{"id":333579,"date":"2026-05-12T20:25:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/?p=333579"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:25:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:55:34","slug":"how-the-director-of-clue-cracked-the-silliest-idea-hed-ever-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/how-the-director-of-clue-cracked-the-silliest-idea-hed-ever-heard\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Director of &#8216;Clue&#8217; Cracked the &#8216;Silliest Idea&#8217; He&#8217;d Ever Heard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWhen Jonathan Lynn was summoned to Hollywood to jot down the screenplay for\u00a0<em>Clue<\/em>, his first response was that it was the silliest idea he\u2019d ever heard. A feature film based on a board game? But he\u2019d never flown firstclass before, and he had a spare week. So he went.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tForty years later, the film is a real cult phenomenon \u2014 performed live by shadow casts the best way\u00a0<em>Rocky Horror<\/em>\u00a0once was, endlessly rewatched on streaming, and quoted with near-religious devotion by multiple generations of fans. On the most recent episode of\u00a0<em>It Happened in Hollywood<\/em>, I sat down with Lynn for a wide-ranging conversation about how considered one of comedy\u2019s most intricately engineered movies got here to exist. (It very nearly didn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"pmc-protected-embed-3\" class=\"pmc-protected-embed\" width=\"100%\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=PMC4209672210\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLynn arrived in Los Angeles because the sixth author to be approached concerning the project \u2014 after Tom Stoppard, who accepted the commission after which mailed back the check with a note saying the entire idea was hopelessly old-fashioned. Lynn met producer Peter Guber and director John Landis, the latter pitching his vision for the film in a performance that involved jumping on office furniture and running in circles for ten minutes straight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cAfter which the butler says, \u2018I can let you know who did it!&#8217;\u201d Lynn recalled. \u201cSo I said, \u2018Who did?\u2019 And he said, \u2018I don\u2019t know. That\u2019s why I would like a author.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLynn checked in to the Chateau Marmont \u2014 which bore a resemblance to the foreboding mansion he was about to invent, and had recently hosted its own premature death in the shape of John Belushi\u2019s overdose \u2014 and spent the night attempting to work out if there was actually a story here. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe breakthrough got here when he realized that characters named after colours couldn\u2019t possibly be their real names. Which meant they were all aliases \u2014 which meant all of them had something to cover.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cIt was the spine of the entire thing,\u201d Lynn says. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFrom that single logic problem, your complete clockwork machinery of\u00a0<em>Clue<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the blackmail, the secrets, the cascading murders \u2014 was born.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe film\u2019s casting is considered one of the good sliding-doors stories in Eighties Hollywood. The role of Miss Scarlet was originally solid with Carrie Fisher, who got here in and was, by Lynn\u2019s account, genuinely hilarious within the room. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tHis wife back in London was somewhat less enthusiastic when Lynn called to share the news.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cShe said, \u2018Are you <em>nuts<\/em>?\u2019 I said, \u2018Why?!\u2019 She said, \u2018She\u2019s a drug addict!\u2019 So I said, \u2018Really? She seemed effective to me.&#8217;\u201d Lynn then met Fisher for lunch and remained unconvinced \u2014 whilst she fell over a chair on her technique to the table.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tDays before rehearsals were set to start, Fisher called to say she was in rehab at Cedars-Sinai and would want to commute to set every day. Insurance firms took a dim view of this arrangement. With 4 or five days left, Lynn solid Lesley Ann Warren. Warren turned out, he says, to provide an exquisite performance. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe film\u2019s most celebrated gimmick \u2014 three different endings, distributed to different theaters \u2014 was another person\u2019s idea, and Lynn was nervous about it from the beginning. The pondering was that audiences would return 3 times to see each resolution. As a substitute, as he puts it, individuals who couldn\u2019t determine which ending to see simply didn\u2019t go in any respect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cThe ending is what people remember,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cIt\u2019s what they exit having just seen. If you happen to can\u2019t determine what your last two hours has been about, critics are inclined to say, \u2018They couldn\u2019t even make up their minds learn how to end it.\u2019 In order that was a disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWhen the film moved to home video and cable television, all three endings were joined together and played in sequence; that\u2019s the format most viewers know today. That version, Lynn says, finally revealed the complete ingenuity of what he had built. The box office damage was done, however the cult was just starting to form.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tOne detail I had never heard before the interview: Lynn and Tim Curry attended the identical school in England. Lynn was 14 when Curry was 12. They weren\u2019t close, but they knew one another \u2014 and Curry would later tell Lynn that seeing him pursue acting had shown him it was possible for somebody from their conservative, Methodist-founded institution to enter the business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMany years later, on the Paramount lot, each of them veterans by that time, Lynn solid Curry as Wadsworth the butler \u2014 the role that anchors your complete film. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know that I can truthfully say I got that work out of him,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cI believe he did that work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tProbably the most famous line within the film \u2014 Madeline Kahn\u2019s\u00a0\u201cflames\u2026 flames on the side of my face\u201d\u00a0confession \u2014 was improvised. Kahn asked Lynn if she could scrap what he\u2019d written for that moment and check out something of her own. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cSure,\u201d he told her. \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t work, we\u2019ll do the speech within the script.\u201d They never shot the script version. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe one other notable ad-lib was Michael McKean\u2019s final line \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m going home to sleep with my wife\u201d \u2014\u00a0and even then, Lynn isn\u2019t entirely sure McKean invented it. \u201cHe believes he adlibbed that one and he can have done, although I assumed I wrote that.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe script, by necessity, was essentially airtight: with three separate endings requiring precise choreography of who was offscreen at which moment, a single modified line could collapse your complete structure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe whole interior of the film was shot on the Paramount soundstage where Alfred Hitchcock had built the apartment complex for\u00a0<em>Rear Window<\/em>. The set was so convincing that after production wrapped, <em>Dynasty<\/em> reportedly purchased it and repurposed it because the Carlyle Hotel \u2014 which I looked up online and located to be true.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLynn first met John Landis the day Landis was mixing\u00a0<em>Thriller<\/em>. In the blending suite \u2014 an enormous room with a ping-pong table, a pool table, and no chairs \u2014 a friendly young man got here over to ask if Lynn wanted pizza. It was Michael Jackson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cVery nice fellow,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLynn is 83 now and, he says, retired from filmmaking for a while. He stays surprised that anyone still desires to speak about a movie he made 40 years ago. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tHowever it\u2019s no mystery: This movie consistently kills.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t<strong>Take heed to the complete episode of\u00a0<em>It Happened in Hollywood<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/it-happened-in-hollywood\/id1437795866?i=1000767368440\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">featuring Jonathan Lynn on\u00a0<em>Clue<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/4HCGa2S2KWQdbERQDjXLLB?si=2cc373fc56a342ee\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Jonathan Lynn was summoned to Hollywood to jot down the screenplay for\u00a0Clue, his first response was that it was the silliest idea he\u2019d ever heard. A feature film based on a board game? But he\u2019d never flown firstclass before, and he had a spare week. So he went. Forty years later, the film is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":333580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20669],"tags":[13206,21877,429,10950,11261,2499,51637],"class_list":["post-333579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hollywood","tag-clue","tag-cracked","tag-director","tag-heard","tag-hed","tag-idea","tag-silliest"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333579"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333582,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333579\/revisions\/333582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}