The Extras
The Extras
Behind The Scenes of an Audio Commentary Team
Have you ever wondered what the people who record the audio commentaries of your favorite movies do to prepare? Well, even if you haven’t wondered, we take you behind the scenes with the audio commentary team of Dr. Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr to get the real scoop on their process. This is a light-hearted and fun episode that I think you’ll enjoy.
The Extras Facebook page
The Extras Twitter
Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group
Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv
It's recording, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, steve say hi, hi, steve, who Steve.
Speaker 3:Hi, this is Steve Haberman. Dr Steve Haberman, I'm a PhD, I'm a producer, I'm a writer, I'm an author. I'm too good to be with these two other guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Well, this is just the warm-up. Fortunately, this should never, you know probably get out to the public.
Speaker 3:No, the public. No, I want this all out.
Speaker 2:So what do you guys usually have? Your coffee when you're getting ready for your commentaries here.
Speaker 3:Well, we always have coffee. We have to be highly caffeinated to get motivated to do these things. This is a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:And I have three cups of, or three glasses of wine and a few tequilas just to ensure I'm happy and smiling. And Steve's friends. Yeah, I'd A few tequilas just to ensure I'm happy and smiling in Steve's presence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'd like to believe that that would be fun, but I know that you produce these as well, so if all you were doing was talking, I could believe that you might do that, constantine, thanks for appreciating that, but as a producer. You're like. You got to like know that you have what you need.
Speaker 3:Constantine needs wine like I need coffee. He really does, he does. He needs to relax. His inner talent comes out, otherwise he gets a little nervous.
Speaker 1:But, as you know, I'm sitting here trying to actually making sure that Tim's levels are right and they're not right.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello, how about now? Okay, I'm close enough now.
Speaker 3:Loto is a.
Speaker 2:Galaala night. There we go. Hi, tim lard here. Host of the extras podcast. So, as you can tell, we're going to take a little behind the scenes sneak peek with my good friends steve haberman and constantine nassar film historians and writers extraordinaire and they invited me over to just kind of have coffee with them before they dive into their audio commentary one of many that they do each month for various boutique labels, including the Warner Archive, as they recently did one for the Beast with Five Fingers that came out in October. Hope you enjoy it. Well, I thought I'd ask you guys a couple questions. I know you guys are here. What are you here to do, actually?
Speaker 3:Oh, generically we're doing a commentary for a classic Gothic horror film from the 1950s.
Speaker 2:So where are we, Constantine?
Speaker 1:Hi, this is Constantine Constantine Nassar. I'm not a PhD and proud of it. Anyway, I'm much younger than Steve, by the way.
Speaker 3:And his mother says he's a very good eater.
Speaker 1:So today we're actually going to be recording in my home office this commentary track. We're making adjustments as we speak. It's always a little complicated when you're trying to record and think of things to say to catch up with Steve, because he's very witty on his feet and a lot of knowledge in that brain of his.
Speaker 3:I'm very witty on my butt too.
Speaker 2:Well, what I was trying to get at is that you have a home studio and it's a great setup and that's where you usually do your commentary recording for what you and Steve do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, when, when uh budget started going away, uh, it just made financial sense to figure out how to do this cheaper and faster. Yeah, um, and I would hate to, you know, beg people for, uh, uh, discount rates. So, um, discount rates. And this has actually happened before COVID. We were doing this before COVID and I was also editing a lot from home and doing a lot of my work from my home studio, and then it just seemed to be kind of the only way to do this, especially the way we like to do it and the way some of the talent that I work with were a lot of retakes. I mean, I've had people come in here for a whole week trying to get the commentary to perfection and I tend to indulge my friends.
Speaker 2:You know one thing when I was doing extras, you know, at Warner Brothers we'd sometimes go and interview the people who did the music and that's a great conversation if music is an important part of the TV series or the film.
Speaker 2:That's a great conversation if music is an important part of the TV series or the film. And so many times we're ending up at a person's home studio because with today's tools, you know most musicians and most people who are like in charge of the, the sound on these, would do their first cuts or do their initial thinking or creating everything. So you have here in LA, you got people who have houses and they're downstairs is their studio or their guest cuts or do their initial thinking or creating everything. So you have here in LA, you got people who have houses and they're downstairs. It's their studio or their guest house or whatever, and so it works great. But that's because we have computers and we have the ability to do that and things are affordable and it's a great way to do it. And then you can go do your final, you know, at the studio or the stage or whatever you need to do.
Speaker 1:Well, clients never liked coming to my office that I had to pay for. So I figured why am I getting an office so? When I moved here, it was and now people want to go back to the office. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Well, plus, it's better for the commentary, because many times I've recorded at professional recording studios in LA and Santa Monica and so on, and what they do is they just take the raw footage of my commentary and slap it onto the DVD or the Blu-ray and it's got my frumpers and it's got you know me starting over again and all that kind of. I try to do it as well as I can in one take. But even Orson Welles has got to be edited a little bit, you know.
Speaker 3:And this way I'm completely secure that Constantine is going to make us both sound really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So people might not be interested in knowing the financial element of why we do stuff at home or in our own home studio and stuff, but I think they are interested to know why do you actually do these commentaries? What is it that interests you in getting together and doing these for the fans?
Speaker 3:Well, I personally think that my voice should be commenting on every movie ever made, so that's my motivation. I just think that everybody should hear my thoughts on everything, just ask his wife.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:You are a PhD, I mean, you're a doctor Right, exactly, you know I should be paid for this.
Speaker 3:You guys aren't being paid, are you? No, right, right, exactly. You know I should be paid for this, you guys aren't being paid, are you?
Speaker 2:No? Oh good, thank God. But I did want to know, like what's the motivation? Why get together? Why do this?
Speaker 1:Well, I actually like Steve's company. That may surprise even Steve, mostly surprises Steve these days. It's nice to have a reason to get together and it's fun. I mean reason to get together and, um, um, it's fun. I mean, you know it's work. I think people think it's. It may not be, but I think if even in our uh, uh effort to come off with um off the cuff commentary or it's, it may sound unplanned, but we've been thinking and talking and researching, not just maybe steve, but I I spent a lot of time prepping this, so it sounds a little bit like I can catch up with this guy Well, it's also.
Speaker 3:it's like writing a book. You know? I mean Orson Welles again. He said nobody in the cave, when we were cavemen, ever said to anybody get up and act out a play for us. One guy, one caveman with a huge ego, decided that he was going to get up and do a presentation in front of everybody else in the cave and that was the beginning of theater. And that's sort of what we do with these commentaries. You know, we're very self-important and we just think that what we have to say may be of some value. And so you know it's. And also we love these movies. I never do a movie that I don't love or at least like, or at least have been blackmailed into doing.
Speaker 2:So you know, Well, going back in the time machine is there? Is there something you can remember? Like you heard an audio commentary, maybe early on, and you're like ha, I could do that or I want to do that, anything like that that you guys recall no.
Speaker 3:Well actually I can't.
Speaker 1:I can say that I mean, look, I mean I started my career producing commentaries, or earlier in my career where I was just a producer, so I've produced arguably like probably a thousand commentaries, and after several years of working with people that I thought were among the best in the business, um, I certainly found myself, especially when you end up interviewing people and then they die, and then you end up being like one of the last people that spent time with with actors or directors Um, you become the one that carries on the knowledge, because there's nobody left from the golden age, and so if I've spent time with Kirk Douglas, I guess I could share those stories because I was in the aerial realm of that famous actor. So Steve's in probably the same boat, but I, at a certain point, just thought I can do this as well because I know what it takes and I'm a writer as well.
Speaker 3:You're both writers. Right, yeah. Well, like I said, it's like writing a book. You know, instead of doing that, writing a book is a lot of work, it takes a long time, but doing a commentary you can do in an afternoon, yeah, and you can get all of your thoughts out, or at least as many as you can remember at the time. And you know, maybe it is of value.
Speaker 2:Steve, what was your very first commentary?
Speaker 3:Well, I did comment. My first commentaries were movies that I wrote. I did a commentary for Life Stinks with Mel Brooks, because I wrote my Life Stinks with Mel Brooks and I did Dracula, dead and Loving it, and Constantine was the producer of that commentary, it was me and Mel and Rudy DeLuca. I enjoyed doing it and I guess Constantine thought that maybe I would be good at doing movies that I didn't write. So he asked me to do Village of the Damned. Yeah, village of the Damned. I think that was the first one, and so I did it and I enjoyed it. And then, you know, the people just asked me to do them people just asked me to do them.
Speaker 1:We, we, we. We got along because we also had a lot in common, not just in a superficial way, about I love horror movies and you like this or that it was. It was much deeper and I could get into these, uh, uh, I think, rich conversations with Steve and, um, even even though he had more experience in other areas I think he had just written his book, I had read the book, I knew of him from that capacity as well and we just struck up a friendship. And then it was sometime in the mid-2000s I think, we were doing the Fox box set which I had suggested to my friends over at 20th Century Fox because it was a weird experience. We've got three films.
Speaker 1:It was like Chandu the Magician what was it? Chandu the Lodger and Dragonwick. Can we put those three in a box set? Hangover Square no, no, that wasn't part of the set. I had them switch it up. Yeah, it was like three random films and I said, well, why don't you do a John Brahm set and why don't you do this? And we took actually Chandu. Anyway, dragonwick was up for grabs and there was not a lot to the budget. So I said to Steve. Can we do a commentary?
Speaker 2:And I threw it in for free, so is that the first one you guys did together, the first one we?
Speaker 1:did together. I was very nervous.
Speaker 2:That was back in 2000-ish. You said 2000?
Speaker 1:I remember, yes, 2007 or something, and I had all these pages and notes and everything and Steve was like just don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 3:I said, have fun, nobody's going to listen to this anyway.
Speaker 1:Just say what you want to say who cares?
Speaker 3:How? Yeah, just say what you want to say, who cares?
Speaker 2:How many do you think you've done over the years?
Speaker 3:70. I have done 70. I know that there's a great website on the internet called Discape and a guy named Patrick Mullins does it. Look that up, google Discape and it has lists and the posters and everything of all the commentators that work regularly and it's pretty impressive. And that's how I know I've done 70.
Speaker 2:And you've done 70, but how many have you guys done together?
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 2:I hadn't counted those.
Speaker 1:We probably have done over 30. I think I've done over 40. And some of them, like Dracula or Never Take Sweets from a Stranger those are solo, but I think together and this goes into, like Dr Fives and the Poe films, and so we've done a number.
Speaker 2:So you talked about it or touched on it briefly. But how do you prepare when you know that you've got a film and you're going to be doing commentary? What's your process, Steve?
Speaker 3:Well, I watch the movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then I read up on it, and then I take a bath and while I'm in the bath I think about an angle, I think what has not been said about this movie Hopefully something that's really key.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And the angle you want to look for is something that has to do with the actual auteur of the movie, be it the director that's ideal or the screenwriter, or the producer or whatever. And you think about what does this movie have in common, in terms of themes and style, with the other work by this auteur? And you start mulling that over over and pretty soon, you know, the light goes on and perhaps you'll come up with an original thought that hasn't been in any of the books that you've read or any of the comments that you've seen, and you know encyclopedias of film and stuff like that, and that's pretty much my pre-production process. My pre-production process.
Speaker 1:Constantine. Well, despite having a critical studies degree from USC, I actually come sorry. I'm just looking at the levels. I come to it knowing he's going to be doing that approach Right and I'm trying to just make sure I have all the facts ready to go.
Speaker 1:I like to, whenever possible, and particularly with these old films, get access to the screenplay and try to understand what the writer was aiming for. And when I say writer in the golden age, certainly they were crafted between the writer, the producer, sometimes the director, but oftentimes it was the producer telling the writer what is what we want to do and then go make something. And luckily with these films there's in the horror and science fiction genre so much research, so much material has been unearthed. It's hard to find stuff that you can wedge into a 90 minute film that hasn't been sourced somewhere else. But sometimes and I think with with the curse of Frankenstein I mean, I was holding onto a script that I had found for about 10 years to release information. So from a I come to add it. I come to this more from a film history standpoint so that I can at least compliment or have some other things that that Steve is, you know, compliments, what Steve is bringing to the table and sometimes we get it right.
Speaker 1:I think or at least we I think that most of the times we add to the conversation, to the value and to the history of the legacy of the film we're talking about.
Speaker 2:So what's the hardest part of the commentaries? Is it the preparation, or is it the editing, or what is it Keeping?
Speaker 3:him sober. It's very hard because you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but you know it's certain things professionally you have to do Steve can't hit me anymore like Bud Abbott because I had neck surgery. So if he hits me, my head might fall off Exactly. What was the?
Speaker 2:question what was the hardest part, or what is the hardest part, of you know, doing this?
Speaker 3:There's no hard driving down from Crestline, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2:Dealing with tele-traffic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is all joy Once we get in here and we're doing it, it's fun. I mean, for me I wouldn't blame Konstantin if he disagreed, but I, I enjoy the process, all of it. I enjoy, you know, researching it and thinking about it and saying it, and then listening to it later, and then you know so that leaves the door wide open for you, constantine, you can.
Speaker 1:You can say what's hard about working with steve, you know you know actually the thing about what steve likes to record and then after about five minutes like let let's take it from the top. I want to hear the whole thing over again, what we just recorded, and I get kind of annoyed by that.
Speaker 1:but I know why he's doing it, I know but you know it, it does, I think, set the stage, even if 90% of it is Steve talking of where we're going with the thing and thing and and uh, from from my, from my aspect, because I'm also like the engineer and the editor uh, I'm thinking about, I'm looking, actually, as we're recording, making sure, right now the the microphone is picking up my voice clearly enough, I'm looking at it. So these are the things I do when I'm trying to think about, you know, watching Steve. Is he going to stop talking? So then, is it? Am I jumping in? I don't know, but I you know.
Speaker 1:So there's but, yeah, it's mostly enjoyable. Usually when we hit the halfway mark, we're halfway there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true. You know, we're always saying how much more of this movie is there left?
Speaker 2:We've said it all we're going to have to start making stuff up now. Talk slower Right, all right, so you just mentioned the hardest part, which there's nothing for you, steve. So what's the most enjoyable or your favorite part of it?
Speaker 3:That's a very good question, you know, I, hmm, I I guess hearing it. Maybe tub time, tub time there, yeah, tub time is good, but I think, uh, no, I think I think hearing it for the first time, because what he does is, you know, two or three days later he'll send it to me, um on email and, uh, I listen to it and it's always better than I thought it was, because when you finish something, especially something like this, it's very handmade, it's very analog, you know, and you think about, oh, I should have said this, or did I say that? Or, you know, did I say that at the right time? Did I mispronounce that? You know, you think about stuff and then you hear it again and it's pretty good. It's usually pretty good, and I very seldom asked to redo anything or change anything because, you know, I mean, we're very much on point when we do this.
Speaker 3:It's a concentrated day. We do all these in one day. We, you know, I come down from the mountain and then we have lunch, and then we talk about how we're going to approach this, and then we do it. We just start doing it and then I go home, which is another two and a half hour drive, and and so hearing it for the first time, I think is is is exciting. How about for you, constantine?
Speaker 1:I actually feel relief when we're done and then I feel relief when the edit is done, because it takes a lot of time and I, I admit here on the on the podcast, I mean I I rerecord a lot of myself because often I come off like an idiot when I'm you know trying to like come up with a you know word like now and steve's like here's the word you want okay, thanks thanks, um, but when I'm able to not be intimidated, um, no, actually, when, when I'm I'm able to not be intimidated, no, actually, when I'm able to relax, when the whole session is done, it's a lot easier for me to like, edit something, see how much time I have, fill in a gap or move a few things around, usually what I say, so that there is something of substance to bounce off of Steve.
Speaker 1:So I mean, that's where my post-production skills come in. But yeah, it's a challenge, but I'm happy when Steve is happy and I'm happy when, hopefully, we get good marks. If the reviews come in and people listen to this and usually we've gotten some very nice compliments from people I really respect that make the whole thing worthwhile make the whole thing worthwhile.
Speaker 2:I mean, you basically are kind of like doing a rewrite of yourself and just kind of making polished and everything.
Speaker 1:My, my, one of my favorite experiences was recording, uh, my, my dear friend Frank Darabont, for the commentary session for the green mile, which took 120 hours to record, cause he was, he, was, he. He really enjoyed the experience and he's, he, he's, he's proud of that number because he came in day after day, week after week, to polish this commentary. I've been around seeing filmmakers. They take their time and some people come in and just wing it and don't care. So, um, I like to take time and I'm not charging myself, but time is money, so my time is valuable. I try to respect Steve's time and make sure he sounds as good as possible. And then, of course, lastly, the audience's time. So if they're listening and we've done well for some filmmaker that we love, that's also good.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you mentioned Frank, because I was just about to ask you. The next question was the difference, what's the difference between producing these and then when you were just the producer for Frank or for, you know, many of the other directors you've worked with?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I'll just go back to my first time with Steve. Steve and Rudy DeLuca and Mel Brooks came in to record for Dracula, dead and Loving it, and I think they came in and it was the two hours of the runtime of the movie. Maybe you took a bathroom break. There are definitely some times where I've worked with filmmakers where they want it over longer stretches. Some people come in scripted. Everybody's got a different method and I just actually, as intimidated I might sound, like it's intimidating to do it with, with, with steve, because we're just what are we saying today? What are we saying in this the scene? It's actually a lot of fun. So I, I think we, we make it fun.
Speaker 2:Some people come in and it's a real obligation and it's and it's like a a challenge for them to do it, even filmmakers today, yeah, yeah yeah, well, uh, I think audio commentaries continue to be very popular and I know a lot of the boutique labels they want that these commentaries so they can have you know hours that they can say are of new content and everything. But why do you think these uh continue to be so popular with the fans?
Speaker 3:well, I like listening to the commentary. I mean, if it's a movie that I love, I want to experience it in many different ways. You know, usually movies that I loved I've seen a million times, and so it's a new experience to hear somebody else's commentary on it. And if somebody can bring something to the movie that I didn't see myself, or maybe even just agree with um, agree with me, you know, that that's fun. I don't like commentaries where somebody is just telling me you know the all the credits of some minor actor or you know stuff like that that you can look up on on the internet. But if, if, if, there's some kind of real insight about a film or a filmmaker that I love, that's time well spent for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's some films out there that I wish had commentaries and that if you, you know you look at films of, let's say, the 60s, well, there's not going to be a Star Wars commentary without George Lucas, right, like Steven Spielberg does not want commentaries on his films, we're getting to a point where there will be a time where someone else will get to do a Godfather commentary and really reveal all the stuff. I think the history of cinema has been allowed opportunities thanks to the studios themselves. As Leonard Maltin once put it to me, the studios have, by default, paid for the recording of their own history and somehow you can get away on some of these boutique labels without having legal departments tell you you can't talk about a budget, you can't talk about someone got replaced or fired. In many of the cases where we want to go deeper, you sometimes just can't. But, um, I think there's a just an inherent nature of history. There's a value of commentaries, uh, when they're done well with thought and the work is put into them.
Speaker 1:Um, and I think sometimes you know more often than not, uh, you're going to glean something from a filmmaker, even if they're just sitting there talking. It's their movie and they're talking about something that's on screen and it sounds obvious. You may not know what and why, but that that commentary is, you're getting special time with that filmmaker for that two hours. Historians, you know, um, there are some that are better than others, and if we can bring something to the table eventually, the films that demand a historical track or just, uh, demand context. You know whether it's pulp fiction, where's our? You know, tarantino, why didn't you do a commentary? You know it's his, his prerogative not to, but I'll tell you, I really appreciated doing a commentary with Mel Brooks, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:Steve and Rudy.
Speaker 3:Thanks.
Speaker 2:And Steve and Rudy. As a fan of history, I feel like life goes by and so you're living history and if you film history you saw a movie this year, you saw one this month, this week it goes by. It's when you take the time to evaluate history, or somebody does, who starts to bring back to your attention hey, while you were to watch this movie and this TV show this evening with your kids or whatever, life went on and yours have gone by, and now you revisit something and the person who knows the history of that film, that TV show or history itself brings back to your attention something and you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize the importance of what I was seeing at the time, because I didn't know that we were breaking new ground with this movie. I didn't know that this TV series was breaking new ground. People who then can look back on these things and dig in film historians, film critics help us, I think.
Speaker 2:Reevaluate a film, really reevaluate a TV series, re-appreciate it, and you might say, well, yeah, I liked it when I first saw it, but now I'm re-watching it. And I'm re-watching it now, hearing somebody bringing me some new information that helps me appreciate the work that went into it and I think that's what I've enjoyed. And we work in the behind the scenes and the extras and the supplements whatever you want to call that stuff for the films and TV shows, and commentaries, I think, are a key part of that, because it's something you can do while you're watching the rest. You're watching that feature, you're watching that interview this you can listen to while you're watching the film and it's unique. I think it's pretty unique and it's great that you guys are doing these, yeah, well that's one of the things that commentaries do.
Speaker 3:It gives you perspective because, like you say, you'll take a work for granted because you know it's contemporary with you. You're swimming in the same water as they are and you know you can't see it. But with time and the right commentator, you know it can be. It can give you perspective and you see value in a work that wasn't apparent at the time. That's why history is written years later, not while it's happening.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Because you don't know where it's going. Yeah, and that's hopefully one of the things that commentaries do. But you know, a commentarian can't just be well, they can, but should let's say should, to give that kind of perspective should have be familiar with disciplines beyond film history and film criticism. You know, I used to tell my students that if you want to be a filmmaker, learning how to make a film is just step one. You know that's easy, and learning the history of film is something else. But you also need to be into psychology, into philosophy. You also need to be into psychology, into philosophy, into history, into science.
Speaker 3:The more you know, the more you're going to bring to the art, and that's true of evaluating art as well. You know, even you know we seem to specialize in horror films of a certain type, classic horror films, we'll say, or gothic horror films. And you know they were products of literature, they were products of philosophy, they were products of their time, which is history. And the more you know about all of those, you know satellite disciplines, the more you're going to bring to that commentary and then the more that, hopefully, the listener will appreciate that work and see. You know how it's like buzzing the lights of all these other disciplines.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And there's so much psychology in horror films. Oh yeah, very much.
Speaker 1:You know, so the more that you understand. Exactly Right.
Speaker 2:Jungian, freudian, whatever you know. That influences Exactly and you think back to the 20s, 30s, 40s and all the change that was happening in the world and sciences and psychology, and the art world too.
Speaker 3:Art world, yes, you know I mean, the first great horror film, arguably, is the Cabinet of Dr Caligari, which was basically you know you could rename that movie. This is Expressionism.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because that's what they were doing is they were sort of like revealing expressionism, which was a very esoteric art movement of the time and shortly before the time, and now we have cabinet of Dr Calgary that preserves it. Not only that, but uses it for artistic reasons, to you know, to explore a horror story.
Speaker 2:I've held you back long enough from diving into your project, but thanks for taking a few minutes to talk about doing audio commentaries.
Speaker 3:I'm always interested in talking about myself.
Speaker 2:Hey, I hope you enjoyed that little peek behind the scenes there with Constantine and Steve. It was a lot of fun for me to just go over and talk to them and it's a little bit different, something a little lighter here to enjoy here on the Extras Podcast. As always, if you're enjoying our podcast, be sure and subscribe and join our Facebook group if you'd like to do that and, as always, stay slightly obsessed about audio commentaries.