The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Sleeper
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And it’s kind of interesting now, thinking about how we just made this film
also with giant food and lots of physical comedy in it. We don’t have a banana
peel guy; we probably should have. It would’ve been a rip-off of the rip-off.
Also, when they are reading off the ingredients for his breakfast and it’s
like wheat germ, organic honey, tiger’s milk, and his doctors in the future
say, “Oh yes, those were the charmed substances that some years ago were
thought to contain life-preserving properties.”
And the other doctor says, “You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or
cream pies, or hot fudge?”
“Those were thought to be unhealthy, precisely the opposite of what we
now know to be true.”
I always think about that moment because it has borne out to be true
again and again. Seems like every few months scientists come back and say,
“Oh no, we said this was good for you but actually it’s bad for you.”
How did Sleeper actually change your life?
Miller: It was a real inspiration with me doing my earliest student films.
I made a student film that was called Sleazy the Wonder Squirrel Goes to
France, in which I had this comic strip character that I drew for my daily
paper in college called Sleazy the Wondrous Squirrel, which is already, obviously,
not the most pretentious thing.
He had a talk show with an Ed McMahon–like hamster, and they had
talks about film that I want to say were not that great. Ah, the wisdom of
several years. But the idea was that he had booked Godot to be on his talk
show and he never showed up. And so they said, “We’ll go to France to find
him and kick his ass.”
And it was all about the adventures they had in France. And so for me
at the time, I was trying to do what I felt was being done so well in Sleeper,
which was trying to make some commentary about America and France.
There were a lot of people getting hit by giant toilets and that sort of thing,
as well. I was really trying to marry the high and low of art. That’s been
something that, to the less obvious extent, I’ve been trying to do ever since
with Clone High, with How I Met Your Mother. Especially with Cloudy with
a Chance of Meatballs, where we really wanted it to be a really emotionally
compelling and very cinematic movie. We also wanted it to be a silly cartoon