Month: November 2022

Disclaimer: While all of the products recommended here were chosen independently by our editorial staff, Uproxx may receive payment to direct readers to certain retail vendors who are offering these products for purchase.

Welcome to SNX DLX, your weekly roundup of the best sneakers to hit the internet! We’ve got a small offering of just seven shoes this week, but despite the small numbers, this list is packing some pretty big-deal collaborations. Supreme and Nike as well as Balenciaga and Adidas have paired up to give us two highly anticipated drops that are sure to make someone’s sneaker of the year list.

Will these new collaborations make our end-of-the-year list? We’ll see.

Aside from the big team-ups, we have some strong selections from both Nike and New Balance but shockingly nothing out of Jordan Brand. Some dope Jordan drops are still slated for the upcoming weeks, so we haven’t heard the last from the brand this year. Let’s dive into this week’s seven best sneaker drops.

New Balance 550 Indigo Sea Salt/Rain Cloud Sea Salt

Ever since Aime Leon Dore made New Balance 550s dope, the brand has quietly been churning out colorways on a near-weekly basis. Those colorways typically follow a similar palette, white leather with colored panels but now New Balance is getting a bit adventurous with the silhouette with this week’s Indigo Sea Salt and Rain Cloud Sea Salt colorways.

The Indigo is bathed in blue tones while the Rain Cloud gets that classic New Balance greyscale look. Both are dope and show just how versatile the 550 silhouette is. Turns out it has a life beyond its classic white leather base build.

The New Balance 550 Indigo Sea Salt/Rain Cloud Sea Salt are out now for a retail price of $120. Pick up a pair at GOAT or Flight Club.

Nike Air Force 1 Low Color of the Month University Blue

Nike’s latest AF-1 colorway from their ‘Color of the Month’ series is this beautiful University Blue take on the classic sneaker. The sneaker’s entire upper is covered in University Blue as well as the outsole with a white wraparound swoosh, midsole, and laces. As is usually the case with AF-1s, the simpler the better!

The tongue reads “Anniversary Edition,” but other than that, it’s just a classic AF-1 build done up in a classic colorway.

The Nike Air Force 1 Low Color Of The Month is set to drop on November 3rd at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $150. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Supreme x Nike Air Max 98 TL

This week Supreme has given us a few good Nike collaborations, but let’s face it, the label isn’t really producing internet-breaking bangers anymore. Well.. this week might be different. The Nike Air Max 98 TL is Supreme’s best Nike collaboration of the year, easily. The sneaker features a mesh upper with synthetic leather overlays, a mesh tongue, and reflective accents across the swirling upper.

The sneaker features groovy Supreme branding at the hells and drops in four different colorways including pink, brown, white, and black.

The Supreme x Nike Air Max 98 TL is set to drop on November 3rd for an unannounced retail price. Pick up a pair via the Supreme webstore.

Adidas x Balenciaga Collection

The highly anticipated Adidas and Balenciaga collection drops tomorrow! The collection has been buzzed about for quite a while and see’s the three stripes taking on a few of Balenciaga’s sneaker and shoe silhouettes and the two brands teaming up for a corresponding apparel collection.

The sneakers in the collection include Balenciaga’s Triple S and Sock Runner which perfectly marries the two aesthetics of the brand. A distressed Stan Smith is expected to drop sometime early next year. It’s not a collaboration that’s for everyone, but for fans of high-fashion streetwear, this is quite possibly the best release of the year.

The Adidas Balenciaga Collection is set to drop on November 3rd for an unannounced price. Hit the Adidas CONFIRMED app to purchase pieces from the collection.

Nike SB Dunk Why So Sad?

Continuing what we’ve dubbed Nike’s Question Mark Collection (which includes the legendary What The Dunk?) is this week’s Why So Sad? Why So Sad? Is a mental health and suicide prevention campaign started by Scottish skater John Rattray and seeks to make sports a daily habit for people suffering from depression as exercise has been proven to be good for your mental health.

The sneaker features a wearaway Swoosh that fades with age from Coastal Blue to white and sports a Coastal Blue colorway with a Zoom Air unit, and a suede and nubuck leather upper. It’s a dope-looking sneaker that raises awareness for a noble cause.

The Nike SB Dunk Why So Sad? Is set to drop on November 4th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $120. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

Nike Women’s Dunk High Cinnabar

Nike is dropping a new autumnal colorway for the Dunk High in women’s exclusive sizing this week. The sneaker features a premium leather upper in Sail with Cinnabar overlays, a leather tongue tag over a durable canvas tongue with metal eye stays. It adds a level of luxury to the high-top Dunk look.

The Nike Women’s Dunk High Cinnabar is set to drop on November 4th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $150. Pick up a pair via the Nike SNKRS app.

New Balance Made in USA 990v6

New Balance has spent most of 2022 refreshing the first three versions of its legendary 990 silhouette, but this week they’re finally going with a more updated model, version 6.

Featuring a premium suede and mesh upper with Fuel Cell foam and an ENCAP midsole, the v6 is the latest generation model of the 990 and is overall a bit sleeker than all the other previous versions. As with all MADE in USA 990s, this sneaker is bathed in a greyscale and white colorway with striking black accents.

The New Balance MADE in USA 990v6 is set to drop on November 4th at 7:00 AM PST for a retail price of $199.99 in both Men’s and Women’s sizes. Pick up a pair at the New Balance webstore.

As Black Panther: Wakanda Forever gets ready to tackle the monumental task of building on the massive global success of the first film without the benefit of Chadwick Boseman anchoring the film, writer/director Ryan Coogler is opening up about the emotional journey that started with the shocking death of his lead actor. Fortunately, Coogler had a small, yet bittersweet advantage working in his favor. Grief was already a central theme of the original script as the film would have grappled with T’Challa dealing with the aftermath of his absence during the events of Avengers: Endgame.

Via Inverse:

“The tone was going to be similar,” Coogler says. “The character was going to be grieving the loss of time, you know, coming back after being gone for five years. As a man with so much responsibility to so many, coming back after a forced five years absence, that’s what the film was tackling. He was grieving time he couldn’t get back. Grief was a big part of it.”

Wakanda’s epic rivalry with Namor was already built into the script, which Coogler kept even as the story went through a major overhaul. “There were other characters, for sure, that we considered including,” Coogler said. “Namor was always there.”

But even with a central conflict still in play and a script already engineered to focus on grief, Coogler revealed last month that he almost quit the film business entirely after Boseman’s death. Ultimately, the director knew he had to press on.

“I was poring over a lot of our conversations that we had, towards what I realized was the end of his life,” Coogler told Entertainment Weekly. “I decided that it made more sense to keep going.”

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11.

(Via Inverse)

Dead To Me is a dark delight starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as the unlikely best of friends who must deal with very morbid turns of events. Dead husbands and all the fallout that one can expect often come these ladies’ way. Cardellini is often the best part of every project that she takes on, but here, she’s an equal to Applegate, who revealed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in fall of 2021.

Applegate has recently been very upfront about the struggles of her condition, which has left her with mandatory walking sticks from here on out. This final season of the show was something that Applegate was adamant about doing, and as one can see, these ladies will not be relaxing next to the pool with a mai tai anytime soon. They could very well land behind bars, and Applegate’s Jen appears to be most in danger of this outcome. James Marsden has a talent for rising from the dead (see HBO’s Westworld), and we get to see his furious butt again in the above trailer. Let’s do this synopsis:

Jen (Christina Applegate) and Judy (Linda Cardellini) return, ready to risk their lives one last time for a friendship that’s above the law. In the aftermath of yet another hit and run, both women receive shocking news. When the FBI takes over Steve’s murder case, Jen is confronted with the dire consequences of taking a life, and Detective Perez (Diana Maria Riva) struggles to cover up her own complicity. Meanwhile, Judy faces her own existential crisis when her life is threatened by an unexpected force from her past and Ben (James Marsden) wrestles with his darkest demons. This season, no one’s future is guaranteed. Will Jen and Judy get away with their lives? And can they save each other?

Fingers crossed for more Caliban. You know with I’m talking about.

Dead To Me returns on November 17.

Drum roll, please. The new episode of Fresh Pair is here, and Redman, the rapper who defined the combination of comedy and complex lyricism through the ’90s and 2000s, stops by to accept his custom kicks from Katty and Just Blaze while breaking down his unique contributions to the hip-hop canon. Among them: His admission that longstanding fan-favorite hit “Da Rockwilder” really did have an extended version.

Another highlight of the interview is Redman talking about his infamous MTV Cribs episode. For those who weren’t around at the time or just need a refresher, in the 2001 episode of the celebrity home tour show, Redman showed off his Staten Island duplex complete with a shoebox full of cash and a cousin crashed out on the floor. At the time, this was a departure from the usual Cribs guests, who often introduced viewers to extravagant mansions with over-the-top furnishings and garages full of luxury cars.

“Let’s be very clear,” he says, mischievously. “A lot of people was renting houses for MTV Cribs. And I used to be like, ‘Yo, they house is too neat.’ Every house they showed on there was neat, the refrigerators was stocked full with food and water… I was like, ‘Yo, there’s something going on that I’m not getting.’ Until they asked me… and the first thing they said was, ‘We got a couple of houses picked out for you.’”

He jokes that he caught the camera crew off-guard and a meeting was held to decide how to proceed. The anecdote is a great example of how Redman’s authenticity endeared him so well to audiences in the 2000s.

With all due respect to Jimmy Carter, as far as modern presidents go, it’s hard to imagine there’d be anyone more fun to party with than Barack Obama. And Bono has now confirmed this.

As The New York Post reported, based on an interview the U2 frontman did with BBC Radio 2 on Tuesday, Barack makes a mean cocktail. “He mixes cocktails,” Bono explained of the president/mixologist, though noted that “he doesn’t have too many, he’s very measured.” The singer also revealed that after throwing back some “strong cocktails” at the White House, he was later discovered quietly taking a quick nap in the Lincoln Bedroom by his wife, activist Ali Hewson, and the 44th president.

According to The New York Post, Bono is allergic to salicylates, a group of chemicals that are found in many fruits, vegetables, and spices, including grapes, which can make red wine a bit of a problem for the artist. And red wine just happened to be on the menu that night, which can apparently cause the Irish singer’s “head to swell up like a balloon” and usually causes him to just “fall asleep somewhere.” (Emphasis on somewhere.)

“I ended up slipping out for a kip and the president said to Ali after about 10 minutes, ‘Where’s Bono gone?,’” Bono recalled of the evening. When Hewson told the president that her husband had “just gone for a sleep,” Obama was apparently confused. “He has to, he just has to go for these sleeps, he’ll be back in 10 minutes,” Hewson promised. “I’ve been with him for 30 years, don’t you worry a thing about him, Mr. President. I’ll go find him.’”

But Obama apparently insisted on accompanying Hewson on her spousal scavenger hunt around the White House, where they eventually found Bono sleeping soundly. “There I was in Lincoln’s bedroom, asleep, fallen asleep in the bosom of Abraham himself,” Bono explained. “He just woke me up and laughed. [The] president laughed his head off.”

Bono admitted that it wasn’t the first or only time he’s taken a nap in an awkward place: “I’ve fallen asleep in really awkward spots,” he said. “The lighting desk of Sonic Youth – they mixed around me and couldn’t be nicer.”

He also noted that it’s an incident Obama has never let him forget — though Bono swears that the former president’s heavy pour is partly to blame. “[Obama] does tell people that he drinks me under the table, he doesn’t believe the allergy thing,” Bono said. “He does make strong cocktails, though. Just saying.”

(Via The New York Post)

Angela Alvarez is making history as the oldest nominee for Best New Artist at this year’s Latin Grammy Awards. In an interview with Billboard that was published yesterday (November 1), the Cuban singer revealed how she nabbed the nomination at 95 years old.

In the Best New Artist category, Alvarez faces competition like 15-year-old artist Yahritza Martínez of Yahritza y Su Esencia, 24-year-old Spanish pop star Pol Granch, and 25-year-old Mexican singer Silvana Estrada. In her interview with Billboard, Alvarez talked about how she is finally living out her dreams of being a musician in her nineties.

During her childhood in Cuba, Alvarez learned how to play the piano and the guitar. She was later singing and writing her own songs until her father dissuaded her from pursuing music as a career. Alvarez eventually settled down with her husband and had four children. She’s now a grandmother to nine children and a great-grandmother.

Alvarez’s grandson, Carlos José Alvarez, convinced her to record the songs that she had stowed away for decades. The project didn’t take off until last year when the Alvarezes started to work with producer Misha’al Al-Omar. Alvarez’s self-titled debut album was released that following July. The 15-track LP features Alvarez’s powerful compositions like “Un Canto A Mi Cuba,” an ode to her home country.

Alvarez’s grandson submitted her album for consideration for Best New Artist on a whim. In September, Alvarez was surprised to become the oldest nominee in category in the history of the Latin Grammy Awards.

“It was a very big but very beautiful surprise, and I thought afterwards that all my dreams came true,” Alvarez said. “At 95, but that doesn’t matter.”

Alvarez’s journey to her debut album was documented in the movie Miss Angela. Andy Garcia served as executive producer and narrator of the project. Garcia also invited Alvarez to appear in 2022 remake of The Father Of The Bride that he starred in on HBO. The 2022 Latin Grammy Awards will take place in Las Vegas on Thursday, November 17. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Univision.

Following the tragic death of Takeoff yesterday (November 1), the late rapper’s Migos bandmate is appearing to honor his cousin. Though neither Quavo or Offset have spoken out about the loss of Takeoff yet, Offset changed his Instagram profile picture to an image of Takeoff.

Over the past few months, there were rumors of a beef between the three Migos, especially as Takeoff and Offset geared up to release their joint album, Only Built For Infinity Links.

Though there may have been tension behind the scenes, Quavo and Takeoff reiterated that they had nothing but love for Offset during an interview with Big Facts last month.

“Family always going to be family,” said Quavo. “We always family. Ain’t nothing gonna change.”

In his final interview with Drink Champs, host NORE offered Takeoff high praise for his bars on the Only Built For Infinity Links album. In the moment, he demanded that he continue to receive his accolades for his work while he was still with us

“Enough is enough,” Takeoff stated. “I’m chill, I’m laid back, but it’s time to pop it, you know what I mean? I mean it’s time to give me my flowers. I don’t want them later on when I ain’t here. I want ’em right now.”

Production on the upcoming installment in the Equalizer franchise began less than a month ago in Italy, and things are already off to a rocky start. On Monday evening, the head of the film’s catering service died of a heart attack, and when police found small amounts of cocaine on his person, things got even more troubled. Italian police raided the hotel rooms where the cast and crew have been staying and found quite a bit of cocaine, which is generally not something that people should have.

According to Variety, Italian police found 120 grams of cocaine which led to several of the movie’s catering crew members being placed under house arrest in the hotel on alleged drug dealing charges. A third member was also found with cocaine and had their driver’s license pulled, while police also searched the movie’s production camp. It was first reported by the Italian news outlet Il Giornale.

Despite the tiny setback, The Equalizer 3 is expected to hit theaters on September 1st 2023. The film stars Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning and is based on the hit 1980s spy series of the same name. Washington stars as, you guessed it, The Equalizer who sets out to protect those who need his help. So, your standard Denzel Washington action movie.

A series based on the original television show premiered last year, starring Queen Latifah as the titular equalizer and street vigilante, a role she was born to play. Maybe Washington will let her step in for The Equalizer 4, as long as there aren’t any more drug busts.

(Via Variety)

Former NBC sci-fi problem child Manifest will return on November 4 for Season 4, Part I, which will show us more Flight 828 passenger shenanigans. Expect to see callings and people tossing around “death date” while no one, including the federal government, seems to know what’s happening. It’s up to the intrepid Michaela Stone, her family, and the rest of the wayward bunch to protect themselves and solve problems. Also, why is Cal suddenly five years older than the last time we saw him?

We don’t know the answer to that question, and we might never know beyond Cal touching an airplane wing or something. What we do know is this: Season 4 will be the final Manifest season. There’s good and bad news there, given that Netflix resuscitated the bonkers show after NBC cancelled it while it sat atop the Netflix streaming charts. However, Jeff Rake reportedly planned a full six seasons for this turbulent shindig, so things will be abbreviated.

Alls well that might not end well, but fans will also receive the treat of a supersized season of sorts. Season 4 will arrive in two batches to tell us more about the cultish, shadowy forces surrounding the flight’s disappearance and reemergence. And to reiterate, there will be no Season 5. However, we do have this current synopsis to quell the voices in the Stone family’s heads:

Two years after the brutal murder of Grace turned their lives upside down, the Stone family is in shambles as a devastated Ben continues to mourn his wife and search for his kidnapped daughter, Eden. Consumed by his grief, Ben has stepped down from his role as co-captain of the lifeboat, leaving Michaela to captain it alone, a near impossible feat with the passengers’ every move now being monitored by a government registry. As the Death Date draws closer and the passengers grow desperate for a path to survival, a mysterious passenger arrives with a package for Cal that changes everything they know about Flight 828 and will prove to be the key to unlocking the secret of the Callings in this compelling, mind-bending, and deeply emotional journey.

Manifest will descend for a second-to-last rodeo on November 4.

Twelve years ago, director Eric Appel directed a fake trailer for Funny or Die promising a “Weird Al” Yankovic biopic. It starred Aaron Paul as Weird Al, and got a lot of internet attention with a lot of cries for a full-length feature movie. Then, over the next 12 years, we got an onslaught of biopic movies that didn’t seem to care at all what liberties were taken in regards to actual facts, making the Weird al film look more and more like something halfway reasonable.

In the full-length film, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (which Appel co-wrote with Yankovic), Daniel Radcliffe dons the Hawaiian shirt of “Weird Al” Yankovic, a role he says didn’t quite understand why it was even being offered since he looks almost nothing like “Weird Al.” That was until he read the script, which has scenes of “Weird Al” fighting Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel and traveling to Hell in search for the lyrics to “Eat It” (which, in the film, was an original song and “Beat It” is a parody) — it was at this point Radcliffe realized his lack of physical similarity to the real “Weird Al” did not matter. Ahead, both Radcliffe and Appel take us through the intricacies of bringing a fake biopic about a very real musician to realization. And how Boogie Nights, of all films, was their true inspiration.

In sixth-grade music class we had to do a musical performance of something. So I mimed a Weird Al song, so we finally have something in common…

Daniel Radcliffe: Did you say you mimed it? You did a physical interpretation?

Wait, no, I should have said lip-synced…

Daniel Radcliffe: Oh, okay…

Eric Appel: What song did you do? What was it?

“Girls Just Want to Have Lunch.”

Eric Appel: That’s a great one.

Watching this movie, there is a lot about Weird Al I did not realize.

Eric Appel:: It’s crazy. Yeah, especially in that back half.

I didn’t know Weird Al fought Pablo Escobar.

Daniel Radcliffe: I know. I know. It’s really shocking to a lot of people.

Eric Appel:: Yeah, it’s crazy how they keep it off Google.

Daniel Radcliffe: And it’s hard to do that as well, so he’s got massive serious power.

Eric Appel:: The greatest was after our trailer released. I watched a bunch of reaction videos on YouTube and watching people’s brain break halfway through. They’re like, “Wait, what? No, is this real?” And nothing brought me more joy.

Didn’t you experience that twice? You did the original trailer 12 years ago, right?

Eric Appel:: I did the original trailer, yeah. I mean, the first one, I think just because it came out on Funny or Die, it was like, people kind of knew it was kind of a goof. But with this version coming out, the film being released, you think it’s going to be a real biopic. Like Weird Al is certainly deserving of one. He’s an icon! He’s been around for 40 years performing; millions and millions of fans. So it’s a different experience this time around, but equally fun.

To be fair, this movie is about as factually correct as Bohemian Rhapsody.

Eric Appel:: It’s funny how all of these movies, one of the tropes of all the biopics is they’ll take events that happened over the course of three years and, for story purposes, because a movie can only be so long, they’ll combine all that stuff into one scene where it’s like, “Wow, that was the most amazing evening where all these milestones in someone’s career happened.”

In Bohemian Rhapsody, the scene where they come up with “We Will Rock You” and then “Another One Bites the Dust” is very much like the scene in this movie when Al comes up with “My Bologna.”

Daniel Radcliffe: That’s literally my favorite trope, the instant inspiration trope. And just the entire song being written in a moment because of hearing a literal lyric from the song be said to you is, yeah, just glorious. I love that so much.

In Rocketman, Elton John turns into a rocket on stage and flies into space. That’s about on level with some stuff that happens in this movie.

Daniel Radcliffe: What? I haven’t seen that.

Eric Appel:: Yeah. I mean, that one, that goes to some pretty wacky places for sure. And Elvis, too. It’s funny, I saw the Elvis movie, obviously, after we made ours and, God, there were moments in that… I loved the film by the way, but there were moments where I’m like, “Did they somehow see what we did?” And it’s because of all these tropes. These things are so tried and true and a compelling biopic story always follows the same trajectory. That’s what we did. Let’s take all of those moments and do our version of them. There’s always going to be a hitting rock bottom, like what’s our crazy unexpected Weird Al version of hitting rock bottom?

How do you write this movie and also avoid being what Walk Hard is?

Eric Appel:: Well, do you want to know my big secret?

What is your big secret?

Eric Appel:: I’ve never seen Walk Hard.

Well, that probably helped.

Eric Appel:: I’ve never seen Walk Hard. For some reason, I don’t know, I missed it when it came out…

To be fair, most people did.

Eric Appel: Yeah, I’ve seen moments from it. I love everyone involved in that movie but, again for whatever reason, I never saw Walk Hard. And then when we decided we were going to make this movie, I purposefully stayed away from Walk Hard because I didn’t want anything to inspire me. But what we did with this movie, we were drawing inspiration from not even just rock music biopics, kind of like Boogie Nights and Forest Gump just as much as anything…

Right, the pool scene at Dr. Demento’s house is from Boogie Nights…

Eric Appel: Yeah. And, really, the Dr. Demento-Al relationship is Jack Warner and Dirk Diggler. So we didn’t want it to feel like such a direct specific parody of a specific biopic.

How does Daniel get involved? Who calls who here?

Eric Appel: I mean we reached out. We reached out to Daniel.

Though. I could see a world where Daniel’s like, “Someone, let me play Weird Al.”

Daniel Radcliffe: Yeah, when I got the script and the offer came in, it’s the Weird Al biopic and you’d be playing Weird Al. My immediate reaction was like, “Okay, that’s really cool.” I’m a huge Weird Al fan but, to my mind, I feel like one of my strengths as an actor is knowing what I will and will not be good at, and good in. So I was going, “I have a feeling there’s probably other people who are closer physically to Al.” But then I read the script and as soon as I opened it, I was like, Oh right, that doesn’t matter. It’s not the name of the game here. This is just something else entirely.

And as soon as I read the script, I was like, Oh, right, this is the only thing this script could have been. Weird Al’s biopic should obviously be a parody of biopics. It makes more sense than anything else I’ve heard in my life and I never would’ve thought of that. So when you start reading it, you just go, Oh, right. Yeah. And you get the idea and immediately it became very apparent this is going to be really funny and really fun to do. Every page was a song or a fight scene or a dance number or the pool party scene…

Or a shootout.

Daniel Radcliffe: A shootout, right. Exactly. So every page was like that and then when we were shooting, every day was that way. It was like, Oh, cool, what insane stuff do I get to do today? Yeah, it was incredible fun.

I was reading how you actually sang the songs on set, then obviously they were dubbed in for the movie by Weird Al. Will we ever get to hear your renditions? I bet they’re good.

Daniel Radcliffe: I don’t think so. No. If I had known there was a chance they would ever be out there, I would have sung them better. So, yeah, hopefully not.

Do you have to call Madonna and explain how she’s going to be represented in this movie?

Eric Appel: Yeah, we didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t really get permission or tell anybody about what we were doing. The thing with this kind of comedy and this kind of parody, we’re not punching down on anyone or being mean or cruel. It’s a really fun version of Madonna that I hope, if and when she sees it … I’m sure she’ll watch it as soon as it pops up.

In the spirit of how Weird Al would always call people and tell him he was doing them, even though he didn’t have to. I didn’t know if it worked like that here, too.

Eric Appel: I mean, I think it’s a little different with music because you have to get the rights to the music. So maybe it’s a little more than a formality on some of those calls, but for this it’s like, Nah. It’s very clearly not the real Madonna and she’s such a public figure. She’s a Halloween costume that you can go buy in the store.

Daniel Radcliffe: I would also just echo what you said. It’s so insane what this film is. Yeah, the story is that she reached out to Al initially to ask him to parody one of her songs and that’s how “Like a Surgeon” happened. So one can assume, of that, that she has a sense of humor and about her own stuff … hopefully. And I think that this is such a kind of amazing mustache twirling villain and also I’m hoping that she’ll just be delighted by being played by Evan Rachel Wood.

I mean, she takes over a drug cartel. That is flattering. Not everyone can do that.

Daniel Radcliffe: Not everyone has that kind of organizational capability, but she very much does.

Eric Appel: You can’t say she’s not ambitious.

Obviously, Al had permission to make the parody songs, but if you want to put them into a movie, do you have to get permission again to put the Weird Al versions of the songs in this movie? Was there anything you couldn’t use that you wanted to use?

Eric Appel: Well, like I said before about getting people’s permission, when it’s music, it’s a different story. So to get the right to play Weird Al parodies, you have to get the rights to the actual song that he’s parodying in the movie. So there are certain tweaks that had to be made to the script. There are certain things that we had to do in order to get permission for people to sell us these songs.

What was a tweak? I’m just curious how that works.

Eric Appel: To get Queen’s music, there are things that changed on the script level because it’s like, “We don’t want you doing this and if you’re using our song.”

In between this movie premiering at the Toronto Film Festival and now, unfortunately Coolio died. There’s a Coolio joke in the movie. Was there any internal discussions about that?

Eric Appel: I mean, obviously, any death is a tragedy. He’s gone too soon for sure. I’m bummed that he doesn’t get to see the movie.

So there was no thought of removing it. I know he and Weird Al had made up.

Eric Appel: No, I mean I don’t think it’s anything that will offend anyone. It’s still a wonderful reference to Coolio.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.