When discussing classic films, particularly the comedies of yesteryear, a common and often repeated take is “Wow, you could NEVER make that today.” While it’s easy to brush off such an often-repeated sentiment, it actually holds significant truth. The fact of the matter is it’s already well into the afternoon. 

By the time you lock financing, attach talent, negotiate distribution rights, survive multiple rounds of studio notes, and wait for a VFX vendor in Vancouver to finish their renders, the sun will have already gone down. In truth, you would be lucky if you even got past the brainstorming phase before you start to get sleepy. 

Here are eight movies you just couldn’t make today because feature films typically take several months, if not years, to complete.

1. American Pie

People forget that even relatively small studio comedies still take a long time to make. By the time producers finalize the cast, film multiple versions of pie fucking, and carefully light the scene where a teenage girl performing sex acts is captured on a webcam and broadcast on the internet without her consent, it would already be tomorrow, at the earliest.

2. Soul Man

Even the most efficient productions take months between development and theatrical release, meaning there is essentially no chance of completing a feature-length comedy whose entire comedic premise and engine is blackface.

3. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Critics often argue this movie could never be made today, which becomes immediately obvious once you remember how long you need to film not one, but two extended trans-panic sequences. There simply are not enough hours left in the day to finish the makeup, photography, and editing required for a full reaction montage of dozens of law enforcement officers and Dan Marino, spitting, heaving, and vomiting.

4. Sixteen Candles

The writing alone for this John Hughes coming-of-age teen comedy classic took two days, which many people don’t realize is actually pretty fast. Tack on discovering several up-and-coming actors that would go on to define the 80s, scouting locations that would become the quintessential depiction of suburbia, and fully workshopping Long Duk Dong’s gong sound effects, and you’d be lucky if you could make this movie in a week.

5. Shallow Hal

When they made this, The Farrelly Brothers were under intense pressure because of an impending Screen Actors Guild strike. But they still had to spend months courting Garry Shandling for a supporting role that he ultimately turned down. It turns out that even making a movie with a basic premise like “fat people are disgusting, but wouldn’t it be crazy if they deserved love, too?” is still too complicated to make before midnight.

6. Animal House

A lot of older viewers think modern studios would never allow a movie like this to happen today, which is true because not only does Universal typically schedule releases several fiscal quarters in advance, but even if a studio executive approved the project at 2:15 PM sharp, there simply is not enough time left in the day to film the movie’s peeping scenes and drunk-driving parade finale before everyone wraps for the evening.

7. Tropic Thunder

Ben Stiller himself claims it could never be made today, and he is correct. If you started production immediately after breakfast, there simply would not be enough remaining daylight to finish Robert Downey Jr.’s blackface makeup and Ben Stiller’s intellectually disabled farmhand’s prosthetic teeth at the same time. And cutting those characters is obviously not an option because how else could the movie be expected to fully explore one of the most important and pressing issues of our times, that some Hollywood actors are too self-serious and cringey or something.

8. Revenge of the Nerds

This film is frequently cited as something Hollywood could never make today. It might not have crazy special effects or CGI, but even this little comedy still requires ADR, music licensing, and multiple days of editing to ensure the rape scene is just as hilarious on film as it is on paper.