Drunk History (2013–…): Season 2, Episode 6 - Hollywood - full transcript

- Orson Welles wrote, produced,
directed, he starred in it.

I am fucked up.

- And Ub looks at him,
and he says, what about a mouse?

Walt Disney, he's like,
yeah, let's do that.

- Nancy Davis, she knows,
I got... I got to talk to

the president of the Screen
Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan.

I've had a bottle of whiskey,

so tell me what you want me
to do.

♪♪

- Old Hollywood was, like,
liberally glamorous.

It was innate in those people,
and nowadays,



it just feels constructed
but super inauthentic.

- All of those people had,
like, a certain class.

- And you didn't know anything
about Jimmy Stewart,

but you wanted to.

Whereas now,
if he was on Twitter,

you'd know everything
about Jimmy Stewart

and you wouldn't care.

- This was before cell phones,
it's before iPads,

before people
had other distractions.

Back in the day,
that was the magic,

that silver... what was on
the silver screen.

- Bergie.
- Waters.

- How many beers will we have?

- We'll have as many as it takes
to tell a good story.



That's a many.

- Oh, you already been drinking.

- Drippies.

I'm really drunk right now.

- Is it bad?

Hello, today, we are going to be
discussing Orson Welles

and William Randolph Hearst.

William Randolph Hearst was the
biggest media mogul in America.

Three out of five people
read a Hearst paper.

He had owned 25% of the world's
most valuable art,

the second biggest private zoo
in the world,

he had started
to build San Simeon.

The fucking property was, like,

half the size
of Rhode Island, man.

Not his wife,
but this woman, Marion Davies,

next thing you know she's living
in San Simeon, loving it.

Meanwhile, Orson Welles,

a boy-genius prodigy,
had just done War of the Worlds.

Orson would say things like,
tonight at 7:52 P.M.,

we spotted a craft
entering Earth's atmosphere.

It lands on
the White House lawn, yes, yes!

Hollywood came a-knockin'.

And they said, Orson, babe,

what do you want, babe?

You want a... you want
a three-picture deal?

We don't say a word,
all the money you want, babe?

Done.

Greenlit, done fucking deal.

Orson's having some late night,
probably hammering cocktails,

with a one Herman Mankiewicz,
screenwriter,

and Mankiewicz all of a sudden
starts going like,

yeah, I was... I was at
San Simeon the other week.

And Orson's like,
you have inside info

and... and like little juicy
tidbits of what's happening

at the Hearst Castle?

He's like, oh, yeah.

He's like, oh, shit.
I have an inside guy.

Do tell, do tell.

I party there regularly.

I'm having drinks, smoking cigs,
drinking champy,

having delicious appetizers
with Marion Davies

and Dougie Fairbanks
and all those people, loving it.

He's witnessing this stuff
first-hand of...

Hold on.

Fuck.

Sorry, whiskey beard.

Oh, mama.

But then Hearst would leave
these parties and go out

and spread all
his newspapers out

and just lord over his powers
like,

I control media,
which controls the world.

I am fucking God.

And Orson goes, stop.

I need you to write me

a screenplay about this,

and I am going to make it

into a feature film.

Deal was made.

Orson Welles knew that we need
to kind of keep this top secret,

and keep it under wraps
because of Hearst.

Mankiewicz would
pound out the pages.

Orson Welles kept on
reading this stuff.

He was like,
this is amazing screenwriting.

This is gonna be
the best movie ever.

Like, I'm making a fucking sh...
Kick-ass movie, man.

Capisce?

He wrote, produced,

directed, he starred in it.

When the movie was complete,

the most powerful
gossip columnist at the time,

she said to Hearst, they made
Marion Davies look like

a complete floozy,
horrible person.

I mean the... the whole movie
was basically trashing

the Hearst name.

Hearst hears about this,
and he sees red.

He starts threatening
any newspaper out there.

If you put a review,
if you put an ad out for this,

you're done.

He told every movie theater,
if you run this movie,

we will never place an ad for
one of your films ever again.

So...

Hmm, um...

Oh, what was I talking about?

- Citizen Kane?

That was very general.

Um...

So RKO called Orson Welles

at 2:00 in the morning
and said, Orson,

no one is going
to show your film.

Wonderful.

Show it in tents.

Put up a quote that says,

"The movie that no one
will let you see."

As fate would have it,

Orson
and William Randolph Hearst

were in the same elevator.

Welles and Hearst never look
at each other.

Orson says, so, Mr. Hearst,
did you see my film?

He said, no, and I never will.

And he said,
Kane would've seen it!

Kane would have seen the film!

It got nominated...
for nine Academy Awards.

They won one Oscar
for best screenplay.

William Randolph Hearst
hated, loathed,

and wanted to crush the movie,

but that's where his legacy
is remembered,

as Kane.

It's a great
fucking movie, dude.

It is haunting and there's
nothing like that movie at all.

There's nothing will ever
be like the movie.

It is such a wonderful
fucking thing.

I love it.

And he would... also did the voice
in The Transformers Movie.

- Are you fucking kidding me?

This is... what?

No, I'm out of here.

Both: Cheers.
- All right.

Let's... let's learn.

- Hello, today, we're talking
about Ub Iwerks,

the creator of Mickey Mouse.

So our story starts in 1919
in Kansas City, USA.

Walt Disney was a draftsman.

Ub Iwerks was an animator.

Ub goes, hey, Walt,

what if we were to put
a live-action person

into an animated frame?

Yes, that's it.

They create something called
the Alice Comedies,

but there's no money in it.

Walt, though, is ambitious.

He goes off to California

and he goes to the head of
Universal Animation,

Charles Mintz.

He was like, this is amazing,

I can use this,

but the quality
has to be as good.

Walt's like, Ub,
get out here, ASAP.

Yo, this is better than being
in Kansas City,

'cause Kansas City is like...

You could, like,
give me the deed to the city

and I still wouldn't even
stay there.

And he drives the seven days
to California.

He takes these...
Oh, no, let me back up.

At this point, Ub came up
with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

So Oswald does great
for Universal,

and Walt goes to Charles Mintz
and he says,

listen, we are fucking
killing it.

Time for you to pay us
some more money.

And Mintz... Mintz looks at him
and he laughs.

I'm gonna give you less money.

And Mintz goes, I have signed
all of your animators,

and I own Oswald.

He's mine.

Walt Disney vowed from that day,

not only will I ever not own
any character I create,

I will never not own them.

I think.

He said to Ub, Ub, you with me?

And Ub, yet again,
left with Walt Disney.

And Ub said to him,
what are we doing, Walt?

And Walt's like,
we need a character, Ub.

What do you got?

What about a horse?
Nope.

What about a dog?
Nope.

What about a cat?

No, man.
We got enough cats.

We got Felix the Cat.
There's a lot of cats out there.

What else you got?

What about a mouse?

Walt's like, yeah,
let's do that.

But what happened next
was all Ub Iwerks, okay?

So Ub locked himself
in the studio,

and he churns out
600 to 700 frames a day.

Unheard of.

He did two months of animation
in two weeks,

and he created a character,
Mickey Mouse.

He sat down and drew
that cartoon Plane Crazy.

Walt loves it,
but he goes, you know what?

We need something bigger,
and Ub was like,

what if we could
sync sound to it?

What if we did our next cartoon
where we could see

the action happening in the time
with the music?

And Walt was like, yeah,
let's do sync sound.

So Steambay... so Steam mill...

So Steamboat Willie comes out

and it blows audiences away.

They went,
I can see that mouse whistling.

I can hear the mouse whistling.

Oh, my God!
This mouse is whistling along

with what his mouth is doing.

There's fucking sync sound.

There were standing ovations.

Mickey Mouse became
an icon overnight.

He was referenced
in movies and songs,

and it creates Disney.

Like, this em... embellishes
their minds to everybody.

They know that this is like
the game has changed.

With the added pressures
of Mickey doing really well,

Disney, he wanted to oversee
every bit of production.

Hey, you got to meet
this timing sheet,

and we got to be here by then,
and productivity

and bla-a-a-aaah!

Now, at a party in Hollywood,

a little kid came up
to Walt Disney.

He's like, hey, Mr. Walt Disney,
I love Mickey Mouse.

Would you draw me
a picture of him?

Walt's like, sure, kid.

I'll draw you a picture
of Mickey Mouse,

and he handed the paper
to Ub Iwerks.

And Ub goes, whoa!

Are you fucking kidding me?

This is... what?

No, I'm out of here.

- Okay, so let's go back.

So... where was I?
Ub and...

- Oh, Walt Disney?

- And Ub starts
Iwerks Animation.

Crazy stuff happened
in his cartoons.

You know, girls dresses
would blow off

and, you know,
animals would lose limbs.

Like, it was anarchy.

But the Hays Commission
comes in.

Those are the guys who were
starting to put limitations

on what you could
and couldn't show.

And they were like,
this is not gonna fly anymore.

So that was the end
of Iwerks Animation.

A friend of Ub's is working
at Disney Studios still.

He's like, Ub's out of work.
You could use him.

Walt agrees to have Ub
for lunch.

He says, Ub, I want you back.
Please come work for me.

And Ub looks at him
and he says, Walt,

I want to come back
and work for you,

but I will never work for you
in animation.

I want to work for you

in photographic effects.

And Walt is like, yeah,
you're the guy for that.

Come and do that for me.

He was a rock star for Walt.

He... he... he builds stuff
so they could do Mary Poppins,

the penguin dance.

He wins a Technical Oscar
for that.

Ub Iwerks had his hand in every
single ride at Disneyland,

creating the special effects.

And Ub died a Disney Legend.

So this is a real Disney ending.

Or, as I like to think,
as I like to think...

this is an Iwerks ending,
'cause he was the man.

- To Ub.
- Ub.

- What the fucking kind
of name's Ub?

- Hey, how are you?
- How's it going?

- Adam.
- Derek.

- Hi, Derek.
- Nice to meet you, Adam.

- Hello.

- So this is one of the things
that old Hollywood had

that new Hollywood still has?

- Yes, very much so.

This is my gun.
This is what I use for...

- That's just a doorknob.

- That's just a doorknob, yeah.

And we can...
if they cock it.

If they... if they load bullets
into it...

This is like bushes.

This is what we fake for bushes

'cause we can't have trees
in here and stuff like that.

- Hey, what's that in the bush?

- Yeah.
- What do you do with this?

It's just a can.

Yeah, I've cut myself
many times.

- Oh, cool.
- You probably will as well.

- Back off.

Am I like
the classic cliché like,

"Oh, he's gonna
be fascinated by that"?

- Everyone's... everyone's
fascinated with the shing.

- All right, let me try
to walk like a lady in here.

- Straight down.

- That's... I'm a lady
of the night.

Do you think I have
what it takes?

- I don't.

- Thank you for your honesty.
- You got it.

- Hello, I'm Drew Droege.

I've been drinking heavily,

and I'm going to talk to you
all about the Reagans.

Ronald, Nancy, and others.
Get ready.

Hu... oh, hi.

So, it's 1949.

A young actress named
Nancy Davis

somehow gets on
a communist black list.

She knows I got... I got to talk

to the president of
the Screen Actors Guild,

Ronald Reagan,
because he's gonna help me.

He was in a movie called
Knute Rockne,

and he was in Bedtime for Bonzo.

A lot of people don't remember
Ronald Reagan was very liberal.

This is a guy who's like,
hey, I'm an actor,

I'm the president of the...
The Screen Actors Guild,

I love my life, I'm hot,

and pro-union
and all that stuff.

Then somebody said to Ronnie,

like, this actress, Nancy Davis,
wants to meet with you.

Ronnie saw Nancy and was like,

she's hot, I'll meet her.

So they met
for dinner afterwards.

Nancy walks in,
and she is bangin'.

She's like got it all happening.

Spilt... I spilt on myself.

Do you have any drinks...

Do you have any glasses that are
any smaller... smaller lipped?

- We broke into this place.
I don't know whose it is.

- Where are we?

- During dinner, and you know,
she was like,

I'm on a black list
of the communist party,

and he's like... he was like,
what?

And she was like, yes.
Can you believe it?

And he was like, I can't.

You don't seem like
a communist to me,

and she's like, I'm not.

There was nothing communist
about her,

she was always
rabidly conservative.

He got to the bottom of things

and realized it was
a clerical error,

so he got her off that list.

And they were like,
let's fall in love.

Boom.

Hollywood.

- Honestly, like I'm wasted.

- Yeah, so just...
Pretend you're Nancy...

- I'm beyond wasted.
- Pretend you're...

- I've had a bottle...
I've had a bottle of whiskey,

so tell me what you want me
to do.

- Just pretend...
- But I'll do whatever

the fuck you want me to do,

but I... I want... I want
to make a good show.

- Okay, yeah. Okay.

The Reagans were married
in 1952.

Nancy, you know,
definitely convinced Ronnie,

we're... We are has-beens.

Like we... we're not gonna make it
in Hollywood.

You need to be
more conservative.

Ow. Oh, fuck.

- You okay?
What'd you do?

- I'm fine.

I stabbed my own eye out.

- How'd you stab your eye out?

What?

Let's be famous,
you know, politically,

and become the... the faces
of conservatism.

She was basically like
his manager.

You need to be the movie star
that you are, always smile,

and hold your head to a half,
45 degree right angle.

I think she, in her mind,
ran her own studio,

and... and... and she had
one... one player,

and that was Ronald Reagan.

Remember, busineth...

Business.

So it was 1964.

Barry Goldwater was running
for president,

a hyper-Conservative,
a boring human being.

They employed Ronald Reagan,

who was this famous,
great actor, um,

to give the speech.

In the speech he said you can
either go right or left.

But that's not what it is,
it's either up or down.

And up, you ca... you can choose
to be up...

towards individualism, or down

in the depths
of totalitarianism.

People were like,
wow, I need to watch this.

He has a chiseled jaw.
I trust him.

I like this guy.

And so like, then he got very
popular with the Republicans.

They were not
successful actors as actors,

but they were incredibly
successful actors

as politicians.

And Ronnie became
the Governor of California.

Nancy was always
about being famous on any level.

Like, if I'm not going
to be a movie star,

I'm gonna be, you know,
in the White House.

All of sudden, it's the '80s.

He started to run for president.

He made everyone
feel good about...

About being American again.

And Nancy coached him.

Nancy was like,
talk about the children,

talk about, um... holidays,

talk about... booze,

talk about all of it.

- Landslide won,
because they wanted a hero.

She was in charge.

She did it, and it was... it was
one grand performance,

until the end.

Pfft, what are we... what are we
talking about right now?

- Just, well...

The end...

- Hi, everybody...

I just burped on Comedy Central.

- We need to kind of
keep this top secret,

and keep it under wraps
because of Hearst and...

- You're right, I agree.

- All right.
- 100%.

- Let's do it again.