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right so having listened to (almost all of - still saving the episode about North by Northwest until after I get around to watching it myself) your podcast there isn't really anything that makes me think you'd like this movie but I just rewatched Sobakasu (I Am What I Am) (though the direct translation is actually Freckles) and really need to recommend it to another aromantic person so I am nevertheless here in your ask box recommending Sobakasu. It's about an aroace woman in Japan and her relationships with friends and family and work, it's very slice of life, I liked it the first time but I felt compelled to rewatch it and I liked it a lot better on the rewatch.

ooh, I’ll check it out, thanks for the recommendation!

#Ask #Aroace #rewatch rewind

Some final thoughts about the 40 movies I rewatched most frequently in my first 20 years of keeping track. Transcript coming soon Sounds of

The final episode... for now, at least.

Transcript below the break

First of all, to be clear, there are several movies from the 1970s that I love, they just didn’t happen to make it into my top 40. But the thing about the ‘70s is… that’s when Hollywood movies became more explicitly sexy. By which I mean that after the Motion Picture Production Code was abandoned in the late 1960s, filmmakers started putting much more explicit sexual content into their movies because they were finally allowed to. Now, I’m not saying I’m in favor of censorship. I think people should be able to make movies about whatever they want, provided they’re not actively hurting people. But a lot of 1970s movies feel particularly overwhelmingly sexual to me, like Hollywood was trying to release decades’ worth of previously forbidden sex scenes as quickly as possible. And I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily think there’s anything inherently wrong with that, although I feel like it was often executed in ways that objectified women, which I do have a problem with. But I also think a not insignificant reason I’m not as into movies from that era is related to my asexuality. I’m not judging 1970s movies for having too much sex, and obviously not every movie from that decade has explicit sexual content, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the decade after the production code went away is the one that doesn’t have any representation in my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies. While movies with sexual content continue to be made long after the 1970s, it does feel a bit like once the novelty wore off, filmmakers kind of toned it down a bit, or at least incorporated it into more interesting stories. It’s kind of like when a kid learns a swear word. At first it’s like, a huge deal, and they get in trouble for using it, and then when they get older they’re like, “allowed” to swear, and they feel so cool for a while, but then it stops feeling cool and they learn how to use it more selectively and effectively. That’s how it feels like sexual content in the Hollywood film industry evolved. So as a relatively sex-indifferent asexual who doesn’t exactly mind sexual content, but doesn’t particularly like it either, it makes sense that that transition period doesn’t appeal to me as much.

And I do have to keep saying that I’m specifically talking about the Hollywood film industry because the vast majority of the movies I watch are from Hollywood. Really the only “foreign” film in my top 40 is Pride and Prejudice, and even that was co-produced by an American company. I have seen and enjoyed several films from other countries, but I could definitely watch more. There is an upsetting lack of diversity on this list: the vast majority of these films are primarily about white, straight, cis, allo, middle-to-upper-class Americans or Europeans. There are characters who don’t fit all of those, but most of them play relatively minor supporting roles in the main stories. I’m pretty sure that all of the directors on this list are white, and all of the screenwriters are at least half white, but I don’t know all of their backgrounds, so forgive me if I’m unintentionally erasing the identity of any of these filmmakers. Regardless, I definitely need to watch more movies made by people of color. As I addressed in previous episodes, only two of these movies were directed solely by a woman, one was co-directed by a man and a woman, and the other 37 were directed by men, so I also need to watch more female-directed films. The screenwriter gender breakdown is a little better, with eight written solely by women, eight written by a combination of men and women, and 24 written solely by men. I would personally love to see more movies written and directed by non-binary people, but mainstream society doesn’t seem to want to give them much of a voice, so I think I’ll have to look into more independent films to find that. The two newest movies on this list were independently produced with funds raised through Kickstarter, so I do seem to be moving in that direction, even though the vast majority of my top films were made by major Hollywood studios. I wasn’t surprised that Disney was the studio with the most films on this list, with nine – what can I say? I grew up during the Disney renaissance, I was indoctrinated. But I wasn’t necessarily expecting RKO to have the second most, with seven, considering that studio hasn’t been around since the 1950s. MGM is in third place with six, but I would have expected that to have more than RKO, considering it made a lot of classic Golden Age gems and still technically exists today (even though it’s now owned by Amazon). Over half of the movies on this list were made by one of those three studios. Again, an embarrassing lack of diversity.

So why did I go through all of that? Well, aside from wanting an excuse to go back through all 40 movies again, I also wanted to emphasize that even when you’re not interested in sexual or romantic content, it’s extremely difficult to avoid. Allonormativity and amatonormativity are everywhere. I was able to find ways to relate to these movies from an aroace perspective, but every single one ultimately leans, at least to some extent, into the pervading societal assumption that every normal human fundamentally desires a long-term, monogamous, romantic and sexual partner of the opposite sex. This is so normalized that the two movies that earned a zero for both romantic and sexual content still include romantic kissing, and while I stand by my assertion that those movies don’t have enough romantic content to justify a higher rating, I also know that if those throwaway background romantic moments had been between two characters of the same sex, a bunch of people would have made a huge deal about how the LGBT+ “agenda” was being “shoved down their throats” and “forced on their children.” You know who really shoves their lifestyle down people’s throats and forces them on children? Straight cis allos! If children’s sexual and romantic orientations could be changed just by seeing them in movies, I would be incredibly straight and allo by now. But even spending all those years bombarded with the message that normal people were like that, it didn’t make me feel attraction that my brain wasn’t wired to feel, it just made me confused. What I would love to see in my next 20 years of movie watching is more normalization of other ways of being outside of amatonormativity. Right now that’s feeling very unlikely, given the enormous backlash against LGBTQIA+ rights that is currently escalating throughout much of this country. More awareness of aspec identities has led to more explicit aphobia. But it has also led more people like me to understand ourselves better, and I would love to see that continue until acceptance overwhelms the bigotry. And that could be greatly helped by more aspec artists getting to tell their stories. I know of some good aspec representation in books and TV shows, but I really haven’t heard about much in feature films, apart from the sort of vague ace coding I’ve discussed throughout this podcast. But I would love to hear recommendations if any listeners out there know of any openly asexual and/or aromantic movie characters.

#the rewatch rewind #movies #aromantic #asexual

My attempts to explain why this is the number one movie I will never get tired of rewatching. Transcript coming soon

Here it is! My most frequently rewatched movie! Thank you for coming on this journey with me.

Script below the break

This must have been one of the first old movies I saw in 2002 because the only thing I remember about my initial experience of it was that I expected Tracy to accept Mike’s proposal, and if I’d been an experienced old movie watcher by then I would have known that obviously Katharine Hepburn was going to end up with Cary Grant, not James Stewart. I certainly did not immediately fully appreciate this movie, although I was intrigued enough to keep revisiting it until eventually it became my favorite. I watched it five times in each year from 2003 through 2005, four times in 2006, twice in 2007, 2008, and 2009, three times each in 2010 and 2011, five times in 2012, once in 2013, once in 2014, twice in 2015, once in 2017, twice in 2018, four times in 2019, once in 2020, twice in 2021, and once in 2022. Part of why I watch this so much is because it has three stars whose birthdays I celebrate almost every year, so I often watch it for Cary Grant’s birthday and then either Katharine Hepburn’s or James Stewart’s (their birthdays are only about a week apart so I don’t usually watch it for both). I think part of why I didn’t watch it in 2016 is because I watched it in late December of 2015 for the 75th anniversary of its release, so Grant’s birthday in January felt too soon to revisit it, and that May I decided to watch through all the Fred and Ginger movies starting with Astaire’s birthday, so I was less focused on Kate’s and Jimmy’s birthdays that year. And then later in 2016 I was too obsessed with Poe Party to watch much of anything else. But to make up for that, the reason I watched it so many times in 2019 is because Mary Kate Wiles used to host readings of plays and movie scripts with her actor friends for her Patreon, and I offered to transcribe the script of Philadelphia Story so she could do a reading of that one, and even though I knew the movie very well by then I decided to go through it a few more times to make sure I got all the details right, so eventually my love of Poe Party led to more rewatches of this. And the current Shipwrecked project, The Case of the Greater Gatsby, takes place in December of 1940 so there are lots of Philadelphia Story references in it and they make me very happy. Anyway, I’ve put quite a bit of effort into not watching this movie too many times too close together because I don’t ever want to overwatch it to the point of getting tired of it, like I did with a few other movies I’ve mentioned on this podcast, and many more that I burned out before they could make it into my top 40. While the stars’ birthdays have contributed to the view count, mostly this is my number one comfort movie that I know I can always turn to when I need something to watch, and I’m afraid of pushing it to the point where that no longer works. Although the fact that I sat through it 51 times in 20 years – the same number of views as number two plus number 40 on this list – and haven’t come close to getting tired of it yet indicates that I probably never will.

Another of my favorite scenes comes a bit earlier in the film, when Tracy and her younger sister, Dinah, played by Virginia Weidler, meet Mike and Liz for the first time. Tracy immediately saw through Dexter’s story that they were friends of her older brother’s and knows they’re reporters, but agreed to play along when Dexter informed her that Sidney Kidd intends to publish a story about Tracy’s father’s affair with a dancer unless he gets a story on her wedding. To protest the situation, Tracy and Dinah decide to put on a show for Mike and Liz, who don’t know that they know they’re reporters, and it is maybe my favorite comedic scene in any movie. First Dinah dramatically stumbles in wearing pointe shoes and some gaudy jewelry that was a wedding present she previously insulted. She then puts on an overly posh voice as she explains that she spoke French before she spoke English – “C’est vrai absolument!” – and boasts that she can play the piano “and sing at the same time!” She makes her way to the piano with the least graceful toe walk possible, and then bangs out a very silly rendition of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” a song mainly associated with Groucho Marx. While Mike and Liz are staring at her in bewilderment, Tracy peeks into the room and beams like she’s never been prouder of her sister. Once the song is finished, Tracy enters and praises Dinah in French, comparing her to Chopin, and then saying Dinah looks ill and she hopes it’s not smallpox, which freaks out Mike and Liz, but the audience knows it’s a private joke because earlier Tracy told Dinah that the only way she could postpone the wedding was to get smallpox. After Dinah leaves, it’s Tracy’s turn to confuse the reporters, and it is truly brilliant. The dialogue and the way it’s read, as Tracy turns the interview around and starts asking them invasive questions, is so good. Like when Tracy’s talking about how they don’t let any reporters in, “except for little Mr. Grace who does the social news. Can you imagine a grown-up man having to sink so low?” or when she’s welcoming them to Philadelphia and says, “It’s a quaint old place, don’t you think? Filled with relics, and how old are you, Mr. Connor?” It’s the seemingly accidental but actually very deliberate insults that get me. And then on top of that, there is some incredible yet subtle physical comedy going on throughout the conversation. Tracy accidentally-on-purpose pushes Mike and Liz into each other as she offers them seats, and there’s a whole very long bit between Tracy and Mike involving cigarettes, matches, and lighters that I didn’t even notice the first few times I watched it because I was too focused on what they were saying. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable scene all the way through, and every time I watch Tracy exit that room, leaving the reporters to ponder their bafflement, I have to applaud.

But the movie also excels at mixing some drama and seriousness in with the comedy. There’s a lot of focus on how Tracy demands perfection from herself and everyone around her, and as a result is missing out on the joys of human messiness. She makes a big deal about never drinking alcohol, although Dexter reveals that she did get drunk one time when they were married, and later remembered nothing about it. But after Dexter tells her that being married to her felt like being a high priest to a goddess, and George tells her that he worships her like a queen, and her father, who showed up uninvited, tells her she might just as well be made of bronze, Tracy gives in and starts drinking heavily at the party the night before her wedding, which was where Mike also got very drunk. Tracy and Mike meet up at Dexter’s house, then go back to her place, and dance and argue for a while until Mike kisses her and tells her that he sees her as a human being, which is a wonderful change of pace for her, so she suggests they go swimming together. Later, Dexter and George see Mike carrying Tracy back to the house, both of them in bathrobes, and George assumes the worst. The next morning, Tracy can’t remember what happened, but Dinah tells her that she saw Mike carry Tracy into her room – which is another excellent scene, Virginia Weidler was one of the best child actors of all time and people barely ever talk about her anymore, but she and Katharine Hepburn do a fabulous job of getting the point across that they both think Tracy slept with Mike the night before without breaking production codes. And then after that when Mike appears, he and Tracy have the most excruciatingly awkward conversation, and it’s so painful but so good. Dexter also shows up trying to comfort Tracy, and I love the way he doesn’t accuse her or condemn her or even ask her what happened, partly because he knows she doesn’t remember, partly because Mike told him nothing happened, but partly because you get the feeling that he wouldn’t think any less of her if she had drunkenly hooked up with Mike. And maybe that’s reading too much into this, but his reaction is certainly quite different from George’s, which I guess makes sense because technically she would have been cheating on George and not Dexter, but George doesn’t even let her explain before breaking up with her by note. He does finally show up in person as she’s reading the note aloud to Dexter, Mike, and Liz, and their confrontation is so well done – I particularly love Liz’s “Say something, stupid!” to Mike, who is just standing there listening to George accuse Tracy of having an affair with him. But after a while, Mike does eventually reveal that their so-called affair consisted of exactly two kisses and a rather late swim. Tracy and George don’t believe him at first, and then Tracy is offended, until he points out that she was very drunk and he didn’t want to take advantage of her. And like, I know that this movie was made in 1940, so the censors weren’t going to let Tracy actually have sex with another man the night before her wedding anyway, but I still can’t help loving the way they handled this. Tracy makes a bit of a fool of herself and learns that George is not the right man for her without going too far, and Mike demonstrates that it’s not that difficult to respect a woman’s autonomy and recognize when she is unable to consent.

I have a lot of mixed and complicated feelings about this story from an aroace perspective. On the one hand, it is very focused on romance and marriage. Also the whole thing about characters describing Tracy using phrases like “virgin goddess” and “perennial spinster, however many marriages” to illustrate her coldness and lack of human understanding is…not exactly an ace-affirming metaphor. On the other hand, I always appreciate stories about adults who have the chance to sleep together and choose not to, even when I know it’s at least partly because of production codes. And somehow, something about the way Dexter, Tracy, Mike, and Liz all interact give me hints of queer found family vibes, even though they end up paired off heterosexually. Maybe it’s the fact that it was directed by a gay man and features at least two probably queer actors that’s giving me that vibe, I don’t know. Another of my favorite scenes – I know, I have way too many – is when Dexter and Liz return to the Lord house after writing a blackmail note to Sidney Kidd. It’s a fairly short scene, but the way the two of them interact as platonic friends who understand each other but clearly don’t like each other romantically is not something I’m used to seeing in a scene featuring a man and a woman alone, and it makes me happy. Mike also has some great moments with Dexter, as does Tracy with Liz. I like to think that the four of them maintain their friendship after the events of the movie, rather than amatonormatively going off and doing their own thing with their spouse and forgetting about their friends. This movie does portray sex and romance as part of the human experience, but I don’t feel like it portrays them as the only important part. The message is all about pursuing the life that’s right for you, and not looking down on people who have different priorities, and when you look at it from that perspective, it actually is kind of ace-affirming, albeit probably unintentionally. But as I’ve indicated multiple times in previous episodes, asexual representation is so rare, and aromantic representation is even rarer, that if you can find an approximation of affirmation by tilting a story and squinting at it, even that feels exciting. That’s how low the bar is.

With that being said, as a teenager I definitely did relate to Tracy Lord, at least in terms of the way I was perceived. I think a lot of my peers thought that I thought I was better than them, when it was mostly that I just didn’t understand them. I don’t remember anyone calling me a goddess or a queen or a statue, but other middle and high schoolers definitely teased me for being “perfect”, which told me that they didn’t really see me as a person, so I felt Tracy’s pain and confusion when she got called out like that. I do think that like Tracy, I had a lot to learn about letting myself make mistakes and not judging other people too harshly for theirs, but I also still strongly feel that some of the criticism leveled at Tracy – and at me – was unwarranted. I can’t tell if the movie wants us to agree with Tracy’s father when he blames his philandering on not having the right kind of daughter, but I think that’s entirely unreasonable of him, and Tracy absolutely does not deserve that. And I’m not sure it’s fair of Dexter to blame her for contributing to his alcoholism, but at least Dexter takes some responsibility for his actions, unlike Seth Lord. I think my peers didn’t understand me any more than I understood them, but I probably could have cut them more slack and tried to get to know them better before writing most of them off as too different for me to possibly get to know. The circumstances in this movie are very different from being a high school misfit, but as a high schooler who often had trouble relating to movies that were actually about high school misfits, somehow this movie spoke to me. It was an escape from high school that also helped get me through high school. The story helped me become a less judgmental and more forgiving person toward others while also helping me feel better about being who I was unapologetically. I also got similar messages from other sources, so I don’t want to give this movie too much credit, but at the same time, I don’t think any single movie affected my teenage years more than this one, so I would certainly be a different person if I had never seen it.

The story of how this movie came about and what it led to is also very important to me. After appearing in several box office flops in the late 1930s – several of which made it onto this list – Katharine Hepburn left Hollywood for Broadway to star in and financially back the stage version of Philadelphia Story, which Philip Barry had written specifically for her. Howard Hughes purchased the film rights as a gift for Hepburn, with whom he had been romantically involved, although it seems like the romantic part of their relationship was over before that, so this is like My Man Godfrey in that it turned out the way it did partly because of exes who were still friends. Katharine Hepburn then sold the rights to Louis B. Mayer for only $250,000 on the condition that she would have input and veto power over producer, director, screenwriter, and cast. She got the director and writer she wanted, but her first choice for the two male leads – Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy – were unavailable. Gable reportedly hated George Cukor and was rumored to be at least partly responsible for the director being kicked off of Gone with the Wind, so it’s probably just as well that he wasn’t involved. Future lovers Hepburn and Tracy hadn’t even met yet at this point, so it would have been interesting if this was their first movie. But ultimately, Cary Grant came on board, under the condition that he would receive top billing, which feels a bit strange to see because Hepburn is clearly playing the main lead, but Grant also donated his entire salary to the British War Relief Society, so we can’t accuse him of too much selfishness. And James Stewart’s performance as Mike would earn him one of the film’s two Oscars, although he apparently thought that Henry Fonda should have won for The Grapes of Wrath, and that he had only received it as belated recognition for his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the previous year. Donald Ogden Stewart also won for Best Screenplay. The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Cukor was nominated for Best Director, and the performances of Katharine Hepburn and Ruth Hussey were nominated as well. The fact that Hepburn didn’t win – and lost to her rival Ginger Rogers, no less – indicates that Hollywood was still a little reluctant to welcome her back. But this movie crucially changed the public’s perception of Katharine Hepburn, transforming her from box office poison to a box office draw. They were calling her a has-been in 1938, but with The Philadelphia Story she showed them that she still had more to contribute, and her career took off in the 1940s, and lasted into the 1990s.

Even now, generations later, twenty years after Hepburn’s death, it’s easy to tell just by watching this movie why it was such a turning point for her. She completely embodies the spoiled socialite, but she makes Tracy sympathetic enough that when she is taken down a few pegs, as she needed to be, the audience feels sorry for her rather than gloating. Tracy is radiant enough that we understand why George worships her, yet she is down to earth enough that we understand her yearning to be seen not as an object of worship, but as a human being. Hepburn nails both the comedic scenes and the more serious dramatic scenes, with no hint of the desperately-trying-too-hard actress who comes across too often in some of her earlier films. While I obviously still love many of those films, watching this one feels like we’re seeing a Katharine Hepburn who has finally come into her own. There certainly was an element of trying to get the public to like her, but there’s no desperation about it. She gets this character, and knows how to make the audience get her too. I don’t think I could have found Tracy so relatable if she hadn’t been played like that. And listen, I’m thrilled that Ginger Rogers won an Oscar, especially because Hepburn would end up with four and didn’t really need this win, but if I had to pick one single all-time favorite film performance, I can’t think of any that would beat Katharine Hepburn’s Tracy Lord. Although I also have to say that I think Cary Grant’s performance as Dexter is incredibly underappreciated. I’ve said before that sometimes I have trouble taking him seriously in dramatic roles, but this was the ideal blend of seriousness and silliness for him, and he nails every emotional beat. He does an excellent job of showing the audience that he has grown and learned from the mistakes of his first marriage and is ready to move forward with healing his relationship with Tracy, which makes this a much better remarriage story than His Girl Friday, for example. There were a lot of movies made around this time about a divorced couple reconciling, mostly because that was the only way the Production Code allowed the scandalous topic of divorce to be addressed on film, but Philadelphia Story feels different from most of those. It’s more like Pride and Prejudice, if Pride and Prejudice started right after Elizabeth turned down Darcy’s first proposal. Both are about a couple who needed to grow and reflect before they could be happy together. I think those are my favorite kind of romances because they have less to do with attraction, which I don’t really understand, and more to do with trying to become the best version of oneself, which everyone can do regardless of how they feel about romance. Anyway, I’m a little sad that this was the last time Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn worked together, but I’m so glad they got to make this masterpiece before their careers diverged.

#the philadelphia story #george cukor #katharine hepburn #cary grant #james stewart #i love this movie so much #this project has been a lot of fun #i'll be back with a conclusions episode soon-ish #but i'm going to take a break first

On adaptations, a riveting story with fascinating characters, appreciating a classic romance through an aromantic lens, aptly named dogs, an

Yes, I've watched this full miniseries 37 times.

Script below the break

Okay so yes, this is technically a TV show rather than a movie, but even though it’s over five hours long, I still tend to watch it as a movie, and it felt right to count it as such, although when I first wrote it down in my movie notebook, I never anticipated that it would become my second most-frequently-rewatched. I remember that my parents were really into it, and at some point when it was on TV after we finally got a VCR, they had taped it. I tried to watch it with them a few times when I was younger, but I found the flowery language difficult to understand, and I typically fell asleep in the middle without knowing what was going on. The first time I watched it and actually paid attention was in 2005, and the main thing I remember was that my dad assumed I knew the story by then and kept making spoilery comments. I don’t think I fully appreciated it at that point, but I definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. I ended up watching it twice in that year and then five times in 2006, which is when it became one of my favorite stories. I read the book and watched a few other adaptations that year. In 2007 I only watched this series once, but that was also the year that my family ended up getting two male puppies, and after much deliberation about what to name them, we determined that Bingley and Darcy were the best names that went together and represented something we all enjoyed. After that, I watched it three times in 2008, once in 2009, twice in 2010, four times in 2011, twice in 2012, twice in 2013, four times in 2014, once in 2015, once in 2016, twice in 2017, once in 2018, three times in 2020, once in 2021, and twice in 2022. I don’t remember exactly when, but somehow between my siblings, my parents, and I, we ended up with three copies of this on DVD in addition to the taped one. I should also mention that I only counted it when I watched the whole thing from start to finish within a few days, so I’ve watched it like that 37 times, but I’ve definitely seen pieces of it way more than that. I keep waiting to get tired of watching it, but every time I put it on, it remains delightfully enjoyable.

I know that Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is one of the most beloved stories in the English-speaking world, and probably beyond – although the number of people confused by my dogs’ names taught me that not everyone is particularly familiar with it – and that it has been adapted and retold dozens of times, and that fans of the story have very strong opinions about which is the “best” adaptation. The loudest debate is between this version and the 2005 film directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. The first time I watched that version was in 2006, in the midst of my mania for the 1995 version, and I thought it was terrible. I knew it had to be shorter for the feature film format, but they cut out so many of my favorite parts! It wasn’t until I rewatched the 2005 version in 2016 that I understood that the people who prefer that version love this story for very different reasons from me. If you’re mostly invested in the Elizabeth/Darcy romance, that’s the version for you. It’s all about the tension and chemistry between those two characters, and everyone else is kind of stuck in as an afterthought. But even though the Bennet daughters’ need to get married is central to the plot, I had never considered the main appeal of this story to be its romance. To 2023 me and you the listener, who know that I’m aromantic, that isn’t very surprising, but at the time it kind of blew my mind to learn that so many fans of the story are there for that slow burn. Even in 2012 to 2013, when The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was coming out, I figured the reason people were so obsessed with Darcy was because not seeing him until episode 60 added to his mystique. At the end of that show, I was way more concerned about Lydia’s story than Lizzie’s, and while I enjoyed seeing Lizzie and Darcy finally get together, it was more of a “yay, things are happy now” relief than squeeing over the adorable romance. Anyway, while I used to be one of those obnoxiously pretentious fans who maintained that the 1995 adaptation was way better than the 2005 one, now I’m more of the opinion that they’re both good, just different, and just because I prefer one over the other doesn’t actually make it better. So if you’re listening to this and are a huge fan of the 2005 version, or any other adaptation, know that I’m not trying to tell you you’re wrong. Ultimately, Pride and Prejudice is a great story with many layers, and I think it’s awesome that there have been so many different versions that emphasize different aspects.

Despite the fact that this version is quite long (although not nearly as long as the Lizzie Bennet Diaries), I personally love the pacing. The events of the story take place over about a year, and these six 55-minute episodes take their time bringing us through that year with the characters. Watching it now, I don’t understand how I ever fell asleep with it on as a child, because I am thoroughly engaged the whole way through. Sometimes I intend to only watch an episode or two at a time, but I end up sitting through the whole thing because I cannot tear myself away. These characters are just so fascinating, and the cast brings them to life so convincingly. In general, I try to separate actors from characters, but I will always associate this cast with this show. Part of that is because of how many times I’ve watched this, and another part is because most of these actors haven’t been in very many American films – with the major exception, of course, of Colin Firth, whose Hollywood career skyrocketed after the success of this series – so I haven’t seen them in many other things. But the main reason is because they all embody their characters so perfectly in this series that it’s hard to see them as actors. Every cast member fully committed to their character in a way that somehow makes them feel simultaneously larger than life and grounded in reality. Alison Steadman’s Mrs. Bennet in particular is over the top and ridiculous but manages to just barely remain believable. While the five Bennet sisters on the surface can be summarized by archetypes, they’re much deeper than they first appear, and I love the ways that both the writing and the performances gradually bring that out. Crispin Bonham-Carter perfectly embodies the puppy-dog friendliness and gullibility of Bingley, and Colin Firth nails Darcy’s transformation after Elizabeth calls him out. Benjamin Whitrow makes Mr. Bennet so likable that it took me a while to understand that part of the family’s plight is his fault. That kind of complexity is one of the major things that makes this movie so rewatchable. There are so many layers to every storyline and every character that you can’t possibly uncover them all in just a few views. There’s also a lot going on in the background – like, Mary doesn’t get very many lines, but I love watching her light up whenever Mr. Collins is around. The show is edited in such a way that the audience can see what every relevant character is thinking at all times, so that even when it’s difficult to understand the fancy dialogue, we still get what’s happening based on the characters’ reactions.

This adaptation receives a lot of praise for its faithfulness to the novel, but while it does follow the book quite closely, I don’t think it gets enough credit for the changes and additions it made that were still in the spirit of the original story. There is some dialogue that was taken word for word from the book, but Jane Austen tended to summarize conversations rather than transcribing them, so quite a bit of new dialogue needed to be added, and I personally find it difficult to tell where Jane Austen ends and Andrew Davies takes over. Austen didn’t write scenes that only featured male characters, claiming that she had no way of knowing how men spoke or behaved when there were no women present, but this show opens with a scene between Bingley and Darcy and focuses a bit more on their friendship than the book does. The change in this version that gets the most attention is when Darcy unexpectedly happens upon Elizabeth after having taken a swim in a lake on his property at Pemberley. I always just saw this as a silly way to add to the awkwardness of the situation, with Darcy trying to remain dignified in soaking, casual clothes, and it surprised me to learn that a lot of people love that scene because Colin Firth apparently looks very sexy in his wet shirt. The change that I personally find most interesting is in the letter that Darcy writes explaining himself to Elizabeth after she turns down his first proposal. In the book, he starts with the allegations about breaking up Jane and Bingley and then moves on to the more serious stuff about how Wickham (played by Adrian Lukis, who told Elizabeth that Darcy ruined his life) had tried to seduce Darcy’s younger sister. In this version, the letter starts with the Wickham stuff and ends with the Bingley stuff because we’re initially watching Darcy and flashbacks of his memories, and then halfway through revealing the letter to the audience, we see Darcy give it to Elizabeth, and then we see her reactions to reading his thoughts about her sister and the rest of her family, along with flashbacks of her memories. Darcy is rather arrogant when he talks about separating Bingley from Jane, so I feel like it makes a little more sense for him to start with that when he’s upset by Elizabeth’s rejection and then move on to the darker Wickham drama, but I really like the way this version shows their reactions to the part of the letter that’s most painful to each of them. And before he writes the letter, we see Darcy dwelling on Elizabeth’s words, and he reacts to what she said about Wickham by saying aloud to himself, “At least in that I may defend myself,” implying that the Wickham story is what prompted him to write the letter in the first place, explaining why he starts with that this time. So it’s true to the original without being constrained by the original, and I think that’s what makes it work so well as an adaptation.

As I said before, many people think of Pride and Prejudice as primarily a romantic story, and like, they’re not wrong, but there’s so much more to it than that. There’s a lot of focus on familial relationships, especially between the two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, which I’ve always appreciated for its similarities to my relationship with my sister. It’s also worth noting that in this society, women in the Bennets’ station could not get a job, so they basically had two options: marry well, or depend on a male relative. Marriage was essentially a business arrangement, not necessarily a romantic one. In the first episode, Jane and Elizabeth have a conversation about their situation in which Elizabeth says that because Jane is the prettiest and sweetest of the sisters, she will need to be the one to marry very well, and Jane responds with, “But Lizzy, I would wish… I should so much like… to marry for love.” And then she makes this amazing face like she can hardly believe how unreasonable she’s being. Elizabeth assures her, “And so you shall, I’m sure. Only take care you fall in love with a man of good fortune.” But when Jane asks Elizabeth how she feels about marriage, she asserts, “I am determined that nothing but the very deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill!” And they laugh. But Elizabeth is completely serious, at least about the first part, as she demonstrates when she turns down two very lucrative marriage proposals that most sensible women in her position would have eagerly accepted. Both men – Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy – think they are doing her a great favor in offering their hand and are shocked by her refusal. Mr. Collins is a bit of a doofus, but he is also going to inherit her father’s house, and it would therefore be the honorable thing for him to marry one of the Bennet daughters so they could at least continue to live there after Mr. Bennet’s death. But Elizabeth knew he would make her miserable and was unwilling to put up with him merely for security. One could say she slapped amatonormativity in the face, and we love to see it. But interestingly, when Mr. Collins does get married, it’s to the very aro-coded Charlotte Lucas (played by Lucy Scott). Her good friend Elizabeth is utterly shocked that anyone, let alone someone she cares about, would agree to marry Mr. Collins. But Charlotte literally tells Lizzy, “I’m not romantic, you know. I never was.” Aromantic queen. And when Elizabeth vents to Jane about this, Jane has the great line, “You do not make allowances for differences of situation and temper.” Jane is the ally we all need. Later, when Elizabeth visits the Collinses, Charlotte makes it clear that she kind of just does her own thing and barely sees her husband, and Elizabeth feels bad for her friend, but honestly, Charlotte’s life doesn’t sound so bad to me. She has security, and her husband mostly leaves her alone. Things didn’t get much better for an introverted aroace woman in that society. Although part of me does still wish that Mary had ended up with Collins, since she also seems like an introvert on the aroace spectrum, but she actually likes him.

Elizabeth is the opposite of aroace, but the way she refuses to listen when society tells her she’s supposed to marry for money feels kind of similar to modern aroace people refusing to listen when society tells us we’re supposed to fall in romantic, sexual love. One of the things I appreciate most about this story is how it demonstrates that everyone and every relationship is different. Jane and Bingley immediately fall for each other and are perfectly compatible, but because they place so much trust in the people around them, it takes a while for them to officially get together. And I don’t just mean the way Bingley’s sisters and Darcy pulled him away – Elizabeth kept reassuring Jane that it was obvious how she felt about Bingley because it was obvious to her, and neither of them realized that a stranger would just see Jane’s kindness to Bingley as treating him like she treats everyone else. Elizabeth and Darcy are just as well suited for each other as Jane and Bingley are, but they both have some major growing to do – they need to overcome their pride and prejudice, if you will – before they can be together. And then there’s Lydia and Wickham, whose relationship is based mainly on lust. Neither of them seems to have learned anything between the beginning and end of their story, and it’s hard to imagine them being happy together. I used to think of Lydia as a spoiled brat who got what she deserved, but now I feel really bad for her. She was a 15-year-old child who was preyed upon by a grown man, and the best-case scenario was for her to marry him. Her plight demonstrates just how awful the societal rules regarding sex were for women, although the story barely seems aware of it. Her elopement is used as a plot device for Darcy to redeem himself, and the focus is all on how her sisters’ chances of good marriages have been damaged. It’s kind of odd that so many social norms are condemned in this story, and yet Lydia is portrayed as deserving of life-long punishment for daring to break one rule. Jane Austen was progressive, but not that progressive. So that’s the one part of this that bothers me. If you too want justice for Lydia, I highly recommend The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube, which does an excellent job of humanizing and redeeming her.

#pride and prejudice #pride and prejudice 1995 #the rewatch rewind

On a perfect ensemble cast, updating Old Hollywood, loving things for their flaws, and more. Transcript coming soon

My love for this movie is difficult to express, but here is my attempt.

Script below the break

One thing that I learned relatively recently that explains a lot is that apparently, Jonathan Lynn screened the movie His Girl Friday for the cast of Clue to demonstrate the feel he wanted for this movie. Even though Clue was made in the 1980s, it takes place in the 1950s, and was intentionally mimicking the style of fast-talking screwball comedies from the 1930s and ‘40s. So while I still consider watching Singin’ in the Rain in 2002 my proper introduction to Old Hollywood, falling in love with Clue a couple years earlier really prepared me to fall in love with old movies. Characters who look glamorous and sophisticated but are actually goofballs getting involved in ridiculous situations is my jam, and Clue takes what classic screwballs did with that to a whole new level. The script brilliantly combined several different types of both old-fashioned and updated comedy, and the perfect cast brought it to life in the best possible way. I don’t know if the His Girl Friday screening had any real impact, but regardless, every member of the cast fully understood the assignment and absolutely crushed it. A big part of what makes this movie so rewatchable is that everybody is so on all of the time that it’s fun to focus on what they’re doing in the background. Martin Mull is an amazing confidently clueless Colonel Mustard. Lesley Ann Warren gives Miss Scarlet just the right amount of sass. Christopher Lloyd makes Professor Plum sleazy enough that we get the picture without it ever getting too uncomfortable. Eileen Brennan nails Mrs. Peacock’s barely-holding-it-together-but-can-still-judge-you temperament. Mr. Green is accident prone which means he brings in the physical comedy, and Michael McKean fully commits to it. Of the main characters, Mrs. White has the fewest lines, but Madeline Kahn makes her presence known, doing absolutely everything possible with what she’s given, and improvising one of the greatest, funniest speeches in movie history. Jonathan Lynn discouraged improvisation on the set in general, but Kahn going on and on about the flames on the side of her face was too hilarious not to include. This devotion to delivering the lines exactly as written meant that Tim Curry as the butler Wadsworth, who ultimately figures out what happened and explains the whole thing, had to basically memorize a dictionary, and he killed it and I love him for it. When I was younger, I used to think I had a crush on Wadsworth, but I eventually came to realize that I just wanted to be Wadsworth, with the confidence to solve a puzzle and the eloquence to explain the solution in a highly entertaining, if long-winded, way.

I understand that they were trying to use the multiple endings to represent how the game is different every time, and also as a bit of a publicity stunt, but it kind of backfired. Theater-going audiences found it confusing, and the movie initially flopped. Thankfully with the home video version that included all three endings, Clue eventually did gain the cult following it deserves. But the problem is, in trying to accommodate three different solutions, the mystery gets lost in the middle, and none of the endings actually track. Yvette’s death is the part that makes the least sense – we clearly see that Mrs. Peacock and Mrs. White were both elsewhere seconds beforehand, so endings B and C don’t work, and in ending A Yvette was working with the killer so what she says right before she is killed doesn’t make any sense. For all of Wadsworth’s explanations, each ending leaves many unanswered questions, and they kind of draw attention to this in two of the endings, with one character saying, “There’s still one thing I don’t understand” and somebody else interjecting, “ONE thing?” Clearly this was meant to be a comedy rather than a serious murder mystery, but I do feel like if they weren’t trying to be so gimmicky, they could have made the mystery part work too (see Poe Party). Although in some ways, I kind of love that Clue doesn’t make sense. It feels perfectly consistent to have these characters who are pretending to be serious and dignified when they’re really all very silly people get caught up in a murder mystery with three endings that don’t work. When I point out Clue’s plot holes, it’s more like gently ribbing a friend than cinematic critique. I have to analyze the flaws in the story because of who I am as an overthinker, but I don’t think the flaws make it bad; if anything, they increase my enjoyment of the movie. It’s like a game: spot all the inconsistencies, and then realize that none of them matter. Because ultimately, fans of this movie aren’t here for the story; we’re here for the cast and the vibes. I don’t really know how to describe it, but while there are certainly other fun mystery-parody-type comedies out there, none of the others I’ve seen has quite the same tone as Clue, and that’s another reason I keep rewatching it.

And from an aroace perspective, Clue is great because there really is no love story. I mean, people mention spouses and affairs, and jealousy is floated as a possible motive for murder, but none of the characters that we see fall in love with each other during the course of the movie. Professor Plum does hit on Miss Scarlet a bit, but her reaction is very, “What the hell is wrong with you? We have way more important things to worry about right now.” When the cop shows up, in order to prevent him from finding out about the murders, some of the characters pretend to be making out with the bodies as if they’re alive, which is very weird on many levels, but it’s kind of a great illustration of the ridiculousness of allonormativity. If the cop had looked twice at them he would have noticed something was off, but of course adults at a party are going to be making out, nothing to see here, moving on. I always thought this part was hilarious when I was younger, and now that I understand my identity better I can articulate my appreciation for the way this movie portrays people who are focused on romance as the weird ones. Obviously that’s specific to this situation – like, I think most alloromantic people would agree that being locked in a murder house is not the best time to pursue romance. But aromantic stories are so rare that I’ll take whatever I can find. When Clue mentions sex, it’s usually either as a punchline (“Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage”) or part of a motive, since most of the blackmail victims are being blackmailed for something to do with sex. The sexual content is mostly in the background, adding to the vibes without pulling too much focus, kind of like some of my favorite classic films noirs. And this whole movie is so silly that I don’t feel like the sexiness is really meant to be taken seriously. Asking how an asexual person could possibly enjoy a film filled with so many blatantly allosexual characters would be just as ridiculous as asking how a person who had never killed anyone could possibly enjoy a film filled with so much murder. These characters clearly weren’t meant to be too relatable. But I still appreciate getting to see them on an evening when they’re at least mostly focused on things besides romance and sex.

I truly believe that Clue is a great movie that has something for everyone, and highly recommend it to anyone listening who hasn’t seen it, but at the same time, I am incapable of separating the movie from my own nostalgia. I can’t imagine what I would think of this movie if I watched it today for the first time because I would be a fundamentally different person if I hadn’t seen Clue a zillion times when I was young. Not only did it inform my taste in movies going forward, but it also shaped my understanding of the world, in a way. I think like most children, I once assumed adults knew what they were doing, but this movie showed me a bunch of adults who didn’t have the slightest idea, which was simultaneously terrifying and comforting. It also changed the way I talked, because I used to quote this movie constantly. I do it less now, but there was a time when instead of “I wasn’t talking to you” I would always say, “I was asking Miss Scarlet!” Or when somebody was looking for a key, I’d go, “Never mind about the key; unlock the door!” If anybody said, “Maybe…” with a long pause, I’d have to follow it with “Mr. Boddy killed the cook!” And similarly, “Oh who cares?” always had to be followed by, “That guy doesn’t matter! Let him stay locked up for another half an hour! The police will be here by then, and there are TWO DEAD BODIES IN THE STUDY!!!” And if anyone got confused about numbers, I’d helpfully chime in, “Even if you were right, that would be one plus one plus two plus one, not one plus two plus one plus one.” I could go on, but I’d end up quoting the whole movie, because I’m pretty sure I’ve managed to work every single line into a non-Clue-related conversation at least once. Often people just stare at me blankly, but it’s fun quoting it to my siblings because they usually respond with the next line, and we can go through whole scenes if nobody stops us. I have so many fun memories of reciting and analyzing this movie with them, arguing about things like whether Mr. Boddy says, “It’s only glass” or “It’s hunky glass” about the conservatory wall – it’s definitely “only” but my sister will not be convinced. Memories of my little brother adorably misunderstanding lines, thinking that Mrs. White’s husband had a “big fair” with Yvette, or that Mrs. Peacock said, “Oh I got a horse!” instead of “Oh my god of course!” or that blackmail was what those dark brown UPS trucks delivered. At one point, I wrote a script for Master Detective, which had the same basic premise as Clue – a bunch of blackmail victims congregated in a house to confront their blackmailer and his accomplices – but made even less sense. I didn’t back it up so it disappeared when that computer died, thankfully, but I still remember enough of it to cringe about. Since all the suspects had color names, I decided all the murder victims needed themed names as well, so I named them all after body parts to go with Mr. Boddy and thought I was so clever. I don’t remember most of them anymore, but I know there was a Mr. Elbow and a Mrs. Toenail. I also remember at one point I wrote in the directions something like, “It’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. In fact, Miss Peach drops a pin” and again was delighted by my own cleverness. My brother and I used to act it out with toys, and one time, after the dead body of the butler had been thrown out the window for some reason right before somebody else was arriving, my brother was being silly and had the new person pick up the dead body and say, “I brought your butler back!” seemingly without realizing that the butler was dead, and I thought that was so hilarious that I added it into the script, and it’s still my favorite part that I remember. It was a bad script, but in my defense I was very young, and anyway my point is, Clue inspired me to be creative in a fun way, without worrying about taking my work or myself too seriously, which is the attitude I’ve tried to take into making this podcast.

#clue #clue movie #the rewatch rewind

On glamorous facades, reflecting truth through layers of deception, possibly too many behind-the-scenes stories, and more. Transcript coming

What a glorious feeling

Script below the break

A big part of what makes Singin’ in the Rain such a perfect introduction to Old Hollywood is that the songs are from Old Hollywood and the story is about Old Hollywood. It’s so fascinating to watch the characters figuring out the technical aspects of adding sound to a medium that modern audiences automatically associate with sound. But even beyond that, this movie breaks the illusion of Hollywood glamor while still sort of trying to hide behind that illusion, in a way that almost feels like it’s laughing at itself. So much of the story is about how movie magic relies on facades and deception. The movie starts with a red-carpet interview where Don tells of his rise to fame and his motto: “Dignity, always dignity,” while the audience sees flashbacks of his very undignified beginnings. Lina is on screen looking quietly glamorous for about 10 minutes before she finally speaks, revealing what the silence of her films has concealed: her voice is almost unbearably squeaky and obnoxious. So in order to make her presentable in a talking picture – which eventually becomes a musical – her voice is dubbed by Kathy. Initially the plan is to credit Kathy as Lina’s voice and use this to help launch her to stardom, but Lina threatens to sue the studio unless they force Kathy to be her voice indefinitely without credit. I don’t think it was usually quite that dramatic, but uncredited dubbing happened all the time. In previous episodes, I’ve mentioned Marni Nixon, who dubbed the singing for many iconic performances, such as Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, without credit at the time, although now her contributions are kind of general knowledge, at least among movie buffs. But we don’t even have to go that far to find an example: it happened in Singin’ in the Rain itself! Betty Noyes, also known for singing “Baby Mine” in the Disney movie Dumbo, sang for Debbie Reynolds in a couple of her songs without credit, notably including “Would You?” which Kathy is meant to be dubbing for Lina. So Betty Noyes sang for Debbie Reynolds when she was singing for Jean Hagen. (Part of the time, anyway. The “Singin’ in the Rain” reprise that Kathy sings for Lina behind the curtain was definitely Debbie Reynolds’s voice.) Even more ironically, when Kathy is dubbing Lina’s dialogue (“Nothing can keep us apart, our love with last ‘til the stars turn cold”), that was Jean Hagen’s normal speaking voice, so Jean Hagen dubbed Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen. I just can’t get over how blatantly these filmmakers went, “Hollywood is fake and yes that includes us” – although I suppose it was much less blatant at the time, I’m not sure at what point all of this became so well-known.

Learning about the dubbing didn’t decrease my love for this movie, although some of the other behind-the-scenes trivia kind of did – specifically the fact that nobody seemed to have a very good time working with Gene Kelly because he was so demanding and impatient, particularly with then 19-year-old Debbie Reynolds, who was not a very experienced dancer, which Kelly found exasperating, even though he knew about it when she got the role. Apparently at one point Fred Astaire – also a notoriously demanding perfectionist – found her crying under a piano at the studio and offered to help her with her dancing. She learned fast and committed hard, literally bursting blood vessels in her feet during the “Good Morning” number. Reynolds later famously said that Singin’ in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things she ever had to do. Not that she was the only one who worked hard. Gene Kelly was sick with a 103-degree fever when he performed one of the most famous scenes in Hollywood history, dancing and singing to the title song. I used to view this as admirable, but now I’m like, maybe they could have waited to film it until he got better? Similarly, Donald O’Connor, who was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day at the time, had to rest in the hospital for several days after filming the “Make ‘Em Laugh” scene, and again, it’s like, it’s an incredible performance in a great number, but was it really worth going to the hospital for? Both the story within this movie and the story of how it was made raise some very interesting questions about the “point” of motion pictures – as art, as entertainment, and as an industry – that are still being wrestled with today. Personally, I don’t believe anyone should be forced to risk their health for their job, but at the same time I appreciate how dedicated everyone involved was to making this masterpiece the best it could possibly be. It certainly paid off in this instance. It’s easy for me to say now that it would have been worth making a slightly worse movie if that meant protecting the well-being of the actors, but maybe if it was worse I wouldn’t have quite fallen in love with it to this degree and my life would look very different. So I still don’t know how to feel about all this. And I don’t even know how much it matters anymore, given that the only major cast member still alive is Rita Moreno, whom I absolutely would not have recognized without seeing her name in the credits, and I don’t think she personally was injured on this set – although she was originally supposed to sing “I’ve Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’” which then got absorbed into the “Beautiful Girl Montage” that she wasn’t part of, which is a major bummer because she deserved a bigger role in this.

Anyway, speaking of complicated feelings, let’s talk about the romantic aspects of Singin’ in the Rain. The romance between Don and Kathy is an important part of the story, and while that’s a little disturbing knowing how terribly Kelly treated Reynolds on set, and that he was approximately twice her age, their characters’ relationship within the movie is mostly very sweet and I don’t really have a problem with it. And I appreciate how much screentime is devoted to the friendship between Don and Cosmo, which Don is shown continuing to value just as much as he always did even after he starts seeing Kathy. It’s always great to see characters refusing to follow the amatonormative idea of a relationship hierarchy, with every other relationship falling far below one’s romantic partnership. I love the scene in Don’s house that leads to the “Good Morning” number partly because it’s an important turning point in the story and it’s a great song, but also because it shows Don and Kathy and Cosmo as a trio, not a couple with a third wheel, which is so lovely to see. But though Don does his best to resist amatonormativity, it still pursues him rather relentlessly in the form of his costar, Lina Lamont. The studio leaks rumors that Don and Lina are romantically involved to increase publicity for their films, and Lina seems to believe them, despite Don’s adamant assertions that, “There is nothing between us. There has never been anything between us. Just air.” Their relationship is yet another example of a Hollywood façade, and one of my favorite scenes is when they’re working on a silent film and pretending to be madly in love when they’re in the middle of a fight. Their scene ends with a kiss, and as soon as the director yells, “Cut!” Don pushes Lina away in disgust, but she is so sold on their romance that she says, “Oh Donny, you couldn’t kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy weensy bit!” to which he retorts, “Meet the greatest actor in the world! I’d rather kiss a tarantula!” It would be easy to attribute many of Lina’s actions to jealousy after Don falls in love with Kathy, which was definitely an important motivation, but it wasn’t her only motivation. Because while she is portrayed as relatively clueless, she has to know that the rise of talking pictures is bad for her. It’s not just that she’s losing her man, she’s also losing her career. When she tries to use her star power to force Kathy to work solely as her voice, part of that is certainly to get in the way of Don and Kathy’s happiness together, but I would argue that more of it was a desperate attempt to remain in an industry that was moving on without her. Lina is portrayed as the villain, and granted some of the things she does are pretty awful, but at the same time one can’t help feeling sorry for her. She was taken in by the glamor of Hollywood, unable to see that everything from her romance to her popularity was make-believe, and suddenly her entire life is crashing around her. We cheer when the curtain opens to reveal that Kathy is singing for Lina, but we also cry for her a little – at least, I do. I find Lina to be a thoroughly fascinating and compelling character, and Jean Hagen gives one of my all-time favorite performances (she was nominated for an Oscar and absolutely should have won), and I really want to know what happens to her after the events of the movie. Hopefully she realizes that she doesn’t need a man, least of all one who hates her like Don does, and finds a new career that makes her happy.

The thing I find so compelling about this movie is that while it exposes Hollywood glamor as a sham, it also shows that when you see through that, there’s often still something valuable underneath. The smoke and mirrors of movie magic add to the entertainment value, but fundamentally, movies are stories, and storytelling is a deep-rooted feature of humanity. Sometimes when I tell people that I enjoy old movies, they assume that means I’m into the fancy costumes and larger-than-life stars, and like, I guess that’s part of it, but mostly I just really enjoy good stories that are told well, and that’s what a lot of old movies are. And it’s not just Hollywood that tries to glamorize people and their stories; our whole society does it, too, only to a slightly lesser extent. Just as Lina needed to conceal her unpleasant voice and the studio felt that Lockwood and Lamont would sell more tickets if people thought they were actually dating, or just as people thought Debbie Reynolds’s voice wasn’t strong enough for all of Kathy’s songs, normal people in everyday life feel the need to disguise facets of their identity that are less socially acceptable. Don’t act too queer, conform to your assigned gender role, don’t infodump about your hyperfixations; in short, put on a show to pretend to be “normal.” But just as nobody is really as glamorous and flawless as movie stars’ personas pretend to be, nobody is really normal either. Hopefully our society will someday get to the point where people don’t have to keep up this façade, and perhaps future movies will reflect that. But for now, it’s difficult to imagine a more perfect illustration of how the film industry reflects society than the layered deceptions of Singin’ in the Rain. It’s sort of halfway between satire and an honest reflection, and it works remarkably well as both. But it’s also very easy to just watch it as a fun musical without thinking too hard about any of this. I just happen to greatly enjoy overthinking the stories I love, and this happens to be one that lends itself to much overthinking, which is one of the many reasons why I love it.

#singin in the rain #stanley donan #gene kelly #donald o'connor #debbie reynolds #jean hagen #the rewatch rewind

On an iconic duo, a delightful supporting cast, dress drama, non-sexual intimacy, and more. Transcript coming soon

Heaven, I'm in heaven...

Script below the break

This was the fourth film that Fred and Ginger made together, but only the second in which they had starring roles, and the first that was written specifically for them. Two of their previous films – 1933’s Flying Down to Rio and 1935’s Roberta – gave them relatively small parts, although their scenes were unquestionably the highlights. In Flying Down to Rio, they got fourth and fifth billing and are barely in it, but they caused a splash with their one dance number, and an iconic duo was born. They got second and third billing in Roberta, in which they basically function as the B romantic pair, with Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott as the A couple. Fred and Ginger’s first starring roles had been in 1934’s The Gay Divorcee, which was an adaptation of the Broadway musical Gay Divorce. Critics of Top Hat (including Astaire himself) complained that it was basically a rehash of The Gay Divorcee, and like, I can see their point: both films have a weird mistaken identity story and feature essentially the same cast filling very similar roles – with the notable change from Alice Brady to Helen Broderick in the “Ginger’s older relative/friend” role. But while I also enjoy The Gay Divorcee, somehow I feel like Top Hat just works better. The story makes at least a little bit more sense, and they didn’t devote a quarter of the runtime to a single interminable musical number like The Gay Divorcee did with the frickin Continental… although The Piccolino came dangerously close to replicating that. After Top Hat, Fred and Ginger made five more films with RKO in the 1930s: 1936’s Follow the Fleet, in which they were basically the B couple like they had been in Roberta, although they did get top billing in this one; 1936’s Swing Time, which is mostly very good and would probably have made it onto this podcast if not for that one blackface number; 1937’s Shall We Dance, which I kind of slept on for a while but now I think is probably my second favorite of theirs, although the ending drags a bit; 1938’s Carefree, possibly their weirdest movie, which involves hypnotism; and 1939’s The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, which I find to be disappointingly forgettable. Then, after 10 years apart, they reunited for MGM’s The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, which is basically Fred and Ginger fan fiction and it makes me so happy that it exists.

While there were lots of other dancing musicals being made in Hollywood around this time, the Astaire/Rogers ones feel like their own genre, and not just because of the stars. I think a big part of what makes Top Hat feel like the quintessential Fred and Ginger film is the supporting cast. Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick, Erik Rhodes, and Eric Blore were each in at least one other Fred and Ginger movie, but this is the only one that has all four of them. Edward Everett Horton excelled at playing the kind of guy who thinks he’s in control of every situation, but actually has no clue what’s going on, and he’s especially in his element as Horace Hardwick, convinced that he can get to the bottom of everyone’s strange behavior while never suspecting that he could end all the confusion just by meeting Dale. Helen Broderick delivers wisecracks in a brilliantly dry, cynical tone that contrasts with Horton’s bumbling to great comedic effect. Their characters don’t seem to have a very functional marriage, but they also don’t really seem to mind that. Typically the “haha, married couples hate each other” types of jokes really irritate me, but Horace and Madge are such ridiculous characters that it’s actually kind of funny when they do it. And then there’s Erik Rhodes, whose absurdly over-the-top Italian characterization in Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee so offended Mussolini that both those films were banned in Italy. Personally I feel like Top Hat’s portrayal of Venice as a giant white soundstage is probably more insulting to Italians than a guy doing a bad accent and being silly is, but I don’t know, maybe it’s still offensive. To me, as a non-Italian, I just think Erik Rhodes is very funny as Alberto Beddini, the dressmaker whose clothes Dale is modeling. He has some truly excellent lines, like, “Never again will I allow women to wear my dresses!” and “I am no man; I am Beddini!” Despite his declarations of love for Dale, he is extremely queer-coded, while also interestingly being one of the most masculine characters in the film, which is…kind of the opposite of how male characters are typically queer-coded. So Alberto is very silly but also quite fascinating. Eric Blore was in half of the Fred and Ginger movies and he’s always hilarious. In Top Hat he plays Horace’s valet, Bates, who always refer to themselves in the plural (“We are Bates, sir”), so the next time someone complains to you about this so-called newfangled trend of young people messing with pronouns, feel free to point out that at least one middle-aged man was doing that way back in 1935. One of my favorite exchanges in the movie is when Horace is trying to explain to Bates that Jerry seems to have gotten into a perilous situation with a woman by saying, “He has practically put his foot right into a hornets’ nest” and Bates respond with, “But hornets’ nests grow on trees, sir.” “Never mind that. We have got to do something.” “What about rubbing it with butter, sir?” “You blasted fool, you can’t rub a girl with butter!” “My sister got into a hornets’ nest and we rubbed HER with butter, sir!” “That’s the wrong treatment, you should have used mud – never mind that!” It has nothing to do with anything but it makes me laugh every time. This supporting cast adds a silly, somewhat Vaudevillian aspect to Top Hat that no Fred and Ginger film would be complete without.

Of course, Fred and Ginger movies are better known for a different somewhat Vaudevillian aspect: their songs. It’s very interesting to watch Top Hat from a musical history perspective because it was made before the advent of the book musical – that is, a show where the songs are fully integrated into the story and used to tell a specific narrative. The songs in this movie do sort of advance the plot, but the lyrics are generic enough that they stand alone completely out of context. It’s kind of a bridge between the disjointed songs and scenes of vaudeville and the continuously flowing story of book musicals. All the music in Top Hat was written by the legendary Irving Berlin, including two solo numbers for Fred: “No Strings (I’m Fancy Free)” which is what Jerry is dancing to in the hotel when he disturbs Dale, and “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” which is part of his show; and three numbers for both Fred and Ginger to dance to: “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (to Be Caught in the Rain)?” for soon after they meet, before Dale thinks that Jerry is Horace, “Cheek to Cheek” when they’re in love but Dale is conflicted because she thinks he’s married to Madge, who is confusingly encouraging them to dance, and “The Piccolino” after Dale finally learns Jerry’s true identity. Both Astaire and Rogers were significantly better dancers than singers, but typically Fred did most of the singing, and the only song he doesn’t sing in Top Hat is the Piccolino, apparently because he didn’t like it, so Ginger sings it first and then an offscreen chorus repeats it. My favorite number in the film has always been “Isn’t this a Lovely Day (to Be Caught in the Rain)?” because I love the way Jerry starts dancing fancier and fancier and is pleasantly surprised that Dale can keep up with him, and it’s fun that Ginger got to wear pants for once, and I also just really enjoy that song. There was a time soon after I first fell in love with this movie when I tried to make saying the word “lovely” a lot part of my personality, mainly inspired by this song. I truly enjoy all the numbers, even if I do think The Piccolino goes on a bit too long, although, again, it’s not nearly as painfully long as The Continental in The Gay Divorcee, which it’s clearly meant to pay homage to. But Fred and Ginger’s most famous dance number – certainly in this film, and also probably in any of their films – is “Cheek to Cheek.” It is pure, breathtaking magic, and even knowing about the major drama with Ginger’s dress in no way detracts from that.

Now, when it comes to watching Top Hat from an aroace perspective, even I cannot deny that this movie in general, and the “Cheek to Cheek” number specifically, is extremely romantic. The main storyline is Jerry immediately falling for Dale and flirting with her until she falls for him, and then her attempting to suppress her feelings when she thinks he’s married to her best friend. But somehow, even watching it as a young teen who had no idea that I was aroace, this felt different from other romantic films I’d seen. I remember feeling irritated the first time I read a description of Fred and Ginger’s dancing as their version of making love because “ugh, why do people have to make everything about sex?” It took me a while to realize that not only is that an apt description, but it’s also part of what drew me to them in the first place. Because despite the way the terms “making love” and “being intimate” are now used almost exclusively as synonyms for “having sex,” they don’t necessarily have to be. There are other ways of experiencing and expressing love and intimacy besides sex. It’s just that our allonormative society puts sex on such a high pedestal and portrays it as the One True Form of Intimacy that all other forms are devalued to the point that often they feel barely worth mentioning. And I do feel like when some people talk about Fred and Ginger this way, what they’re implying is “Their dances were the Hays Code era version of sex scenes.” And, granted, it’s quite possible that that was the intent. But nothing about their dancing is inherently sexual, and yet, it would be hard to deny that it’s extremely intimate. So as someone who craves non-sexual intimacy, in a world where that concept almost seems oxymoronic, it’s so encouraging to see these characters express that. Of course, I don’t want exactly what they have – for one thing, I’m a terrible dancer, despite my one year of tap lessons in 2nd grade. And for another, what they have is way too romantic for me. But although I could never have articulated this at the time, just seeing this example of extreme intimacy coming in other, non-sexual forms as a young obliviously asexual person was so important. It gave me some armor against the onslaught of allo- and amatonormative messages implying that sexual relationships are inherently more valuable and valid than any other kind of relationship. Top Hat ends with the implication that Jerry and Dale are about to get married, so I guess we’re meant to infer that their relationship will eventually become sexual, but I don’t see how anyone could watch this movie and still think that a sexless marriage consisting of dance numbers like “Cheek to Cheek” would be any less valid than a sexual marriage. Like so many of my favorite movies, it’s not exactly ace representation, but it’s easy to imagine many of the characters in Top Hat as ace, and often that’s as good as it gets.

#top hat #fred astaire #ginger rogers #the rewatch rewind

On lightening the darkness, playing with tropes, independent filmmakers continuing to demonstrate their brilliance, and more. Transcript com

Here we go again, we're changing the scene.

Script below the break.

So here’s the thing about film noir. In general, I enjoy it: I think it’s a fascinating filmmaking style and a very effective technique to tell a certain type of story, and two of my other top 40 most frequently rewatched films – Notorious and Gaslight – are fairly noir-esque, but also, film noir can get very dark. Every November, along with many film lovers on the internet, I celebrate Noirvember, a time to watch and appreciate film noir. In 2015, I actually managed to watch 30 noirs in Noirvember, and by the end of the month I noticed that it was really getting to me. I was starting to feel a constant vague sense of unease, dread, and despair. So in every November since then I’ve forced myself to consume noirs somewhat more moderately. I must have known that Gilded Lily was going to be more of a parody and not like one of the darker noirs. The group was called Shipwrecked Comedy, after all. But even Poe Party had had some pretty dark moments. I’m sure I expected jokes in The Case of the Gilded Lily, but I was utterly floored by just how laugh-out-loud funny the whole darn film was. It wasn’t dark at all, at least compared to most noirs or even to Poe Party. There wasn’t even any murder! The first time I watched it, I must have missed at least half the jokes because I was still laughing at prior gags. The plot was just as complicated and twisty as most noirs, but that first time I was barely paying attention because, again, too much laughing. Therefore, once I finished it, I naturally had to immediately rewatch it several times to pick up on the jokes and plot points I’d missed, and I was delighted but not at all surprised to find that it held up very well. I don’t recall exactly how many times I’d seen it before the link was made public on December 11, but by the end of 2017 I’d watched it nine times. I then watched it four times in 2018, six times in 2019, five times in 2020, three times in 2021, and four times in 2022. And I still think the jokes are funny. So if you haven’t watched it, you absolutely should, it’s still available for free on YouTube (link in the show notes) and it’s like the length of one episode of a TV show.

There are so many different types of humor in this film, and all of them are great. There’s the whole playing with and making fun of noir tropes aspect, including several instances of characters interrupting each other’s voiceovers, a camera rotation into a Dutch angle causing Ford to fall over, and Wilhelmina trying to smoke and drink to fit in but not quite understanding the concept. That last one serves the dual purpose of making fun of the excessive smoking and drinking common in noirs and further developing one of my favorite types of character: the confidently clueless. The Case of the Gilded Lily has two of these: Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, the starlet who’s being blackmailed, played by Sarah Grace Hart, and Dash Gunfire, Ford’s rival private eye, played by Joey Richter. Wilhelmina’s cluelessness mostly makes her happy and charming, whereas Dash’s makes him frustrated and annoying, and it’s very entertaining to see two such similar yet very different characters in the same project. Basically everything either of them says or does makes me laugh. There’s also some great physical comedy, mainly from Clayton Farris as the disgruntled Buster Keaton. Similarly, there’s humor with the set and props, like when Cliff Calloway (played by Tom DeTrinis) switches between smoking a cigar and a cigarette in the same scene depending on who he’s talking to, and when Officer Claudette Knickerbocker (played by Joanna Sotomura) is talking to Ford on the phone about how hot she finds Cliff, and it cuts away to Ford putting down the phone and pouring himself a drink and when we see Claudette again her office is in complete disarray. And then there are all the hilarious running gags. Like how whenever someone brings up that Wilhelmina’s real name is Lily THomas, Ford has to argue that it should be pronounced Thomas. And how every time the scene changes after Vivian sings “A Change of Scene” the first time, there’s a little reprise of her singing about how we’re changing the scene. And the way Fig is obsessed with cookies and keeps getting them – I am truly in awe of Sinéad Persaud’s brilliance in writing a character for herself that required her to eat lots of cookies. What an iconic move. And then there’s the running bit where Ford will pause and stare into the distance dramatically before mentioning The War, much to Fig’s confusion, until it’s finally revealed that The War was a movie he and Claudette acted in when they were children. Another running bit is the bartender Bixby Crane (played by Dante Swain) repeatedly saying his own name unnecessarily, and taking things very literally in unexpected ways. This bit was particularly funny to me because my high school band director’s name was Parker Bixby, and when we marched in the Tournament of Roses parade, one of the announcers commented, “I want to change my name to Parker Bixby.” Later somebody put that on t-shirts and Mr. Bixby ended up with one. So seeing a character named Bixby who was obsessed with his own name made me laugh even harder than it would have if they’d picked any other name for that character.

And then there’s the Core Four. Sean and Sinéad’s characters and dynamic were very similar in A Tell-Tale Vlog, Poe Party, and Gilded Lily: both Poe and Ford are loners who secretly desire friends, and both Lenore and Fig are outgoing and talkative and enjoy winding up Sean’s character, who begrudgingly appreciates them despite his best efforts to abhor them. But of course, they are unquestionably different characters, and I think they both did an excellent job of adjusting their mannerisms to make them feel distinct. Mary Kate and Sarah’s characters, on the other hand, are essentially the complete opposite of what they played in Poe Party. Annabel was sweet and naïve and wanted everyone to be happy, whereas Vivian is bitter and jaded and having affairs with four different men in five different states (another great line) and doesn’t seem to care about anyone besides herself. Going straight from an ingenue to a femme fatale and absolutely nailing both was an excellent way for Mary Kate Wiles to demonstrate her incredible acting range. I’d already been a huge fan of her work for over five years at that point, and I was still blown away. Vivian doesn’t even get that much screentime, but gah, what MK does with her voice, like, just, close your eyes and listen to Annabel and then listen to Vivian, you can’t even tell they’re the same person. I feel like this also helps distinguish Edgar and Ford from each other. It’s a running theme in most Shipwrecked projects that Sean’s character is super into Mary Kate’s character, although they rarely end up together, and I can’t really explain why, but I don’t feel like Poe would be particularly into Vivian, nor would Ford be interested in Annabel. But I could be wrong about that, I don’t really understand how sexual or romantic attraction works. Anyway, all that being said, if I had to pick one single favorite aspect of The Case of the Gilded Lily, it would have to be Sarah Grace Hart as Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, mostly because she is absolutely hilarious, but also because she is so different from Emily Dickinson in Poe Party. Emily is forgotten by everyone the second after she introduces herself, whereas Wilhelmina is one of the most famous stars in Hollywood. Emily seems to know what’s going on, and I have a theory that she could have figured out the whole thing if people would have just listened to her, whereas Wilhelmina, bless her, is paying blackmail while also telling everyone what she’s being blackmailed for. Also it’s literally just… having a stage name. Not really something worth paying $20,000 per week to keep secret, especially if you’re just going to tell everyone anyway. But Sarah commits to this character so hard that you never once doubt that Willie would absolutely fall prey to this ridiculous scheme. She’s so earnestly oblivious in the most endearing and hilarious way that she’s probably my favorite Shipwrecked character, and possibly my favorite character in anything ever.

Classic film noir tended to be relatively sexually explicit for its time – at least, as much as it was allowed to be under production codes. In particular, the male protagonist was often led astray by his attraction to the sexy but dangerous femme fatale. The Persauds had said that they were inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit, another noir parody, which turns these sexy expectations around with a femme fatale type character who is, if not overtly asexual, certainly ace-coded – she’s married to a rabbit, and when asked what the attraction is, she says, and I quote, “He makes me laugh.” The Case of the Gilded Lily finds a different way to put a twist on the femme fatale trope with Vivian Nightingale, who is certainly not ace-coded, but also doesn’t seem to be particularly dangerous – at least in the Gilded Lily plot, I don’t know where Greater Gatsby is going yet. Vivian is a possible suspect, and Ford is very attracted to her, but she’s innocent and nothing bad really comes of her involvement in this story. She has an attitude of, “I have no clue how I got mixed up with you clowns, but I’ll be fabulous while I’m here" that you have to admire. Really the only romance in The Case of the Gilded Lily is the one between Wilhelmina Vanderjetski and Roger Haircremé, and that one is… questionable, to put it mildly. For one thing, Willie lied to Roger about her background to get him to marry her. For another, Roger saw through her ridiculous story but pretended not to, instead blackmailing her to pay off his gambling debts. When Fig and Ford uncover this, instead of being furious with her husband, Wilhelmina is delighted that the blackmailer was just her kind, loving husband who’d never do anything to hurt her. Typically I’m very much in favor of forgiveness, but in this case I really don’t think Roger deserves it. In a way, this could be seen as illustrating the harms of amatonormativity, showing that Wilhelmina thinks staying with a blackmailer is preferable to having no husband, but it definitely comes across as her genuinely believing that Roger has done nothing wrong. It’s weird, but I love the way this shifts the noir trope of sexy-romance-gone-wrong to be about a couple who was married at the start and has no intention of getting divorced at the end, and involves a woman who bears zero resemblance to a typical femme fatale.

#the case of the gilded lily #fig and ford #shipwrecked comedy #the rewatch rewind #please watch this short

On why we love this coming-of-age story that feels realistic despite its unrealistic premise. Transcript coming soon

My final guest episode, with not one but two very special guests!

Transcript below the break

It's it's terrible and like it's supposed to be bad. And you're like, supposed to think like, oh, it's- I feel bad for her, but I hadn't quite absorbed how awful that is. And it's like, I mean, that does happen, stuff like that. And it's like it's her fault when it very much was not for several reasons. But I just, it's just like, struck me as so much more disturbing to be like, OK, we're gonna have this undressed teenager that we took pictures of without her consent and blame her for it, and that was upsetting to me when I was just realizing that. But I also think that the scene when Clarisse confronts Mia about that is really well done. I think that they like, hit those emotional beats really well, and just like that, that she's really disappointed in her. But like Mia handles it well. And then I love when Joe comes in and sort of says, like “You were too harsh on her” and that they managed to slip in some levity with her with that moment of, like, “Her friends didn't help- Anna, Banana… Montana.” And I love that. And then that like, that's the moment when Clarisse says, “I have no idea what you're talking about” is great. But I also think it's like such a good point of, like, the thing. About like, “As a queen, I was too critical of the person who could become the next ruler of my country.” And he says, “No. As a grandmother, you were too harsh on your granddaughter.” And then that she takes that into the scene when they're in Mia's house talking about giving the speech or whatever, but she says, like, “I am first and foremost your grandmother.” And then that great moment when she hugs her and then just kind of goes, “Ah! I- I did it! I hugged someone!” is so great because she's been so emotionally distant and yeah. I just, I think that they really like they… they Julie Andrews-ified the queen but they didn't like make her completely like… soft and lovable. I mean, I guess it's kind of Mary Poppins too, where she's like, standoffish, but then also like sweet underneath.

#the princess diaries #garry marshall #anne hathaway #julie andrews #the rewatch rewind #i love this movie so much #and chatting about it with friends was so fun

On balancing silliness with seriousness, post-divorce friendship, getting engaged to a teddy bear, obscure Oscars trivia, and more.

Another new episode! Getting into the home stretch!

Script below the break

But as much as I love all the supporting characters, I don’t think I’d have watched this movie nearly as many times if not for the leads. William Powell brings just the right combination of sophistication and jadedness to the role of Godfrey, making it easy to believe that he was once a rich man but lost everything he had to a woman he loved who betrayed him. It’s beautiful to watch him rediscover his own purpose and humanity in response to the Bullocks’ kindness and choose to focus on the positive aspects of their quirks. When William Powell was offered the role of Godfrey, he agreed to take it only if Carole Lombard would play Irene, knowing that she would be perfect, and he was completely correct. Lombard absolutely kills it as Irene, flawlessly combining the dramatic naïveté of an overgrown toddler with a genuine desire to be a good and mature person. And the way Powell and Lombard play off each other is utterly delightful. Their first conversation sets up their dynamic beautifully – he’s rather amused by her, but she takes everything he says extremely seriously. Like when she asks him, “Why do you live in a place like this when there are so many nice places?” and he responds, “It’s because my real estate agent felt that the altitude would be very good for my asthma,” she doesn’t seem to know that he’s joking, and says, “Oh my uncle has asthma!” And he just rolls with it and replies, “No! Well, now there’s a coincidence!” This is already funny as written, but their delivery and facial expressions make it so much funnier. Then probably my favorite part of the movie is when Irene is sulking and trying to get Godfrey to notice her, but she mostly just comes across as ridiculous, and Cornelia is heckling her mercilessly. Godfrey is trying to act uninterested, but it’s clear from a few of his glances in her direction that he really does want to give her the attention she craves. It’s readily apparent from all of their scenes that they both thoroughly understood the assignment and knew how to play off each other. Powell and Lombard had worked together twice before and had even been briefly married to each other from 1931 to 1933. Despite the fact that things didn’t work out between them romantically in real life, they remained good friends, and seem to have only used their history to bring out the best performance in each other here. It is kind of funny that Godfrey keeps telling Irene that she’s way too young for him because it’s like, “You clearly didn’t think she was too young when you married her five years ago!” Mostly, though, it just makes me really happy as someone who has no interest in pursuing romantic relationships to know that it was Powell and Lombard’s post-divorce friendship that led to possibly the best movie that either of them ever made. It’s so encouraging to see the evidence that sometimes the relationship between two people can actually get better when they stop trying to make it romantic.

However, it took me a while to see things that way, because in the movie itself, Godfrey and Irene do end up together romantically. Once I learned that the actors were divorced in real life, my first thought was more, “Wow, amazing that they could still pretend to be in love after falling out of love.” In more recent rewatches, I’ve come to realize that the romance in the movie is very weird – which, to be fair, is quite usual for screwball comedies – but I think as an obliviously aromantic teenager it greatly informed what I thought romance was. Irene meets a nice man who helps her win a game against her awful sister and decides to be in love with him, so all she has to do is convince him that he’s also in love with her. Not understanding that romantic attraction was a thing that I was not experiencing, teenaged me thought that was how that worked: you just pick somebody and decide you have a crush on them, and if the other person has also picked you to be their crush, romance is born. Right? Apparently not. Anyway, in more recent rewatches, when it gets to the part where Godfrey tells Irene, “You’re grateful to me because I helped you to beat Cornelia. And I’m grateful to you because you helped me to beat life. But that doesn’t mean that we have to fall in love,” I’m like, “Correct! It doesn’t mean that! You don’t have to fall in love!” But the movie implies that Godfrey is suppressing his feelings for Irene because of the previous bad relationship that led to his homelessness, and it expects us to all be on board with the way Irene follows him after he quits and basically forces him to marry her. The older I get, the more this ending bothers me. I realize that it’s meant to be part of the screwball silliness of it all, and that it was inevitable for a movie like this to make the male and female lead end up together, but it’s like, can we maybe make sure that Godfrey is on board with that first? I can very much see their marriage going the same way as that of the actors who played them, with Irene and Godfrey ultimately concluding that they’re better suited as friends than lovers. But again, as a young person watching this movie, I thought their relationship was beautiful. Soon after I first got really into My Man Godfrey, my friend had a Build-A-Bear birthday party, and I named my bear Godfrey. I can’t remember who I was talking to or how this came up, but I remember making the declaration that if I was still single at 40, I would marry that Godfrey bear. So if you’re listening to this, consider yourself invited to our wedding in seven years. It probably won’t be much weirder than Irene and Godfrey’s wedding at the end of this movie.

And perhaps it was that touch of seriousness that led this mostly silly comedy to six Oscar nominations: Gregory La Cava for Best Director, Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind for Best Adapted Screenplay, William Powell for Best Actor, Carole Lombard for Best Actress, Mischa Auer for Best Supporting Actor, and Alice Brady for Best Supporting Actress. This made My Man Godfrey the first movie to be nominated in all four acting categories, which isn’t saying much because that was also the first year that the Oscars had four acting categories, but it remains the only film to this day to be nominated in all four acting categories without being nominated for Best Picture. And it was the only movie to be nominated in those six categories without winning anything until American Hustle, 77 years later. Of all the people nominated for Oscars for My Man Godfrey, only Alice Brady would ever win one, for In Old Chicago the following year. The director and one of the writers would each be nominated once more, also the following year, for Stage Door. William Powell had been nominated once before, for 1934’s The Thin Man, and would be nominated again for 1947’s Life With Father. But this was the only nomination for both Mischa Auer and Carole Lombard. Lombard in particular really wanted an Oscar and moved on to dramatic roles for a few years hoping that would help, but it didn’t. So she briefly returned to comedy before her career and life were tragically cut short by a plane crash in 1942, when she was only 33 years old. So, my age. I feel like, had Carole Lombard lived longer and continued to make more films in a similar vein, she probably would have made it into more than one of my top 40. The more I rewatch My Man Godfrey, the more impressed I become with her performance. This is one of the few old movies that actually has a blooper reel available, and that shows just how different her normal speech and facial expressions and mannerisms were from Irene’s. I have watched and enjoyed several of Lombard’s other films, but a lot of them are a bit too silly even for me, and I really wish she could have been in more of the still fun and kooky but not-quite-as-screwball-as-the-‘30s comedies that were just starting to become popular around the time of her death. But at least we get to see her in My Man Godfrey. Thank you, William Powell.

#my man godfrey #gregory la cava #william powell #carole lombard #this movie is so good #the rewatch rewind

On bad press, good jokes, songs that are so bad they're almost good, comedically clueless characters, steering away from romantic storylines

A movie that is so much better than its reputation implies.

Script below the break

So, first of all, let’s get this out of the way: as I mentioned at the end of last episode, this movie has often been cited as one of the worst films ever made. Aside from the whole question of whether it’s even possible to definitively rank something as subjective and vague as how “good” or “bad” a movie is, for Ishtar in particular, this feels like a highly unfair label. There were a lot of problems with making it, in terms of creative disagreements, political unrest in filming locations, and an enormous budget that kept growing, but plenty of movies with similar issues turn out okay. Most of the negative perceptions of this movie were stirred up by the press before and shortly after the film’s release, and it has been speculated that this was for two main reasons: one, Warren Beatty (who was also the producer) didn’t like dealing with press and had not permitted any reporters on set during filming, which they resented; and two, David Puttnam, who took over as head of Columbia Pictures during production of Ishtar and was well known for despising big-budget pictures, as well has having grudges against both Beatty and Hoffman, allegedly leaked negative stories about production to the media. So the movie was set up to fail at the box office, which it did, grossing just under $14.4 million against a budget of approximately $55 million. But, while there are definitely people who have seen it and not enjoyed it, which is fair enough, most of the people who strongly criticize it have never actually watched it. And despite all the conflict during production, the main people involved in making it still defend it, with Beatty calling it “a very good, not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman” and Hoffman quoted as saying, “I liked that film…just about everyone I’ve ever met that makes a face when the name is brought up has not seen it…I would do it again in a second,” and May stating in 2006, “If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”

A big part of that is because I’m always amused by characters who think they know exactly what’s going on but actually have no clue. Come to think of it, Cary Grant often played characters like that, although usually not quite to this extent. In Ishtar, Lyle and Chuck are in a completely different world from all the other characters, in the most entertaining way possible. There are several relatively subtle examples of this that took me a few rewatches to notice but are now some of my favorite parts of the movie, like when Lyle is an ice cream truck driver in New York and is so focused on coming up with his next song that he doesn’t notice the crowd of children trying to get him to stop and let them buy ice cream, or when Chuck finds out the American Embassy in Ishtar can’t easily issue him a new passport and punches a hole in the divider between offices and everyone else in the room goes to fix it while he and Lyle keep talking obliviously, or when a ton of pedestrians and cars are very conspicuously following both of them in Marrakech without them ever catching on. And there are more obvious examples, like toward the end when both the CIA and the rebel army have sent Chuck and Lyle into the desert hoping they’ll die there, and even after they’ve gotten lost their main worry is that they’re missing their performance at the hotel. Things like this happen constantly throughout the film, and they’re funny every time. While it’s mostly entertaining, their cluelessness can also be taken as criticism of the average American’s ignorance when it comes to foreign politics. When Jim Harrison mentions Gaddafi, Chuck asks, “Is that near here?” clearly under the impression that Gaddafi is the name of a country rather than the ruler of one. Chuck seems to have the basic understanding that good guys equal Americans and friends of Americans, and bad guys equal communists, while Lyle seems to have even less understanding than that. Jim Harrison and Shirra Assel are their complete opposites, with a much deeper comprehension of the complexities of the tension in the area, albeit with very different perspectives. Jim is often exasperated and bewildered by Chuck and Lyle’s cluelessness, but Shirra, while she sometimes gets a little frustrated with and definitely takes advantage of them, never reveals much disdain toward them the way Jim does. Isabelle Adjani plays Shirra completely straight, as though this is a very serious political thriller, and her gravity makes the film so much funnier. Beatty and Hoffman are similarly committed to their characters’ conviction that the main storyline is their rise to prominence as songwriters. Charles Grodin plays Jim as though he’s the only main character who fully understands what movie he’s in, and wishes he knew how to get out of it. And to me, that is a perfectly hilarious dynamic.

And speaking of complicated, let’s get into Ishtar’s portrayals of sex and romance. In the flashback portion, we see that Chuck was dating a woman named Carol (played by Carol Kane) and Lyle was married to a woman named Willa (played very briefly by Tess Harper, who doesn’t even get any lines), but both of them get dumped because they’re more focused on songwriting than their significant others. But in Ishtar and Morocco, both Chuck and Lyle are interested in Shirra – maybe not quite as much as they’re interested in their music, but almost. They both seem to think they’re competing for her affections, but she is clearly not remotely interested in doing anything with either of them beyond getting them to help her overthrow the Emir. Shirra reacts to their unwanted advances by either getting slightly annoyed or using their interest in her to get them to do what she wants. Even at the end of the movie, when she cares about them enough to save their lives, and even enjoy their music, you still don’t get the feeling that she’s interested in them romantically. When Chuck and Lyle are pursuing her, they’re the ones who are portrayed as weird for focusing on romance when there are so many other more important things going on, which is a refreshing break from the amatonormative message of so many movies that romance is the highest goal. Similarly, Chuck and Lyle are clearly sexually attracted to Shirra, but aside from her exposing her breasts to reveal that she’s a woman, there’s nothing sexual that goes on between them. There’s a great conversation between Jim and Chuck when Jim’s describing how Shirra and Lyle were alone in a hotel room together, and Jim is convinced that Shirra seduced Lyle and recruited him to her cause, but Chuck says, “Oh don’t be ridiculous, Lyle’s not a communist; he’s from the South! And I don’t think she’s that kind of girl.” And when Jim points out, “She’s a suspected terrorist,” Chuck responds with, “Granted, but that doesn’t mean she sleeps around!” So the allonormative assumption that everybody’s having sex all the time is portrayed as ridiculous. Of course, when I started enjoying this movie I had no idea that I was aroace or that that was even a thing, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I love this story that had multiple opportunities to go down romantic and/or sexual paths but actively chose not to. Lyle, Chuck, and Shirra all end the movie happy and, at least as far as we know, single, and not enough movies have that kind of ending. When you’re always made to feel like the weird one for not thinking everything should be about romance and sex, it’s so nice to see any characters who try to make this movie become more about those things portrayed as the unreasonable ones.

This movie is obviously not for everyone, but that’s true of pretty much every movie. The haters are going to keep hating, but it’s nice that there are multiple generations of audiences now who weren’t around for the negative press and can still discover and appreciate the fun silliness of it. Probably the worst result of the bad reviews and poor box office performance is the fact that Elaine May never directed another movie after Ishtar. (I mean, I guess technically she still could, but given that she’s in her 90s now, that seems unlikely.) And like, yes, by all accounts she was responsible for a significant amount of the conflict on set and prompted much of the overspending, but I can’t help thinking of several prominent male directors who have a reputation for working similarly and are hailed as geniuses, even if they direct an occasional flop. I do think part of it was that May herself was discouraged, both because she had such a rough time on set and because of the horrible media response, so she might not have wanted to direct again even if given the chance. But I don’t think it’s inaccurate to attribute at least some of the negativity aimed at her to sexism. Even now, 35 years post-Ishtar, there are still so few female directors in Hollywood, and when they succeed it’s taken as an anomaly, but when they fail it’s like, “goodbye,” and that needs to change. This is my most frequently rewatched movie that was directed by a woman, and one of only three in my entire top 40, along with Mamma Mia! (directed by Phyllida Lloyd) and Frozen (co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, who is a man, so I guess it would be more accurate to say there are only two and a half female-directed films in my top 40). I could definitely do better at seeking out films that were directed by women, but also, way more movies could be directed by women in the first place. Anyway, my point is, Ishtar probably wouldn’t have been quite so maligned if it had been made by a man, but it also probably wouldn’t have turned out nearly as enjoyable to me, so while I hate that it destroyed her career, I’m mostly very glad that Elaine May wrote and directed Ishtar.

#ishtar #elaine may #warren beatty #dustin hoffman #the rewatch rewind

On well written, brilliantly portrayed characters that transcend tropes, a beautifully developed relationship journey, alternative messages

The most underrated 1980s teen movie

Script below the break

I know the dynamic of a buttoned-down, over-organized control freak paired with a spontaneous, go-with-the-flow goofball has been done to death, but no movie does it better than The Sure Thing. The characters of Gib and Alison are so well developed that they feel like real people rather than a tired trope. Even though it’s fairly obvious from the moment Alison enters the story that she and Gib are ultimately going to end up together, their journey toward that predictable conclusion is never dull. Part of that is because of the obstacles they encounter on their journey across the country, but the main reason is because they were perfectly cast. Apparently both John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga were a lot like their respective characters at the time and therefore brought a lot of themselves to their roles. The whole “shotgunning a beer” bit was added because Cusack mentioned that was something he could do, and that became an important way to show the evolution of their characters and relationship. Initially, Rob Reiner didn’t even want to consider Cusack for the part of Gib because he was a minor, but the casting directors talked him into giving the then 16-year-old a chance, and Cusack’s audition convinced the director that he was the perfect Gib. Producer Roger Birnbaum went to court to have John Cusack emancipated and served as his legal guardian during filming. It is a little uncomfortable to know that Cusack was only 17 at the time of filming while his love interests were 20 and 21 – like, I know the age gap is only a few years, but he was technically a minor and they were technically adults, although their characters were all meant to be 18 or 19, so it’s not like the movie is promoting inappropriate relationships. Yes, it definitely would have been better to cast someone who was over 18, but at the same time, John Cusack does such an incredible job playing this character that I totally understand why they went ahead and cast him anyway. He plays Gib with the perfect balance of kind of a jerk but still kind of sweet that keeps the audience rooting for him while still criticizing his bad behavior. And the way he and Zuniga play off each other is endlessly compelling.

And they’re also very good at having serious moments together. Like right after that scene, when they’re in a fancy restaurant because it was the only place they could find that would take a credit card – oh how times have changed – Gib opens up about where his interest in outer space came from. Earlier in the movie, both with Alison and with other girls, he’s tried to use his knowledge of space and astronomy to impress/seduce women – not very effectively – but here he’s being vulnerable and genuine, and Alison’s reactions show that she recognizes and appreciates that. And then when they finally get to LA and separate, they both do such a great job of showing how much they have changed, while still remaining true to who their characters have been from the beginning. Alison starts to realize that her boyfriend Jason, whose idea of a good time is staying home, playing cards, and admiring the special hangers and flannel sheets, is not nearly as fun to be around as Gib. And after making such a deep personal connection with Alison, Gib starts to question whether an emotionless sexual encounter with the Sure Thing is really what he’s looking for. Neither of them say these things in so many words, but they make it abundantly clear how they’re feeling, and it’s very rewarding as an audience member to see the characters we’ve become so invested in reach that point in their journeys. But they’re also very mad at each other, mostly because they’ve fallen for each other against their will, and it isn’t until they somehow get back to the east coast (we never see how that happens, but I guess it’s not important) that they resolve this tension. And the way they reconcile through a paper that Gib has their English professor (played by Viveca Lindfors) read to the class is an amazing way end the movie. So basically, this is a story about two very well-written, perfectly cast characters who go on an extremely satisfying journey that is just as fun to watch the 20th time as the first.

And as I thought about it even more, I realized that, even though I’m positive that this was not the intention of any of the filmmakers, there is a way to interpret the character of Gib as being on the asexual spectrum. In the first half of the movie, he does appear to be in constant pursuit of sex, at least at first glance, but a lot of his attempts are kind of halfhearted. You get the feeling that he wants to be able to say he’s slept with a lot of people because his friends and society tell him that’s what will make him cool. He seems a lot happier and more comfortable when he’s stopped trying to seduce Alison, and ultimately, even though the Sure Thing is definitely willing to sleep with him, he decides he doesn’t want that anymore, despite having travelled across the country specifically to have sex with her. Obviously, there are a lot of different conclusions that could be drawn from this. I think a big one is that people who are socialized as boys, regardless of whether they’re asexual or not, are often given a very toxic and unhealthy message about what their sex lives should be like, including the idea that women are objects to be tricked into providing momentary pleasure, and that having lots of sex is what makes you a real man. So it’s rather refreshing to see a coming of age story that shows a young man maturing by actively choosing not to have sex with a woman who is given no name, and is only identified by her willingness to put out. And in some ways I don’t want to encourage the headcanon that Gib is asexual because I think it’s important to show that allosexual men are allowed to say “no” when it doesn’t feel right, and that that doesn’t make them less of a man. But I also think the disconnect between how Gib is expected to feel about the Sure Thing and how he actually feels when he meets her is very relatable to asexual people. Society’s messages about how “normal” people feel about sex and sexual attraction are very confusing to people who don’t feel that way. And I guess what this movie is trying to say is that some of those messages don’t apply even to allosexual people. I just wish it didn’t perpetuate the amatonormative message that sex and romance are vital aspects of the most important relationship in everyone’s lives. In the story that Gib writes to reveal to Alison that he didn’t sleep with the Sure Thing, he reveals that she asked, “Do you love me?” and that for the first time in his life, he knew that those were more than just words, and that if he said it, it would be a lie, so he said no and left. And again, part of that feels very amatonormative, but at the same time, the whole idea of being true to yourself and honest with any prospective partners is a good message for people of all romantic and sexual orientations.

#the sure thing #rob reiner #john cusack #daphne zuniga #the rewatch rewind

On why this is my favorite Hitchcock movie, reduced restrictions on sexual content, continued fascination with actors' relative ages, and mo

Time for another new episode!

Script below the break.

And I mean, obviously, a big part of that is because of Cary Grant. If I had to pick one movie that most perfectly displays everything I love about Cary Grant, I’d have to go with North by Northwest. In this movie, he’s simultaneously a comedian, a romantic lead, an action hero, and a confused victim of circumstance. His character is upset by all the awful things that happen to him but remains relatively unfazed and undaunted. He’s suave and sophisticated but also goofy and relatable. I love every moment of his performance. As always, he’s at his best when he’s being funny, so one of my favorite parts is when Roger is trying to escape from an art auction when Vandamm and his cronies have sealed off the exits, so he starts calling out ridiculous numbers, hoping someone will call the police to have him removed from the premises. Grant does such a great job of being disruptive in the most charming but silly way possible, relieving some of the tension without completely derailing the suspenseful tone of the story, and it’s so perfect. But he also plays the darker moments very well. In a lot of my other favorite Cary Grant movies, you can’t ever really take anything his character says at face value because he’s always joking or at least being a little sarcastic. In this movie, while Roger takes most things in his stride and doesn’t let them throw him too much, there are moments when he’s truly hurt or stunned, and he plays them very believably. It’s kind of jarring, in a good way, to see a man who is mostly poised despite all the chaos around him, actually get thrown off balance occasionally. Roger Thornhill generally doesn’t take himself or the world too seriously, but his tolerance for bullshit does have limits, and it’s interesting to see how he acts when he’s beyond tired of going with the flow. A lot of Hitchcock’s films start to feel kind of tedious after two or three watches because once you know where it’s leading, the building of suspense loses some of its intensity and can feel kind of draggy. But, aside from the fact that you kind of need to watch this one a few times to fully understand its convoluted plot, I could watch Cary Grant playing Roger Thornhill for ages without getting tired of it, which is one of the reasons I keep revisiting this one.

But I can’t give Grant all the credit. Every performance in this movie is excellent. James Mason is a delectably menacing Phillip Vandamm, and Jessie Royce Landis brings some welcome levity toward the beginning as Roger’s mother. And, of course, there’s Eva Marie Saint, who, as I alluded to at the end of last episode, is, at the time of recording, as far as I know, still alive at 99, making her the oldest living Oscar winner. She didn’t win an Oscar for North by Northwest – she won for her film debut in On the Waterfront five years earlier – but boy does she give a fascinating performance in this movie. She doesn’t even show up until about 45 minutes in, and at first her character just seems like a sexy love interest for Roger, who has had a very rough 45 minutes’ worth of story and could use a break. But then it’s revealed that oh no, she’s working for Vandamm! And then it’s like, but is she really? Wait, she’s actually spying on Vandamm! But then she shoots Roger? Oh, just kidding, they were blanks, she’s still a good guy, never mind. And now she’s in danger! The audience’s perception of Eve changes so many times that it must have been very difficult to keep track of how she needed to come across in each scene, but Saint absolutely nails it. She’s perfectly mysterious and even sinister when she needs to be, but easily transitions to open and vulnerable and likable when the audience is supposed to be rooting for her. It’s an extremely complicated role and it absolutely could not have been played better. And the way she and Grant interact throughout these transitions is brilliant. Roger’s perceptions of Eve follow a similar path to the audience’s, but not quite at the same time. For instance, while Roger and Eve are together in her train compartment, we see a porter deliver a note to Vandamm from her that says, “What should I do with him in the morning?” Which, on the one hand, is kind of weird, because like, how are they supposed to get a response back to her without Roger seeing it? But the purpose of that is obviously to show the audience that – gasp – Eve is not just some random woman Roger happened to run into; she’s involved in this somehow! But Roger doesn’t begin to suspect her until after he’s been crop-dusted and the hotel clerk tells him that George Kaplan checked out before he supposedly gave Eve instructions on where to meet him. So there’s a whole section when the audience knows something Roger doesn’t. But then later the opposite happens, when Eve shoots Roger during the confrontation in the Mount Rushmore cafeteria – both Roger and Eve know it’s fake, but the audience doesn’t until later.

While this movie is decidedly neither aromantic nor asexual, it does portray romance and sex in a somewhat unusual way. The character of Eve Kendall is rather similar to Alicia Huberman in Notorious, in that they both use sex for spy purposes – the main difference being that we never have any doubts about which side Alicia is on. As I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, characters faking sexual attraction to use sex for personal or political gain makes more sense to me as an asexual person than characters expressing genuine feelings of sexual attraction, which might explain why, in general, the movies that have made it into my top 40 that include sexual content tend to feature ulterior motives behind the sex. Eve does develop real feelings for Roger, but in order to keep Vandamm from suspecting her, she has to pretend she only slept with Roger under Vandamm’s orders, which adds an intriguing layer to the whole situation. Another interesting thing about North by Northwest, especially when compared with Notorious, is that while production codes were still in effect in 1959, they were clearly starting to relax. Notorious was as explicit as it was allowed to be, but all the sexual activity is cloaked in innuendo, however thin. No modern audience would consider North by Northwest a sexually explicit movie, but at least the characters could say that they had sex. In Notorious, when Alex finds out that Alicia is a spy, he berates himself for “believing in her with her clinging kisses” but nothing more risqué than that, whereas in North by Northwest, Roger vents about Eve “using sex like some people use a flyswatter.” As an Old Hollywood fan, I find it endlessly fascinating to see what content was allowed when, and as James and I discussed in the Notorious episode, Hitchcock loved to push the envelope. So while there’s no nudity or anything like that in this movie, there is definitely clear sexual content. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that any of the characters is asexual, there is at least one who is very strongly implied to be gay. Leonard, played by Martin Landau, is Vandamm’s right hand man who seems to have a thing for Vandamm. He’s accused of being jealous that Vandamm likes Eve, and he refers to his own “woman’s intuition.” The rules may have been relaxing around discussions of heterosexual activities, but references to homosexuality still weren’t allowed to be more overt than that. Still, I think we can safely claim Leonard as LGBT+ representation. Landau himself was very open about intentionally playing him as gay, which both Hitchcock and Lehman supported.

#north by northwest #alfred hitchcock #cary grant #eva marie saint #the rewatch rewind

On a ridiculous premise with a fabulous script and cast, age gaps, confusing admiration with romance, and more.

New episode!

Script below the break.

The script was already incredible on the page, and then it was brought to life by the perfect cast. I’ve already talked about one Cary Grant/Myrna Loy pairing, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, which was made the year after The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, and they are equally delightful together in both, although their characters’ dynamic could not have been more different. In Mr. Blandings, while their relationship has some ups and downs, they’re married to each other the whole time, whereas in Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer they embark on a mutual-contempt-to-mutual-admiration journey. And they both play every stage of their relationship flawlessly. They have incredible chemistry, both romantic and comedic, so their scenes together are beautifully entertaining. And then there’s Shirley Temple. This was toward the end of her film career, and you can kind of tell that the studios didn’t really know what to do with her now that she wasn’t a little girl anymore. In many of her earlier films, she played an orphan who managed to charm grumpy older men, and again in this movie she plays an orphan, but now that she’s a teenager, enchanting adults isn’t cute anymore. The older man needs to find it annoying that she’s trying to charm him, otherwise it would be creepy. I’m sure it must have been frustrating for 19-year-old Temple to be essentially typecast in the same kind of role she’d been playing since she was a toddler, except now she’s the obstacle to the main love story rather than the star. But by golly, she sells the heck out of it anyway. She gives Susan the exact blend of silliness and earnestness required to make the character and the story work. She has a very believable sisterly dynamic with Myrna Loy, even though Loy was definitely old enough to be her mother. It’s unclear what their characters’ age gap is supposed to be – we know that Margaret is an established judge while Susan is still in high school, so they have to be pretty far apart, which is kind of odd because Margaret tells Richard that their parents didn’t get married until they were both out of law school, so they must have been rather old when Susan was born, but let’s not overthink it too much. Margaret is clearly torn between trying to be a sister and parent figure to Susan, who doesn’t seem at all interested in making that easier on Margaret, and I love the way Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple play within that tension.

And then there’s the way Susan interacts with Richard. She thinks he’s the most wonderful person she’s ever seen and is initially awestruck. There’s this great moment when they first meet and she dares to lightly touch his arm, and then looks like that’s the most fantastic thing she’s ever done. And then she decides she’s deeply in love with him, and when they start going out, she’s convinced they’re going to end up together. Richard never really knows what to make of Susan, but he tries to keep up with her as best he can. One of my favorite scenes is when Susan is interviewing Richard, and he starts out just giving her vague, bland answers, but when she keeps insisting that he must have had a very interesting life, he starts making up a super dramatic backstory. She hangs on his every word, absolutely eating it up. At one point, he tells her that he used to steal, and she breathlessly asks, “What did you steal?” Richard’s line is “crusts of bread and things,” but Cary Grant gives one of my favorite line deliveries of all time. He starts with saying “crusts of bread” kind of normally, but then he pauses dramatically, leans forward, and puts a lot of emphasis on “and THINGS” and then does this amazing little nod and I love it so much. “Crusts of bread… and THINGS” is one of those random movie lines I quote a lot and nobody knows what I’m talking about. Anyway, there are a bunch of other very entertaining moments between Richard and Susan, like when they’re watching the high school basketball game and Susan’s really getting into the cheers, and at the end of one, she looks at Richard expectantly, so he just goes, “Rah!” with mock enthusiasm, which seems to satisfy her. And of course there’s the “mellow greetings, ukie-dukie” scene when they’re both just saying nonsense fake slang but making it sound like a real conversation. They absolutely should not be dating, but I really enjoy the aspects of their relationship that don’t involve Susan trying to make something romantic happen. I can definitely see them having a fun sibling-in-law dynamic in the future.

#the bachelor and the bobby-soxer #cary grant #myrna loy #shirley temple #the rewatch rewind

There's really no way to adequately express what Poe Party has meant to me and how much I love it, but here is my attempt.Transcript coming

I love Poe Party too much to feel like any words will do it justice, but I keep trying.

Script below the break.

My journey to Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, or Poe Party for short, or Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Invite-Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck for long, began years before the project itself was even written. In the late 2000s-early 2010s, my sister was relatively plugged into the YouTube scene, at least compared to me, and she first introduced me to a group called Team Starkid around 2009-2010-ish. At the time, they were a bunch of college theater kids who had put together a Harry Potter parody musical and on a whim posted it to YouTube, where it went viral, so they started making and posting other musicals – which they are still doing. I feel like I might still have discovered Poe Party if I hadn’t been a Starkid fan, but that definitely helped. A more crucial step on my road to Poe Party started on April 9, 2012, when my sister posted a link to a new YouTube video on my Facebook wall, with the message, “Fictional vlogs by Lizzie Bennet. (actually Hank Green.) There’s only one so far, but I’m kind of crazily excited for this!” Hank Green, of course, along with his brother John, is basically one of the fathers of YouTube. I don’t think I’d seen a ton of their videos at that point, but I was familiar with and liked them. And of course, I knew Lizzie Bennet was the main character in Pride and Prejudice, a story that I loved very much – more on that in a future episode. So I was also very excited for this new show, called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but I could not have imagined the intense emotional journey it would take me on, through two short episodes a week (plus spinoffs) for almost a year. There had never been a TV show that I was more invested in than LBD. I was double majoring in college and working part time, but the main thing I cared about was these modern Pride and Prejudice characters. The show was clearly very low-budget, but I was blown away by the writing and acting. I was particularly impressed by the person playing Lizzie, Ashley Clements, and the person playing Lydia, Mary Kate Wiles. And, like, it wasn’t just me – LBD had a huge following for what it was. Not, like, millions of fans, but hundreds of thousands by the end. As the finale approached, the producers launched a Kickstarter to release the show on DVD and – ostensibly – pay significantly more to the cast and crew who had been incredibly underpaid. If you’re at all interested in hearing more about that, I highly recommend checking out The Look Back Diaries on Ashley Clements’s YouTube channel; she just did a whole deep dive into the show and its aftermath in honor of its 10th anniversary that I found fascinating. But anyway, coincidentally, right around that same time, Starkid also launched their first Kickstarter, since most of them had graduated from college and no longer had access to the same resources but wanted to keep making more musicals. So they were raising money for Twisted, a Wicked-style villain redemption retelling of Aladdin, which sounded interesting. I had never pledged to a Kickstarter before, but I backed both the LBD DVDs and Twisted on the same day: March 25, 2013, according to my emails.

And then it was August 22 and the first episode (Chapter 1: The Bells) dropped and it was so much better than I was hoping for. First of all, the look set the tone perfectly. The lighting was exquisite, and the location – incidentally the same house where Muzzled was filmed – was perfect. And then there was the writing. One thing the Persauds had mentioned during the Kickstarter was that they were inspired by the movie Clue, which will be featured in a future episode of this podcast, so I was expecting similar vibes to that, but I was not expecting there to be so many direct references to Clue. All of them made me extremely happy. It felt like the show was made specifically for me. It was like Clue, but even better. I already loved every single character and knew I would be sad to see some of them get murdered. It was also very clear from even just that first episode that this was going to fall into the “everybody was having way too much fun” category of film that I love. But while most movies like that tend to have pretty weak stories and just overall mediocre scripts, and the cast having fun makes up for that, Poe Party was different. The writing was fantastic, AND the acting was perfect, AND it looked gorgeous, AND everybody was having fun. Again, I tried not to have unrealistic expectations, I tried to tell myself that not every episode could be quite the banger that the first one was, but I was still incredibly excited for the rest of the show. And I was not at all disappointed. Somehow it just kept getting better. The running joke about everyone forgetting Emily Dickinson was there or who she was just kept getting funnier. Ditto the joke about George Eliot thinking she needed to convince everyone she was a man when everyone was clearly fine with her being a woman. I remember at one point, when around three or four chapters were out, Mary Kate tweeted that they were working on editing her favorite part of the show, and I thought, surely it doesn’t get better than what I’ve seen already. But it turned out she was talking about chapter 8, and yes, it absolutely was better. The constables, Jim and Jimmy – played by Jim O’Heir and Jimmy Wong – and everyone else trying to fool them, are so delightful to watch. Even though chapter 8 features probably the second saddest death in the series, it’s overall the funniest episode. This show touches an incredibly wide range of emotions and moods, especially considering it takes place in one house over one night.

In her episode of A Tell Tale Vlog, Annabel mentioned that she had started seeing a banker named Eddie, and then in the Poe Party Kickstarter video, she asked Edgar if she could bring Eddie as her plus one to his party. So Eddie (played by Ryan W. Garcia) shows up late to the party with Annabel, and then becomes the first murder victim. EXCEPT, spoiler alert: he’s actually NOT DEAD, and is, in fact, one of the murderers. And from the very first episode, I recognized Eddie’s similarities to Mr. Boddy in Clue, who is also not dead when you first think he is, and I was therefore suspicious of him from the get-go. But I was still very much open to any possibility (or so I thought) because the Persauds had done an excellent job of making everyone at least somewhat fishy. But there was one thing I was not prepared for, and that was the end of chapter 9. Because it absolutely never occurred to me that Poe’s beautiful Annabel Lee would die, and I’m honestly still kind of devastated about it, even understanding why it had to happen, and at the time I was almost inconsolable. Mary Kate Wiles had led me to this brilliant show, in which she played the kindest, most likable character, only to be brutally murdered? Some fans at the time had thought Annabel might be the killer, which I never did, and honestly I would have been kind of angry if she had been because we need to have more genuinely nice characters in things. I was upset that she died, but I would have been more so if she’d turned evil. (Not that I have anything against MK playing villains – I’m all for it, under the right circumstances. And thankfully the Persauds know when the right circumstances are.) And like, okay, I know I complain about too much romance in stories, but Annabel’s “It was always you” as she died in Edgar’s arms – that got me. Annabel had been planning to marry Eddie because he was more respectable than the unhinged poet she actually loved, and I think that that whole trying to fake the life you think you’re supposed to have thing spoke to me. I had been so tempted to try that, and this was almost as clear of a message as the constables’ “Don’t Do Murder”: Don’t Fake Romance.

So yeah. I was deep into this. But then nobody in Shipwrecked chose it that week, and I thought, okay, maybe it wasn’t that good, or, maybe my theory is laughably far off the mark. Maybe Eddie’s too obvious. Maybe he really is dead. Then in chapter 10, Charlotte Brontë confessed, and revealed that her sister Anne had been there the whole time helping, and at that point I was pretty sure Eddie was also involved again. We clearly saw that Annabel’s killer was wearing pants, unlike either Brontë sister. And then it was Halloween and the finale finally arrived, and I was right about Eddie, but I was still completely unprepared for how awesome that final chapter would be. I think there was still a small part of me that didn’t believe it was possible for the end to live up to the buildup of the first ten incredible chapters. But it absolutely did. The finale was everything – everything, I say – that I wanted it to be and much more. The evil slow clap. The revolving villain trio of creepy neck touching. The flashbacks. The fights. The pet rock’s revenge. The literary references. And of course, the surprise reveal of Jane Austen, played by Laura Spencer, who had also played Jane Bennet in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The episodes were posted at 9 am on Mondays, when I was at work, so I couldn’t watch them right when they dropped, but after the first one I couldn’t wait until I got home either. My work’s wifi blocked YouTube, and I had an extremely limited data plan at the time, so on my lunch break I would walk to the McDonald’s down the street and watch the new episode using their wifi. And when the camera panned to Jane Austen, it was all I could do not to yell “OH MY GOSH IT’S LAURA SPENCER!” in that McDonald’s. I definitely audibly gasped, but I don’t think anyone noticed. The thing is, I would have still been blown away by the finale without that extra surprise. But that’s what Shipwrecked does. They make things that can appeal to a wide audience, and then they sprinkle in some extra treats for people who have been following them for a while. Of course, LBD was not a Shipwrecked project, but finding Shipwrecked through LBD is a fairly common path. And I’m still so impressed with how well they kept Laura as Jane Austen a secret. As a Kickstarter perk, I’d had a video chat with the Core Four that summer, and I’d mentioned that Jane Austen was my favorite author, and I was disappointed that she wasn’t going to be in Poe Party, and they were just like, “Yeah, we thought about including her, but we figured she would be too similar to Charlotte Brontë,” and betrayed not a SINGLE HINT that she was, in fact, in the show. Which is another thing Shipwrecked does: make a very specific, deliberate plan about what to reveal when, and stick to it.

The show may have ended, and the world may have been falling apart faster than usual, but I could not have gotten Poe Party out of my head even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. For over a decade I’d been searching for something that felt like a classic movie, but with some modern sensibilities, and these independent filmmakers had made exactly what I was looking for, zillions of times better than I’d imagined it. That clever, witty dialogue, perfectly delivered by quirky characters, almost felt like it came from a 1930s screwball comedy. But it also felt fresh and new and different from anything I’d seen before. It had so many similarities to Clue – in fact, I taught myself how to make gifs, or [other pronunciation] gifs, in order to highlight specific parallels between Poe Party and Clue – and yet remained unique. Where Clue was mostly just comedy, Poe Party was comedy, tragedy, romance, and intrigue, and absolutely nailed all of those. (Sadly no ravens, though, they didn’t have the budget for that.) Anyway, the series held up shockingly well upon rewatch, and I could not get enough of it. And despite the socially anxious part of my brain that remains convinced that everyone always is annoyed with me, that I have nothing worthwhile to say, that I should just shut up and stop bothering others with my existence – people seemed to like what I was posting about Poe Party. Other fans would engage me in conversation, and I started making internet friends for the first time. And, shockingly, the members of Shipwrecked seemed to genuinely appreciate what I was saying as well. After the finale had aired, Mary Kate reblogged my Annabel Lee poem on Tumblr and said, “I legitimately thought this was brilliant, and only didn’t choose it that week because of spoilers. Every single fic Jane wrote for this ftw has been wonderful, and I have so enjoyed them all, but this was above and beyond.” And maybe it sounds like I’m just boasting at this point, but the reason I’m sharing this is because a year earlier I had felt like a failure of a human who had no place in the world, and now this incredible actress/producer I greatly admired, who had just made my new favorite show, was saying that I had enhanced her experience of releasing it. People were liking and appreciating me, just for being myself and enthusiastically enjoying a movie. And I no longer felt like I was supposed to change who I was.

Also in 2017, the first episode of Poe Party was shown at a festival near me, so I got to meet the Core Four members of Shipwrecked and some fans in person. That was very exciting, but I was also extremely nervous, although I didn’t need to be. The Shipwrecked people were so lovely and actually wanted to talk to me and the other fans who were there. And then I got to see Poe Party win some awards, which was awesome. And then a few months later, Shipwrecked launched another Kickstarter, and I pledged even more to it than I had to Poe Party even though the goal was lower, and then they kept making more stuff and I kept supporting it, and also continued to love everything they made (yes, even the Fart Feud with the Tin Can Brothers). I continued to support Mary Kate on Patreon, and I also started supporting other cast members on Patreon, like Whitney Avalon who had played Mary Shelley and does a lot of her own stuff on YouTube, and of course Ashley Clements, as I’ve mentioned previously, and as soon as Shipwrecked finally got their own Patreon, I was all in at the top tier. And, like, I don’t want to go on about this too much, because I do truly believe that I would love their work even if I’d never interacted with them, but I don’t know that I’d be quite the die-hard, take-all-my-money-to-make-more-things Shipwrecked fan that I am, if I hadn’t had so many wonderful interactions with the members of Shipwrecked over the years. I didn’t set out to become friends with them, but I kind of have – although I still feel a little weird and presumptuous to claim that. I feel like this will sound to some people like an out-of-control parasocial relationship, but like, it’s not that, because they do know me. Other people in my life have referred to Shipwrecked as “the people you pay to be your friends,” but it’s not that either: I give them money so they can keep making things, and we also happened to hit it off as friends – which again feels like a presumptuous label, but I can’t come up with a more accurate word. They make what they love and I love what they make, so it’s not that surprising that we’d get along. And for similar reasons, it’s not surprising that I’ve made so many very close friendships with other Shipwrecked fans. Our love for these projects brought us together, and then turned out to be far from the only thing we have in common.

I feel like I’m talking way too much about my own personal experiences, I’m so sorry if this is boring. Back to Poe Party itself. I’ve hinted at it already, but I need to emphasize again both how incredible the script is, and how amazingly the cast brought it to life. The story was so well thought out: every scene, every character, every moment was there for a reason. Like, I thought George Eliot disguising herself as a man was just a nod to female authors having to use male pen names, but then that turned into an important clue that led to the Brontës. Yes, you can poke plenty of holes in Poe Party if you want to – not all of the characters based on real people were actually alive at the same time, some of the technology is anachronistic, etc – but none of that stuff really matters. It’s clearly meant to be silly and fun, so you don’t really need to know what year it is. But the fact that they managed to write something silly and fun that didn’t completely devolve into absolute nonsense is so incredibly impressive. Sean and Sinéad wrote an absolutely brilliant script, and then they assembled the perfect cast for it. Every actor is on the exact same page about what this project is, and they each know exactly how their character fits in. Even when they’re in the background, everyone is giving 100%. I want to especially shout out Joey Richter, since Ernest Hemingway is drinking all night, and Joey did a tremendous job of tracking how drunk he was supposed to be. By the finale he’s having to slap himself to stay awake in the background, and it’s hilarious. Everyone else is also a delight to watch, and I feel like I’m still noticing little background moments I hadn’t clocked before. There aren’t very many close-ups, which I think was mainly because they didn’t have the budget for the time it would take to shoot them, but it works perfectly because a lot of the funny moments become even funnier when you can see multiple characters’ reactions at once. If you’re watching the background acting closely enough, you may notice a few instances of people almost breaking, but personally I just choose to interpret that as the characters finding it difficult to keep it together when other characters around them are being silly, and who can blame them? I appreciate that the writers and director trusted the cast enough to let them play around and improvise, because some great ad-libbed lines ended up in the final cut, and many more went into the best blooper reel ever, which is 24 minutes long and I love every second of it. There are some moments from the bloopers that I find myself saying sometimes when I’m watching the actual show – Ashley’s “Don’t be mean to me!” is probably the one I quote the most.

#poe party #edgar allan poe's murder mystery dinner party #shipwrecked comedy #the rewatch rewind

On psychological and emotional manipulation, incredibly impressive performances, masterful direction, and more. Content warning: mentions of

An old movie with a very relevant name.

Script below the break.

Paula is an incredibly complex character who undergoes a significant emotional journey. At the beginning, though she’s definitely still haunted by the trauma of her youth, she’s mostly happy and hopeful and vivacious. And then all of that slowly dims as Gregory’s manipulations escalate, almost as if she is a gas light that he’s turning down. That’s not why the movie is called Gaslight, though; it’s called that because one of the early signs that something sketchy is going on is when Paula starts to notice lights dimming as if someone turned a new light on somewhere else in the house, but nobody else seems to notice this and she can’t find a good explanation for it. But watching Paula go from a lively, lovestruck newlywed to basically a zombie struggling to find a shred of reality she can trust also feels like watching a gas light flame go down. And it would have been so easy to either overdo or undersell this descent into confusion, but Ingrid Bergman perfectly balances every moment. You can see Paula starting to doubt herself more and more as her actions and words become more hesitant and her looks become more vague, until she begins to resign herself to the fact that Gregory must be right, she must be insane, there’s nothing more she can do. It’s so painful and heartbreaking that I desperately want to reach through the screen and comfort her and tell her what’s really going on. And then, just when I almost can’t stand it anymore, Joseph Cotten shows up to do that for me. He plays Inspector Brian Cameron of Scotland Yard, a childhood fan of Paula’s aunt who happens to see Paula one of the few times she’s out with Gregory in London, which leads him to reopen the cold case of her aunt’s murder and figure out what’s going on just in time to help Paula. The implication that Paula needs a man to rescue her is one thing I don’t love about this movie, but at the same time I think it’s important to acknowledge that Gregory was so effective at – for lack of a better term – gaslighting her that she could not have escaped that situation without help.

While Bergman’s performance is far and away my favorite aspect of this movie, the rest of the cast is also phenomenal, albeit rather small. It definitely has that based-on-a-play feel of limited locations and few characters, although that also works very well with the story. Part of Gregory’s strategy is to cut Paula off from the rest of the world so she won’t have a safety net. Consequently, for most of the film she only interacts with him and their two servants: the kind but mostly-deaf cook, Elizabeth, played by Barbara Everest, and the saucy, flirtatious maid, Nancy, played by none other than 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her film debut, both of whom are absolutely perfect in their roles. I love Everest’s delivery of “I see just how it is” when Gregory is trying to keep Elizabeth on his side without realizing that she’s always been firmly on Paula’s. And Lansbury embodies the exact attitude required for Nancy: flirtatious toward Gregory, disdainful toward Paula, totally oblivious to how she’s being manipulated until the end – all conveyed with every look she gives and line she speaks as if she’s a veteran actor. It comes as absolutely no surprise that she went on to have such a long and successful career, with this as her first screen performance. She was even nominated for an Oscar! And then there’s the neighbor Miss Thwaites, played by Dame May Whitty, who adds some much-needed levity with her “diggy biscuits” and morbid curiosity about the house in her square where there was a “real murder!” Joseph Cotten’s role is honestly pretty bland – kind of the film noir version of a classic Disney prince, in a way – but he makes the most of it. And then there’s Charles Boyer, giving one of the best creepy villain performances I’ve ever seen, which was also Oscar-nominated. He starts out just sort of vaguely unsettling, raising one or two red flags right off the bat, but like, he could still be okay, and then by the end he is full-on terrifying. He has this amazing stone-faced look that makes your blood run cold. There’s this one moment in particular, kind of toward the middle, when Miss Thwaites and Inspector Cameron (posing as her nephew) have tried to visit them, and Gregory tells Nancy to send them away. Paula wanted to let them in but he freaked out so she backed down, and then after Nancy leaves she again says she wanted to see them, and he’s like, “Oh, why didn’t you say so?” and it makes me want to scream. Then he tells her she didn’t have time to see them because they’re going out to the theater, and Paula’s like, “I didn’t know that…or did I forget?” and Gregory, facing the camera with his back to her, opens his mouth to respond, and then stops and waits for her to dwell on that for a few more seconds before he tells her that no, this is a surprise, and both his face and her face are so perfect there, I love it and hate it so much. Like, I love it from a “this movie is so well acted” perspective, and I hate it from a “this character is a horrible human being” perspective. And then Paula gets overly happy, since she’s been trapped in the house for so long that him letting her go out seems like a wonderful gift. But then he “notices” that a picture is missing from the wall, and makes her think she hid it, and they end up not going out because she’s “too unwell.”

That’s the main way he manipulates her: by moving things and making it look like she took them. What’s particularly interesting about the way the movie shows this is we never actually see Gregory taking any of the things, but it is nevertheless clear that he has been. But he is so insistent that she’s doing it that we can easily believe that Paula wouldn’t suspect him, or that if she did, she would have significant doubts. And even if she did figure it out, it’s not like there’s anything she can do about it. She’s in London for the first time in a decade, she doesn’t know anyone, she doesn’t have anywhere to go, and she’s not sure she can trust her own mind. And I think it’s so important that the movie at no point faults her for ending up in that situation or for not being able to leave. The movie also gives no indication that Gregory is physically harming Paula, but leaves the audience in no doubt that he is an abusive husband. And I feel like the messages that abuse doesn’t have to be physical and that it’s never the victim’s fault are still too rare in media today, let alone nearly 80 years ago. I feel like back then most unhealthy relationships in movies were in the His Girl Friday vein of “they’re kind of both abusing each other so it’s fine” or would find other ways for excusing or explaining the abusive behavior, like “the abuser was drunk” or “the victim was asking for it” or what have you. And if they weren’t like that, the victim usually ended up dead. In Gaslight, Gregory has no excuse. I mean, he does have a reason, but it’s a terrible reason that in no way justifies his actions. And Paula not only survives, but also gets an incredibly satisfying confrontation with Gregory after Brian and another policeman have tied him up. When the police leave them alone together, Gregory pleads with her to get a knife and cut him free, and for a moment you think she’s actually going to help him, but she gets her revenge by pretending she can’t find the knife and saying she’s too insane to help him, forcing him to admit that he has lied to her and she isn’t actually mad. And she wraps up her great payback with: “If I were not mad, I could have helped you. Whatever you had done, I could have pitied and protected you. But because I am mad, I hate you. Because I am mad, I have betrayed you. And because I'm mad, I'm rejoicing in my heart, without a shred of pity, without a shred of regret, watching you go with glory in my heart!” So she turns his gaslighting around on him, and it’s amazing. Although I must admit that right after that when she cries, “Mr. Cameron! Take this man away!” is the one part when I feel like Ingrid Bergman overdoes it just a little bit and gets too melodramatic, but after everything Paula has been through, she deserves as many melodramatic moments as she wants.

I would prefer it if the movie didn’t conclude with the implication that Paula is going to end up romantically involved with Brian, but again, she deserves all the happiness she can get, and if that’s what’s going to make her happy, I’m all for it. And I guess we can claim Miss Thwaites as aroace representation, since she seems to be an old maid with no interest in romance. This movie also speaks to my aromanticism and asexuality in a different, unique way. Because to a certain extent, being aroace in an allonormative, amatonormative society kind of feels like the entire world is gaslighting you. Of course, I don’t mean to imply that my experiences have been anywhere near as horrendous as someone like Paula’s – having your reality cruelly and intentionally twisted by a partner is on an entirely different level from not quite fitting in with the dominant culture’s concept of reality. Still, being constantly bombarded with the message that all mature humans frequently experience sexual and romantic attraction, and that a universal top life goal is to find a partner you’re attracted to that way, when you don’t feel those attractions and don’t desire that kind of partner, is incredibly confusing and disorienting. Once you become an adult, or even a teenager, people start giving you knowing looks when they hear you’ve been hanging out with a friend one-on-one, especially if that friend happens to be of the opposite sex. And you don’t think you like any of your friends “that way” but you also don’t really know what liking someone “that way” feels like so you start to think maybe you don’t know your own feelings. And if you’re lucky, your brain subconsciously decides that you do have crushes like a normal person, they’re just always on movie stars, most of whom are dead, which you realize is weird, but it’s an understandable kind of weird. Nobody believes you when you say you don’t have a crush on anybody, but if you show them a picture of Cary Grant and say, “I have a crush on him,” that makes sense to them. And so you end up becoming convinced that you’re experiencing types of attraction that you’re not, to the point that when you first hear about asexuality you don’t even consider the possibility that it could describe you. And of course, when I say “you” I mean “me”; I can’t speak for all aroaces, although I do think most of us experience some form of that confusion before we figure out that our identity exists. I feel like there’s a relatively widespread perception that aromantic and/or asexual people are just single allos who want to feel special by giving themselves a label, but for me, the opposite is true. Using the aroace label makes me feel less special, because now I know there are other people out there like me, after spending so much time trying to play along with the attraction I thought I was supposed to be feeling. It’s honestly been kind of difficult to unlearn this, to teach myself how to even recognize, let alone trust, what I’m actually feeling versus the socially acceptable way to be feeling about other people.

It’s weird because, looking back, it’s so obvious to me that I was faking crushes, that I was just parroting things I’d heard when I talked about them, that I was just smiling and nodding when people would say things like, “Isn’t that person hot?” But at the time, I absolutely could not admit that, even to myself, because I felt like, in order to be human, I must be experiencing what I’d been led to believe were universal human emotions that went along with sexual and romantic attraction. Back in 2013 I blogged about all the movies I’d seen at least 10 times in 10 years, and I just re-read my post about Gaslight, in which I apparently wrote that I found Joseph Cotten attractive in this movie. I don’t remember thinking or writing that, but I’m sure if I’d been asked to elaborate, I would have said I thought he was hot or whatever, even though I absolutely did not, I just thought I was supposed to. I wasn’t consciously lying; I had become convinced that I felt things I didn’t. Although, now that I think about it, maybe I really was attracted to him, not sexually or romantically, but in terms of the way his character functions in the story. I desperately needed someone to show up and tell me that the problem wasn’t with my mind and provide me with some key information I was missing that would explain what was going on, just like Brian does for Paula. Again, her experience was much more horrifying than mine, but learning that some people are aromantic and asexual, that not feeling those kinds of attraction is perfectly normal for those people, was almost as revelatory to me as learning that her husband killed her aunt and was trying to drive her mad was to Paula. Maybe it sounds like I’m the one being melodramatic now, but I don’t know how else to explain how messed up it is to spend decades convincing yourself and everyone else that you’re feeling things you’re not, and what a relief it is to learn that you were right all along and can finally take the mask off. And that’s why I’ve been focusing so much on looking at movies from an aromantic and asexual perspective on this podcast. Because I don’t want anyone else to go through all that. I want everyone to know that amatonormativity and allonormativity are lies, both because I want people on the aromantic and/or asexual spectrums to understand themselves sooner than I understood myself, and because I want alloromantic, allosexual people to know that not everyone is like them. I don’t blame the allo people I was surrounded with for perpetuating these norms because they didn’t know better. I know they weren’t really trying to gaslight me. But I would like to live in a society where most people do know better.

#gaslight #ingrid bergman #charles boyer #george cukor #angela lansbury #the rewatch rewind

On delivering lightning-speed dialogue, messing with gender roles, exposing corruption without violating production codes, and more. Transcr

Another new episode!

Script below the break.

By far the best and most noteworthy aspect of this movie is its rapid-fire dialogue. Yes, a lot of old movies are very dialogue-heavy with people talking pretty fast, but like, His Girl Friday takes it to a whole other level. A typical movie averages around 90 words of dialogue per minute; His Girl Friday averages around 240. Many lines were specifically written so that the beginning and the end didn’t matter, allowing the actors to talk over each other, as people do in real conversations, without preventing the audience from understanding what was going on. All the fast, overlapping talking is particularly impressive given that multi-track recording hadn’t been developed yet, so they couldn’t adjust the volumes of different speakers separately in post-production; they just turned different overhead microphones on and off so the primary speaker was louder when they were recording, with some scenes reportedly requiring up to 35 switches – shout out to that sound department. At the time, the record for fastest film dialogue was held by the 1931 version of The Front Page, and director Howard Hawks was determined to break it with this adaptation, which he later proved he had done by screening the two versions next to each other. He also encouraged the actors to improvise, which made filming take longer – as it had with his earlier Bringing Up Baby – but helped the conversations feel even more authentic. Rosalind Russell felt that Cary Grant had more good lines in the script than she did, so she hired her own writer to help enhance her dialogue. Apparently at one point, after she did something unscripted, Grant broke character and said into camera, “Is she going to do that?” which Hawks really wanted to keep in the movie, but ultimately didn’t make the final cut. But several noteworthy ad-libs remained, including at least two, possibly three, amazing inside jokes. One is when Walter says, “He looks like that fellow in the movies…Ralph Bellamy” about Bruce, who did, in fact, look exactly like Ralph Bellamy, the actor playing him. And then there’s the part when the mayor says, “You’re through,” and Walter replies with, “The last man that said that to me was Archie Leach,” in reference to Cary Grant’s birth name – yes, he had the same birth surname as me, but we’re not related as far as I know. And the third, which has not been officially confirmed as an ad-lib or intentional reference but might have been, is when Walter calls the man hiding in a desk a “mock turtle,” which was the character Grant played in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland movie.

Hildy is such a strong character that I’m always disappointed when she goes back to Walter at the end. She is clearly a much better match with him than with Bruce, whose slow, deliberate speech contrasts rather jarringly with Hildy and Walter’s snappy patter. But Walter has learned exactly zero lessons by the end of the movie, and there is no reason to believe that any of the problems with their first marriage will ever be resolved. Throughout the movie, Hildy is torn between wanting the domestic life of Bruce’s wife and the more hectic life of a newspaper reporter that still has a hold on her. When Walter tells her she can’t quit because she’s a newspaperman, she replies that that’s why she’s leaving, so she can be a woman. But as much as she complains about it, she makes it pretty clear that she does love being a reporter. I think there is a part of her that genuinely likes the idea of settling down as a housewife, but it seems like the main reason she wants to do that is because society is telling her that’s what women are supposed to do. So I’m very glad the movie doesn’t make her marry Bruce. I also recognize that at the time it was rather radical to suggest that a woman should pursue a career in something other than homemaking if she wants to, let alone suggest that she doesn’t have to completely give up the idea of having a husband to do so. In 1940 it was highly unusual to show a man wanting his wife to also have a career like Walter does. So from that perspective it is kind of nice to see them get back together. But at the same time, he treats her pretty terribly, and it kind of feels like it’s saying that a career gal should be happy with any man she can manage to get, regardless of how slimy he is. Not that Hildy doesn’t also treat Walter pretty terribly too. I guess they show their affection by hurling insults at each other, which is a type of relationship that makes no sense to me, but they seem to be on the same page about it. Still, I would love to see Hildy walk out on both Walter and Bruce like the strong, independent woman she is. At least the movie makes it clear that, despite its title, she is nobody’s assistant, or “girl Friday.”

The progressive for 1940 but doesn’t quite work now theme extends beyond feminism. Besides the Walter/Hildy/Bruce love triangle, the other main storyline in the movie involves a man named Earl Williams, played by John Qualen, who is about to be hanged for killing a policeman, despite some legitimate questions regarding his sanity. Walter wants Hildy to do one final interview with Earl to show that he definitely wasn’t responsible for his actions, and that he’s being strategically executed a few days before an election so the incumbent sheriff and mayor will look tough on crime and win. Most of the reporters don’t seem to care, asking the sheriff if he can move the execution up a few hours so it can make their morning editions. The sheriff refuses, but it is very clear that he could not care less about upholding the law, and same with the mayor, because when a messenger from the governor arrives with a reprieve, they try to bribe him to leave and come back later so they can still execute Williams and pretend the reprieve arrived too late. And it’s not just the politicians who are corrupt. Hildy bribes a prison guard twice: first to get an interview with Earl Williams, and then to find out how he managed to get a gun and escape. Then when Hildy and Walter find Williams, they hide him, not because they think he’s innocent and want to save him, but because they want to be able to turn him in after they’ve written the story of how they captured him. The movie’s statements about the way American society treats working-class people on the fringes, like Earl, and the way the criminal justice system is easily manipulated for political or financial gain, are honestly still pretty accurate, for the most part. But in a bizarre twist, Walter tells Bruce and Hildy that the policeman Earl shot was black, and that the politicians are trying to get votes from black people by executing his white killer, which is just, so completely backwards from how anything actually works that it kind of detracts from the legitimate points the movie does make. Everything about this story just screams late 1930s/early 1940s, from the characters’ world views to the costumes to the current event references, which makes sense given when the movie was made, but is completely inconsistent with the written prologue at the beginning, which states: “It all happened in the dark ages of the newspaper game – when to a reporter getting that story justified anything short of murder. Incidentally, you will see in this picture no resemblance to the men and women of the press today. Ready? Well, once upon a time—” It’s like, nice try, but in 1940 you can’t pretend this is set in a bygone era and then talk about Hitler and the European war. I don’t think they were really fooling anyone, but at least this allowed the filmmakers to get away with criticizing journalists without getting sued or censored.

#his girl friday #cary grant #rosalind russell #howard hawks #the rewatch rewind

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