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Movie 43

Movie 43 is a 2013 American anthology comedy film conceived by producer Charles B. Wessler. The film features fourteen different storylines, each one by a different director, including Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner, Will Graham, and Jonathan van Tulleken. It stars an ensemble cast that is led by Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Gerard Butler, Seth MacFarlane, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Jeremy Allen White, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Chris Pratt, Liev Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet.

Movie 43

  • Steve Baker
  • Ricky Blitt
  • Will Carlough
  • Tobias Carlson
  • Jacob Fleisher
  • Patrik Forsberg
  • Will Graham
  • James Gunn
  • Claes Kjellstrom
  • Jack Kukoda
  • Bob Odenkirk
  • Bill O'Malley
  • Matthew Alec Portenoy
  • Greg Pritikin
  • Rocky Russo
  • Olle Sarri
  • Elizabeth Wright Shapiro
  • Jeremy Sosenko
  • Jonathan van Tulleken
  • Jonas Wittenmark

Relativity Media

  • January 25, 2013 (2013-01-25) (United States)

94 minutes
UK version:
98 minutes

United States

English

$6 million[1]

$32.4 million[1]

Julianne Moore, Tony Shalhoub, Bob Odenkirk, Anton Yelchin and Shane Jacobson also appear in storylines not included in the film's theatrical release.


The film took almost a decade to get into production as most studios rejected the script, which was eventually picked up by Relativity Media for $6 million. The film was shot over a period of several years, as casting also proved to be a challenge for the producers. Some actors, including George Clooney, declined to take part, while others, such as Richard Gere, attempted to get out of the project.


Released on January 25, 2013 after having been originally slated for release on April 13, 2012,[2] Movie 43 was panned by critics, although it was a modest commercial success, grossing $32.4 million against a budget of $6 million. Considered one of the worst films of all time, the film received three awards at the 34th Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture.[3]

Produced and directed by and written by Rocky Russo, Jeremy Sosenko, and Ricky Blitt

Peter Farrelly

Production[edit]

Development[edit]

Wessler first came up with the idea for an outrageous comedy made up of several short films in the early 2000s. "It's like Funny or Die, only if you could go crazy," judged Farrelly, "because with Funny or Die, there are certain limits. And we just wanted to do that kind of short and go much further than that." Charlie Wessler affirmed that he "wanted to make a Kentucky Fried Movie for the modern age".[10]


Wessler then recruited three pairs of directors—Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, and David and Jerry Zucker—to sign on to write and direct one-third of the project each. He then began working out a deal with a studio for the project, but the project did not stick. "They ended up calling me about a month after we started negotiating the deal and said 'we can't do it' because they had political pressure to not make R-rated movies that were marketed to teenagers," claimed Wessler. He then went to multiple other studios, but, according to Wessler, "no one could understand what [he] was trying to do".[10]


In 2009, Peter Farrelly and producer John Penotti took their pitch—along with about 60 scripts for the vignettes—to Relativity Media. At that meeting, Wessler, Penotti, and Farrelly presented one short that they already had shot, starring Kate Winslet as a woman going on a blind date with a seemingly successful and handsome Hugh Jackman. "They just looked at me and said, 'Go for it,'" Wessler told The Hollywood Reporter. "It takes a lot of balls to make something that is not conventional." Relativity provided $6 million for the film, but no other studio would sign on. "Other potential backers", Farrelly revealed, "didn't believe it could happen—a movie with Kate Winslet for $6 million?"[10]


The film officially began principal photography in March 2010, but due to its large cast, producer/director Farrelly told Entertainment Weekly that "This movie was made over four years, and they just had to wait for a year or two years for different actors. They would shoot for a week, and shut down for several months. Same thing with the directors. It was the type of movie you could come back to." Shortly before shooting, writers Parker, Stone, and the Zuckers backed out.[11]


The film ended up with thirteen directors and nineteen writers tied to it, each one co-writing and directing different segments of the sixteen different storylines.[12] Farrelly directed the parts of the movie with Halle Berry and Kate Winslet.[10][11][13]

Casting and filming[edit]

Wessler spent years recruiting actors for the film. Many turned down the project. "Most agents would avoid me because they knew what I wanted to do—what agent wants to book their big client in a no pay, $800-a-day, two-day shoot?" he said. "The truth is, I had a lot of friends who were in this movie. And if they didn't say yes, this movie wouldn't have gotten made." In the end, most of the actors were willing to take part because the film only required a few days of their time and often allowed them to play a character outside of their wheelhouse.[10]


Hugh Jackman was the first actor Wessler cast. He met the star at a wedding and then called him sometime later and pitched him the short. Jackman read the script and agreed to be a part of the film. "He called me back I think 24 hours later and said, 'Yeah I wanna do this,' which I think is, quite frankly, incredibly ballsy. Because you could be made a fool of, or you could look silly, and there will be people who say, 'That's crazy; he should never have done it.'"[10]


After talking to the multiple agents of Kate Winslet, she eventually agreed to take part. The Winslet-Jackman sketch was shot shortly after and became the reel to attract other A-list stars.[10]


John Hodgman, who plays opposite Justin Long in one sketch, signed on with no knowledge of the project. Long, Hodgman's co-star in the long-running Get a Mac series of Apple commercials, asked him to do the project, and he then signed on, without still knowing too much. Hodgman said, "I got an e-mail from Justin that said, 'I'm going to be dressing up as Robin again. Do you want to dress up as the Penguin?' And I said yes. Without even realizing cameras would be involved, or that it would be a movie."[10]


James Gunn revealed during a Facebook Q&A that he was convinced to do the film by Elizabeth Banks and to "blame her" for it. He added, "I didn't even get to edit that stupid thing!" He also has never seen the film.[14]


Others were not so affable. In fact, some stars hedged: Richard Gere, a friend of Wessler's, said yes—but also said he would not be available for more than a year. So Wessler waited him out, convinced his sketch was good. Gere eventually called Wessler and told him he was free to shoot, on just a couple of conditions: they had to do it in four days, and they needed to relocate the shoot from Los Angeles to New York City.[10]


"They clearly wanted out!" judged Farrelly. "But we wouldn't let them. The strategy was simple: Wait for them. Shoot when they want to shoot. Guilt them to death."[15] Colin Farrell initially agreed to be in the Butler leprechaun sketch—as Butler's brother, also a leprechaun—but then he backed out and Gerard Butler did the sketch by himself. Farrelly said that when he approached George Clooney about playing himself in a sketch (the gag was that Clooney is bad at picking up women), Clooney told him "No fucking way."[10] There were two sketches cut from the film that were originally shown during a test screening; one that starred Anton Yelchin as a necrophiliac mortician who worked at a hospital and had sex with the dead female bodies, and another starring Julianne Moore and Tony Shalhoub as a married couple being interviewed by a detective about their missing daughter.[16] Producer Penotti said that the sketches would be seen on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases of the film,[10] however only the latter was included in the release.[8]


Because the filmmakers worked around the stars' schedules, the filming of the whole movie took several years. While so many A-list actors were on board, most were not completely aware of what other sketches would be included in the film, which features thirteen vignettes tied together by a story of a mad screenwriter (Quaid) pitching ideas to a movie producer (Kinnear). Penotti said many of the actors did not ask many questions about what else was going on in the film. "They were attracted to their script, and as long as that tickled their funnybone, that was enough," he revealed.[10][13]

Promotion[edit]

The title of the film, Movie 43 has no meaning. Farrelly heard his son talking with friends about a film called "Movie 43", but when Farrelly discovered the film did not exist, he cribbed the name.[10]


Relativity did little to promote the film and none of the cast members did any promotion of the film. The film was not screened for critics in advance. "The slapdash title, the lack of promotion and advance screenings, the release date—none of it bodes well," opined Entertainment Weekly senior editor Thom Geier. "January is usually where movies go to die," Geier argued. "And to go by the trailer—the only option—the content seems dated." A red-band trailer was released on October 3, 2012.[17] Farrelly was optimistic: "Kids, teenagers, 50-somethings who still smoke pot—they're all going to find something here," he asserted.[10]

Reception[edit]

Critical response[edit]

Movie 43 was panned by critics, with some considering it to be one of the worst films ever made.[18] The film received a weighted average score of 18 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 23 critics, signifying "overwhelming dislike".[19] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 4% positive rating based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 2.74/10. The site's critics consensus states: "A star-studded turkey, Movie 43 is loaded with gleefully offensive and often scatological gags, but it's largely bereft of laughs."[20] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a D rating.[21]


Brian Gibson (Vue Weekly) describes Movie 43 as "An execrable waste cooked up by a hell's kitchen of directors and writers. It's death-of-laughter by committee. Its title? Because it's like one of those many asteroids out there—a dismal chunk of rock hurtling through an empty void, without purpose."[22] IGN's Gregg Katzman gave the film a 1/10, with the main criticisms being its unfunny jokes and the waste of its all-star cast, with the only positive being its sub two hour running time.[23] It would go on to tie with Scary Movie 5 for IGN's worst movie of 2013.[24] In his guest review for Roger Ebert's website, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times outright panned the film, giving it zero out of four stars, calling it "aggressively tasteless", and going so far as to say "Movie 43 is the Citizen Kane of awful". He wrote that the film has nothing in common with The Groove Tube and The Kentucky Fried Movie, two "very funny and influential" sketch-comedy films. He additionally criticized Movie 43 for what he calls "female humiliation", saying that although the men are "jerks, idiots, dolts and fools", the women have it even worse.[25] Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave the film 1/5 stars, describing it as "the work of a confused man thrashing around in an industry he no longer understands".[26] Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film zero out of four stars and called it the worst film he had ever seen.[27] Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News gave it a negative review, saying, "As a film critic, I've seen nearly 4,000 movies over the last fifteen years. Right now, I can't think of one worse than Movie 43."[28]


In one of the few positive reviews, Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post gave the film three and a half out of four stars, calling it "a near masterpiece of tastelessness".[29] Alonso Duralde of TheWrap said that the film was "gross, juvenile, disgusting, scatological, vile, reprehensible and in the worst possible taste. But heaven help me, I laughed."[30]

Box office[edit]

Movie 43 was predicted to debut to less than $10 million, with the studio expecting $8–9 million.[31] It took in $1,810,561 on its opening Friday, far below expectations.[32]


The opening weekend total came to $4,805,878, opening in seventh place. At the end of its run, closing in the United States on March 14, 2013, the film had grossed $8,840,453 domestically and $23,598,535 internationally for a worldwide total of $32,438,988.[1]


Relativity stated that they had already covered all costs with international pre-sales deals and a deal with Netflix.[21]

List of films considered the worst

List of films shot over three or more years

at IMDb

Movie 43