The Cotton Club
WHAT WENT WRONG
Sad Boom Media
4.8 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 97 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'The Cotton Club' was supposed to be Robert Evans’ big comeback... Instead, it became the movie that finally took him down - and nearly dragged Francis Ford Coppola with him. Chris and Lizzie break down how Evans' desperation to make the film led to shady financing, a baffling creative curveball from Richard Gere, and a production so chaotic that an actual mobster came on board as a line producer.
Even though 'The Cotton Club' began as a story highlighting the racial inequalities of the actual nightclub, it became a film that marginalized its own black talent. Find out why it took Coppola 30 years to correct this mistake, finally allowing Gregory and Maurice Hines to steal the show.
Make sure you listen to our Out of Frame episode on The Cotton Club Murder first as a primer for this episode!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, |
| 0:25.1 | Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make |
| 0:30.2 | them, let alone a good one, let alone a home run-esque swing, well, an attempt at a home run that nearly bankrupts you, |
| 0:40.1 | but is it worth it because it's still pretty amazing at the end of the day? I think so. As always, |
| 0:46.8 | I am Chris Winterbara, joined by my co-host Lizzie Bassett, Lizzie. How are you doing? And what have |
| 0:52.0 | you brought for us today? |
| 1:00.7 | I'm doing great, Chris. And I'm very, very excited to talk about today's film, which is the Cotton Club. |
| 1:08.8 | Before we dive into this at all, I want you all to make sure you have gone back and listened to the episode we dropped on Friday, which was an out-of-frame episode, that covers in detail a murder, which is |
| 1:12.7 | directly affiliated with this film. It also covers the investment that was tied to that murder. |
| 1:19.2 | So we're not going to talk about it a ton in this episode because it was already discussed |
| 1:22.5 | in that one. So please go back and listen to that one first before we dive in here. |
| 1:26.9 | Chris, had you ever seen |
| 1:28.9 | Francis Ford Coppola as the Cotton Club before, or Francis Copla, actually, as he was originally |
| 1:34.1 | credited on this? And what was your reaction upon watching it for the podcast? I had seen the |
| 1:39.5 | Cotton Club, not for probably 20 years or so. I saw this in high school, I want to say, or middle school. |
| 1:46.6 | Oh, so then you saw the original. |
| 1:49.3 | Yes, I believe I did. So this movie, my dad's a fan of this movie. My dad's a really big fan of tap dancing, oddly enough. |
| 1:57.8 | And so I actually saw Gregory Hines live at the Paramount in Seattle the year before he died. |
| 2:03.8 | Whoa. I think it was in 2002. I was looking online to try to figure out when... |
| 2:07.1 | He died in 2003. Yeah. So I think that was the last time he came to Seattle. We saw Gregory Hines. We saw Savam Glover a couple times. Stomp, obviously, and stuff like that. Like a lot of rhythmic, you know, dance and stuff like that. |
| 2:18.3 | And so my dad, and as I mentioned, my dad loved all that jazz. And so the Cotton Club, to me, |
| 2:24.0 | in my mind, was always The Godfather Meets All That Jazz. And I saw this movie. I didn't like it as |
... |
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