transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:07] From Blank Check Productions, this is Critical Darlings, a podcast about the movies everyone's talking about, one new release after another. Please welcome your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Willmore.

Speaker 2:
[00:27] Marie Barty, thank you for that spooky introduction. I don't think she did it any more spooky this time. We're here, of course, with our producer Ben Frisch. Hello, Ben.

Speaker 3:
[00:37] Good morning.

Speaker 2:
[00:37] You're a fan.

Speaker 3:
[00:38] I am a fan.

Speaker 2:
[00:39] Which I love.

Speaker 3:
[00:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[00:40] Yeah. It sat very well with me.

Speaker 4:
[00:43] Richard, I have a question for you. If I broke your heart as a friend and a collaborator and went off to-

Speaker 2:
[00:48] Not Alison, when?

Speaker 4:
[00:50] When I break your heart as a friend and collaborator and then leave you in silence for 10 years while I go off to enormous podcasting fame and fortune.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[01:00] But then came back to you and was like, Richard, please, I need to record an episode with you. Only you know me as I truly am. First question, would you say yes? Second question, would you deliberately do a really bad job of reassuring me all of the time that this is the best work that we've ever done together?

Speaker 2:
[01:17] I mean, yes to the first question, second question probably, but maybe inadvertently do that. But here's the thing, it would definitely be in a barn.

Speaker 4:
[01:29] Okay, sure, sure.

Speaker 2:
[01:30] But it's sort of like art barn.

Speaker 4:
[01:31] An art barn, I would like to say, I mean, I like to have a few ateliers lying around the country sides, you know, just in case I need to brood while doing some work.

Speaker 3:
[01:40] Did you have a dress barn growing up?

Speaker 2:
[01:42] Of course, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[01:44] I just realized it's a dress barn.

Speaker 4:
[01:45] Sure, sure.

Speaker 2:
[01:46] It is a literal dress barn.

Speaker 4:
[01:47] I didn't have the chain store, I just had a literal barn that was filled with dresses in my backyard. That's how I like to keep my clothes. Some people walk in closets, I just have a whole barn.

Speaker 2:
[01:56] Is that Kate Winslet's movie, The Dressmaker? That could be called the dress barn in some way.

Speaker 5:
[01:59] It's more a silo.

Speaker 4:
[02:01] Remember?

Speaker 2:
[02:01] It has like a sorghum.

Speaker 4:
[02:04] Sorghum, I know. Incredible movie. Let's just talk about that movie for this whole episode. I have a lot of thoughts about this.

Speaker 2:
[02:10] We're doing a Judy Davis deep dive on this.

Speaker 4:
[02:13] Just doing that particular tone of weird Australian comedies of that era. Muriel's wedding, we're just going to go deep. Early Bowslermen, we can do it. It has a lot to do with the tone of Mother Mary, of course, which also many say is very Australian and wacky.

Speaker 2:
[02:34] It's definitely a weird movie, but in an exciting way. We should say that we have seen this movie, obviously. It is playing in New York and LA in very limited theaters, but on April 25th, Friday, it will be going wider. April 24th, April 24th, yes. Oh, okay.

Speaker 4:
[02:53] Yeah, so we're aware that this is going to be coming out maybe a day before it hits wide release.

Speaker 2:
[02:58] Which we're trying to avoid.

Speaker 4:
[02:59] We're trying to avoid that.

Speaker 2:
[03:01] But this happens to be the time. Yeah, because there's a completely non-controversial movie we have to talk about next week that I think is going to be a really easy conversation about fame and...

Speaker 4:
[03:11] Also happens to deal with a famous pop star.

Speaker 2:
[03:16] Yeah, you know, Neverland was sort of a barn.

Speaker 4:
[03:20] In a way. People often say...

Speaker 2:
[03:24] Yeah. But yeah, so that's a hint to what we're talking about next week. But this week we're talking about Mother Mary, which is David Lowery's kind of spooky movie about art and rivalry and all that stuff.

Speaker 4:
[03:38] We are going to have a spoiler section where we're going to talk about this reveal that happens later in the movie and everything that we feel like it entails. But for now, what we're going to be talking about, everything we mentioned now, it's not what falls under the umbrella of a spoiler. We'd say like, yeah, this is a movie that kind of leaves a lot of things vague and mysterious. So the things that we're going to mention are just going to be our interpretation of what the movie is offering in this, let's say, first half.

Speaker 3:
[04:05] So we'll do a very clear spoiler warning when we get to that stuff. But we're also going to be talking about David Lowery, Michaela Cole and Anne Hathaway and fake pop stars on film in general and we'll try and bracket that stuff off. So we'll have the spoiler warning and you can choose to skip that and I'll give you time codes to do that if you want. Anyway, how did you guys see the movie?

Speaker 2:
[04:28] We saw it together.

Speaker 4:
[04:29] We did see it together.

Speaker 2:
[04:30] Which is not all that common these days.

Speaker 4:
[04:32] Yeah, no, I have a, on a later episode, I will make a complaint about a movie we were supposed to see together and then you ditched me.

Speaker 2:
[04:40] Oh, speaking of Barnes.

Speaker 4:
[04:43] Yes. But we did see this together. Yeah, it's a drama about friendship or a kind of broken friendship about connection, a psycho drama, you might say, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole as two former friends and former collaborators. Anne Hathaway's character, the titular Mother Mary, is now an enormous pop star. Michaela Cole's character, Sam Anselm, is a famous designer.

Speaker 2:
[05:16] Quite successful in her own right.

Speaker 4:
[05:18] Yes. And once upon a time, like over a decade ago, they collaborated together on the persona of Mother Mary that then Anne Hathaway's character essentially ran away with, they going, ascending to other levels of fame while leaving Sam, her former friend, to build her own career from scratch.

Speaker 2:
[05:42] Yes. Yeah. So there's a betrayal at the heart of it. I think just to establish our terms, we should maybe have a brief conversation about what, is there a pop star analog in the real world to who Mother Mary is? It's been much debated. David Lowery himself has been like, oh, I was inspired by Taylor Swift's Reputation Tour. There have been other options thrown out there. I think when I wrote about the movie in premierparty.com, my newsletter, there's obviously Gaga in there, but I think there's also a good deal of Lana Del Rey.

Speaker 4:
[06:20] Sure. In the sadness, Mother Mary's whole idea is she sings these sad songs. That's what Sam says. You're using these sad songs, and you let everyone in to share your sadness. There's obviously some Madonna in there in all of the ways it plays with Catholic iconography.

Speaker 2:
[06:41] Yeah, the halo crown.

Speaker 4:
[06:42] Yes. Mother Mary always wears this halo. That's like her signature look. Apparently, it was something she directly got from Sam, and it makes her look like she's a figure out of a medieval religious iconography even.

Speaker 2:
[06:58] Before paintings had like depth to them.

Speaker 4:
[07:00] Right, when they're flat and all of the religious figures had just like halos on them all the time. It looks like that. It's very beautiful. It's really striking. Yeah, David Lowery has brought up Taylor Swift specifically, which I think was like...

Speaker 2:
[07:12] How could you not?

Speaker 4:
[07:13] How could you not? It's also like, I think a kind of canny move to summon the attention of the Swifties down on your A24 psychodrama. Yeah, he has brought up directly looking at three different stadium numbers and reputation to use.

Speaker 2:
[07:28] Not Aris.

Speaker 4:
[07:29] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[07:30] Because I guess this was in...

Speaker 4:
[07:31] No. They did. Apparently, he and Anne Hathaway went to the Aris tour in Europe. Unclear if they did it together. I mean, I would like to believe they did. But yeah, he's also brought up St. Vincent, I think.

Speaker 2:
[07:43] Oh, yeah. I think David Ehrlich had made that comparison in his review. I see that. Because I think the music is more aligned with someone like that or Lana Del Rey, that it's a little more indie of a sound.

Speaker 4:
[07:59] Oh, yeah. There's, we should say, real songs are written that were performed by Anne Hathaway, written by and produced by among other people like Jack Antonoff, FK Twiggs who appears in the movie, Charlie XCX and the composer Daniel Hart. There's like a quote unquote greatest hits album that was released, Mother Mary Greatest Hits album that includes like six tracks or so all performed.

Speaker 3:
[08:24] It's great.

Speaker 4:
[08:24] Yeah. You're a big fan, right? You said you were listening to it.

Speaker 3:
[08:26] Yeah. I've listened to it a few times. I only saw the movie on Sunday, so I haven't had a whole lot of time with it. But it works as a nice little companion pop mini album.

Speaker 4:
[08:35] So other analogs, there's obviously some Lady Gaga in there, right? Including there's a part where Sam mentions that Mother Mary walked a red carpet wearing nothing but honey, like dollops of honey, which is a very Gaga-esque, meat dressy kind of move. Then there's Beyonce as well. I mean, there's definitely, I think, unavoidably Beyonce. I think maybe Beyonce makes more sense to me than the Taylor Swift comparison in terms of the remove that Mother Mary has from her audience. Taylor Swift, for all that she is just this enormously powerful, popular pop star and business woman, always brought up, what she offers is always this kind of sense of relatability, this eternal girlishness. Mother Mary does not do that. Mother Mary is aloof and she is mother. She has a kind of remove that feels more Beyonce-esque in terms of the kind of deliberate elevation of her own kind of image.

Speaker 2:
[09:41] Yeah, there's a holy vibe. It's like there's a religious sort of ecstasy and appreciation for her. She's very de-sexualized in her pop persona. You could make the argument about Swift, but the she-

Speaker 4:
[09:56] But Swift's whole thing is, something else that should be said about this movie, which is something I love, is that it takes place in this homosocial world of women. There are no men at all, right?

Speaker 2:
[10:06] Yeah, I was so bored.

Speaker 4:
[10:09] Yes, you don't even exist in this movie. Yeah, it's not even that... You know, there are men mentioned off screen, like in particular... Like she sings songs that include some kind of vaguely, songs about love songs, but there is no mention of previous relationships that she's had with anyone. There's no... It exists in a world that I think is very deliberately meant to evoke this kind of pop star world in which it is dominated by young women and dominated by these female performers, but exaggerated to the point where it is entirely women.

Speaker 2:
[10:50] The cheaper version... Here's me setting up the straw man of a movie that doesn't exist, but the cheaper version of this movie is the core tension is over a guy. I mean, death becomes her or something.

Speaker 4:
[11:01] I guess this is then... It raises the other question, which is like, how much do you see this as like a sapphic love story?

Speaker 2:
[11:09] Well, that's a great question because that... When I wrote about the movie, I was specifically writing about how a friend of a friend had overheard someone at a screening saying, this is like the greatest gay guy movie of all time. And I was like, I guess I see on paper why that would be, but I don't really think that that's what Lowery made. And that's not a bad thing. It's just like, I think it's a different kind of movie. And in so writing about it, I went to the Wikipedia page for the movie and that brief plot description says it's a psychosexual sort of relationship thing with Michaela Cole and Anne Hathaway. And it's like, that was just a lot of projecting. That's not what the movie is about. I mean, maybe I'm completely missing something like textually or subtextually, but I didn't see it as a sapphic romantic tension thing at all.

Speaker 4:
[11:54] Yeah, I didn't either. I was on KCRW's press play with another critic who immediately was like, obviously, they used to be lovers. I was like, that wasn't the vibe I got really. I think they used to be incredibly close. And I think there are other aspects of this movie that kind of almost position the relationship in this whole other dimension that we can talk about. But I didn't read that as them being past lovers. In fact, I feel like the movie tries to evoke in this very almost like an elementary school sense of the ways in which you can be, like, women can be, like, incredibly close, you know, like, closer in ways that, than it feels possible in the context of a romance. And then have, like, essentially a breakup in that same way that it feels like world ending and like.

Speaker 2:
[12:37] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[12:37] I think part of what it's positing is that a creative partnership can be more than platonic, but maybe less than erotic.

Speaker 4:
[12:47] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[12:48] Yes, I think that's a perfect way of putting it, in that, like, there is an intensity there that is, like, you are giving something of your, sort of, existence to the, or you're trusting them with it, you know, because, like, you know, I'm going to go out into the world and kind of carry this identity we're creating, you know, and I have to trust it, you know, and that's way more intense than mere friendship, but I don't, yeah, I don't see anything specifically erotic about it.

Speaker 4:
[13:15] Yeah, and I think that.

Speaker 2:
[13:16] And I prefer that. Yeah. Again, the easier version of this movie would be to have all those implications and it just kind of comes down to sex. In this case, it's no, it is higher minded than that, I guess.

Speaker 4:
[13:28] Yeah, it does try to tackle, to your point, Ben, like the idea of a creative partnership is something like sublimated, right? Like they did this thing together. And part of the tension in as they try and hash out this relationship that they used to have is that there's a fundamental unevenness because Mother Mary is the public facing part of this. Whereas Sam was providing, you know, like as much of what became that persona, it seems like, as Anne Hathaway's character does, but in private. And so it is possible for one of them to just walk away with the whole enterprise as if she owns it and leaving the other one behind. So it felt like they were, something that felt incredibly shared and mutual then became just belonging to one half of that partnership.

Speaker 3:
[14:16] You're getting it exactly why I like, I, this movie affected me really personally. Yeah. I just felt like I was seeing something on screen that I have personally felt in terms of creative partnerships that I've had. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[14:31] I really want to hear about this. I mean, I'm not to force you to go into difficult.

Speaker 3:
[14:35] I don't know. I'm happy to talk about the feelings. I don't want to.

Speaker 4:
[14:38] Yeah, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:
[14:40] He's talking about Griffin, Alison.

Speaker 4:
[14:43] How could he?

Speaker 3:
[14:44] I was in a band with Ben Hosley called Ben Folds 5.

Speaker 2:
[14:47] And there were only two of us. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[14:50] The central tension of this movie is about how the rupturing of this creative partnership, which is both even and uneven in different ways, can metastasize into something that is both creatively, personally, and spiritually destructive. I just had flashbacks to times when I have felt this way. And the way that Michaela Cole, she's speaking so elliptically. We should say the dialogue in this movie is very heightened.

Speaker 4:
[15:24] Yeah, it's very stylized and poetic at times. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[15:28] And I think that's turned a lot of people off. But to me, it feels like she's trying to express a sort of power over Anne Hathaway's character through her use of language, because that's in a way her only means. I don't know, I went through a period in which, like for a year, I was like deeply wrecked. And I felt this movie, as I said, in a very personal way.

Speaker 2:
[15:58] Yeah, and I think that we have to then, or I sort of wondered then, thinking about David Lowery, like did something like this happen to him? Was there some sort of intense creative partnership that we might not even know about the other half of that he's kind of commenting on here?

Speaker 4:
[16:15] I wondered too, I mean, something that I appreciate, and I think, speaking to like how deeply this resonated with you, Ben, is the degree to which, and part of why I think it is, I didn't see it as being like, oh, this is just a coded romantic and sexual relationship, is that it takes the idea of a creative partnership so seriously, you know, as like something very profound that like is incredibly deep and like kind of this binding of the two souls in their own right. But yeah, I don't know, like Willowie has written or has talked about how he started writing this movie as a dialogue between what he saw as like two halves of himself, which I think you can see on screen, in particular the idea of Michaela Cole's character as like the, I want to just like kind of isolate and work in the dark forever by myself, you know, like that, like just hammering things out in private. I don't even need to see how they're received. And then the other half and Hathaway's character being like, not just like out there in public, but also almost like serving the public, serving the audience in a way, right? Like there's the, one of the best scenes in the movie is one where she, it's like a dream ballet, right? Where it just kind of, the camera tracks across this part where she just like climbs up on stage and then she's backstage. Yeah, she's getting ready. She climbs back up on stage and then right back down. Each time she's like more and more exhausted and they kind of keep like pushing her on and pushing her on.

Speaker 2:
[17:45] All kind of silhouetted.

Speaker 4:
[17:46] Yeah, no, it's a really kind of beautifully done scene. I mean, I think it's also not an accident that this movie comes right in between, like he started writing it right in between doing The Green Night, which is this very David Lowery-esque, kind of a screwball comedy. Yes, it's wacky, right? This kind of mystical Arthurian drama medieval imagining, and then his Disney movie, the Peter Pan one, Peter Pan Wendy, which I never saw.

Speaker 2:
[18:22] Did you see it? No, because I really do count myself as a really big David Lowery fan, and looking at his filmography, I was like, wait, I haven't seen one of his movies because I didn't see the Peter Pan movie. But he does have that duality in him that's like, you know, the same guy who made a ghost story also made Pete's Dragon. And Pete's Dragon is a beautiful, like Disney children's film. I love that movie. But he also, and he made The Old Man and the Gun, and he made The Green Knight. Like he has a very one for me, one for them attitude, even when the one for them is made with his kind of particular tailoring. So I hope maybe Peter and Wendy is great. But yeah, I could see this as being like two halves of himself where he's like, what are these tensions that I have in me between commercial and art, you know, with a capital A, and how do I have both of these entities in me at the same time?

Speaker 4:
[19:25] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:26] One of whom serves the public, essentially, and one of whom serves.

Speaker 4:
[19:30] Like, I mean, but like, works like in isolation.

Speaker 2:
[19:33] And I think crucially understands what is behind that public persona. You know, Michaela Cole's character here is just like, she's like, I helped you build this and I and, you know, only two of us in the world know what any of this really means.

Speaker 4:
[19:49] Right.

Speaker 2:
[19:50] Despite what the public might kind of take it as.

Speaker 4:
[19:52] But I think also, I don't think that Michaela Cole's character is presented as the one who has it necessarily more together. You know, she describes herself as Miss Havisham. She is like working by herself in this, like, she lives and works on this kind of British estate, which looks beautiful and kind of haunted. But like, it does not look like it is necessarily healthier as a kind of creative practice than Mother Mary's, you know? Like they are both, yeah, like these separate halves of a process.

Speaker 3:
[20:23] Early on, she asked if there is any food.

Speaker 4:
[20:26] And there is no food.

Speaker 3:
[20:26] And there is no food.

Speaker 2:
[20:27] And she is like, oh, is there? No.

Speaker 3:
[20:29] Which is both, I think, kind of a ride joke, but also sort of like, how do you have a giant manner and then have no nourishments?

Speaker 4:
[20:37] Well, also a manner full of people working and yeah. I mean, I think that that one, and I do like this movie a lot, though I don't think it entirely coheres for me. But one thing I was craving a lot is that it's hard to even picture these characters eating food. They are, I think there are definitely aspects that make it feel like this kind of like Ingmar Bergman-esque persona drama, right? Like where you're like, these are two separate women's, or maybe they're like two aspects of one person. But you don't get as much of like, these are two women who were really good friends when they were starting out a decade plus ago. When there's a part where Anne Hathaway finds an old photo of them together, and you're like, I was like, I cannot imagine.

Speaker 2:
[21:26] It looks like they're like Coachella or something.

Speaker 4:
[21:28] Right, right. I cannot imagine them as like two not famous people kind of like out to conquer the world together. Like, I just cannot imagine that. Like they, because the world is like very, like the dialogue is kind of stylized, the world is stylized, it's hard to also be like, oh, these are real physical people and not these kind of outsize. Even like, even removed from the kind of like outsize pop persona, they do like still feel abstract.

Speaker 2:
[21:55] Yeah, and I think in his career, like Lowery has worked with a number of like quite big celebrities and he has come across people, I'm sure, who like lead with image and persona, an assumed persona, but then he gets to know them in a personal way and it's like, what a lonely existence. And it's, but I mean, and that's an actor. I think for pops, a particular kind of pop star in particular, that is like, like Taylor Swift, I know she like goes to sleep and goes to the bathroom and like looks in the mirror and what, you know, like she like does normal human things, but I have a very, very hard time imagining it.

Speaker 4:
[22:32] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:32] You know? Whereas I like, and I think that the isolation of that maybe does somewhat echo like what it is to be this kind of high minded filmmaker who like wants to bird these visions that no one is ever going to fully understand or something.

Speaker 4:
[22:49] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6:
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Speaker 4:
[23:29] How do you feel about the fact that the movie really wants to establish Sam as not just someone who was left behind, but someone who has built this whole empire on her own? Because I understand the desire to have them take place in kind of equal footing. But I feel like there's part of me that is like, I feel like something is lost by not having there be more of a professional imbalance between them. Like part of what Sam says, I mean, in describing their former relationship is that like you left me and then I had to kind of build this in part fueled by my resentment of you, this whole career of my own. But that it makes the idea that Mother Mary retreated out of her reach, which is something that I think the movie portrays in this. My favorite scene in the movie is when Sam goes to see Mother Mary in concert. And is looking at this person who was her collaborator and who she was incredibly close to, who is so physically close to her, but is on stage and might as well be million miles away. And I feel like a little bit of that is diffused by the idea that now she is a famous designer. Mother Mary is not actually out of reach. In some ways, they are moving in the same circles if they chose to.

Speaker 2:
[24:48] Yeah, I see your point. I mean, certainly that scene where she goes to see Mother Mary in concert. I mean, have you ever gone to a friend's live podcast show? And you're like, wait, I've been on that podcast, but why am I in the fucking audience right now?

Speaker 4:
[25:01] Yeah, you're like, you are on stage?

Speaker 2:
[25:03] Yeah, it's just, it's an outrageous feeling. It's an injustice. I wish I was more kidding. But I don't know, I kind of like that she is standing very firmly on her own two feet. I think that it, because I think that Mary has to be more, like has to be something of a supplicant, you know? And if she was just gonna go to some ratty apartment where the friend that she betrayed and left behind is sort of toiling in obscurity, that I think that the power dynamic there would be a little bit too simple or something, you know? Where in this case, like Mary showing up at this huge atelier and all the outbuildings and all that, she's kind of the weaker party at the feet of this empire that has been built.

Speaker 3:
[25:53] She's a catatonic.

Speaker 2:
[25:55] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like Anne Hathaway in this movie, but boy, oh boy, it's a really interesting note, but it is a bit one note in terms of the performance.

Speaker 4:
[26:10] Yeah, she has like kind of like glassy eyes, like she's on the verge of tears for like the whole movie. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[26:17] And I like it. I think she's good at it, but she's a great on-screen crier.

Speaker 3:
[26:20] Her depression in this movie is like sort of simultaneously catatonic and a little bit manic, anxious, and I also completely recognize that.

Speaker 4:
[26:32] Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good point about the supplicant thing. Yet I'm also like, you are an enormous pop star. There's one part where she kind of like, I can't even remember the context, she does like a snap, right? Like early on.

Speaker 2:
[26:44] Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[26:44] And I'm like, that is actually something that I wanted a little more of because it's just like, you also have been just surrounded by people easing the way for you. Like anything you've asked for, for now years and years of your life has materialized in front of you before you've ever even needed to. I wanted a little bit more of that because like she does, yes, show up at her friend's doorstep in the middle of them preparing for a show and is like, can you stop what you're doing to make me address in like an incredibly short time frame? And there is never a moment where you think that she's going to be told no. But yeah, I mean, there is a little pop star imperiousness there.

Speaker 2:
[27:22] There is one contributing factor that will have, okay, spoiler alert, we're going to talk about what the movie is actually about or well, not thematically, but plot-wise. So if you haven't seen it yet, stop here.

Speaker 4:
[27:36] And this is not like a super plotty movie in any sense, but there is a kind of reveal. Yes. So if you're worried about that, please know that that's what's coming next.

Speaker 3:
[27:47] Hey, Ben from the editing booth here. If you want to remain spoiler free, but still want to listen to our discussion of Anne Hathaway, David Lowery, Michaela Cole and fake pop stars on film, then you can skip ahead 19 and a half minutes. See you on the other side.

Speaker 2:
[28:04] One thing complicating Mary's whole deal is that she's been possessed by a vengeance ghost or whatever it is. So I think that maybe all of the trappings and behaviors of her superstardom have fallen away because she's like, my assistant can't help me with the fact that I have this thing in me. Over the course of the movie, her realizing that it is something of karmic retribution for what she did, really lays her low and I think that she enters the movie knowing that there's something that she did that brought this on her. So she's humbled, I guess.

Speaker 4:
[28:44] Yeah. It is a movie about a literal possession by someone else's expelled resentment, slash also like a ghost. But it is also, I think, supposed to be a movie about someone who feels like lost in the sauce, right? Like her standing there, like the kind of scene before she takes off and flies off to London impulsively, is her looking at herself in the mirror in a dress she doesn't like, right? And feeling like, I don't see myself here anymore. I don't, I have like, the persona has overcome everything. I don't feel like I have control of it anymore. So there, the ghost is both a metaphor and not a metaphor, right? Like the ghost seems to be a real thing in this movie, but it is also like the, it is like sort of the persona of Mother Mary, kind of like beyond like having taken over her. Like she feels like she is no longer in control.

Speaker 2:
[29:38] And what I, one thing I like about the movie is that, you know, David Lowery from what I know is a straight man.

Speaker 4:
[29:45] Yes, he is married to another filmmaker, a woman.

Speaker 2:
[29:50] Right. So just broadly speaking about that demographic, I think there is again a version of this movie where that sort of loss in the sauce-ness, that intensity with which a dress is treated would be kind of derided. And they're like, oh, this is so silly. And there is an element of that in this, but I think he's like, no, this is like a huge part of Mary's self, and it might seem sort of just materialistic or whatever, but it really matters. I think the movie sort of gives fair due to that sort of intensity in a way that doesn't feel mocking. I think sometimes you want to compare this to Vox Lux, another sort of dark depiction of modern pop stardom. I think there's a lot more snide-ness in that movie about the star persona than there is in Mother Mary.

Speaker 4:
[30:42] Yeah. That is something that I appreciate about this movie, is that it takes pop music very seriously. Even if I feel like, I'm not convinced that the songs feel to me like there's not a banger in there.

Speaker 2:
[30:59] It's so hard to do that effectively.

Speaker 3:
[31:02] They work better as songs, like when you listen to them.

Speaker 2:
[31:06] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[31:07] Burial is especially great.

Speaker 2:
[31:09] Yeah. I like the music, but it's like Stereophonic that was off-Broadway, then on Broadway with future Carolyn Bissette, Sarah Pigeon. Those songs are incredible because they just sound like Fleetwood Mac songs, and the play is kind of, but that was also the past, so it's a little easier to do it retroactively, anticipating what the pop sound will be when the movie comes out. So you have to do it years in advance, basically. That's really hard. I think that the songs are good, but do I think that they would propel this person to Taylor Swift-level stardom? I don't know.

Speaker 4:
[31:43] I think they're beautiful and vaguely ethereal songs, which fits with the aloof persona.

Speaker 2:
[31:50] Which should be a Bowery Ballroom, not an ethereal.

Speaker 4:
[31:52] Yeah, exactly. I think that's what the stadium says. But I'm glad that you brought up Vox Lux because I really dislike Vox Lux. Why?

Speaker 2:
[31:59] It's such a gentle-

Speaker 4:
[32:01] I just, it's not- Look, I do not mind something that is very abrasive. You know, actually, I love an abrasive movie. I love a movie that is just like, what if we just rubbed all of your senses with sandpaper?

Speaker 2:
[32:15] Yes, give it to me. I don't like that.

Speaker 4:
[32:17] You don't like that? Yeah, I'm the one who's like, yes, give me an unpleasant experience. But Vox Lux does not feel guided by any genuine appreciation for pop music. I'm like, I do not think you can even satirize pop music. Unless you understand why it is good, you know? And I think there's only contempt for it in that movie.

Speaker 2:
[32:38] And this movie, he regards it with this, it's a shallowness there that is sort of part of his bigger point, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[32:47] Yeah. And in this movie, almost to a fault, I think is devoted to the idea of this ecstatic nature that can come with pop, right? A transportive, like, but I mean, and even if I feel like the songs don't feel quite there, yes, like as a kind of enormous like stadium.

Speaker 2:
[33:08] They're not like radio friendly.

Speaker 4:
[33:10] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[33:10] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[33:11] I think like this movie does a really good job of showing a stadium show, which is something that is so hard to do.

Speaker 2:
[33:18] And on not a huge budget.

Speaker 4:
[33:19] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[33:20] Which like there have been some movies, I mean, I feel like our parent podcast, Blank Check, will get mad, but like Trap, the M9 Shyamalan movie.

Speaker 4:
[33:29] I like Trap.

Speaker 2:
[33:32] No, that movie is fine. But like the way that that concert is portrayed, it's like, what? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[33:38] No, it is like it is a kind of a hilariously dinky looking, or the JLo rom-com Marry Me.

Speaker 2:
[33:47] The documentary?

Speaker 4:
[33:47] The documentary in which she marries Wyn Wilson. Yeah. Yeah. When they show, she's supposed to be this enormous pop star. And they have to show her on stage, you're like, is this a high school auditorium? Like it looks like, they just do not have the budget to create something that looks like tens of thousands of people have come here to see you. I mean, in that they just don't have the space.

Speaker 2:
[34:09] But Lowery does just enough to show you the sort of expanse of the crowd to convince you, but not so much that you start to notice the kind of fakery of it.

Speaker 4:
[34:18] Yes, yeah. And I mean, he also just like, he shows kind of like this enormous production value, right, like even if he is working with a lower budget. Like I think the moment we mentioned, which is hinted at at the beginning of the movie and that we eventually see where she falls, she has this accident, Mother Mary has an accident that really kind of like wounds her, it leaves her like with surgery scars, right, from like getting to like it is her on a platform being like lifted above the crowd like it's like a full on stadium worthy production and you're like, yeah, that's what you have to do if you're doing a stadium tour, like you got to do some showmanship, you got to have not just backup dancers and costumes and all of this stuff, but you're doing like really elaborate things to sustain your global tour.

Speaker 3:
[35:09] And that's the moment that the ghost fully enters into her.

Speaker 2:
[35:14] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[35:14] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[35:15] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[35:16] Which is also the moment that she becomes a sort of online spectacle.

Speaker 2:
[35:20] Yeah, because she's essentially hanged, but survives. And I think there's a lot in that imagery of hanging witches and it's a loaded way for that accident to play out. But I've never been to one of these big stadium shows. I'm not a big live music goer.

Speaker 4:
[35:42] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[35:42] But it feels convincing to me.

Speaker 4:
[35:45] Yeah, I haven't been for a very long time.

Speaker 2:
[35:48] What have you been to? What have both of you been to?

Speaker 4:
[35:51] Yeah, I almost never, I have not tried for years to go see a stadium show. I feel like, for whatever reason, the one that is really emblazoned on my mind is going to see the circus tour, Britney Spears. Like, spontaneously, it was at Madison Square Garden and at the time I was working across the street and we were like, you can still get really high up tickets for like 12 bucks. And so we went and whereas I've toured with the circus, you were famously ran away to the circus.

Speaker 2:
[36:17] Ben, I've probably you probably have more experience in this realm.

Speaker 3:
[36:20] I actually don't. I've never been to like a giant show.

Speaker 2:
[36:24] But I thought you followed Rascal Flatts around the country for a while. Is that not true?

Speaker 3:
[36:30] I've been to like music festivals.

Speaker 2:
[36:34] But that's a little bit more like you have to load in out quickly. Like so it's the production is not so great.

Speaker 3:
[36:39] Yeah, and like club stuff. But nothing on that level. To me, it's like, I don't know. Maybe my opinion would change even when I'm going to see Robin later this year.

Speaker 2:
[36:50] There you go.

Speaker 3:
[36:50] So that'll, I guess, be kind of my first one of these. But part of the musical experience for me is like being able to see the performer, like in the flesh.

Speaker 4:
[37:03] Not just like on a screen.

Speaker 2:
[37:05] What a weirdo. I don't understand that.

Speaker 3:
[37:08] But I do get, and I think this movie is sort of about, is the way that all of these people, their feelings and energies sort of enter into and are processed by this figure at the center of the stage, and what that does to a person.

Speaker 2:
[37:23] Yeah. And if one feeling about that person actually gets inside them. And granted, it's a feeling that's like Michaela Cole's character has sort of spit out into the world and it has a much more direct connection to Mary than does a random fan. But I think the idea of one sort of sentiment about Mary finally getting to her is a really interesting way to think about the supposed imperviousness of fame and all that.

Speaker 3:
[37:52] What do you make of the fact that the ghost emerges from her body? Like it comes from her tooth, her jaw, and it's like expelled via her body.

Speaker 4:
[38:03] Yeah. I mean, I think it feels and it enters Anne Hathaway through like her wounds.

Speaker 3:
[38:07] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[38:08] Like I feel like, I mean, to connect to Richard's point, it feels like she just like Michaela Cole's character literally expels her resentment, right? Like she doesn't feel like she can keep holding this in anymore. Like it is like having it inside her is like poisoning her. She is like watching Mother Mary on stage at that concert and like crushing her own tooth. She's like clenching her jaw so hard.

Speaker 2:
[38:32] It's like when you're at town hall in midtown Manhattan and you see your friends who do a podcast, and you're just like, what? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[38:39] And you're like, I'm loving this. I'm so angry though. I'm so angry. I can't even articulate why. And then you spit out a ghost. It's a common experience. I think we all really.

Speaker 2:
[38:49] My ghost got hit by a petty cab outside and it didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 4:
[38:53] Yeah. Well, this movie also brings up the intriguing idea that it takes a few months for a ghost to kind of traverse from London.

Speaker 3:
[39:03] Oceans take longer.

Speaker 2:
[39:04] I'm doing this on foot.

Speaker 4:
[39:08] But I mean, I like the idea of it being like this kind of like, yes, like a physical expelling.

Speaker 2:
[39:14] And a painful one. Like in order to put that out into the world, you have to sort of like suffer yourself.

Speaker 4:
[39:20] Yeah, yeah. Like she creates this wound in her mouth through which the ghost kind of like ends, is expelled apparently, right? And at the same way, like Mother Mary, the ghost goes inside her after she gets like her hand cut open, right? Like she gets this kind of stigmata. And, and that, like those, like having this kind of opening, these openings in her flesh allows the ghost inside.

Speaker 2:
[39:46] And we see this, but, this is all pretty much related in the present tense of the movie as a story. It's a very story telling kind of movie. It reminded me of like a Connor McPherson play where people just sit around monologuing about ghosts in the case of one of his plays. I like the kind of stagey-ness of it. Like I think, you know, obviously we see the concerts. So there's a cinematic element to that. The ghost special effects, the seance, all that. But like, I, there's a lot of this movie I think could just be a play. Yeah. And be really effective. Because the writing is so heightened, as Ben said, and like, and then that would work on stage.

Speaker 4:
[40:25] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the connections, though, that it does offer, in particular, there is this part where early on Mother Mary is like showing the dance she's going to do. And she does this dance that is...

Speaker 3:
[40:41] The scene is amazing.

Speaker 4:
[40:42] It is an amazing scene. It is like one of the better, like, my favorite scene of the movie, like I said, is the concert scene. But I feel like this is probably the...

Speaker 2:
[40:48] Anne Hathaway thought they were a break. She didn't know the cameras were rolling.

Speaker 4:
[40:51] She was just like, let me just do this.

Speaker 2:
[40:52] That's what she does.

Speaker 4:
[40:53] Yeah, when she's relaxing. Yeah, she does this incredible dance that we later see is sort of a recreation of the possession, right? Like, it is a possession dance, after which Sam kind of dryly says, like, you're going to do that while singing.

Speaker 7:
[41:10] But it is, yes, like...

Speaker 2:
[41:11] That's a great button to that.

Speaker 4:
[41:13] Yeah, yeah, you're like, you obviously are not. But yeah, she kind of like thrashes herself around. And it, I don't know, it connects also to the idea that the work she's doing has physical costs, right? Like the scars, the wounds, the bruises, like she, it isn't just that she is giving this energy like constantly, like as she does these shows, it is actually like kind of, she's a martyr.

Speaker 2:
[41:38] She's a corporeal being who is, like have you watched any of the genuinely wonderful Netflix series about the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders?

Speaker 4:
[41:47] I have not.

Speaker 2:
[41:48] So they do a signature dance called Thunderstruck to some ACDC song or something, and it involves like really high like Rockette style kicks, and then at the end of the dance, they fall into a split like in perfect unison, and they talk to former Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders who like have had hip replacements at like 35. And they're supposed to project a sort of just like physical ease, but it really does take a toll on the body. And you'd have to imagine that doing a 100 city tour with elaborate choreography, like that has an effect on your physical being. You're not that elastic, and you're also aging. And yeah, I think that again, that's part of the sort of reverence that Lowery has for this art form.

Speaker 4:
[42:37] Yeah, I mean, and that you just keep up the performance and the face, right? Like the kind of smiling face. Also, I mean, like, there are lots of fragments of this movie that really just stick with me. And I think one of the other ones is there's a shot where Hathaway, you know, with like kind of her kind of bedraggled travel clothing and her hair undone and no makeup is looking at the camera. And then it kind of flickers. Like, it combines that with a shot of her in full regalia as Mother Mary and it kind of flickers back and forth for a moment. And it's just like very hauntingly done. It is, it, there are multiple times in this movie where the comparison of like the costuming is like with armor, right, including Sam mentioning like I wanted, like I was the one who thought of dressing you like Joan of Arc first. Yeah, but yes, there is this kind of constant equating the work of being a pop star with a form of like being martyred to your audience.

Speaker 2:
[43:41] Yeah, because Joan of Arc died of old age, right? Comfortable in her bed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, but like, but the very idea of like, let's dress you up as someone who was burned alive as a teenager. Like, it's a violent sort of, you know, sort of idea about that kind of status. So yeah, we're kind of saying that this is a ghost, it's a spirit, it's a manifestation of a feeling. And I think that Lowery finds a really novel way to render that on screen. The entity is kind of a billowing piece of cloth in a way. How did it strike you?

Speaker 4:
[44:18] It's really beautiful, right? Like it is this kind of, it is this diaphanous red fabric, which is one of the reasons, right?

Speaker 3:
[44:27] Like a chiffon.

Speaker 4:
[44:28] One of the reasons that Mother Mary, when she comes to ask for this dress, she's like, no red. And it's in part because this entity is like red fabric. Yeah, and like is obviously the thing. I mean, I think it's striking and gorgeous. It reminded me in different ways of Peter Strickland's movie In Fabric, which has a haunted dress, a haunted red dress that at different times attacks people. But it also, there are ways in which like, especially when it's kind of floating in the black, where it reminded me of the kind of weird space in Under the Skin.

Speaker 2:
[45:05] Very much, yes.

Speaker 4:
[45:07] Where it is this kind of void space. I mean, in that case, the like fabric, the things billowing are like skin, right? Like the bodies of people who have been like sucked of their substance. But yeah, like that kind of dreamlike space, but also this like haunting space of, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[45:25] Something that I don't know if Lowery had this in mind, but in the like 1800s, the idea of spirits manifesting in the real world was something called, they would call it ectoplasm. And ectoplasm was sort of thought to be this, and was actually because these psychics or mediums were all frauds, they would actually manifest it as fabric, as chiffon and these like low lit environments that you know. And I have no idea if he was thinking that way, but that's something that immediately came to mind.

Speaker 2:
[46:00] Wait, Ghostbusters is from the 1800s? Jesus, I'm so old. No, I think that's a great point. And I think that it's funny that Lowery now in two movies has done ghostly. One that's this form, this kind of amorphous presence that's not corporeal in any way. And then in a ghost story, it's literally a sheet with the eye holes kind of. So he's kind of given us both extremes.

Speaker 4:
[46:27] Yeah, that's a really good point.

Speaker 2:
[46:30] Richard Brody in his review of Mother Mary got into sort of the way that the movie does not comment at all on the sort of racial politics of the fact that it's two black women who...

Speaker 4:
[46:43] Perform the magic, basically?

Speaker 2:
[46:44] Yeah, and that Mary is sort of like affected by or affecting, I don't really know what to make of that, but I do think that it's a bit, just bears mentioning, like, it's worth reading Brody's take on it, because like, whether that was a conscious thing of Lowry's or not, it's in there anyway.

Speaker 4:
[47:01] Yeah, yeah, and Sam, Michaela Cole's character, is very much presented as a kind of mystic, right? Like she, beyond just like the ways in which she kind of works in her church-like, you know...

Speaker 2:
[47:15] And she studied under Reynolds Woodcock, you know that?

Speaker 4:
[47:20] You know, Reynolds wishes he had a barn atelier like that.

Speaker 2:
[47:25] Oh, I think Vicky Creeps built one for him after the movie ends. It's implied.

Speaker 4:
[47:29] It's a sequel.

Speaker 7:
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Speaker 2:
[48:06] Can we zoom out a little bit and talk about Lowery as a filmmaker? Because I mentioned that he's like, I'm a big fan of his. Not everything he's made, I think I'm in love with, but I'm curious what you guys think about his movies. Because I don't know, I'm sort of entranced by him.

Speaker 4:
[48:24] Yeah, I feel like I first kind of ran across him when I used to go to South by Southwest back in the mumblecore days. And he was mumblecore adjacent, even though, like a lot of people who I think kind of got clustered into that scene, the aesthetics of his movies were not remotely like those of the kind of key mumblecore players, right? Like his movies are a lot more poetic and lyrical. The visuals are very different. Like he is not necessarily, he's not someone who is like, I love improv and consumer-grade camera work and 20-somethings avoiding conflict. Like none of those things are really kind of guiding forces in his movies. But yeah, it's funny, I barely remember Saint Nick, which is the first of his movies that I saw. But I remember Ain't Them Bodies Saints and the kind of just like the kind of lush beauty and melancholy of that. That's just like a quality that is just kind of running through all of his movies. It's almost like ache.

Speaker 2:
[49:39] A hundred percent. I mean, I think, you know, in some ways like a ghost story is this kind of, I've seen it sort of referenced as a sort of like, well, that's what like some letterboxed idiot thinks is profound or whatever. I get why it sort of stands in for that kind of pretension, if you want to call it that. But I think that movie is genuinely profound and I really appreciate that Lowery in that, in Pete's Dragon, in Green Night certainly, really like has mortality chief on his mind in a lot of his filmmaking. This is the only time I ever did this, but when I worked at my old job, and thus I trusted that my email address might get opened, if someone received an email from me, I emailed him about a ghost story. I was just like, I think this movie is blah, blah, blah, but everything I just said. He wrote back and he was like, oh, thank you. I haven't read your review because I don't read any reviews, but like, here's kind of what I would, you know, it was just sort of, you know, on my mind and I just love that he follows that instinct in so many different directions, you know? And I think The Green Knight, which is a very divisive movie, I think is maybe the sort of like pinnacle of that sort of concern where he's like, yeah, I'll make a knight movie that I guess has a commercial sort of element to it because there's swords and stuff like that. But really this whole movie is about like, look at this person in ancient times, but look at the ruins next to him. There are ancient times for this person. It's all about death and finiteness. I don't know, I find that fascinating for someone who does, with some regularity, work in the commercial space. I just can't think of anyone else like him.

Speaker 4:
[51:28] Yeah. I mean, I think his commercial movies, I guess like, I mean, even like, even The Green Night, it's hard for me to think of that, or The Old Man and the Gun, it's hard for me to think of those as even like really commercial movies, right? Like, even Pete's Dragon, like a Disney movie, a live action Disney movie, is like really, it is very lyrical, it is like, it has a very different pace and tone.

Speaker 2:
[51:55] It's a gorgeous movie.

Speaker 4:
[51:55] It is a gorgeous movie. I mean, The Old Man and the Gun, which is this like movie that is about Robert Redford, his like screen history and persona.

Speaker 2:
[52:04] It's him saying goodbye.

Speaker 4:
[52:06] His goodbye movie. I mean, that also like, and it's got this kind of like jazzy, you know, heist aspect to it, but it is like so much more meditative than that in other ways. Yeah, I think he's a really, I think he's a really gifted filmmaker. I still love a ghost story. I don't, yeah, I'm a letterbox idiot though, famously. But I think like a ghost story in its just like intense compact quality, the ways in which it channels all of history through this house, you know, while also being about a couple and their, you know, like their loving but not always happy relationship.

Speaker 2:
[52:42] I mean, obviously Robert Zemeck has perfected it with the movie Here. But a ghost story is a good precursor to that. Yeah. No, I don't mean to gush about him. I just, I am really struck by someone who is so earnest. And I don't detect any of the sort of irony or, I mean, he's cynical in some ways, but like, he's not arch, you know, in the way a lot of younger male filmmakers can be these days.

Speaker 4:
[53:10] Can we talk about one Annie Hathaway a bit? She's, I mean.

Speaker 2:
[53:15] New Jersey's finest.

Speaker 4:
[53:16] New Jersey's finest. On the verge of having a very storied year, we've got this movie. She's Penelope in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Chris Nolan, actually, I like to call him my close personal friend. She's in The End of Oak Street, which is the new movie from David Robert Mitchell of It Follows and Under the Silver Lake. That looks very Twilight Zone-esque. It's set up. I'm really looking forward to that one. I have no idea how it's going to be. She's in Verity.

Speaker 2:
[53:48] Colleen Hoover.

Speaker 4:
[53:48] The Colleen Hoover adaptation. It's like the Gothic Colleen Hoover adaptation.

Speaker 2:
[53:52] It was described to me as the weird Colleen Hoover. What I've seen is pretty weird, but okay.

Speaker 4:
[53:59] Yeah. We're like, what is the alternative to that? So there's a bunch of big, interesting swings of movies.

Speaker 2:
[54:08] Did you mention Devil Wears Prada 2?

Speaker 4:
[54:09] Devil Wears Prada 2, of course, which is coming out very soon.

Speaker 2:
[54:14] Yeah. She's having something of a renaissance. I think I've fallen under the trap before, especially with female actors, where I'm like, where did she go? And it's like, she's raising her children. That's where she went.

Speaker 4:
[54:29] I mean, she also, she's never really stopped working, right?

Speaker 2:
[54:34] But there was a little bit of a lull in her late 30s, roughly. Wasn't there kind of?

Speaker 4:
[54:40] She was like in only one movie in 2018, Ocean 8.

Speaker 2:
[54:46] Which she's brilliant in. I think she's the best part of that.

Speaker 4:
[54:48] She is. That's a bad movie though. She was in a bunch of movies in 2019. And even like during the pandemic, I feel like the weirdness of it was, well, one, she was in We Crashed, right? That show.

Speaker 2:
[55:04] Which she's very good in. That show's not good.

Speaker 4:
[55:06] That show's not good, but that kind of took up time. You know, she was in Armageddon time and Eileen. I think the thing is, like, she, like, there were movies that just, like, I didn't register. Like, remember when she was in Mother's Instincts?

Speaker 2:
[55:21] Yeah. I know, because I went, there was one Union Square Regal Theater. They played that movie for one day.

Speaker 4:
[55:30] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[55:32] And I went, as did about eight other gay guys, including some I knew. Yeah, no, she did that. She did the terrible COVID movie, Locked Up, or Locked Down, or whatever, with She Was Ill, Edgy Forward. That movie sucks.

Speaker 4:
[55:47] Wait, but like, I feel like, to go back to Mother's Instincts, because I feel like that was a movie that people barely knew existed.

Speaker 2:
[55:52] It's her and Jessica Justin.

Speaker 4:
[55:53] It's incredibly, yes, like, it tries to be sort of like a Hitchcockian thriller drama where they're like neighbors, they're moms. It's the 1950s, directed by Benoit Delhomme. Yeah, do you know how I watched this movie? Because they did not do press screenings.

Speaker 2:
[56:10] They sure didn't.

Speaker 4:
[56:10] Neon picked it up or something, right?

Speaker 2:
[56:13] Out of the trash.

Speaker 4:
[56:15] I Googled, watch Mother's Instinct online free, and then watch it on some shady streaming site because they had been released I think in the UK a year before. But yes, it's a movie that people do not know exists.

Speaker 2:
[56:27] There's a novel called A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton that was turned into a movie with Julianne Moore and Sigourney Weaver about one mother is watching both kids and the kid drowns and it's a drama about how that affects this relationship, whatever. That's kind of what Mother's Instinct is too, but they play it as a sort of Tawdry thriller. I think there's like a real villain in it too. If memory serves, one of the husbands.

Speaker 4:
[56:54] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[56:55] But again, she's good in it. And I think that back in my earlier writing days, I think I was a little hard on Anne Hathaway because we first lash out at that which we understand, which is to say, I saw the theater kid in her and I recognized myself and I hated that. And I think she still does have that sort of theater kid energy in interviews especially, but she's been making really interesting choices for the last decade.

Speaker 4:
[57:23] You know, another movie she made that people don't know exists, I think, for understandable reasons. She made a romantic comedy with Rebecca Miller called She Came to Me, starring Peter Dinklage. I may be one of the only people in the entire world who has seen it.

Speaker 2:
[57:36] Oh, I've seen it. Marissa Tomei plays a tugboat captain.

Speaker 4:
[57:38] Yeah. I think it's possible that Anne Hathaway, I think there's like one part where they quip about how many pencil skirts she wears. Did she become a nun at the end of this movie?

Speaker 2:
[57:49] Yeah, there's something like that. I was really fixated on Marissa Tomei being a tugboat captain, which she is, but not all the choices have been.

Speaker 4:
[57:59] No, but I mean Rebecca Miller. I can absolutely understand why. I mean, she has made interesting, ambitious choices.

Speaker 2:
[58:09] Yes, and I think that post-Oscar where she's spoken about how that was a really difficult time because people were sort of mocking her and she won for the theater kiddiest kind of thing she could have won for, a Les Mis movie. And she said it came true when she got the award. And there was a lot there that people were just sort of piling on about and I probably was one of those people.

Speaker 4:
[58:35] I mean, yeah, the kind of backlash against her. I always think about this writer who I think used to work for, I can't remember, she is no longer a magazine writer, but named Lauren Waterman, writes a very intermittent sub stack. And she wrote a sub stack about interviewing Anne Hathaway twice over her being a pretty young actor and then being a more famous one. And has this really interesting part where she goes back and listens to this old transcript of like, or looks at this old transcript of the interview with her. And Anne Hathaway was like 21 at the time. And she kind of like, she ends the interview by being like, is there anything I should have asked you that I haven't? You know, which is like, not an unusual closing question that journalists reach for a lot. And she kind of like starts doing, I guess, a kind of obnoxious theater kitty answer about being like, I'm not as serious as I seem, you know, like I don't take myself that seriously, I am really grateful and blah, blah, blah. And Lauren is like shocked to see that in the transcript, she breaks in and is like, slow down, this isn't the Oscars, which is like really, and she was like shocked at how rude that was. She's like, I can't believe I said this to her. And she kind of pieces together that she realizes she caused Anne Hathaway to basically have a panic attack afterwards when she like went outside and sat on the curb and like, and Anne Hathaway clearly like remembers this, but it's not until after the interview that they have like enough of a rapport in the second interview that kind of like hints at it. But I feel like there was, yes, like there is an aspect of Anne Hathaway that is like very theater kiddie, but also very kind of like, I'm so grateful to be here, but also like I see myself as being, you know, like maybe like the next, you know, like, I don't know, I'm like listening. Like someone who kind of seems to miscalibrate whatever it is, the extremely kind of like narrow path that we would like women to walk while seeming authentic, but also appropriately, you know, like, like subdued and real and like she's not always great at it. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[60:35] And I think that's kind of why it's been so fun to watch her make these interesting choices for the past however many years. Because she, I mean, I don't know the part, I don't know her, but like it seems like she has kind of let go of a lot of that. And she's like, I'm just going to do what interests me.

Speaker 4:
[60:51] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[60:51] And a few years ago, I don't know if she switched stylists or gave her stylists a different brief, but she's been dressing really edgy and cool lately. And watching Mother Mary, I was like, oh, was this the sort of culmination of that? Or maybe it was Delphiore's product too, or maybe it was the Colleen Hoover, I don't know. But she just has sort of stepped into herself in a way that I find is cool in her early 40s. It feels like she just seems a little more comfortable with her star persona than she was in the past. And part of that reason, she wasn't comfortable in the past was because people were jerks to her.

Speaker 3:
[61:28] When was the last time she sang? She doesn't sing a whole lot.

Speaker 2:
[61:34] No. Well, obviously Les Mis. Yeah. Past that, though, she might have done a Shakespeare in the park that involved a little singing, but like, no, I mean, it's not, she's not foregrounded it in her career at all.

Speaker 3:
[61:50] I love it when actors who you don't know for singing, singing stuff.

Speaker 2:
[61:54] I know.

Speaker 3:
[61:55] Like, I love it when Meryl Streep sings.

Speaker 2:
[61:58] She's a good singer.

Speaker 3:
[61:59] She's a fine singer. She's not like the world's best, but it's like, I don't know, there's just something so fun about seeing an actor that you don't know for being a singer like, just like do it.

Speaker 4:
[62:10] I mean, I in general, like, I mean, in that like Hong Kong star style also, where like people are just like, you may be a big movie star, but of course you also have to put out some pop albums because that's just required, like, maybe you're not a good singer at all, but that's just like part of being famous. And I really enjoy that. Like you're expected to be this kind of triple threat. You've got to like be a star. You've got to be a decent actor. You've got to be good on stage singing. Yeah, like, you know, I like that. We should require it more. It should be just so much harder to, you know, you should be put through your paces if you're going to be famous.

Speaker 2:
[62:42] Yeah, I would like to see her sing again in a movie. I think that'd be kind of fun. I mean, obviously, like, if she has any mind toward that EGOT, she's got to do Broadway.

Speaker 4:
[62:52] When's it going to happen?

Speaker 2:
[62:53] Which she would, they would, I mean, a producer would say yes on the spot. Like, we'll build a show around you, we don't care. I think someone who has a very different sized career is Michaela Cole.

Speaker 4:
[63:05] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[63:07] Who obviously broke out really big with Chewing Gum and then I May Destroy You was the really big HBO miniseries that put her on the map. Kind of around the same time that Phoebe Waller-Bridge was breaking out with Fleabag. Not exactly, but these two British creators and actors. And then Michaela Cole kind of didn't go to ground, but she didn't seem to capitalize on that breakout success as actively as another person might have.

Speaker 4:
[63:37] Yeah, and also like the pandemic happened, like the breakout was bright as... I mean, it's interesting that like Anne Hathaway is someone who, like her style of acting is that you're always going to see her working, right? And let's like, I think that is the theater kid aspect, but it is also just like, she does not like disappear effortlessly and naturalistically into roles. Like she shows the work, and sometimes that, I mean, I think increasingly she has chosen roles in which that is that benefits, you know, like the role.

Speaker 2:
[64:10] She's gone bigger. I mean, like Eileen, for example, is a big, florid performance, but it works.

Speaker 4:
[64:15] Yes, yes. And I think like she has just kind of like part of the roles she's chosen have like used that quality. Michaela Cole is someone who, I mean, she hasn't done nearly as much work because she has, like, as you pointed out slowly. Like, I think the difference between the roles in which she doesn't direct necessarily, she didn't like direct all the episodes of I May Destroy You, like it was her project, she kind of like, her understanding of her own energy, I think is like, she has been much better at kind of showcasing that in her own projects. And I feel like when I watch her under other filmmakers, she seems like her intensity is almost maybe confounding to them. You know, like she just like is such a distinctive, strong presence and like intense presence.

Speaker 3:
[64:58] She's one of the most interesting people to look at of all time.

Speaker 4:
[65:02] No, I know. She has an incredible face.

Speaker 3:
[65:04] There's no angle, and Lowery shoots her very well in this movie, but there's just no angle from which she is not fascinating to look at.

Speaker 4:
[65:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[65:14] Yeah, and it has to be said that like she is a darker skinned black woman, and so therefore, inherently, the career opportunities were not going to be presented to her in the same way they would have for a Phoebe Weller-Bridge or whoever else, you know, and that's a shame. And she has these incredibly angular features and this intensity that, yeah, I think a lot of filmmakers probably were like, well, she's a force into herself. I don't know how to slaughter into this project.

Speaker 4:
[65:40] And what's funny is like in her own projects, she both like understands that intensity, but also punctures it a lot. Like she's really funny in Chewing Gum. She's very funny at times in I May Destroy You, even as I May Destroy You tackles some really intense topics. Like she understands that like the intensity is something that can be also like can be deflated and used for comedy as much as it can be used for like these shows of emotion. And I feel like other people do not seem as confident with that as she is like doing it with herself. But you know, she has two movies out right now. She is, and they're both like two handers basically, right? Like she's in The Christophers, the new Steven Soderbergh movie with Ian McKellen, which I like a lot as well. And which is also a movie that is meditating about art and persona and the ways in which you can be commodified, but in a much kind of like in a different way, and also like a much more tangible way, you know, for all every way that Mother Mary is like very heightened and abstracts, The Christophers is about going through Ian McKellen's character is like incredibly cluttered, millions of pounds worth of townhouses that are, you know, filled with junk and that he's just using for storage. Like it is filled with like the kind of actual detritus of like people's bodies. And Mother Mary is very much about these kind of like thinking in heightened terms. But they're a really interesting double feature.

Speaker 2:
[67:05] Yeah. And it's, I'm sure, just coincidence that they happen to be out at the same time.

Speaker 4:
[67:10] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:11] I think she is utterly mesmerizing in Mother Mary. Like just like, and the way that she tackles that heightened dialogue, you know, again, I would love to see that on stage. Like she's just got a sort of Shakespearean heft to her that, and she's sort of channeling something otherworldly and, which, you know, befitting of the character. And I think that, you know, in a funny way in terms of time, power dynamics like within the text and sort of out meta textually like, you know, Anne Hathaway is the Oscar winning much bigger movie star. But she, in a way, seems to be sort of like trying to keep up with Cole because Cole is so commanding in the movie.

Speaker 5:
[68:01] So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night stay anywhere?

Speaker 6:
[68:06] Anywhere.

Speaker 5:
[68:07] What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris?

Speaker 7:
[68:09] Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby.

Speaker 5:
[68:11] Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad and Tulum?

Speaker 6:
[68:14] Hilton Honors, baby.

Speaker 5:
[68:17] What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties?

Speaker 1:
[68:23] When you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime, it matters where you stay.

Speaker 4:
[68:28] Hilton, for the stay.

Speaker 1:
[68:29] Book your spring break now.

Speaker 4:
[68:32] Before we close out, is it possible to make a genuinely convincing fictional pop star?

Speaker 2:
[68:39] Is it possible to write a genuinely funny comedian?

Speaker 4:
[68:43] I mean, kind of no.

Speaker 2:
[68:45] No.

Speaker 4:
[68:46] You know? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[68:47] I think you have to cast an actual pop star. I think of this as the problem of genius in any movie. When you have like a genius singer or a genius painter, and sometimes you'll like, they'll have them paint, and then you'll see the painting and it'll be like, oh, like that's...

Speaker 4:
[69:08] Right, right. You're like, this is supposed to be the greatest painting of all time. And it is...

Speaker 3:
[69:12] Where it's like, Star is Born works because it's Lady Gaga. Like you need a Lady Gaga to do that.

Speaker 4:
[69:17] No, I mean, and the thing is, and that song is so good.

Speaker 2:
[69:19] But even in that movie, she's not... I don't fully buy her... Like, I love that movie, I love her in the movie. But like, do I believe that Allie would be as big as she is?

Speaker 4:
[69:30] Well, she doesn't... I mean, neither of those two characters makes a lot of sense, right, as like, in their respective fame, right? Like, his fame makes no sense, like, in the level, in that movie.

Speaker 2:
[69:42] I just saw the Beaches musical on Broadway. You can read my review in The Guardian. Um, and that is, it's more based on the novel than the 88 movie, but like, the movie, you know, it's Bette Midler, and she's this kind of brassy, like, used to do vaudeville, basically, on the Boardwalk of the Atlantic City, and then becomes this major pop singing star. And the funny thing about Beaches, in all of its forms, is that, like, I don't buy you being famous in this era at all for what you're doing. And that's kind of true of Bette Midler herself, where it's like, how did you become 1940s famous in the 70s? It's like, how did that work? And so I think there's, in some ways, a benefit to just accepting that you're gonna be out of time. This is not gonna have a very contemporary analog, because it's so hard to predict that.

Speaker 4:
[70:35] Yeah, I mean, there is this aspect, I mean, to the same way as, like, why is it so hard to write a fictional standup, or a fictional sketch comedy?

Speaker 2:
[70:46] Well, Aaron Sorkit nailed it in Studio 60.

Speaker 4:
[70:48] Everyone famously says, an incredibly funny show.

Speaker 2:
[70:51] Yeah, Gilbert and Sullivan, people love jokes about that.

Speaker 4:
[70:54] Yes. Like, if you could write, if you could come up with an incredibly convincing contemporary pop star for fictional, like, why would you not just, like, kind of, like, engineer that person to become a famous pop star? Like, you might as well just, like, not, skip ahead and not do the movie, if you have so many thoughts on that and the talent. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, I mean, a lot of them feel off in terms of, maybe because you also don't have the budget for it, but, like, it's so hard to write a song that sounds like it would be a legitimate hit song.

Speaker 2:
[71:25] Because if a songwriter did that, they'd be like, why am I giving in to this movie?

Speaker 4:
[71:29] Right, right.

Speaker 2:
[71:30] I mean, I'm just going to make this a hit.

Speaker 4:
[71:32] Shallow is, like, one of the few I can think of that feels like a real...

Speaker 2:
[71:36] But that song is weird, and the movie, no, it's a great song, but the movie sort of did the work of convincing us that, like, okay, this is, like, a radio play, like, you know. But in the real world, if that song just existed sans any context, I don't think it would be...

Speaker 4:
[71:51] Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I guess, like, K-pop Demon Hunters has, like, come up with, like, the few actual songs that have, like, legitimate lives, like, like, like, pop banger, you know, radio hit lives, like, like, beyond the movie. And that is, I mean, that's a phenomenon for a reason, right?

Speaker 2:
[72:10] Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I mean, Golden might be the sort of, like, sort of pinnacle of that.

Speaker 4:
[72:17] Yes, and that was, like, it was, like, a freak, you know, incident of, like, of a kind of, like, great pop songwriting. Yeah, no, it's really hard to write a fake number one pop hit, because, yes, why would you not just go on and have the song?

Speaker 2:
[72:32] Beyond the Lights, do we hear her songs?

Speaker 4:
[72:34] We do. I think the thing that that movie does really well is, like, the music videos are extremely convincing.

Speaker 2:
[72:39] Yes, that's true, that's true, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[72:41] Like, they feel, like, dead on in terms of, like, the look of it, like, the... I feel like the songs are, like, they're okay. But she's also, like, not meant to be, like, the greatest, right? Like, she's still kind of, like, rising, right?

Speaker 2:
[72:54] Right, she's on the come-up, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[72:56] So I feel like that's a pretty good one.

Speaker 2:
[72:58] What's the one with Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross?

Speaker 4:
[73:00] Teen Spirit?

Speaker 2:
[73:01] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that was... That was a Gennaccio film, the something note, the high note.

Speaker 4:
[73:06] Oh, God, I don't even remember.

Speaker 2:
[73:08] Anyway, Tracee Ellis Ross plays a sort of, like, somewhat, quote, aging pop star. They do some, it's half convincing, I would say. But it's a very entertaining movie, but, like, again, you do have to suspend some disbelief for all of these.

Speaker 4:
[73:23] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:23] The only, the one that got it right was Glitter. Which I contend, not a bad movie.

Speaker 4:
[73:30] I mean, like, right, everyone always brings up that...

Speaker 2:
[73:32] It's the best movie to come out in 9-11. No, the soundtrack came out in 9-11, I forget.

Speaker 4:
[73:39] Yeah. I mean, everyone always brings up that thing you do as having, like, a kind of, like, a legit...

Speaker 2:
[73:45] But again, it's easier to do when it's a period piece.

Speaker 4:
[73:47] Sure, sure. I mean, I like when... I mean, they're not pop. I like in Almost Famous when everyone is like, this is kind of like a middling band, you know? So, like, they're just fine.

Speaker 2:
[73:58] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[73:59] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:59] Yeah. Like, I had this conversation once with somebody, I was like, I know they're really successful. They have had so many hit songs. But is Matchbox 20 anyone's favorite band? Is there a single person on Earth other than Prop Thomas? You know, and I feel like... It must be.

Speaker 4:
[74:16] People go spend money to see them in concert. And that's like, that's a true test.

Speaker 2:
[74:18] Right, but Favorite?

Speaker 4:
[74:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:20] Like Stillwater in Almost Famous, like, that's no one's favorite.

Speaker 4:
[74:23] Right, they're no one's favorite band. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[74:25] Spinal Tap.

Speaker 2:
[74:28] Yeah. And that was contemporary.

Speaker 4:
[74:30] Yeah, and they actually managed to go on tour.

Speaker 3:
[74:33] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[74:33] I think it's easier to write like a kind of a parody of a, you know, like...

Speaker 3:
[74:38] Mighty Wind, too.

Speaker 4:
[74:39] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[74:39] Those songs were obviously not like, those were not hits, but...

Speaker 4:
[74:43] Or like the Eurovision Song Contest, right? Like that movie, like those songs are like funny parodies.

Speaker 2:
[74:51] Roseburn and Get Him to the Greek, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[74:54] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:54] It's hard, but I think that Mother Mary, in its sort of weird swirl of a world, like, it sold me enough on it. Even if I don't think that she would be that huge in our world.

Speaker 4:
[75:06] You know what really should have been a bigger deal is Wild Rose. Do you remember the song at the end of Wild Rose?

Speaker 2:
[75:14] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[75:14] Yeah. Incredible song. Written by Mary Steenburgen, who suddenly developed songwriting talent after going under anesthesia, which should be a movie in its own, right? But yeah, like the song at the end.

Speaker 2:
[75:28] Mother Mary Steenburgen.

Speaker 4:
[75:29] Yeah. Wild Rose, good movie generally. Great. Jesse Buckley. But like, oh, that song at the end is so good.

Speaker 2:
[75:36] Country music, I think the bar is different because there's such a storytelling quality to some country music that it's easier, and also it's, look, someone will get mad at me, but like that genre seems to be less constantly evolving than is pop, you know? Whereas pop, if it's six months behind the kind of curve, you notice it.

Speaker 4:
[75:59] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:01] Right. Right.

Speaker 4:
[76:01] Because you're also like, the whole project is not just the songs. It's, as this movie knows very well, it is like this larger kind of like ongoing narrative and image transformation.

Speaker 2:
[76:13] And simulating cool on screen is hard.

Speaker 4:
[76:15] Yeah. Yeah. Really hard. Yeah. And I think there's something about having a pop star whose audience seems to be quite young, right? But that who is Mother Mary, right? Like David Lowery has talked about being like, this is like Taylor Swift in like 10 to 15 years, which age-wise does not quite work. But also it raises that interesting question of like, what does a pop star whose audience is still like, seems to be like young women, girls and young women? What does it look like for them to also be this like very grown up figure?

Speaker 2:
[76:55] So we've mentioned a few of them, but let's kind of just quickly run down another other sort of pop star movies.

Speaker 4:
[77:03] Yeah, or just like general, I guess like this is a broad definition of pop.

Speaker 2:
[77:08] I mean, obviously all of us to this day cannot stop talking about the Mandy Moore, Hugh Grant film, American Dreams with a Z.

Speaker 4:
[77:15] I actually think about American Dreams with a Z.

Speaker 2:
[77:17] Which is also about terrorism.

Speaker 4:
[77:19] Oh yeah, there's like a bomber.

Speaker 2:
[77:21] Great trailer. I was really excited for that movie and then the actual movie is well.

Speaker 4:
[77:26] Yeah, I feel like I'm kind of weirdly fond of this movie. It's been a really long time.

Speaker 2:
[77:31] American Dreams?

Speaker 4:
[77:31] Yes. It's been a really long time since I've seen it.

Speaker 2:
[77:34] Spin-off podcast?

Speaker 4:
[77:36] Yeah, the rare movie to combine an American idol parody with the idea of a terrorist attack with the hodests.

Speaker 2:
[77:46] I think that looking at this letterbox list of sort of pop story movies, I think something like Her Smell works because that's about a niche of music. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[77:58] I mean, I don't find the music performances in Her Smell convincing at all.

Speaker 2:
[78:03] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[78:03] Like, I just like, I think they're the weakest part, but there's not much by way of, you know what I mean? Like most of it is a backstage, like is her just kind of like tearing through backstage and tearing it up. And I think she is like very good at that. Elizabeth Moss knows how to go big and to spiral out of control.

Speaker 2:
[78:23] Yeah. In that movie, Virginia Madsen plays her mom, which reminds me, I forget if I said this on the podcast, do you know about the Nicola Pelts movie Lola that she directed and stars in? So the daughter of a billionaire who's married to Brooklyn Beckham?

Speaker 4:
[78:36] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[78:37] So Virginia Madsen plays the mom in that movie and she's sort of like a parody of, I mean, it's not a deliberate parody of like an actress playing a poor person. And the movie is so sloppy that in the end credits, she's credited as Virginia Madsen.

Speaker 4:
[78:52] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[78:52] That's how badly that movie is made. Anyway, sorry. No. A digression.

Speaker 4:
[78:56] How about Teen Spirit?

Speaker 2:
[78:58] That's the Max Mugella film, which also kind of like American Dreams is about a singing competition.

Speaker 4:
[79:05] I have not seen this one with Elle Fanning as a star.

Speaker 2:
[79:07] It's a strange movie. It's, she's an American but she's in a singing competition in the UK. It feels removed from the world enough that it's like, okay, sure. It doesn't feel like it's really trying to be literal or that credible even. Sing Street, a cute Sundance crowd pleaser.

Speaker 4:
[79:32] That song is pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[79:33] That song is good. John Doyle makes these music movies and Flora and Son, another one which I think is really cute and the songs are good. But again, they have a specific context where they're not...

Speaker 4:
[79:44] It's very like that thing you do where you're like, I can see this being a one hit wonder. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[79:48] Well, exactly.

Speaker 4:
[79:50] Pop Star, Never Stopping. Great movie. An all-timer.

Speaker 2:
[79:55] But obviously the songs there are just like delivered shows.

Speaker 4:
[79:57] They're really, really funny. It's also his, I mean, despite it being called Pop Star, he's not quite a pop star. He's like a slightly kind of hybrid. I mean, like as is often the case with these, the type of star they are feels a little inexact.

Speaker 2:
[80:09] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[80:09] But that's an incredible movie.

Speaker 2:
[80:12] I love that movie so much. I'm glad we're talking about pop music now because we're not going to talk about it at all next week.

Speaker 4:
[80:16] Never. Never again. Never going to come up.

Speaker 2:
[80:20] We Are the Best, that little Swedish movie. That's a great movie.

Speaker 4:
[80:23] That is a great movie.

Speaker 2:
[80:24] Watching that movie, I was like, oh right. People were alive in other countries in the 1970s. It's just like, what was Sweden like that? I don't know. That's a really great movie. People should watch that. Oh, Turning Red.

Speaker 4:
[80:38] Turning Red. Yeah. Great.

Speaker 2:
[80:40] Again, a little bit of a period throwback.

Speaker 4:
[80:42] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[80:43] You have that remove.

Speaker 4:
[80:44] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[80:44] But I buy that boy band.

Speaker 4:
[80:46] Oh yeah. They're supposed to be funny, but yes, they seem absolutely plausible. I love the way these middle school characters react to them, where it's this sublimated lust that they can't quite figure out how to show yet. It's so funny.

Speaker 2:
[81:02] They needed a character who couldn't express that and so had to live vicariously through his sister. I'm just saying hypothetically, were someone to go to a Hanson concert, but felt he could not express what he was feeling.

Speaker 4:
[81:14] I can't imagine what you're talking about.

Speaker 2:
[81:16] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[81:16] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[81:18] It's similar to being at town hall and seeing your friends on stage doing that.

Speaker 4:
[81:28] Oh, what about The Bodyguard?

Speaker 2:
[81:32] A tricky one because a couple of those songs were actual radio hits.

Speaker 4:
[81:36] Yes. I mean, that soundtrack was enormous, right?

Speaker 2:
[81:40] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[81:40] Yeah. I know. It's also just, you're like, this is just Whitney Houston. These are Whitney Houston songs.

Speaker 2:
[81:45] Yeah. Queen of the Night is the one with the headpiece, right? And that one is maybe the most movie-ish of the songs. And obviously, I Will Always Love You was already a Dolly Parton song. You know, but that's a pretty convincing one, I guess. I mean, that movie is, I rewatched it thinking like, oh, it's kind of an unfairly maligned classic. No, it's a pretty bad movie.

Speaker 4:
[82:07] It's a bad movie. The romance is like not great, but the songs are incredible. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[82:12] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[82:13] Yeah. Not really pop at all, but what about Inside Lewin Davis?

Speaker 2:
[82:20] Well, a movie that sort of does protect itself a little because he's supposed to be the one who didn't make it.

Speaker 4:
[82:24] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[82:25] Right.

Speaker 4:
[82:25] But I love that. I feel like it's actually in the same way as Almost Famous. It is much easier to be like, here's someone with talent who is just not going to be one of the acts of this time that we remember. It's some ways, it is still tricky, but it's easier to be like, here's someone who is clearly gifted. They're just not the right gifted in the right way.

Speaker 2:
[82:50] It's not the right sort of magic there. Yeah. Yeah. The one, like the main song that's in the trailer, is that what's original to the movie, I think, right?

Speaker 4:
[82:57] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[82:57] That's a beautiful song.

Speaker 4:
[82:58] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[82:59] Then the Justin Timberlake one is sort of, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[83:02] Yeah. Right. Or you mean the commercial one? Yeah. Yeah. No. Josie and the Pussycats.

Speaker 2:
[83:07] Sure. But again, a satire.

Speaker 4:
[83:09] Right.

Speaker 2:
[83:10] Good movie. A good movie. Yeah. One that, yeah, was unfairly kind of pooh-poohed in its day. And then people were like, no, you don't get it. Oh, Spice World. There would be a band called Spice Girls. That's only in the movies, folks. Before we end the episode, we're going to turn to our recommendations corner. Ben, do you have something to recommend?

Speaker 3:
[83:39] Yeah, I was thinking about goth pop songstresses.

Speaker 2:
[83:45] Because you're never thinking about that otherwise.

Speaker 3:
[83:49] Okay, I do spend a lot of time on this, but I was reminded of trying to find somebody who fits in the zone of the Mother Mary performer. And do you want to know the singer known as Bat for Lashes?

Speaker 4:
[84:03] Yeah, of course.

Speaker 3:
[84:04] I wanted to recommend specifically a song, her cover of I'm On Fire by Bruce Springsteen. It is a completely original sort of take on the song. And I find it incredibly haunting and also something that you could hear maybe Mother Mary doing.

Speaker 2:
[84:26] I'm On Fire originally recorded by Joan of Arc. When she was. That's good. I mean, I love a good cover. I mean, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[84:37] One of my all time favorite covers.

Speaker 2:
[84:39] My recommendation is for a really depressing, harrowing, miserable show called Half Man. That is speaking of Michaela Cole, like doing like a sort of aughtery TV show. This is the follow up to Richard Gad's Baby Reindeer. It's on HBO this time, not Netflix. Jamie Bell is in it. And it is just a really, really bleak depiction of like tortured masculinity and sexuality. That again, is hard to recommend enthusiastically because it's such a miserable sit, but I did by the end get something out of it. So, Half Man, available now.

Speaker 4:
[85:15] My recommendation, I guess, I managed to read a whole book. This is hard for me because of my terrible attention span and illiteracy. But I did read the latest book from Tana French.

Speaker 2:
[85:29] Oh, she's great.

Speaker 4:
[85:30] It's called The Keeper. She wrote the Dublin Murder Squad series, which is a series of mysteries that kept, I think interestingly and also probably incredibly exasperatingly for any streaming service who wants to set out to adapt them. Each novel runs with a different main character in this group of detectives. So it doesn't stick with one. There's a different main character each time. But her more recent novels have been all set in a small Irish village called Ardnacelty. I have read all three, even though I really didn't love the first one. It's just about a retired cop from Chicago who buys this old farmhouse in this village with the idea he's going to retire there, and then gets swept up in all of the intrigues that are very specific to how a small Irish village works. But by this third one, I was like, okay, these are less mysteries, though there's always a mystery, and more about how you navigate the dynamics of a really closed community, first as an outsider and then as someone who has been taken in as part of it. That is actually interesting and just genuinely different. This third one leans into that very heavily. I think it just came out last month, so The Keeper.

Speaker 2:
[86:52] Yeah, she's a great writer.

Speaker 3:
[86:53] Where are we going next week?

Speaker 2:
[86:55] Oh, God.

Speaker 4:
[86:56] We are never going to make it to Neverlands.

Speaker 2:
[86:58] Here's the thing about next week.

Speaker 3:
[87:01] What's this? A ticket to Gary, Indiana.

Speaker 2:
[87:04] Oh, no. We are going to talk about Michael, the Michael Jackson film that people are reacting to pretty normally.

Speaker 4:
[87:12] Yeah, no. As is often the case with Michael Jackson.

Speaker 2:
[87:16] They have a very chill time to be online.

Speaker 4:
[87:17] No one has wrong opinions.

Speaker 2:
[87:19] Yeah. We are going to wait into that. Don't tell people. Listen and then never repeat what we've said. Yeah. We are going to endeavor to talk about this very fraught movie because it's going to be one of the big hits of the year, we think.

Speaker 4:
[87:34] Oh, yeah. It's going to.

Speaker 2:
[87:38] It bears. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[87:39] We will be able to approach it, I think, in an interesting way.

Speaker 2:
[87:42] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[87:48] Critical Darlings is a Blank Check production hosted by Alison Willmore and Richard Lawson. Produced by Benjamin Frisch. Executive produced by Griffin Newman. We'll be back next week to talk about