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Transcript: Tales from the '90s: 'Last Action Hero' Screenwriters Tell All
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Transcript: Tales from the '90s: 'Last Action Hero' Screenwriters Tell All

Richard Rushfield speaks with Adam Leff and Zak Penn about how their spec script dream curdled into a crushing nightmare of Hollywood excess

Dec 10, 2024
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Transcript: Tales from the '90s: 'Last Action Hero' Screenwriters Tell All
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SCHWARZENEGGER’S SHAME Last Action Hero was the 1990s megastar’s first big box office flop. (Columbia Pictures)

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Richard Rushfield (00:01):

Welcome to Hollywood Stories, where the people who have been part of entertainment history onscreen and off come to share their memories of classic moments in the Dream Factory. On this first season of Hollywood Stories, we bring you tales from the 1990s. The 1990s were an incredible creative tumultuous time here, considered one of the most dynamic eras in the history of filmmaking.

It was also a time of tremendous upheaval. There were days of great glamour and days of great scandal as well. And we're going to be talking to people who played major roles in that pageant. Today, on our first episode, we're joined by two who rode the rollercoaster of that era. Adam Leff and Zak Penn, screenwriters have gone on between them to write such noted films as The Avengers, Ready Player One and their cult classic PCU.

But in 1991, they were young screenwriters trying to break in when they sold the script to the biggest star of their day, Arnold Schwarzenegger. That script, Last Action Hero, would become one of the most notorious tales of the studio system at the time. Running them up. Today, they join us from Ankler headquarters in West Los Angeles, speaking together for the first time since the 1990s to take us back and remember that journey.

So I'm pleased today to be joined by two great gentlemen of the 1990s, two people I've known since the events described who have an incredible tale of Hollywood. And I believe you've never told it together on the air.

Adam Leff:

That seems right.

Zak Penn:

Unquestionably true. No one has cared enough to ask us to repeat all this on the air.

Richard Rushfield (01:32):

So I am pleased to bring together the writers of one of the most seminal films and events in the 1990s, Last Action Hero. There's Zak Penn.

Zak Penn (01:41):

Hello everyone.

Richard Rushfield (01:42):

And Adam Leff . . .

Adam Leff (01:43):

Hi there.

Richard Rushfield (01:44):

Who are reuniting for the first time to talk about this incredible journey that they had through the 1990s. And so, thinking through it all in the last week, I think this one is important because so much of what happened to you, if we can explain all the beats in your story, they all kind of need translating for modern times. There's almost nothing that happens along this road that is kind of a direct translation to the 2020s.

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