won’t second guess John Hughes on casting. He had a real knack for it. And LeBrock had a hidden talent for light comedy. Such a shame she wasted it on marrying Steven Seagal.
My training and experience says that it’s a waste of time casting someone who can act the part if you can cast someone who IS the part. There’s more than enough work to go around on any production without making more for yourself unnecessarily.
Who the hell would even want to look like the second, uh, set? Plus it looks painful.
Lol. I wouldn’t know. Someone who needs a little Va Va Voom? If I were a young actress and Daffy was the casting director, I would have to consider it. 😉
If you were auditioning to play Lisa you might. But if you were auditioning to play Anne Frank you’d probably want to go the other way. Casting is a tricky business. There is more at play than whether or not you are skilled or “right” for the role in the vacuum that is you. When we were putting together actors for my current production we had already cast four of our five actors. We were just looking for that fifth person. We had three different guys come in for the last role. All read well, but one just fit in… Read more »
Is it a Russ Meyer production of Anne Frank?
Casting is a subject I’ve always found quite fascinating. Most of the time, when you see a movie, you might not know the name of the casting director but afterwards you think, wow, that was perfect, brilliant even, whoever the heck they are. Other times, especially having grown up with books being even nearer and dearer to my heart than movies, it seemed of utmost importance that any screen adaptation remain true to the book author’s work. After all, writers rarely choose the physical details of their characters accidentally. Maybe never. There’s often a good and compelling reason for the… Read more »
Kelly LeBrock is sort of the classic “what if” or “what could’ve been” among the What the Hell Happened to subjects? Obviously, where would her film career had gone had she not hooked up w/ a major di**head like Steven Seagal? Would she have simply ended up like Sharon Stone or Kim Basinger in that they just “aged out being sex symbols”?
It’s really impossible to say. Her marriage to Seagal basically ended her movie career. If not for that, who knows? Maybe she would have gone back to TV commercials anyway. Or maybe she would have had a legit acting career. We’ll never know.
I think your right about Wright, right? Seriously though, I think that woman got better looking with age.
She was never not a knock out in my opinion. There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in the world. Or so I hear.
I thought her look became interesting beginning with “State of Grace”, but before that I felt she was rather plain.
I said in the WTHHT article on Kelly LeBrock, that I believed that she was a less accomplished variation of Kim Basinger. With that being said, I wonder how she would’ve done for the role (assuming of course, even pre-“Batman”, that wasn’t too expensive)? “My Stepmother is an Alien” was I guess, kind of the closet thing to her being in that type of movie (i.e. a high concept, fantasy comedy).
Good stuff; hey, didn’t the cannibal from “The Hills Have Eyes” have a cameo at the big party that was crashed?
Yes, Michael Berryman who played a mutant in Wes Craven’s horror thriller, The Hills Have Eyes, is also in the party scene.
He plays a school teacher
So he does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpoETplfsgE
They better NOT remake or reboot this! That’ll seriously piss me off. Great post! I’m a huge Hughes fan. 🙂
I’ll be very surprised if it isn’t resurrected in some way shape or form someday. Hollywood is looking for any recognizable property they can revive and squeeze a few more bucks out of.
Glad you liked the article. I’m looking to do more like it in the future.
Ugh – so true. I’m still confused by the use of the 21 Jump Street name for those movies that were nothing like the TV show…
I think those films have something to offer, but it’s far from the original conceit of the TV series “21 Jump Street”, which was like a “Miami Vice” for younger people. The films are like the hijinks of two guys who happen to be undercover cops, and the material is played for laughs. I think the same concept was done with the film version of “Starsky and Hutch”, except “21 Jump Street” is a more successful.
True – I guess Starsky & Hutch was the same way. But it didn’t bother me as I never really watched the show. But I LOVED 21 Jump Street so I was like “don’t mess with my 21 Jump Street!” Lol 😉
That’s the thing: some people either forgot about “21 Jump Street”, were too young or not even born when it was on the air, so they don’t treasure it like you do (personally, I could’ve lived without a film titled “21 Jump Street”). I see the “21 Jump Street” films as in name only, and I recognize that show helped get FOX off the ground when it was a fledgling network. I’m sure there are people that aren’t crazy that the “Bewitched” property was turned into a film as well. On another note, Stephen J. Cannell was magic when it… Read more »
Ha! I forgot about the typewriting paper. 🙂 Been ages since I’ve seen any of his shows! I’ve been out of America for way too long now…
Further fun fact: The “Lisa” computer was named by Steve Jobs for his daughter.
Lisa wasn’t a big seller but did lead to the production of the Mac.
I did not know that. I will have to update the article to include that she was indirectly named after Steve Job’s daughter. Thanks!
Great idea for a post and hope there’s more like it. I saw this film in theaters and have enjoyed many times since. I can’t imagine anyone else in LeBrock’s role. Would be like replacing King King with a Lemur. Very noticeable. This is should go untouched and un-revisited. And it’s surprising how long is has sat just so.Cheers.
The post is kinda sorta my winking satire of click bait while also being click bait. Because who doesn’t like clicks? I plan to do at least 1 more this week. I’m looking at this as a companion series for WTHH.
I’m doing sort of the same thing with my new “lists” series. It’s effective. I love the idea of adding more depth to the WTHH articles. Fantastic idea. Love these changes.
I figure if you can’t beat em, join em. I’ll do the click bait thing but do it the same way I do everything else. I don’t want to just post the same trivia on every other Facts You Didn’t Know list. I’m going to try to get deeper and mix in some humor too.
Right. That’s the key, and what has driven all your WTHH posts. I think this is just the kind of thing it needs. I’m really looking forward to more because, as a movie fan, I like to learn about the process and what happened to bring these things to the screen.
I heard a long time ago that Bill Paxton was for whatever the reasons, ashamed of his association w/ “Weird Science”? Is that true and if so, why could that have been the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QagoRRt4ZlU
What’s funny is that around this time, he you can argue was getting typecast (this and “Aliens” a year later) as pretty much the resident, meat-headed, obnoxious military person.
I think Bill Paxton avoided typecasting after his role in 1987’s “Near Dark (love it), when he plays a werewolf/vampire hybrid from another time. There is an “Aliens” association with that film though, due to three cast members (Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, Lance Henriksen) being in that film, and James Cameron flipping off Bill Paxton’s Severen character in a scene.
I have read several interviews where Paxton discussed Weird Science without a hint of embarrassment. Maybe there is an interview out there where he says he is ashamed of Weird Science, but I couldn’t find it. I’m inclined to call BS on that observation.
Did John Hughes sort of pioneered the “shared universe” concept (although it was never official unlike w/ Marvel and Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark, who is incidentally, also in “Weird Science”) in his movies?
http://www.televisioncrossoveruniverse.com/2014/11/shermer-town-that-john-hughes-built.html
Lol. I think that’s a bit of a stretch. I don’t think there was anything novel about setting a bunch of unrelated stories in a shared fictional location. If anything, the Universal monsters and their many mashups were the prototype for the shared universe.
Don’t forget that Abbot & Costello also shared the Universal monsters universe.
If you go beyond film, Agatha Christie’s various mystery series–the Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple books and other less well known ones–are implicitly set in the same universe. While there are no novels where, say, Poirot and Miss Marple appear together, there are cases where supporting characters from both series appear in the same book.
Yes, I think this is a very common convention in books. Obviously it is the accepted standard in comics. TV shows have spin-offs. But even in film, I don’t think it was new when Hughes did it.
It’s extremely common in crime fiction. Elmore Leonard did it with a lot of his books, Robert B. Parker and Michael Connelly have linked up virtually all of their respective series, and so on.
Literally seconds after I finished typing my last comment, I remembered a very early film example. In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, which came out in 1938, there are two likable supporting characters, a pair of cricket fanatics named Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne), who steal several scenes before things are through. Move forward to 1940 and another espionage film called Night Train to Munich. The hero and heroine are being held captive by the Nazis, and they are, yes, being taken by train to Munich. And who else should be on the train but Charters and Caldicott,… Read more »
Other hypothetical/theorized shared film universes:
https://ohilodude.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/the-dreamworks-animation-theory/
https://ohilodude.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/what-exactly-is-the-alienpredator-universe/
https://ohilodude.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/what-exactly-is-the-lucasspielberg-universe/
https://ohilodude.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/5-crossover-movies-i-want-to-see-happen/
http://www.tor.com/2015/01/08/all-tim-burton-movies-occur-in-the-same-universe/
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=movies+that+are+connected+to+each+other
Why the fuck would a classy actress like Robin Wright want to play an AI sexbot who exists for the purpose of fluffing teen boys? She must’ve been hungry in those days.And I can’t imagine how skinny Kelly Emberg was that you’d have to slash the back of her dresses to fit circa ’85 Kelly Lebrock in them.
At the time, Wright was just getting started. She had done two episodes of a TV series and nothing else.
I would guess the wardrobe issue was based on bone structure. LeBrock was quite statuesque. Emberg was apparently smaller in stature. And obviously skinny.
“Lisa” is the kind of role that actually feels like it’s meant for a model more than an actual actress. Some models, however, certainly pull off acting better than others. I think Kelly LeBrock brought the most to the role that could possibly be made of it. It’s not actually the worst or most embarrassing “Pygmalion” role out there. The honor would probably go to ‘Mannequin’. If you compared Kelly LeBrock’s cheesy 80s sex kitten roles to Kim Cattrall’s, you’d really think it would be the former who’d carve out a legit career and not the latter. Such is the… Read more »
True.
Although as a rule my money is always on the actress who doesn’t marry Steven Seagal. 😉
That’s fair criteria.
Even as a kid, I found “Mannequin” watchable but dumb (I do like the Starship song though:-). The character of Lisa in “Weird Science” has a ballsy personality and is quite astute; just a much better role than Emmy in “Mannequin”.
What I find interesting about Kim Cattrall is that her on screen persona of Samantha Jones in “Sex and The City” (that info was too uncomfortably easy for me to remember:-) is so different than any role I’ve seen her in. It’s like a totally different actress for me.
Emme had no discernable personality traits other than relentless cheeriness. It’s strange how anyone would have written this character as an “ideal female”. Everything Kim Cattrall was in up to “Sex and the City” was so bad it makes you wonder how she was ever even considered for an audition. Well, “Live Nude Girls” with Dana Delaney was kinda good, but nobody saw that.
Yeah, “Live Nude Girls” is decent, and I’ll always like “Big Trouble in Little China”. It’s true, the Emmy character was relentlessly cheerful and obedient; it’s tough for me to relate to a female like that.
That’s because there isn’t really any female like that.
You sure have seen a lot of movies, though. Whatever I mention, you know it, even stuff that’s not at all well known.
I spent a lot of time at movie rental stores back in the day, picking them clean:-). Also, I knew people that rented films of varying tastes, anything from “My Own Private Idaho” to “Boys On The Side”, so I’ve really run the gamut. Then there’s fare that I’ve caught on premium, basic cable, and antenna channels, and I’m still always watching. Heck, when it comes to Kim Cattrall, I remember this film in which she is murdered by her husband played by Christopher Reeve, who is in a wheelchair (this is before his horse riding accident, like RIGHT BEFORE,… Read more »
If you know “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” I’m gonna kvell. That’s my favorite Movie That No One Knows About.
I do know about it (Diane Lane is my favorite actress) but I’ve never seen it. I do have it on wishlist at Amazon. Yeah, that film is super obscure; it makes “Streets of Fire” look mainstream by comparison.
I was flipping through channels one late night when I couldn’t sleep and saw something with Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols and was like, what the what? and stopped to see what it was, then saw Diane Lane playing a punk and was totally intrigued. It’s totally worth checking out. Laura Dern was actually in it too. Betcha never knew there was a Laura Dern-Sex Pistols connection. Use that for your next game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”.
Wow, I’ve never seen it listed on TV; that was quite a find.
I have seen neither Mannequin nor Sex in the City. I know Cattrall from Big Trouble in Little China primarily.
10 Comic Book Movies That Don’t Deserve To Be Rotten On Rotten Tomatoes http://whatculture.com/film/10-comic-book-movies-that-dont-deserve-to-be-rotten-on-rotten-tomatoes.php/2 Weird Science (1985) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 56% Yes, Weird Science was based on a comic book. Hint: it’s called Weird Science and you’ve almost definitely seen the cover a bunch of times (it’s just that people rarely put two and two together). “Made of the Future,” a story from the fifth issue, inspired the film’s premise. Often derided as the least worthwhile film of John Hughes’ golden period, this is an unashamedly goofy picture with an incredibly nutty plot – two nerds design their perfect woman… Read more »
‘Weird Science’ Star Appears Onscreen for the First Time in 25 Years on Last Night’s ‘The Goldbergs’ http://www.pajiba.com/tv_reviews/ilan-mitchellsmith-from-weird-science-makes-cameo-appearance-on-the-goldbergs.php The Goldbergs returned with its 5th season premiere last night (yes, it’s been 5 years already!), and the episode does what the show always does best: Turn Barry into an ass before lovingly redeeming him; create conflict over separation anxiety between Beverly and one of her kids before the kid acknowledges how much better it is to have an overly affectionate mom instead of a neglectful one; and get Rowan Blanchard involved as much as possible. It’s a great show, and a… Read more »
Home Shows G The Goldbergs S05.E01: Weird Science
http://forums.previously.tv/topic/62008-s05e01-weird-science/#comment-3677641
http://www.arubinow.com/html/shooting_locations.html The Sports Car Chase in the end runs through Central Street in Downtown Highland Park, Illinois. Northbrook Court Shopping Center ( remodeled since the film was shot ), on Lake-Cook Road just west of Skokie Blvd. in Northbrook, Illinois. Niles East High School ( formerly ), 7700 Lincoln Ave in Skokie, Illinois. It is the same exact shot from the opening of Sixteen Candles. Chet & Wyatt Donnelly House – 420 Cedar Ave, Highland Park, IL (torn down since filming – info provided by Owen Lockwood) Deb’s House – 1150 Linden Ave., Highland Park, IL (info provided by Owen… Read more »
Honestly, I consider Lisa from Weird Science to be a variant of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. But because said MPDG in this case, is a bombshell in the guise of a magical genie (Weird Science in that regard, could be looked at as a more bawdy, ’80s, teen-centric version of I Dream of Jeannie) the “politically correct” may look at the premise on face value as being sexist. https://screenrant.com/controversial-tv-characters-offensive-banned-tv-today/ LISA (WEIRD SCIENCE) Based on the hit John Hughes movie, the Weird Science TV series followed the same basic plot – high school pals Wyatt and Gary use a… Read more »