The Randall Scandal is a documentary that accompanied an LA Times report by journalists Amy Kaufman and Meg James on producer Randall Emmett. The film documents his start as Mark Wahlberg's personal assistant, his connection to production partner George Furla, and how he made millions working on "the margins of Hollywood"--or in other words, the space we inhabit on this site--making cheaper direct-to-video action flicks with guys like Seagal, Willis, and De Niro that he could sell abroad. From there, we learn about how horribly abusive he was with his assistants and the people he worked with, in addition to his time on Vanderpump Rules, relationship with Lala Kent, and eventual break-up.
This was an important watch for me, and definitely eye opening. We know many of the people we review here on the site aren't great humans, and in some cases are outright horrible. With that in mind, that Randall Emmett turned out to be this horrible isn't surprising--in fact I think we kind of already knew it, this just put it out there in a way that was so powerful no one could ignore it. What struck me most though was how when I watched his movies, other than the two Scorsese pictures he produced (of which I still haven't seen Silence), the sense I had in watching them was that he had no respect for his audience or the art of filmmaking, and that was every bit confirmed in this film. On top of that though, we get this sense of a guy who is totally abusive and narcissistic that hides behind this idea that "you gotta be tough to make it in Hollywood," which yes, we don't want to let him off the hook for being this horrible, but also Hollywood itself has created this machine that allows for creatures like him to thrive there. Many of his assistants put up with the horrible abuse from him because they expected Emmett to invite them into his world, when all he did was stand on their heads to continue to prop himself up. For all of us who enjoy these movies that exist "in the margins of the industry" as it was termed in the film, this is a must watch, if only to give us a better perspective on what happens behind the scenes.
If we tagged Emmett as a producer, he'd have 26 films on the site, plus countless more that we've done on the podcast, which, once they were reviewed would put him easily in the 30 Club, verging on the 40 Club. Usually for a producer to get a tag, they need to be really influential, like Golan and Globus or Roger Corman; or they need to be known for other things, like Albert Pyun and Isaac Florentine who mostly have director credits, but also have a couple producer ones as well--Daniel Zirilli is one who falls into that category too. Even Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin have their producer tags connected to PM Entertainment, and they only get tags for the films they've directed. Randall Emmett on the other hand can be credited with doing more to hurt the DTV action industry than anyone else. His assembly line, stuff as many names who have barely any scenes on the tin, just get it out there approach is a massive departure from the Cannons, PMs, Full Moons, and Concorde/New Horizons--hell, you can make a case even The Asylum, who, say what you want, there's still a sense of "we're trying to make a fun movie here." Randall Emmett could care less if his "geezer teasers," as they were termed in the film, were good or bad, as long as they made money. Even Godfrey Ho was employing some level of art when he spliced his new footage with the old films he bought. And what we saw in this documentary was, for the artists involved in making the movie, Emmett didn't care. He'd scream at people, force the crew to sleep on the floor to cut costs, and in some cases not even pay them, which led to the WGA to put out a do not work order against him. I think the fact that he seemed to have this disdain for the kinds of movies we all love despite the fact he was producing them is what keeps me from tagging him for his films.
Back when Sean Malloy of "I Must Break this Podcast" and I were about to do our episode on Precious Cargo, an EFO film where we discussed what Randall Emmett was doing to the DTV film world, he saw the trailer for Midnight in the Switchgrass and wondered if there was an Ed Wood propping up Bela Lugosi thing going on with Emmett and Bruce Willis. As we find out in this documentary, it was much worse, but no one really knew at that time what was happening with Willis as far as his health. It was really more like, Emmett had this idea that a director was someone who yelled and swore at people, and when Willis started to struggle, Emmett freaked out, causing the rest of the crew to scramble to help Willis out to get him over the goal line. This also gets back to my point about Emmett's disdain for these movies, even when he was the director, while that's happening, there is a whole crew that he's mistreating that take a lot of pride in their work who are putting in a lot of effort. It's possible that not many outside of Alicia Haverland, prop master on Midnight in the Switchgrass, and Teresa Huang, screenwriter on the never shot Arnold Schwarzenegger bio-series Pumped, were the only ones who felt comfortable coming forward, but I would've liked more stories like theirs as opposed to the amount of time they spent on the Lala Kent Vanderpump Rules aspect of the story.
As far as the reality show, because that was a piece of things I wasn't as familiar with, it was harder for me to make the kinds of judgements on it that I could the depictions of what Emmett was like to work with. One of the biggest things was we only had Lala Kent's mother, brother, and some reality podcasters that were fans of hers to describe what happened, while with something like how he treated his assistants, we had three separate assistants giving similar but unique enough stories that it was hard to question their veracity. One thing that did make sense though was how the reality show ultimately ended up being his downfall, but that he craved the attention he could get from being on the show. If he wasn't on the reality show, would anyone have recognized him with other women in Nashville? Like one of the podcasters said, he'd have had no idea who Emmett was if he hadn't done Vanderpump Rules. I read an article recently that said how reality TV attracts narcissists like Randall Emmett, and that's why you see a lot of fraud, crimes, and lawsuits surrounding them. In fact, he had already tried to push his own reality show documenting his life, The Mogul, which didn't end up getting picked up, but gives us a great view into the kind of "boss" he saw himself as. In a way, he was made for reality TV the same way he was made for reality TV to ultimately bring him down.
Finally, we had images and file footage of all kinds of people that we have tagged on here, including the big fella Steve Seagal. I made the decision that, because they didn't actually participate in the documentary the way Dolph did in the He-Man one, I wouldn't tag them. If I had, this would've been Seagal's entry into the 40 Club. It's an interesting thing, because Seagal is a DTVC Hall of Famer and someone I have in the top 10 all time for DTV action stars, but the way I was saying Randall Emmett did damage to the DTV film industry, you could make the case that Seagal has had that same disdain. Taking roles where he never stands, never does his reverse shots, has doubling for any action, yet he wanted to pump as many films out as he could and bring in the paychecks. I was trying to come up with a good reason for why I treat him differently than Randal Emmett, but I think the reality is just that when I started the site, Seagal was still putting out some decent stuff, the movies were fun enough, and when they weren't, there was a goofiness we could celebrate. As he got into the 2010s though, I think what we saw as quirks became worse, but by that point he was already well-established here on the site. Either way, established as he is, he'll still have to sit on 39 tags.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can find this on Hulu, but as far as I can tell, you need to search for it on there, it won't pop up if you browse around. As fans of the kinds of movies Emmett made, and made a lot of money off of making, it's a must watch.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27761408
And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.
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