shesnake:

‘Well, I wanted to give him a shout-out, so we originally had a stop-motion part that read “Michel Gondry.” Legally we didn’t have to get clearance to use his name. But I was like, “Hey, I don’t want to him hear about this and think I was dissing him.”
So I reached out to him so that I could play him the part and explain it. Also, I wanted to meet him!
So I go over to his office. My laptop isn’t working very well for some reason, because I have an old laptop, and it kept being jerky, but then I finally explained the story to him up to the point where I’m gonna play this clip of the stop-motion. But before I play it, he’s like [with French accent], “Wait, wait, okay. Please explain again. So, the richest man in the world, he can have anybody make a film that he wants, and he chooses me.” And I’m like, yeah. He’s like, “I like that.”
Then, I play it, and he’s like, “Well … that’s not my style of animation.” I’m like, okay, nobody thinks it’s really you. But he’s like, “You know, someone might think that …” blah blah blah.
He pitched me, he said, “You should have me do it!” I was like, wow, that would be amazing. But one, Sundance is in two weeks, and two, we probably wouldn’t have enough money — you know, ’cause his joke was, “Pay me as much as [the film’s fictional CEO] Steve Lift would have paid me,” and I was like, “We probably wouldn’t have enough to pay you.”
“So,” I said, “how about we keep that there like it is and in the credits I’ll put ‘Michel Gondry had nothing to do with the making of this film.’”
And then he said, “Yes, but if people like it, then I look like an asshole. Like I missed the boat.”
I said, “How about if we said, ‘Michel Gondry had nothing to do with the making of this film, but he loves it.’”
He says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that can be cool. Yes, let’s do that. Let’s do that.” To change that whole scene was going to cost another $10,000, and we had no more money left. So, he was all down, being really friendly.
Then as soon as I left, before I got back to the airport — I had flown here just for that — he had his people send a note saying, “Michel says no, and you have to change it.” I’m like, well we don’t legally have to, but his producers, and my producers, and it just got, you know …
I was like, “You could have just said that to me. Don’t wait until I leave.” So then we changed it, we just switched around the letters, and now it is a diss.
And I’m going to continue to diss him in each film until he answers me back.’

— Boots Riley