Blank Check with Griffin & David - An Angel at My Table with Dana Stevens

Episode Date: January 23, 2022

Dana Stevens (Slate.com / Her new Buster Keaton biography “Cameraman”) returns to the pod to *literally* wax poetic about the literary coming-of-age story “An Angel At My Table”. The film is an intimate, often heartbreaking saga of a woman discovering her own creative voice…and yes, the woman just happens to look like Little Orphan Annie. The gang discusses the film within the context of other films that show age progression through the casting of multiple actors; the context of films that depict mental illness; and the context of small redheaded children with very curly, almost spherical hair, who may or may not have hard knock lives. Plus - possibly our most obscure box office game yet, and some genuine Janet Frame poetry reading! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

I long to be as full of secrets as she seemed to be. That would prompt a man to podcast them. That's so good that we did that. We waited about 15 minutes. I want to explain what happened, which is this movie has no quotes page. And then when I Googled Angel at My Table quotes, I got quotes from the book. So I opened up a window with Criterion Channel and scrubbed to the scene.

That's the line that kind of jumped out to me the most watching. I don't know if it's the iconic line, but there's not too much... Campion Tour credit does not overuse the device of the voiceover narration giving us sort of like the verbatim excerpts from the book.

No. But I think that wording of I... Say the actual line, right. The actual line is, I long to be as full of secrets as she seemed to be. That would prompt a man to discover them. But just the implication of I long to be as full of secrets as she seemed to be is like a verbalization of a feeling I've never really heard expressed before. I love it. In terms of just

like thinking about how you wish people perceived you and that they wanted to ask questions. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, that's great. And so much of this character's struggle is that she has no like

filter and guard. That she's so readable that people don't really know what to make of her, you know? And also that her inner life is so inscrutable, even to us. And it's something I really love about this movie is you spend two hours and 38 minutes with this woman on camera basically every second. It's so intimate in a way. And yet she's such a mystery. And even at the end of the film, you don't really feel like you know her.

You don't completely understand what motivates her to write, what it means to her to write. And that mystery is just, it's a huge part of what I love about Angel at My Table. She's both at the same time though, because I think especially

with Carrie Fox's performance, she's playing the kind of person who cannot hide exactly how she's feeling on her face at all times. Right? Like, she's, like, so painfully expressive and transparent. That's what freaks people out.

Right, exactly. That she seems like such an open, you know, sort of wounded person, I guess. I don't know. Her social self is very transparent. You're right. Painfully transparent, right? So much so that she has to hide and has to eat in private and all of those things. But her artistic self, and this really is like a coming of age movie about an artist, one of the best coming of age movies about an artist. Her artistic self really remains so private. And it almost is like, I feel like Campion is almost depending on you either knowing

her work going in or that you're going to run off immediately afterwards and read the three autobiographies that this is based on. You know, it's like she's leaving a lot of things just outside of the frame, the frame frame. Oh, oh, Dana. Fifteen comedy points. That's good. The lady's called frame. But that's a question I want to ask around the room in one moment after I introduced the show, because this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy pass from products they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Sometimes they bounce, baby. And this is a miniseries on the films of Jane Campion. It is called The Podcastiano. That's right. Which I think we've realized only works if you say it in an Italian accent. The Podcastiano. You have to.

Otherwise, it's, I don't know. An interesting thing about this filmography. Today, we're covering her third feature film and it is her second feature film that was designed for TV which we usually try to not cover on main feed but this one never

aired in the TV format right it was sort of meant produced under that idea I believe it did air now I want to triple check my research. I think it aired as 50... Sorry, three 50-minute episodes. Okay.

But only in New Zealand? But only in New Zealand and Australia or whatever. But that is... It looks not in a bad way, but it has a more stationary camera right it feels it was made on a television production schedule

yeah you feel that sometimes but I believe it did air on television before immediately pretty much being packaged into a movie and taken to the Venice Film Festival where it went over better than I think anyone thought,

given that this is like a very specific figure. You know, like this is not like, this is, the Campion says, like this is like a person that's only known in my part of the world. Like, you know, so I did not understand, or I did not, was not resolute that people would respond to her in Europe or in America or whatever.

I also just think to foreground this thing, it is interesting, like, for a movie that was designed to be a three part television miniseries and is literally sort of like broken up into part one, part two, part three. and is literally sort of like broken up into part one, part two, part three. I cannot imagine this thing playing as well split into three segments as it does as one complete watch, even though I doubt there were any editing changes to screening it that way other than just putting the things end to end. Because there's something about it. It's weird how well this works as like a small scale epic of a woman's life versus this sort of like long multi-part sort of multi-installment story you know yes

it works great as a movie right yeah it's sort of undeniably should be a movie i don't know that's i mean that's how it's categorized to this day, which is why I asked if it was ever even televised and it played festivals everywhere, was released in theaters everywhere. It's a movie.

Yeah, I mean, well, like this, this is a movie. I mean, obviously, like, you know, the feature length version of An Angel at My Table, but I do think there might

have been a broadcast and now I have to triple check all that. Look, we'll solve this mystery, but our guest today, Yeah. who's already spoken because she knows how to be on this show. She's very good at it. One of my favorite guests returning to the show from Slate. New book cameraman, Buster Keaton biography, Dana Stevens.

Hello. Happy to be with you guys, and I'm really, really happy that I snagged this movie. It was down to this or Bright Star, david and i were emailing about it it was really tough for me because i think if i had to just i hate doing this but if i had to put them in you know lady justice's scales i maybe love bright star slightly more than angel at my table they're kind of sister films in a way right they're her two biopics about writers separated by so many years um but because i hadn't seen this one in so long yeah this just seemed like like maybe a fresher thing because Bright Star is one of those movies

that I'm always pressing earnestly onto people and talking about anyway. Bright Star also has more, it's a more recent film. It has more, like you were the only person in the sort of net I was casting who had spoken up for Angel at my table.

Not that this is a forgotten movie, but obviously, whatever. You know, it's less frequently watched, I guess. So I was happy that you eventually opted for Angel at My Table. Cameraman, the book is out. This episode is dropping January 23rd, right? Dana, is the book coming out this week? I forget your exact release date.

Yes. If this drops on the 23rd, it's two days away from the release of Cameraman. Awesome. Whoever wants to order it at that point is going to have two days until it arrives in their box. Amazing. Getting that up top. I'm always excited when we line

it up like that. That was another reason. It's so nice. It's so nice when that happens. It's such a good book. I have not finished it yet because I'm bad at doing things on any sort of schedule. But it is so excellent. And as a Buster Keaton fan, it's like I remember I mean, when you were last on the show, the book had just gotten announced, I think, during the When Harry Met Sally episode. during the When Harry Met Sally episode. And you said that, like, you wanted to write the Buster Keaton book that you felt like you've never been able to find. And as a big fan of his work,

who, you know, hasn't read and watched everything, but has dug into a lot of the more autobiographical sort of life-spanning works that people have made about him in his career, I do feel like you're able to get out a lot of things that I haven't seen really dug into in other people's accounts. Oh, thank you. Yeah, there's many, many great books on Buster Keaton. But the thing that I wanted to do with this book, and I hope it's working for you and works for people that read it,

was to pull out the camera, you know, just to tell not only his life story and not only the story of his work, but to kind of place him in the context of his time. And because he was such an exemplary figure of the 20th century, I mean, there are just so many ways to frame his work that are about much more than Keaton and much more than cinema. You know, he just, he had this zealot-like quality where he just seemed like he was in some way tangentially connected to so many historical, cultural, technological, legal developments of his time. And so I guess I'm sort of trying to see how history moves through his life is a way of thinking about it. Well, you said right at the beginning of this episode, the thing that's so fascinating about this movie is by the end of it,

Jennifer still doesn't really have a clear sense of who she is as an author, as an artist. Like, you know, she has not really figured that out, despite the fact that she is successful and established by that point. But Buster Keen was one of those guys where, like, by all accounts, he was so compartmentalized about how he treated his career and his work. As you said, he had this eloquent quality, but it also was like, he had an insane work ethic, but it was just kind of like he would solve things. He wasn't a tortured artist.

You know, it was a job. I think that probably comes out of his upbringing and everything, where it was just like, his identity was not inextricably tied to the thing he did. And he was just, I do this thing well, that makes me feel good.

Then I go home and I drink. Well, yeah, there were about five years in his life where he had a serious, serious drinking problem, which which I treat in the book. But then a thing that people don't realize, and I think too often he gets talked about as someone who with the coming of sound, you know, his career went down the toilet and that was the end of him. And the fact is that one of the most inspirational parts of his story is that he very slowly kind of clawed his way back to making a living as an entertainer and, you know, died doing that and doing that very happily and in a fulfilled way. But a little bit like the Janet Frame character that we're going to talk about in this episode, he also has this ineffable, mysterious quality where even after researching him for over five years and, you know, thinking about him every single day in the context

of his time, as a person, I barely understand him at all. I think very, very few people did in his lifetime. It's something that his sister, Louise Keaton, who lived with him, including in his adult life, for many, many years and was very close to him, said, I never knew what he was thinking. Never. That's a famous quote from Louise Keaton. So that mystery to him will remain

no matter how many books are written about him. It's only his movies that answer it, really. Yeah, and it was his whole star quality. Like, as a performer, was the whole stone-faced thing of, like, what the fuck is going on inside this guy's head? Right, right. Like, how could somebody have that sense of humor

and make you laugh so hard, right? And just have such a completely solemn and impassive face at every moment. Yeah. We'll put a link in the bio, or in the, rather, we'll put a link in the episode description of where rather we'll put a link in the episode description of where you can get Dana's book we absolutely will Griff I I think this did not air on TV I take it

back okay okay as far as I can tell it was absolutely made for TV and it was sort of made on a TV sort of budget and time frame and then they screened it at a festival they kicked it up i believe the first festival was the 1990 sydney film festival and it got such a huge reaction that they took it to the venice film festival where it famously went over so well that when it won the silver line it won the runner-up prize the crowd was like going angel angel i didn't and didn't want to hear who had beaten it like who would want like there was like basically like you know i mean obviously you know maybe these stories get inflated over the years but it does kind of sound like there was just kind of a crazy let's see it actually lost the golden lion to tom stopper

it's rosencrantz and guildenstern are Dead movie. Which is sort of a forgotten movie. Yeah. The Gary Oldman, Tim Roth. But it's like a very enjoyable film. I like that movie. It's very entertaining. It's kind of hard to argue with it. But I think that was something of a scandal too at Cannes, right?

I was reading that it didn't win the Golden Lion, the big prize at Cannes. Venice, Venice. I'm sorry. It didn't win the Golden Lion, but it did win the special jury prize and that people were upset at the festival that it didn't take both.

So it was very popular there as well. People absolutely, whatever. It became this, wow, this is a hot, by the way, Goodfellas was in competition at the Venice Film Festival this year at Mo' Better Blues and some, there's, yeah, this is a, Martin Scorsese won the directing trophy.

Anyway. Well, it's also, the movie after this is Piano, where she becomes the first woman to win the Palme d'Or. That's right. So I wonder if also the, her getting a special jury prize instead of the, what, Silver Lion, was seen as sort of like

a continuing sort of condescension, you know? Yeah, maybe it was, right. Like, why is it getting shunted to runner up? Maybe that was part of it. I don't, look, all I can tell you is that people were shouting, Angel, Angel, for 10 minutes. And that's what Campion recalls

basically, just having a great time at the festivals and so then it was like, okay, it's a movie we'll release it it was released in Australia in 1990 and it came out the rest of the world in 1991, pretty much I mean, we've talked about this in the previous episodes

but to reground it, she is a filmmaker whose career is really made by film festivals, going back to her first three short films, playing all at Cannes, and the director sort of demanding to New Zealand, you have to give her money to make a feature to come back here,

because this is, I'm telling you, this is an important director. And it's a time when, you know, Australian and New Zealand cinema is still, I think, fairly exotic. Like, it's still pretty new. So, like, that happens, I think, especially back in the day,

pre-internet at film festivals, where it's sort of like trying to identify where new movie-making movements are coming out of. And this was a vanguard. You know, this was exciting. I think that was a big part of it. Right. A time when film Twitter only existed in person in specific foreign cities.

Seems fun, right? I don't know. Yeah, nice to be able to just like get off playing and leave film Twitter after a week. Dana, when did you first see An Angel at My Table? Like, what's your campion story?

I'm sure that I saw it when it came out because I was already interested in... 91, basically. Yeah, I was already interested in, you know, Australian, New Zealand,

this kind of cinema. I think something that I associated with at the time, and I even confused the movies for years afterwards probably, was My Brilliant Career, right? The Gillian Armstrong movie with Judy Davis, which is also about a young woman kind of growing into herself as a writer.

Very different movie, but it's sort of seemed like part of the genealogy, you know, or just Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I think this movie has something in common with, especially in that early chapter about her childhood you know something about the mystery and those fades to black and you know the way that everything is sort of held at this slightly gauzy distance has a little bit of a picnic hanging rock feel yeah and the way the way she starts scenes in the middle over and over again where you're like whoa what's happening you know like she'll just sort of like cut into a meal or kids and you're like why are we here now you know like like she'll just sort of like cut into a meal or kids. And you're like, why are we here now? You know, like just to add to the yeah, the dreaminess.

Yeah, there's an off kilterness to that portrait of the family that I absolutely love. I mean, there's not there's no sort of expository moment where we learn here are the kids names. Here's their birth order. You know, here's how they each feel about their parents or something like that. They're just this pack of kids who are sometimes mixed in with other neighborhood kids that aren't in the family. And the work is on you to figure out the siblings and their relationship to each other and what their family dynamic is like. And that's all just done with so much elusiveness, you know, elusiveness with an A. And it's just a gorgeous part of the movie. It's almost hard to leave that chapter of the movie for me because that may be my favorite bit.

It's hard to leave that chapter of the movie for me because that may be my favorite bit. And that little girl, I don't know if I'm saying her name right, Alicia Keough, who plays her as a child. For one thing, extraordinary continuity among the three actresses who play her. Yeah, it's wild. To the extent that I almost thought, is this a boyhood thing? Like between the little girl and the adolescent girl, it's almost like they're sisters. They're so similar. And then Carrie Fox also seems like the woman that would have grown out of those two girls. And I'm always very

attentive to that. Like, remember Cinema Paradiso? Like how none of the three guys at the same different ages seemed like the same dude. And that always pulled

me out of that movie completely, you know, and it's a hard thing to pull off because you can't cast someone just based on how they look. Right. There has to be a

continuity of behavior as well. But this movie nails it all. It helps that that Jennifer had a distinctive look like the big hair yeah but but even so yes there is absolutely continuity of performance and i feel like they look more similar than they probably would out of costume because they're well directed and well costumed on top of everything yeah the wig the wig room was well-maintained for this movie. I have some great quotes from Campion on this in our research,

because yes, for one, obviously, Campion was like, the wig is, it was the magic trick. Top bill. And she said, when they put the wig on Alexia Keough, the little girl, she started crying because she was like, this is insane.

Because it is such a, it's such a, you know, the color, the hair color and how big it is. It must have just been sort of bizarre to see it. I feel like the wig is truly transformative. But she also says she was, that Campion loved the last emperor, which has to pull the same trick, you know, going from kid to adolescent to grown up and but she said like my problem with the last emperor is i really like the middle kid and um i got so attached to him that i actually was mad when he grew up into the next kid into the grown up into john lone i think is the yeah and i and i I was so afraid of that. Like, I was basically afraid, like,

oh, you're going to love one of them and you're going to, you know, miss them when they're gone. So she was obsessed with making the transitions happen at a moment where you're happy for the character because then you're a little less

sort of whatever, discombobulated by the switch. Especially the Carrie Fox one. She was like, she needs to show up in a not bleak moment because otherwise it's just going to feel even whatever tougher to let go of the it's very interesting to think about

I wonder if Barry Jenkins like references at all in working on Moonlight because it does there's a similar sort of handoff quality to it and a continuity of performance. And that's a movie where the three actors

look so radically different. Right. And are in such different stages, but you do buy the continuity of them being the same guy. And even just structurally, it feels similar to this. Can I make an embarrassing admission?

I was so, like, Moonlight-pilled watching this movie that I was so like moonlight pilled watching this movie that I was like, okay, it's like three actors at different ages and it's three different parts that when we were on part two, I was like, man, this girl's so good. I can't wait to see how hard Carrie Fox

crushes it. Like I in my mind was like Carrie Fox will be part three rather than part one is two girls and Carrie Fox is part two and three. So I was just like, I can't even imagine how good the fucking Carrie Fox segment's going to be. And then like 30 minutes into part two,

I was like, oh, this is Carrie Fox. That makes sense. Um, I mean, when you, Moonlight is, it's a crazy example where you're like, oh, well, there must have been so much going on to coordinating these performances. Then you read about how that movie was made it's like no those kids you know none of the actors ever met they weren't going off each other's performances at all it's all direction right it's all just and moonlight much like this movie was made on a compressed schedule like

she didn't even have a lot of time with these you know like they really were just bringing people in and out because this movie has so many characters because it's moving through time, but most of them are brief, you know, appearances. That's the other thing, yeah. I think it was a crazy movie to make, this Angel at My Table. This movie is like,

much like Moonlight Again, but it's like the first segment is so vignette, you know? And then it slows down a little. Right, it slows down a little bit. Like by the third one, you're in more realistic passage of time. But this movie just has so many scenes. It's so long.

It has so many locations. It has so many different characters. It's so many different ages. Like this is such a step up as a director in terms of how difficult her challenge is just to get this thing shot. You know? I mean,

Dana, I don't know if you have any thoughts. The girl who played a young, you know, Alexia Keough, by the way, never appeared in another movie. This is it.

And, and the teen one never did another movie too. Right. Is that true? Yeah. I think so. And I was looking most of the siblings also, because anytime there was

like a really good performance from a younger actor, particularly in this one, I'd be like, what did they do after this? And it was like, just this, which in a certain way

speaks well of maybe the cast of Crossroads and shit. Dana, question, because you already posed this. Were you a fan of Janet Frame for watching this movie, or were you drawn to this movie because of your interest in Aussie and New Zealand cinema?

And then part two, did you, after watching this movie, read any of her work? I didn't know her at all. In fact, I think this movie introduced Janet Frame to a lot of people. These books were pretty recent. It's something that I didn't realize until just reading up on her for this show that, you know, the three autobiographies it's based on were published in the 80s and this came out in 1990. So, you know, I think that there may have even been people in that area in New Zealand who were introduced to her and to her books by this movie. So no, I didn't know Janet Frame beforehand. I've read some of her poetry

since then, and I'm hoping maybe we can incorporate some into the show because her poetry is fantastic. But I have not read any of these three memoirs, although watching this again made me really want to read them. Have either of you read any? No, I've only seen this movie. I've seen this movie a few times over the years, but I've never read any of her books.

What's fascinating is I've always wanted to read her books because... Her fiction, you're saying? Her fiction. Because the way Campion has always put it is like, she loved those books when she was younger. Like, Owls Do Cry, I think, was the big debut novel. But, you know, she's written several books. And then, right, her thing was in the 80s,

reading these autobiographies when they came out and realizing like, oh, this person had such a tough life. I had no idea. Like, you know, that was what changed her perspective on the author herself. Like, that was what drew all of her interest because I guess she saw herself in Frames' actual life and things like that. And here, I want to find some quotes. But no, I've never read any Frames. I mean, this makes me want to read it. She also just, you look at her bibliography, and it's like

she wrote three autobiographies. She wrote poetry. She wrote fiction. She wrote children's literature. You know? I mean, she worked in so many different areas. Oh, we talked about it in previous episodes, but adapting some

piece of Janet Frame's catalog was a thing she had like right out of film school. It was like, you know, before Sweetie. I mean, she had like the early inklings of piano, the idea to do some sort of Janet Frame film. And then when she had this early film festival breakout from her short films, she recognized like,

okay, I have some heat and some freedom now. I should make a weird small comedy that I probably can't make later in my career. But it's like she had her first three major films kind of planned out in her mind. Sort of, but like she gets the approval from Frame to make this before sweetie's been made right so frame is really being yeah like is being nice in a way like a champion's like she

really had no reason to trust me like yeah i'd made some short films like that was it like for frame to be like uh yeah go ahead apparently frame was like well you should do three films you should adapt each book sure and campion was like that's that's too much i can't do that like you know and so i guess talked her into the three-part series and then it's this sort of back back back door i guess right to making it into one movie she's like well what if we do sort of three long episodes of television okay sure and then it actually just all fits together as a feature like and i haven't read the autobiography i'm sure there's more to them there's things this book this movie changes about her life for her her sibling didn't drown he like fell into some

burning trash like it like there's things that i think they had to massage because it was like too intense what you mean she lost a brother in real life? Because in the movie she loses two sisters. All right. All right. I need to look at it. Well, she lost two siblings in real life. Okay.

But I think they were both sisters, right? It is a sister. Yeah. Yeah. In the movie they're both sisters. It's not a brother. I didn't realize burning trash was such a problem in those days. We always tell you, Ben, to be careful before you go rummaging around in the burning trash pile.

I'm sorry. It's from... Right. Okay. This is confusing. Okay. Right. In Owls Do Cry, the fictional book.

Okay. This is what it is. The fiction book that she wrote. The sister fell into a pile of burning trash and died. And then, right, in the autobiography, she drowned. Okay. So they're not massaging that detail it's more that frame had

turned that detail into something more lurid and then the reality was something but this movie is not I feel like it's good at not being miserable and traumatic if that makes sense even though there are obviously miserable and traumatic things in her life but not

like wallowing or sort of being heavy-handed about that. The scenes in the mental hospital, things like that. It is the thing I maybe find, well, maybe not, but amongst the things I find most impressive about this movie is how sort of matter of fact

it is able to recount everything. Look, dumb, basic-ass research, deep dive. I was just sort of looking at Janet Frame's Wikipedia page and clicking on a couple links off of that. But it sounded like a lot... She had a struggle in her life after the autobiographies were published, but also even beyond that, after this movie came out,

and that her life and her career became so defined by her sort of struggles with mental illness. Right, because up until that point, she was like a local hero, cult literary figure, who was kind of elusive and unknowable. And then when people kind of went like,

holy fucking shit, I can't believe her life. This is wild. Look at all these things she went through. And that was only like before she was 10 and all that stuff. That that sort of like hounded her and that she felt like there was an authorized biography written of her

in the final years of her life, which is an odd thing for someone who had already written three volumes of their own autobiography. And then there was controversy after she died about liberties that the biographer had taken because he was like, there are things that she admitted to me that I thought were sort of too sensational. Too embarrassing. Right.

And would overwhelm the story, and I was sort of doing compassionate biography, removing details that I felt like would overwhelm her narrative. But apparently so much of why she sat down with him and why she allowed someone to do this book was she was like, I want to recenter my life

away from just my mental struggles. That has sort of so greatly clouded everything. And it is fascinating for her to make this movie at a time where you could imagine, especially if you're saying, hey, I'm doing a TV miniseries about this, a very sort of sensationalist American movie of the week

sort of version of the story that is just the like, can you believe everything she overcame? Yeah, it could have been a girl interrupted. I mean, it could have had a lot of bathos. Absolutely. It could or it could have had some of that one flew over the cuckoo's nest kind of. I mean, all respect to that movie, but its portrait of, you know, mental illness and mental illness treatment is is just really, really crude and reductionist.

And I think it could have been Francis. Like, there's so many examples. And we're even talking about the highbrow examples of that kind of thing, you know? But there are like the crappy TV movie of the week versions of it. It's kind of incredible how matter of fact she's able to recount it, especially for how much is covered. she's able to recount it, especially for how much is covered. And I do feel like the only scenes where she really kind of cranks it up

are the scenes in the institutions, which are like appropriately harrowing, you know? But even like the other traumas across her life, as you said, David, I think, especially the first section, the childhood section, it's such a good sort of capturing of the way you recall childhood memories.

And that wonderful point of view shot of her mother's flowered dress kind of looming over her the way that a baby would perceive its mother was just it's such an unusual way to begin a biopic. And that was one thing I was going to say at the top when we talked about this versus Bright Star, how those were the two movies I was between choosing to do with you guys, is that it's just kind of striking that the same person, Jane Campion, directed what I think are two of the best literary biopics ever made. You know, there's neither of those two biopics for a moment indulges in the sort of classic furrowed brow at your desk with crumpled paper in a wastebasket next to you. You know, just dumb biopic cliches. They completely sidestep them in really elegant ways. Well, and you've just spent the last couple of years writing a biography on an artist, but in a in a medium where you can just sort of like unfurl and tell the whole story. And so often with film biopics, especially ones of artists who go on to do great things, I almost always struggle with ones that try to bite off multiple decades, if not an entire life. I think my favorite biopics are usually the ones that aren't even really biopics and are movies about a real figure

that hyper-focus in on one specific conflict or one specific period of their life or element. Like Wilde, that fantastic Oscar Wilde biography that's only about the trial, you know, that's only about

his trial for homosexuality. And it's a beautiful portrait. Brooke Lennon. It's hard to, what Dana's talking about as well is it's so hard to represent creativity on screen. Yes.

Because it's such an internal process and you hate to do the thing of they look at a flower and then you see them writing a poem called The Flower. You know, just something like that. That would be unbearable. And that's not what she she never, you know, can't be never remotely succumbs to that.

It's all it's all about trying to understand a person's interiority, not the thing they're eventually going to create, I guess, if that makes sense. going to create, I guess, if that makes sense. Yeah, I also think she's sort of focusing more on this person's journey to be taken seriously as a writer rather than focusing on her creatively

developing as a writer, which is the thing that is very hard to dramatize, you know? And in the process, once she's taken seriously as a writer, it's the first time she's taken seriously as a human being. It's like the craziest irony about this person's life. It's completely bananas that she was like days or hours from a lobotomy. Right.

And then they were like, oh, you want a prize? Oh, maybe we shouldn't like hammer anything into your brain right now. Right. I mean, could there be a more suspenseful turning point in a biopic about a writer? Like you're going to get a lobotomy in moments if you don't get a literary prize. But even that happens in this oddly tossed off way where it's almost unbelievable that that happened to a real human being in life. And the movie does not, if anything, I think that the movie almost doesn't quite make that clear enough. It was because I had read that in another context that I understood that that was what was happening at

that moment. But wow, what a strange turn of events. It is unbelievable that that A is so tossed off and B is the halfway point of the film and the movie is not putting some sort of maudlin focus on her overcoming. Right, right. You know? I mean, there's something, that performance of the doctor in that scene is so good in terms of him coming in and being, like, excited. There's that weird thing of, like,

I mean, we're jumping around here, but I think a thing this movie captures really well, especially in the institutionalization scenes, is like there's that glib thing that often gets said that I think is not fully true. That like if you're worried that you're crazy, you're not crazy. Right. This notion that like, you know, the most mentally ill people are the people who think that they're completely fine, which is reductive and incorrect. But when you watch this movie, anytime she is hospitalized, there is that sense you get, and so much of it is Carrie Fox's performance, of like, she is a lot more coherent and self-aware than everyone else she is surrounded by. You know, she is struggling, but she has more wherewithal than they do.

And this is a time in which mental health is not really understood and especially for women. It is a thing that is sort of just thrown on them as like, they're crazy, I don't know what to do about them. And so much of the sort of rise of lobotomies,

which is also a fucking insane thing to read is that like the guy who invents the lobotomy wins like the Nobel Prize or the 1949. And by like 1951, lobotomies are outlawed. Wow. Like the turnaround was so fast. I mean, I don't think it's quite as fast as you're saying, but by the 50s

they are abandoned. Yeah. It was like started in the late 40s. He wins this prize at like 49 and by the early mid 50s, they're done. And a lot of the thing was that like the more and more they got into it, the more they realize like they don't

actually know whether this helps anyone's condition. It makes it easier for people to take care of them. That's so much of lobotomization was like, well, now people are going to be less erratic and difficult and violent because they're just sort of like docile. And the fact that here's this woman who is like cognizant enough to understand that she's struggling with something and that admission, that vulnerability puts her in a position where they go like, I don't know, what do we give her? The standard? Carve a bunch of her brain out?

And everyone just sort of assumes that she has to be like an invalid. And then that scene with the doctor, he comes in and he's just like, well, la-di-da. Like he's suddenly impressed by her, you know? And she says like, so am I not getting the surgery? And he's like, of course not. You just won this award. And it's like the first time they viewed her as a human being

in like years. It's one of those life details that is both so unusual that it is basically the hook of a movie, right? Just saying that about her is sort of a startling fact that would get a movie producer interested.

And it's also so bananas that it's almost impossible to put in a movie without clarifying for the whole audience like, this really happened because it seems impossible. It seems, which is, you know, we're defining what makes a movie biopic sort of happen a lot of the time, right? It's like, well, their life, you couldn't write it. It's absolutely crazy. They should have cut to Margot Robbie in the bathtub saying, this really happened. That really, it freezes and it goes like, ding! That's my biggest complaint about the movie. Yeah. Can I say one thing about, since we're talking about mental illness and how

it's shown in the film, I think maybe my favorite shot in the entire movie, and I watched it a few times so I could count how long it lasted, is when she looks at that piece of chalk in her hand when she freezes at the chalkboard, you know, which is sort of the moment that it's kind of her break with, you know, reality in a way. It's the moment that she sort of realizes, I can't do this teaching career thing. I can't appear in front of other people. You know, I feel like the trajectory that eventually lands her in the mental hospital happens there, beginning with the chalk. lands her in the mental hospital happens there beginning with the chalk. And that is just such an unusual way of treating that moment. And it's so it's so cinematic to decide to look at someone looking at a piece of chalk for I don't know, I think it's like an eight or nine second long shot with no sound. You know, there's nothing sort of put in place to make us know what we're

supposed to think about it. We're just staring at a piece of chalk, you know, and sort of that to me so put me in that moment of, you know, being in front of an audience and realizing that you just simply cannot do the thing that you're there to do. Well, and the irony too of like that sort of obsessive hyper-focus, sort of capturing and sort of, I don't know,

understanding of details and moments is the thing that made her such a skilled writer. But for the first 50 is her teacher praising this sort of autobiography assignment she wrote in which she admits to a suicide attempt. And then he sort of like calls the authorities on her. And he's the first person to tell her that she's a good

writer. He compliments her. We go back to her home. She's in the mirror repeating his compliments to herself. Love that scene. Love. Moment she's had. And then I'm sure this is like a little bit of cinematic condension,

but the fact that then that's interrupted by the professor showing up with two guys to bring her to the hospital, you know? And it's like, even I don't think he was being insincere and complimenting her work, but it speaks so much to the time where he was just like, yeah, but she's a crazy lady. You got to send her to the hospital.

Anyone who admits this kind of thing, even if she writes it well, right, obviously can't take care of herself. And it's like the fact that she had the wherewithal, the honesty, the transparency, the self-reflectiveness to write about that and write about it well only punishes her in her life. Yeah. Well, which is a very feminist, you know, kind of observation too in a very low key way. But it's mad woman in the attic stuff.

You know what I mean? It's sort of like because she was able to be that frank and raw and write something like that, you know, she's off to the funny farm. And there's nothing that's specifically in there to sort of show that that is men deciding for a woman

whether she is mentally competent or not. But, you know, it's what's happening. They also, I mean, she's writing the whole time that she's there. She's getting published works, right? Like people are showing up with her published hard copy, you know, books in hand. Presumably the staff of the institution knows that. Beyond that, the fact is she just behaviorally is so different

than most of the other patients in there who are screaming constantly or nonverbal. You know, she is clearly very fragile,

but she's got a coherence to her. And it's only once it's like, whoa, wait a sec, we didn't know you were important.

You won an award? Now you're serious. It's like, they knew she was functioning at that level. But the only thing that saves her is the sort of recognition of, oh, fuck,

this is an important artist. We knew she was writing, but who gives a shit? Like, if she's an important artist, we're going to look like idiots if we cut her brain out. Well, right. But it's also,

it's, yeah, she's, right. The importance, it's that there's vastly different communities at work here. The importance is being conferred by a community she can barely see. Like a sort of academic, literary... And she's just been dumped into... I mean, the thing about the facility, which Campion says the autobiography doesn't really even get into the like what those places were like so they had to ask janet frame herself sort of like hey what were the what was it like here but like it just seems like it's just sort of like well put them all in there and whatever you know like there's not a lot of distinctive care going on it's just kind of like well they can all kind of rattle around together well remember the moment really early in the movie when she's riding in the train with her

mom and she sees the mentally ill man outside the asylum, right? I mean, that's a really powerful, again, sort of Malickian moment, right? Of this kid kind of starting to understand, starting to glimpse that there are things in the world that are, you know, wrong and bad and frightening that she doesn't understand. And the mom covers up her eyes, right? But all that becomes this great, you know, foreshadowing for her being essentially misdiagnosed or completely overdiagnosed, right? And slapped into a similar facility. Right, overdiagnosed, right.

She's anxious. She expresses her emotions and she's, you know, struggles in front of people. And that is basically diagnosis. Like, well, you have schizophrenia. Right. She's incredibly... It's insane, like, specific diagnosis.

Yeah, and it's like the lobotomy was like a five-year fad cure-all. As you're saying, there wasn't like attentive sort of specific patient-to-patient treatment. It was just sort of like, what do we do to make them all calm down? You know? So even though she's at a wildly different place than the people she's sharing rooms with, they're still about to apply the same thing to her.

I mean, it's that thing that I think the first chunk of the movie captures so well is like, this is the kind of brain and sort of view of the world that makes a good writer. is like, this is the kind of brain and sort of view of the world that makes a good writer. But the fact that the thing is so, you get these brief vignettes, you jump around in time, things aren't really explained to you.

It feels like a collection of memories where especially as anyone looks back on their childhood, there are things that stick out and stay with you with weird detail and poignancy. And sometimes they are the big defining moments of your life. And sometimes they're very small incidental things. The example that's so, it just was really potent for me was like,

the scene of them finding out that the first sister dies of drowning, bookended by the two scenes about the photographs. And all three scenes are kind of given equal weight and importance. You obviously have her mom reacting in grief, but the scene is not over-cranked. And the scene before that... No, especially since the guy delivering the news is just like,

I am a doctor. Your child has died. Is there anyone I can call? Like, he's not really blunting or the information anyway. And the scene is pretty brief. They cut out of it pretty quickly. But the scene before that is like, you know, we see them all at like the lake. Then we see them receiving the photos. And that sister is missing from the photo.

This bizarre observation that feels like, is that some weird artistic, like, sort of flourish, like foreshadowing of the fact that she's about to be a ghost? Then there's this news that she dies. And then the scene after that, we're sort of like past the worst of the grieving. And it is the mom showing like her friends all the photos they have. And they're saying like, that's so nice. You have a good photo of her from right before she died. And she's like, yeah, you know, the photographer did this weird thing where he cut her out of this photo and made her her own photo and then added her arm there. And so it's like, oh, no, there's like an actual justifiable

explanation for why she was missing from the earlier photo. But of course, if you're her, you remember like that's a weird thing that she was missing from the photo.. But of course, if you're her, you remember like, that's a weird thing that she was missing from the photo. And then she dies that soon after. And then this photo exists as this weird memento. But those photo observation scenes are like as important

as the news of the death itself. Right. Well, and they're also that scene where the women confer over the photo that's been restored is framed really fantastically, where you see the women and the photo only sort of from an over the shoulder framing but you see little janet you know

the fantastic alicia alexia keogh sitting there and it's really a scene about her listening and observing right i mean i feel like that's the scene about her coming of age as a writer and if i remember right she's holding a book too she's kind of clutching a book to her chest and to me i sort of saw that as just like the scenes where we see her, you know, writing in her poetry notebook that her dad gives her. That's kind of a Bildungsroman moment of the writer in the making, you know, sort of putting together like, how is my sister being remembered? How weird is it that her arm is being restored in a fake restoration? How am I going to remember her? I just there's so much at work there in terms of

what must have been happening in the little writer mind as she tried to absorb that moment. And the sister has, that same sister, has one of the few sort of like direct writing process scenes where she's like editing her. Right, right. And tells her to change a word, right?

That's a great moment. I think the story of mental health in australia and new zealand had not really been told much as well and campion was sort of like she didn't want it directly you know but like it's such a thing in especially post-war the strange ways our countries try to deal with uh the mentally ill and like you know and institutionalization and all that and so like i do think she talks about basically after reading janet frames autobiography and like anytime she would see a mental institution she would just think like is janet in there like you

know like she like they suddenly became these sort of like prison-like places to her versus i guess things she would just ignore before that That's just kind of an interesting... Well, right. I mean, that's the... Right. It's the thing of, like, okay, so she survives by the skin of her teeth. How many people... Right. ...didn't get that outside validation

that halted a lobotomy at the last second? It's a scary thing. And lobotomies were, I mean, I don't want to pull a number out of my ass, but, like, disproportionately performed upon women in that period of time. Absolutely. Right.

A friend of mine posted this on Letterboxd, but it's like, the other thing with this movie, and starting with the child and the most sort of impressionistic section is crucial to it, but like anytime anyone is mean to Janet or unthinking or insensitive you just kind of like raise your hackles or like it's it's so good at placing you in her corner without ever

you know doing the sort of cliched i don't know childhood bullying stuff does that make sense like she's just such a uh maybe it's the new parent in me or something I have no idea But like doesn't You know like I just was like I just wanted to protect her In the sort of first half of the movie Once she's a grown up It's a little different

But you know Young Janet Watching her You know that was something I sort of kept thinking about There's also something to the fact That she like looks like a cartoon character, right? Or like

a doll. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, yeah, she kind of looks like Australian little orphan Annie. Yes. There's a later scene where she's wearing a red cardigan and I was like, that's what it is. It's Annie. It finally clicked for me. Annie, a crucial figure for

young David Sims, I should say I was I was a big fan of John Houston's Insane Annie movie Yes and I would watch it all the time So maybe that's part of my connection to Any girl with red curly hair Was Annie like your first crush No it's not a crush I think

It was it's famously the first movie I ever Saw right for some reason my Parents were like yeah we took you to see some revival of Annie. And then I had it on video and I would just watch it. I haven't seen it in years. In my memory, it is like sort of a famously bloated movie with these huge sets. And it was sort of like John Huston's Crazy Swan song. But it's not like well regarded per se, right?

It's more just kind of bananas that is not that is not a successful adaptation of annie i mean i have to say my own history with annie is that i saw the original broadway production with andrea mcardle as annie when i was 12 years old basically the same age as andrea mcardle and it was my first trip ever to new york city which you know i immediately fell in love with my parents say that they remember me saying on that trip, possibly as we were coming out of Annie, this is where I'm going to live when I grow up. You know, that was just like a huge, huge thing for me. So when the movie came along, it was sort of like, of course, nothing can live up to it.

But objectively, also, that is just simply not a well-cast movie. The little girl who plays Annie, God bless her, hate to criticize a child actor, but she is not up to par. She's in her 50s now or whatever you can take her down it's fine she she could handle it i mean finney albert finney i is one of my favorite actors i won't hear a word against him but weird choice karyl burnett is a very good ms hannigan i will say she's good right right right right she makes sense tim curry makes sense b Bernadette Peters makes sense. Like that stuff probably makes for something.

I haven't seen it since I was a kid. I want to rewatch it. But what I mostly remember is that it is insanely grandiose. Like it's more just that like the sets are so obviously huge. And it's just kind of bizarre to imagine like 80-year-old John Huston,

like, you know know barking with a cigar like kid actors doing hard knock life I don't know anyway we'll do John Houston one day right we'll do Annie 85 movies yeah we'll do a mini series on like the four different versions of Annie including TV versions

I was gonna say that my I'm sure I watched Annie as a kid. But my sister Romley, who's a bunch younger when she was little, she went through like an obsessive Annie phase, watching it over and over and over again. So, like, I saw Annie a bunch as a teenager, but in this sort of like walking in and out of the room. Right. That was the movie that she watched. She's got Annie on. Right. So I remember being like, people think this movie is bad.

Like it was like a flop. Like this movie seems pretty good, but I was only ever watching it in segments. I feel like if I had to sit down and watch that movie from beginning to end as an adult captive, I'd be like, this thing's a fucking mess. Whereas broken into individual pieces.

It is. It's got some numbers. It's compelling. But I also remember the DVD. She had had some special feature that was like the EPK from the movie. And they had the press conference that was like John Huston being like, we found our Annie. Here's our little orphan Annie. They did the classic like cattle call, right?

Like kids around the country want to be Annie. But it was the first time I really clocked like, oh, that's weird that this guy directed this movie. Like having to watch John Huston in front of a camera with Carol Burnett doing the faces and tugging the ear and this little girl and a dog and being like, it's going to be a musical throw ride for the whole family. It's the only musical he ever made. Like, it makes no sense that they hired about a little girl. It just doesn't. I mean, it doesn't do that very difficult thing that lots of movie musicals don't do. Like, it does not achieve liftoff.

It does not make you believe that those people are spontaneously bursting into song in those situations. Right. A huge, a huge ask. He may have felt a little too cynical to ever pull off a musical in that way. But anyway. He wanted to make Annie. She's a little orphan. I do think that factors into it.

I think the fact that Janet Frame looks so much like Annie makes the fact that your watcher get bullied. Like, I need sympathy. You're always going to

root for a kid. But you're just like, this is like a fucking, like, it's Annie. What are you talking about? They also, like, I feel like she's costumed in far more color

than any other character. Like, Sweetie is such a sort of, we talked about in that episode, that it's like an adult film that has the aesthetics of a children's film. And it's so bright and saturated and stylized. And then this sort of retains that only in the Janet Frame character.

And even that performance being a little larger, and her look being larger than life and all of that that she's such an obvious target because she like pops in the frame so much but you even have scenes of her observing like other people getting bullied you know um yeah you know her parents judging other people like i think she's just very very attuned from a very young age to alienation both when it's happening to herself and when she's seeing it happening to other people. And all of that depends on in the early scenes where there's so little dialogue. And it's, again, Malik-like in the absolute spareness of dialogue in those scenes about childhood.

So much depends upon the kids' performance, all the kids' performances, right? The sisters and everyone, you know, just having this natural observed quality as if we just by accident happened to be observing their private behavior. And just in the framing, I mean, there's just not a shot in that early part of her rural childhood that is not exquisite, like those trains moving against the sunset and, you know, the kind of nature spaces that they move through. And even the interiors, like the color palette of these kind of washed out wallpapers and the house dresses that they wear. Everything about the family's kind of class affiliation and, you know, they're kind of the fact, for example, that you can tell she comes from a household that's pretty much without books, right? It's

a very working class, uncultured kind of household that doesn't need to be set up with any exposition. It's just what we get from the texture of their daily life. And that's one of those things where, I mean, as just happened in Power of the Dog this past year where production design is a huge part

of what informs Campion's project. Yeah, I will say I have been, like, holding back from watching Power of the Dog a second time

because I know we're covering it soon. But it has been hard not to just watch it a couple more times. Because it is one of those movies when you're like a couple weeks out from it,

your appreciation's only grown and grown and grown and you're like, man, I want to dig back into that fucking thing. For me, just because of the way it buckles at the end, right? Because of that ending

that is a true ending. I absolutely love the ending of that movie. It's the kind of movie that makes you want to watch it again immediately. It's like Moby's strip movie. And I know when I saw it in the theater and it was before it had opened. So I realized it would be a while again before I could see it in the theater.

It was just one of those rare movies that I walked out of with this kind of feverish drive. Like I must see it again. When can I see it again? Because you want to see how it's all put together. And I think of all the movies that came out in 2021, it rewards the second viewing more than any other. I think of all the movies that came out in 2021, it rewards the second viewing more than any other. It hugely does. Right. The second viewing.

I'm excited for my third viewing. Because, right, the first viewing, you are the whole time on the edge of like, where is this going? You know, like I'm trying to parse all these mysterious intentions. And then the second viewing is much more interesting retrospect. But yeah, I'm very interested to now just sort of to sort of feel it emotionally if that makes sense i mean not that it

wasn't emotional the first two times but just to sort of like that she she creates such full characters like in power of the dog it's an ensemble of full characters this really is just it's just janet like everyone else is sort of moving in and out right like her parents are just Janet like everyone else is sort of moving in and out right like her parents are unnamed her friends are often you know sort of temper I can't even keep track of them right exactly you know like and

so that this is it's impressive because this is like a two hour 40 minute movie that obviously it keeps you in one character's frame of mind the entire time without dragging this is I mean this movie doesn't drag i for a long movie no no and it's two hours and 40 minutes long you're essentially watching three

episodes of television just played back to back to back it is it is the the quality of her work and i still you know i'm looking forward to several of her films that i've never seen before i get to watch for the first time in this series. But in all the work of hers I've seen, she has a fascinating ability to keep you engaged in a movie without employing any traditional narrative thrust. Like, it's not even like she's a filmmaker who is, like, purposefully creating a sense of mystery

or withholding information for a reason like you know in sort of a twist way but um this is a movie that doesn't follow standard biopic themes and as you said like does not explain itself is the kind of thing that done poorly is so overwhelming and confusing that you're just like, I'm out. I can't even follow this, you know? Right. It could easily be overwhelming. Like, what am I supposed to be following here, essentially? Right.

Two Friends has this weird backward narrative how the dog isn't explicitly a twist movie, but certainly a movie that builds towards a sense of like, what is going on and who's in control of this whole thing and whatever. And in all these cases, it is just like, she's making movies that don't

totally operate the way we're used to movies operating, but yet they still grab you as if they were functioning with a traditional narrative. There's something she's able to sort of latch onto. I don't really understand

the magic trick because it's employed in different ways. Another scene that is just like heartbreaking in this, I mean, you're talking about sort of her working class background in this,

which is another thing that like, you know, in the hands of a more maudlin filmmaker could have been turned into like Angela's ashes or something, you know? Which is, like, also not what she's interested in doing. But that she's trying to, not elevate herself,

but she's trying to enter this literary world where her social status, her class is sort of jarring to people. Not only does she not know how to carry herself, quote unquote, like a writer, but also she just has all these signs of her upbringing that she cannot shake. And it's like much like the scene of her her autobiography with the professor being used against her to institutionalize her. There's the scene where she like comes with like full vulnerability to that woman begging to get her teeth removed, not just because they like so immediately kind of reveal her, but also because she's just in fucking searing pain,

like she cannot get out from under the struggles of poverty of her childhood that are just continuing to haunt her in her young adulthood. And that is immediately posed as like, okay, yes, I can help you. I can remove all your teeth. But also you have to promise me I'm going to send you back to the institution. You know, anytime she sort of comes to someone with some sort of vulnerability, with some awareness of issues, of things she wants to work on, of changes she needs to make in her life. It's almost always

interpreted by people as you lack autonomy. You don't know how to take care of yourself. We need to hand you over. Right. And I think that's why in the third section of the movie, the part based on her third memoir about, you know, the more successful part of her writing life when she's deinstitutionalized and she's connecting with all these kind of arty types, you know, people who like her are engaging in the creative life. I mean, there's just even though, as you say, those those characters are somewhat indistinct, you know, I couldn't exactly say who each of those people are and how she knows them and what role they play in her life. I'm sure if you read the memoir, you'd be able to sort them out better.

But there's just such a sense of joy and liberation that there is a world that she discovers of people who understand that off kilterness about her. You know, and I'm thinking of that character. I think his name is Frank, the shirtless guy typing in his shed, you know, who she lives with for a while at the end. And it's not really clear what their relationship is. I was full of horrible trepidation that he was going to turn out to be some sort of like handsy exploiter or something like that. But that is just a really wonderfully drawn relationship. And in particular, that moment, I mean, this movie really earns it. It could have been so corny in a worse literary biopic. But the moment where she goes to the mailbox and gets out the letter that I presume is saying her memoir is going to be

published. Right. I'm not exactly sure what acceptance she's getting then. But just, you know, following her to the shed and celebrating with the guy is just such be published, right? I'm not exactly sure what acceptance she's getting then. But just, you know, following her to the shed and celebrating with the guy is just such a moment, especially for a person who just finished a book myself under far less trying circumstances. It's just such a moment

of pure liberation and joy. And I love that little passage. Far less trying circumstances, but also give yourself credit during a pandemic. Pandemic. Yeah, you gotta let yourself feel proud of fucking writing a book.

I stared at some chalk during the process, you guys. I stared at some chalk during the process. You guys, I stared at some really traumatic chalk. I, I believe the Frank character is Frank Sargesson, who is a fellow New Zealand novelist that she knew. But what I like about what we're talking about is there's never the point at which some guy comes into her life and kind of steers it in a direction,

right? There are men who come in and out, but like, there's never like the mentor or the lover who kind of, right. So transformative. Yes. I think camping avoids that.

I want to, I found, I want to go back to the red hair for a second. I found this quote from cameo. I do think New Zealand is, it's hard. I've never been there. Have you guys ever been to New Zealand? I know you've been to Australia.

Dana, have you ever been to New Zealand? Australia, yes. New Zealand, no. And obviously because of its sort of reputation on screen, it can be a little easy to literally think of it as like a magic place filled with wizards. But the

way Campion talks about it is she's like green is the color of new zealand so i wanted the movie to be green like you know especially early and i wanted to contrast it with her red hair uh to give that sort of like big bright clash and then she just keeps talking in this quote and i just want to say i just want to read this quote because it's so good the first european painters who brought back paintings of their voyages to new zealand were met by incredulity from their compatriots because everyone thought the colors were exaggerated they didn't believe them because the light in europe is soft and diffused there's a lot of wind in new zealand and it sweeps

everything you can see the air is transparent you can see mountains of 400 kilometers away the shadows are black this industry captivates me i'm sorry this intensity captivates me and the contrasts are so strong that it's difficult to shoot basically like she's saying like new zealand feels everything feels more heightened there anyway like yeah it's sort of sort of magical to think about like how feeling and artistry is almost like easier to convey because everything is so bright and so clear. And like that, that's like some sort of natural advantage she had as an early filmmaker. Like she's bringing these movies to people that just sort of look different. I don't know.

To bring to bring Power the Dog back into the conversation. I mean, that was shot in New Zealand, right? New Zealand passing is Montana. And a huge part of what makes the landscape of that movie so striking is it doesn't look like anywhere you've ever been. Right. It has this very lonely, stark. I mean, if it looks like anywhere, it looks like Lord of the Rings landscapes. Right. Also shot in New Zealand. That's also famously like the cornerstone of Jackson's pitch for you should let me do Lord of the Rings and you should let me do multiple movies is like, A, got this country that has not really been fully utilized as a filming location with an industry here that's ready to

work. And he's just like, I got like 80 locations in my back pocket that no one has ever filmed before that all look fucking insane and look totally different from each other. You know, like just wildly disparate climates and landscapes that are going to blow people's minds and add so much production value. It is. Yeah, that's interesting and we've talked about just sort of an interesting sensibility that like new zealand and australian films have that maybe that's sort of hyper reality that not just visually but tonally that maybe sounds like a reflection of just living in a place that looks like that dana had you seen sweetie before this movie it was this your first campion do you think when

if you saw it like in theaters or whatever? I can't remember what order I saw them in. What year did Sweetie come out? Sweetie came out the year before. It came out in America in 1990. It was at the New York Film Festival in 89 or whatever. They came out quite close. Yeah, I think I would have seen both those. It was so long ago, I can't remember what order, but I think I would have seen both of those when they came out. I mean, that was sort of the period in my very early 20s where I was just madly stuffing movies especially anything that was at all you know a sort of highbrow or arty movie into my brain so i probably saw them both in order and like when the piano comes around it's sort of funny like are you sort of like it's

just funny to think about the piano sort of swinging in as a major player on an oscar state you know what i mean like for a lot of people must have seemed like it was out of nowhere right right but obvious but but there was people are there was excitement for like okay jane campion has made a film again you know michael yeah sorry stewart dryberg shot you know like obviously like she she did have a fairly burnished reputation i suppose on the piano it piano. It's just sort of, yeah. Sure, but it's like, film festival darling with limited releases and then you have a movie that's like,

you know, Oscar darling being parodied in pop culture starring American movie stars. Like, there is a shift there. It's a big shift. Yeah. I know, to me, when the piano came along, I almost had a feeling, I think I was excited enough about Campion

and about these two movies that it was almost sort of like, oh yeah, now you're discovering Campion. And I think I thought it was one of the weaker entries in her filmography at the time. Looking back, I now love the piano and recognize its importance. I still think,

and this is, I think, a major problem with the piano, the music. I don't like the music. Is it by Michael Nyman? Michael Nyman. The music is so imposing in that movie. It is like, the music, I don't like the music. Is it by Michael Nyman? Michael Nyman. Well, the music is so imposing in that movie. It is like, so yes, it's kind of like a Philip Glass score or something where it's like, if you don't like it, you're in trouble because this thing is not going to be quiet or subtle.

Like it's going to be clanging away. I love the music of the piano, but maybe I haven't seen it in a while. I'm interested though. I mean, I think now I'm thinking of the music right now, like as we. I mean, the imagery in the piano, you know, Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, all of that stuff, the storytelling. It's a great movie. It's a great movie.

It's a great script. There's something a little bit over upholstered about its use of a score and especially in a movie that's all about music and playing the piano. Right. I think I just I wanted music that I was happier to listen to for every single second of the movie. And this is maybe just a problem of the score being a little bit overused.

But this is, again, this is my critique of the piano from, you know, 20 years ago. It has been a long time since I saw that movie. This is the thing I just remembered that I cannot let this episode end without me acknowledging. Perhaps the biggest discovery of this film for me.

I think that, I don't think it's hyperbolic to say will probably forever change my life. Fancy free means single? Fancy free means single. Well, I mean, it's one of the possible interpretations. Doesn't fancy free

just sort of mean unencumbered? Sort of tootling down the lane with no... That's how I always thought. Like, I mean, it's one of the possible interpretations. Doesn't fancy free just sort of mean unencumbered, sort of tootling down the lane with no... That's how I always thought, like, oh, like, footloose, fancy free, fun and fancy free, like someone who's just fucking frolicking or whatever. And then that one guy she's, like, boarding with, multiple times in the movie, keeps on, like,

warning her about guys trying to sleep with her at one time in a very racist way, and keeps on saying like, you're still fancy free, right? Like he says it in this very serious tone, like you're still fancy free, right? Interesting. That almost makes it sound like it's New Zealand slang for

being a virgin or something, but I don't know why that would be called fancy free since it seems less free than going out and doing what you want to do. I don't know. It must be a regional difference. We need to get a New Zealander to weigh in on what it means there. Well, because I looked it up. I had the same definition in my mind, Dana, and I looked it up and it says free from...

Well, okay. So this is what it says. Free from engagement. It does say that. Merriam-Webster, it says free from amorous attachment or engagement, free to imagine or fancy. I'm just saying all the many times in my life when I'm single and feeling like a sad bastard about it, I should refer to myself as fancy free. You are fancy free.

I guess it means no one fancies you. Is that what it is? Like the sort of British terminology of I fancy you? You're unfancied by anyone. Yeah, it sounds so much less self-pitying. It's a better way to think of yourself. How are you doing? I'm fancy free right now.

I'm fancy free, baby. An angel at my table. I'm trying to think about... I mean, we haven't, I guess, talked about the Europe section so much. True. And it was the first time Campion had shot outside of New Zealand, Australia.

And I think she was nervous about it. This movie was shot in 12 weeks. That is bananas. And two of them were in Europe. So I think the European section, they had to do really fast. Like that was the most pressurized part of it. Carrie Fox, I guess we should talk about her.

Like she is a phenomenal actress. I believe this is her first... She's just a New Zealand, like, drama school person. Like, she'd never been in a movie before. But she's had such a long, interesting career. It's an unreal performance. I mean, we were talking about, like, the continuity between the three performances

and how well portrayed Framie is as a character. But her in particular, it's just like, especially when you're dealing with a real person like this, this is the kind of movie that an actor could make, the kind of role, rather, that an actor could make

way too much out of, right? Because there are all these sort of very mannered, ticky-twitchy aspects of her being. You know, she is telegraphing her emotion on her face at all times. She's holding all this tension, this awkward energy in her body at all times. And she never, ever veers into cartoonishness, despite the fact, as we said, she looks like

a cartoon character and behaves so strangely, especially in this last section, which is so much about her learning how to function in social settings. Right. She's yeah. She, she's only in one other Campion movie, which is bright star, which does Dana.

I really do feel like you're right. Like it is a weirdly twinned movie with this one, I guess just because the literary sort of aspect of it. But it does feel like she brought Carrie Fox back in that for a reason. Wait, who is she in Bright Star?

She's her mother. She's Fanny's mother. It's like a, you know, she's sort of the fourth lead or whatever. You know, she's a significant

supporting role. Isn't Sweetie also back in Bright Star? Am I wrong? Or Sweetie's in a bunch of movies. Sweetie is in a bunch of movies. Sweetie is in a bunch of them. Sweetie is in Power of the Dog. Sweetie is in something

else. I was just... I can't... But I know Carrie Fox best or I knew Carrie Fox best from Shallow Grave. I don't know if you guys have seen Shallow Grave. I've never seen that. Oh, yeah. I've seen Shallow Grave, but I guess I'd have to see the picture of the cast again to picture her. Wow.

Yeah. I mean that, and it was, it's funny because, you know, uh, Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston sort of break out of that movie. And it's not like she hasn't had a long career, but like,

it's funny that she didn't in the same way. Cause that was this sort of like super cool Brit movie of the nineties, you know? And like, they all kind of like, you know, have their moment because of it. And she was maybe coming in a little more

established than the other two. She got a bunch of awards and nominations for this movie over years of it playing at festivals. So it did really feel like, I don't know, this performance was treated as the emergence of someone significant. Yeah, it's just

an incredibly good performance. And this section with her having like her first romantic relationship, I mean, it was the quote I was fucking butchering at the beginning of the episode, but then she goes into

the thing of like, I never even thought of myself as erotic, you know? Like I thought of myself as like a piece of wood. Not only was it like I didn't think of myself as being desirable, but I just didn't even think of myself as having that drive even. breaking about watching this relationship and knowing it's not going to last and seeing her get so caught up as like a semi-adult woman in this sort of like very childhood sort of crush,

you know? Yeah. The guy breaking off, the guy breaking off their sexual encounter to read his poem to her in bed. Yes. It's also just, it's a very classic, it's just a classic sort of mansplaining moment

and I love Carrie Fox's performance in that scene and just watching her sort of draw back into herself, you know, just the openness that you,

the openness you see in her body just seconds before that just, you know, drains out and she's kind of rolling up into a ball. I mean,

you mimed it, Dana, but she literally starts covering herself with the bed sheets again. Yeah. It's also just something I love about non-American movies that, like, women can be seen topless in bed. It is so dumb how often we have to see, like,

sheets up to armpits in sex scenes. The L-shaped bed sheets. Right, right. The sheet at the guy's crotch and the woman's neck is the funniest thing, right? Right. But, yeah, also, Jane Campion, this, and Sweetie, both very good at

those sorts of doofy men where they're not even villainous sort of but they're just sort of like painfully uh awkward or kind of obvious i guess in their interactions with like you know all the boys and sweetie are also sort of similarly you're like, you know, two-dimensional in a funny way, I guess, where you're just sort of like, oh, yeah. They feel like dumb Americans, especially. Yeah. The way they're like horse roughing with each other, you know. That actor, what's that character's name?

Bernard? Am I getting that wrong? But he's very good. And he's a New Zealand actor doing an American accent like pretty impeccably. Right. But he also just gets

the American energy right and beyond like the mansplaining element of it the thing that's so funny about that scene where he's interrupted fucking to read her his own work is just like that is so alien to her the idea

of needing to like reassert your identity as a writer above all else at all times and needing that sort of validation from other people like even in this moment of intimacy he has to circle back and go like but but tell me I'm a good writer. Right. I mean, and it's especially it's especially sad in contrast to the way she relates to her own identity as a writer, which is so much of what this movie is about. Right. I mean, yeah, this is not so much a movie about watching her. Right. We don't see many scenes of her, you know, sitting around typing and scribbling and thinking about things as she puts them in notebooks, not if she's a little girl. What we see is her learning to believe that she's a writer, right? Whether it's her talking in the mirror to herself when

she's all alone or, you know, speaking to her mentor in school who takes her writing seriously. It really is so hard for her to just have that authority, right? Because of her shyness and her mental illness and all of those things, it's so hard for her to just have the authority of saying, this is what I do. This is what I am. And so the contrast of her being with this guy who's just perfectly comfortable, you know, just sitting there naked, just, you know, reading from his latest opus is it's just it's a great little sort of comic commentary that, again, is a feminist moment in the movie. And we haven't talked about all the ways that this is a movie about coming of age as a woman specifically. Right. Like her mom teaching her how to put on his really, really raunchy sanitary pad that's made of like a folded rag

that you pin to your singlet, right? Or her, if I understood it correctly, like being so ashamed of her bloody rags that she hides them in that little graveyard space, right? So her landlady won't find them. I mean, it's also kind of a coming of age of the female body, you know, which I'm sure in 1990 especially was not a thing that you saw on screens a lot. More visceral, right. And her mom, the early reaction her mom has where she's like, I'm sure you've messed up your bed too, right?

Like where you're like sort of wincing at the lack of sensitivity in that moment. But also like there's that practicality from the mom of like, okay. Pin on the old rag. Right,ity from the mom of like, okay, this is how you deal with this. Right, yeah. It's because like, right,

I mean, back in the day, there was no consideration to making the, like, making this private or easy, right?

Right. Or like, less consideration, at least. Like, when you hear those earlier methods of feminine hygiene described,

they just seem, like, ridiculously impractical and embarrassing. Like, I don't know. Well, and she's so panicked. Her mom's consolation is like, look, you're lucky. Most people, it starts at 12. You didn't get until 15.

Like, it's just like making her aware that it's like, and now look forward to the next several decades of this. I mean, I forget whose bit it is, but some stand-up

has a bit that's, as Triz is funny, that's like, if men got periods, 100% of stand-up comedy would be about menstruation. Like, it would be the only thing that men ever wanted

to fucking talk about, you know? Especially in that format. And you do think about, like, how little sort of menstruation does come into, like, our narratives and our art and shit like that. A, because, like, men, by and large, are like, I don't want to fucking think about that.

And women are sort of shamed into feeling like, well, this isn't, like, a thing you talk about in public. But it does result in things like this, where like she starts bleeding and her mom's like, oh yeah, okay, here we go. And she's like, how has no one like told me that this is a thing? No one warned me, you know?

Like, it's just sort of like, now it's time for the rag and here you go, this is the rest of your life. It's, yeah, it's such a good scene. Going back to sort of her identity thing, sort of her learning to feel comfortable and confident as an author, the fancy free guy,

there's that thing where he'll keep on disparaging artists, saying, you don't want to hang out with those types of people. They're struggling artists. They're not substantive, this and that. And she has that moment where she like builds up like bravery for maybe the first time in her life and says like, I'm a writer. And he goes, well, yeah, but for the time being, you're not gonna do that forever. Like he just immediately barely knowing her shuts her down, you know?

Yes. Which is this thing, like even when, as you said, Dana, she's not like, you're not seeing scenes of her, like, laboring over a typewriter. You mostly find out she's written a book by another character showing her a published copy or someone telling her that she's gotten a good write up or something, you know? We don't even know how much she's writing until you hear the response to the results or things like that. And even still, everyone's kind of like, but that's obviously you're not going to do this forever. With the exception, I do love that one party scene where she actually impresses everybody, right? All those young student types. And there's a moment, once again, I mean, this is kind of like this building's Roman structure

where you see her slowly gaining in confidence until she's twisting to Chubby Checker at the end, you know, which is a really, really great kind of image of liberation to leave her on. But yeah, that moment at the party is also really viscerally satisfying given that we've seen for so long her kind of feel like,

do I count? Am I a writer? You know, being put down or being ignored, you know, just having this moment that a bunch of literary wannabes at a party are impressed because she has two actual books out. That moment feels very quietly triumphant, which is great.

The moment of her that's sort of on the poster, you know, sort of as she returns to New Zealand, feels sort of indescribably triumphant in a different way, right? You mean with the arms upraised? Yeah, like, you know, and just the sort of the silence of, you know, like the emptiness of the frame,

just the fact that she's sort of back in the country, but it seems to be more on like, you know, she can, it's on her terms or she can sort of understand the beauty of it again. You know, there's, there's a reason I think they made it that kind of like big stark image of

the, the, the advertising. And then that funny thing at the end of the, the guys taking pictures of her like that they that she that they actually like she wants to be like they want to uh perceive her as this sort of like legitimate professional success right like she's like settling her father's estate and like yeah right standing on a hill farm animals and them like climbing up the

hill is such a crazy image like where they're like literally like we gotta get at you you know like it's it's it's such a funny ending in a lovely way do you remember how it's a callback to earlier in the movie when her first book comes out remember and she gets presented it and she's asking where's my picture and there's this kind of sweet pathos to her really wanting her face to appear on the book, you know, and knowing that, you know, what her relationship to her body and, you know, her sexuality has been all along. It's such a moving thing that she's a little

bit hurt, you know, that she doesn't get to have the glamour of an author photo. So then, of course, when it happens much later, it's anything but glamorous. Yeah, it's a really excellent movie. I'm very pleased to have watched it the first time. Tretty, are there any other specific scenes we want to call out?

Yeah, before I do the box office game, is there anything in your notes, Dana, that we haven't hit on yet? Do you want to talk about the very ending? I mean, I guess we sort of did with her dancing. But something happens after that. Well, you have the guys taking the photos of her on the mountain, and then it sort of fades to the mountain and then it sort of like fades to black and then it fades into

this little girl dancing to the twist and you almost wonder if the movie has jumped backwards in time and gone back to childhood stuff because there are a few earlier moments where it sort of like cuts back for a glimpse. Am I wrong? Yeah, yeah. So it feels like it's doing that and then the camera sort of turns around and you see that she's

writing and sort of just like hosting this girl. And it's it's there's this nice element to is that supposed to be her niece or my right? Is that just like a neighborhood girl? I suppose so. Maybe you do. You do see her daughter, her sister's daughter earlier in the movie. So maybe it's her. But at any rate, I say auntie.

So it is. Oh, it's her. But at any rate, I say auntie. So it is. Oh, it is. OK. OK. It's just it's kind of nice. This full circle moment where you wonder if you're flashing back to her childhood, which is so difficult at a point where she's gotten to like finally feeling a little bit triumphant.

And then it's like, no, she's like actually created a place of comfort for herself, but not only for herself, where she's sort of like supporting a young girl more than maybe she ever was. You know, she's sort of like encouraging and housing the weirdness of like, just come into my like weird writing trailer that do the twist. No one's going to yell at you for being too loud, you know? No one's going to yell at you for being too loud, you know? Right. That she has found a place and a way to exist and to let another young girl exist is a great way to end the movie. And I thought, too, a lot about the fact that Janet Frame was still alive when this movie came out, you know, that she was still around and that this was an important turning point in her life in terms of bringing much, much more attention to her work. You know, it's just, if she had already died at the moment that we left the fictional her on the screen,

it would have a very different feeling. And there's something wonderfully open-ended about knowing that there was a real person still writing books, you know, watching that movie and having their reception in the world changed because of it.

Yeah. Right. And she lived for many more years. I think she died in 2004? Yeah. Let me look it up. Somewhere in the 2000s, yeah. Yeah, 2004.

It's the age of 79. I think she had leukemia. Yes. Actually, sort of crazy. But yeah, and that's right around when the final biography had just come out and all that. But she's a huge figure in New Zealand. She has the Order of New Zealand or whatever, the big

sort of civilian honor and all that. Let's do the box office game, Griffin. This film came out in America 19th of May 1991. This is a wild box office game, Griffin. Okay, I assume

Angel at My Table, number one at the box office, $35 million opening weekend? No. Angel at My Table had a limited release in New York City, but there is a new movie, number one this week. Dana, if you forget, we're going to guess the five movies

that were on the box office this weekend. It is a black comedy starring one of your favorite actors, Griffin. Starring one of my favorite actors? Is it a Michael Keaton movie? One of your favorite comedy actors, not Michael Keaton. Is it a Steve Martin movie? No.

Is it a Bill Murray movie? It's a Bill Murray movie. Is it What About Bob? It's What About Bob. Great movie. A real Ben movie. Is it What About Bob? It's What About Bob. Great movie. A real Ben movie. Griff, are you a What About Bob fan? Dana, do you care about What About Bob? I don't think I've ever seen What About Bob. I need to see it.

Damon Richard Dreyfuss. Dana, you gotta see it. It's sort of a cable guy vibe, right? Like Murray is the annoying patient and Dreyfuss is the doctor, right? I mean, the thing, look, I've never liked What About Bob as much as I thought I should because

I'm just like, it's a Frank Oz, Bill Murray, black comedy. That feels so in my wheelhouse. I like it, but I always feel like it should be my favorite movie whenever I watch it. The twist in that movie, that's kind of good. not like twist ending, but sort of like the angle on it,

is that, like, Richard Dreyfuss is the therapist, and Bill Murray is the patient who just becomes a problem and follows him to his country house and invades his life. But the thing that increasingly goes on is that, like, everyone else is like, I kind of like Bob, you seem like an asshole.

Like, the more that he's like, Bob is ruining my life! People are like, I kind of like Bob. You seem like an asshole. The more that he's like, Bob is ruining my life. People are like, you're maybe losing your mind. What's the character? Frank Grimes. It's the Frank Grimes story. He's the only one who understands

that this person is intolerable. Right, right. But you start to question whether he's the villain. I mean, the two big things about What About Bob that I always think about are, one, like,

Steven Spielberg was so weirdly obsessed with Bill Murray's performance in that movie. And whichever studio it was, Columbia did not take that seriously as an Oscar film. It was at Disney. Disney, right, Touchstone.

Touchstone, yeah. Steven Spielberg, like, paid out of pocket to run a best actor campaign for bill murray because he felt so strongly about that performance yeah this is like a thing like he held screenings and he like bought print ads that's nice i mean is this the year before or after groundhog day before groundhog day is right? So it's not even yet that moment where I think people are sort of like, oh, is Murray

sort of like beyond just funny? Is he like a super talent? Yeah, anyway. That's the year you should have gotten it. The other thing I was going to say about What About Bob is there's the story of Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray getting into a fight. Two people who are famously very chill and normal to

work with on movies. But Bill Murray had one of the most incredible insults of all time to Richard Dreyfuss, where he said, you are not liked, you are tolerated. Wow. Which is up there with Bill Murray saying to

Chevy Chase, calling him medium talent. Right, right, right. Number two at the box office Griffin is a sequel one of those sequels it's a sequel to a sort of surprise mid hit there's no way

they should have made a sequel although it looks like it made about the same amount of money as the first one it's an action thriller okay it's got a very specific sort of hook. Is it another 48 hours? No. No. No.

It's like smaller than that. It's got a very specific hook. It stars like two character actors. It did okay, but it feels like maybe making a sequel was gilding the lily, was pushing it. Yeah. I just feel maybe making a sequel was gilding the lily was pushing it yeah I just feel like the first one was it was sort of just sort of surprised everyone by doing fairly

well and the first one still has a good reputation I take it maybe the second one's a little memory hold no neither of these are liked no no okay neither remember they're just they're very the first one's like just a very 80s relicky kind of thing yeah no one talks about these movies anymore,

but I know they exist. And there's only two of them. Only two. They don't push it. I think they attempted a spinoff TV show that went nowhere. Is it just two character actors who are in it, or is it a wider group of protagonists?

It's two character actors as cops I think they're cops oh no no I'm sorry I take it back one of them is a cop the other one is a craftsman it's not another it's not another stakeout

no but that vibe that's what I'm thinking in there I'm like what are like the least essential sequels ever made? Maybe you haven't heard of these movies for some reason. I'm sure you have. I'm sure I have. This sounds like my kind of shit. Well, let me tell you the stars of this movie.

Brian Brown is the star of this film. It's FX2. Subtitled? What is it? The Deadly Art of Illusion. That is... So these are the movies. I've never seen them.

Brian Brian, Brian Dennehy. The two Brians. Brian Dennehy is a cop, but Brian Brown is like a special effects guy, right? And he's like using his knowledge of special effects to solve crimes. I don't really know.

I've never seen them. I just know of them as like sort of silly, forgotten crime relics. I just remember like the studio, like the filming studio at the film school, I dropped out of very quickly after six months had a framed FX to the Art of Illusion poster. And I'm not saying that's the reason I dropped out,

but it was one of those months where I was like, they framed it? And they hung it at the wall at the school? Did someone who make this go here, or are they just putting that up there in the pantheon of important movies? Dana, have you seen either FX film? No, that rings no bell whatsoever.

Well, they were moderate hits at the time. That's all I can tell you. Like I said, those were the years when I would be much more likely to be there seeing a Jane Campion movie in the theater or whatever highbrow thing I possibly could. I mean, I was fresh out of Texas where you could not, you know, see anything great on the screen.

And so I was pretty much only seeing fancy smart movies, not FX2. Meanwhile, I'm going to watch the two FX movies tonight. I cannot believe I've never seen them. Yeah, you should just throw them on. I'm going to push to do them on Patreon. Also, David, you said they tried to do a TV spinoff. They did a whole fucking TV network.

Well, well. Isn't that channel based on? Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's what that is. Look, I've seen FX on Hulu, but give me F slash X on Hulu because right now you have to pay to rent those movies. Number three at the box office

is a documentary, a hit documentary in that it is about a famous person. Is it Madonna Truth or Dare? That's right. Right, because that was the highest grossing documentary for a while, I think. I believe you're right until Bowling for Columbine

or something like that. Yeah. Have you seen Madonna Truth or Dare, Dana? Oh, yeah. I've seen Madonna Truth or Dare. That was the same time as the sex book, right? Wasn't the sex book basically a packaging deal with that? Yep. I remember when that was the sort of hot thing.

The sex book, the blonde ambition tour, you know, it's all happening. This is when she's doing a lot of Fincher I think Fincher was supposed to make this Movie in fact and that would have been a lot Out that would have been wild You know and she's She's sort of you know Playing with her sexuality and all

That I've never seen it who directed it was the Highest grossing duck Alec Kish Kish Kishian Alec Kashishian. Alec Kashishian, who then went on to make With Honors. Kashishian, Brendan Fraser, and Patrick Dempsey, and all that. Anyway. I've never seen that movie.

I've seen so many of the Warren Beatty clips and the Antonio Banderas clips, which are just so fascinating. The way that movie sort of catches the weird final stages of this legendary movie star and the emergence of this new guy through the prism of her being sexually bored with one of them and obsessed with the other one

number for yeah is a movie I don't think I've ever heard of it's a Blake Edwards movie like a late Blake Edwards okay one of his last switch it's switch it's switch with Ellen Barkin and Jimmy like a late Blake Edwards movie. One of his last. It's Switch. Ha!

It's Switch with Ellen Barkin and Jimmy Smits. Yes. I've never heard of this movie. Ellen Barkin is like a pig man. I forget who plays her in man form.

And he gets the ultimate punishment. He wakes up in the body of a sexy lady and has to see what it's like. And then I think Jimmy Smith is her love interest. Yeah. I guess so. Yeah.

Jo Beth Williams, Lorraine Bracco, Tony Roberts, Catherine Keener, a young Catherine Keener. I feel like some podcast covered this recently, like Bechdel cast or someone covered this. Would it be fair to say, Griff, that body switch comedies were having a moment then

or are they always having a moment? They were definitely having a moment, right? Yeah. When was the Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin one? That's the great one. That's a couple years earlier. All of me is...

Maybe? 84. 84, a while ago. This is maybe... It's a little bit after. Look, I think they're always bubbling just on the surface. What's the Dudley Moore one? What's the Dudley Moore body style comedy?

Well, this is where I get confused. Because there's 17 again. There's vice versa. There's like Father Like Son. Like Father Like Son is the one I'm thinking of, right? There's those three. And then Big is the fourth one to come out. And there's Freaky Friday

in there somewhere. Yes. Freaky Friday. Yeah, you know, but you're right that it's always a well they'll go to. Freaky Friday is in the 70s, so that's a while ago.

Right. And then there's, well, there was a 90s TV Freaky Friday and then the 2003 low-hand Freaky Friday. then the 2003 Low Hand Freaky Friday. I think some podcasts we're friends with did an episode on Switch recently,

bizarrely enough. And I knew this film existed. I remember just seeing it as a video cover and going like, what is this? How was there a point in time where this all came together? But I think that

I was digging back into it. I feel like Roger Ebert was pushing that Ellen Barkin should have gotten an Oscar nomination for this movie. She got a Globe nom. There we go.

She got a Golden Globe nom. So she did have some traction on that front. You know, it's Blake Edwards when he's, you know, near retirement. I think it's his second

to last movie. So... His last theatrical film is Son of Pink Panther with Benigni. And then he does the TV remake of Victor Victoria that I guess isn't even a remake. It's the film performance.

So yeah, it's his second to last film. And Jimmy Smits is in it. And this, of course, is a Pro Smits podcast. Number five of the box office is a new film this week. I have never heard of it. This is why I was... This is just a wild... week. I have never heard of it. This is,

this is why I was, this is just a wild, David, I'm sorry. Can you just be a little more impressed by the fact that you said Blake Edwards movie? I've never heard of it. I said switch. Yeah,

you said switch. Never heard of it. Clues. Very impressive. You're not going to get this one. This film is directed by Craig R. Baxley. Hmm. Uh,

who, yeah, I don't know. Hasn't really made anything else of note. And stars a football player. Is it a Brian Bosworth movie? It is a Brian Bosworth movie. Okay, fuck. Okay, so I was looking this up recently, too. Fuck.

What the fuck is this movie called? It's his first movie. I know. The Hulk Hogan movie is no holds barred right sure I don't know is this called point of no return no fuck it's got but it's got one of those generic

very generic it feels like it could be like a Rainier Wolf Castle movie I'll tell you he's playing yes absolutely he's playing a tough Alabama cop who's frustrated with a system that handles criminals with kid gloves okay is it is it called

tough Alabama cop it's called it has the name of a famous wrestler funnily enough oh Jake the Snake Roberts it's called Stone Cold okay okay the tell is even more generic than I was thinking yeah Jake the Snake Roberts? It's called Stone Cold. Okay.

Okay. The tale's even more generic than I was thinking. Yeah. A cop who enforces his own brand of justice. That is the tagline. Oh, that's an interesting twist. I haven't heard that before in an action movie. This film was rated NC-17 originally

because it's so violent they cut it down to get the R rating I bet you it's a pretty nasty movie but I've never seen it I've never seen any of Brian Bonsworth's work famously like he was like he was like a college

linebacker who flamed out in the NFL but I guess was just such a big deal anyway that he pivoted to like a shitty acting career. I don't know. Well, and it'd been like 20 years since like the peak of Jim Brown. I think people were just sort of like,

that should happen again, right? Like one of these athletes should be able to be a movie star on this side. I'm also just looking here. His look on the poster is unbelievable. Is it fair to say that he's styled like Boy George? Or not Boy George, I'm also just looking here. His look on the poster is unbelievable. Is it fair to say that he's styled like Boy George? Or not Boy George. I'm sorry, George Michael.

He's got like the one earring and the bleach blonde hair. The one earring, the blonde tipped pompadour. Yeah. And like this fucking jacket looks like it's got like a snake skin pattern. It's just very funny to think that this was tough. Yes. You know, in

1990, this was, anyway. Some other movies at the box office, Griffin. Oscar, the Sylvester Stallone comedy. Wow. Which I've never seen. Have you seen that movie? Alandis. Alandis. Fuck John Landis. Yeah. We've got The Silence of the Lambs. Good movie. Which is still playing

after many months. This is its fourth or fifth month. You've got something called One Good Cop. It's just funny after many months. This is its fourth or fifth month. You've got something called One Good Cop. It's just funny. That's a Keaton, right? That's Keaton, right? Yeah, I've never seen that one. Yeah, that's a Keaton cop dad drama. It's funny.

This is May 19th. This is late May. And there's just nothing. The summer has not yet started. Now this would be all blockbusters. May really was a mannequin sequel in the top 10. On the move. On the move.

On the move. I always get that fucking title wrong. Oh, boy. Yes. No, May. It took so long for May to be part of the summer movie season. It's bizarre that they didn't branch out sooner considering how robust summers were at this point. I think it's happened in the course of

my film criticism career. I don't think the May creep started to happen basically in the post Marvel years. I think it was more like post Spider-Man. Yeah, Spider-Man's a big part. It wasn't because Gladiator I think comes out

first week of May or second week of May. And that's one where I remember in 2000 people saying, like, I guess this is like a time you can open a movie. And then two years after that, Spider-Man has the biggest weekend of all time in May. And then I think officially, May becomes the month you want to release it.

I'm dog-sitting right now, and this dog definitely just took a shit indoors. My father's dog, I can smell it. So I think this is now and this dog definitely just took a shit indoors. My father's dog. I can smell it. So I think this is a great time to wrap up the episode. I agree. And it's,

yeah, it's time. It's time to say goodbye to Dana and an angel at my table. But this has been a lovely discussion. Can I make a request

so that we don't end on the image of Griffin's dog? Yes. Dog sitting poop. Can we hear a little audio on the way out of Janet Frame reading one of her

own poems in her amazing New Zealand accent? A perfect place to put that. Absolutely. Dana, thank you so much for being on the show. You're the best. Always such a pleasure to have you on. And everyone should check out Cameraman, a great book that I'm

enjoying thoroughly. Oh yes, by the time this episode drops, it can almost be in your hands in a matter of a mere 48 hours. So I would be thrilled for people to preorder. Look forward to people getting to read that. Look forward to having you on the show again soon. Hopefully, if March Madness goes the way I'd like it to, maybe for a Buster Keaton miniseries. Oh, come on. Vote for Buster, people.

Come on. What are you thinking? Let's bust those votes. And your podcast, ofies. Oh, come on. Vote for Buster, people. Come on. What are you thinking? Let's bust those votes. And your podcast, of course. Oh, I'm sorry. Is this a place for me to promote my podcast? Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. Yes, if you want to keep on hearing me podcast, I am at Slate. I'm the film critic at Slate and I have two podcasts there. The Slate Culture Gab Fest,

which is a weekly discussion of culture, including but not limited to movies. And the Slate Spoiler Special, which is basically just wading way into the weeds on a movie of the week. Fantastic.

Check those out. You're the best, Dana. You're the coolest. Thanks for doing the show again. It was an absolute pleasure and an honor. It was really, really fun. Have me on again very, very soon. And thank you, the listeners, all for listening.

Thank you. Please remember to, the listeners, all for listening. Thank you. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for her social media, Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for artwork, Alex Barron and AJ McKeon for our editing, JJ Birch, Nick Lariano for our research, Lane Montgomery and The Great American Novel for our theme song.

You can hear their new album, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Online, wherever music is found. Go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where we do franchise commentaries like the Ghostbusters quadrilogy right now, one of the most disjointed franchises in history.

But also on Patreon for February and March, we are doing the two Top of the Lake seasons. We usually try to avoid TV, but it felt like we could this time. Too important a piece in the Campion Philography.

So if you want that missing piece of her career, got to go over to Patreon. Blank check. And go to blankies.react.com for some real nerdy shit. Tune in next week forank check. And go to blankies.react.com for some real nerdy shit. Tune in next week

for the piano. We're talking about it. The breakthrough. Damn right. Checks clearing, baby. And as always,

at Dana's suggestion, now we're going to play an audio clip of the real Janet Frame reading her poetry so you don't have to think about

the fact that I am now immediately going on so you don't have to think about the fact that I am now immediately going on a goose chase to try to locate where the shit is in this house. Every morning I congratulate the articles on their severity. I think they have courage, backbone. Their hard hearts will never give way. Then around ten or half past, hearing the steady falling of drops of water, I look up at the eaves. I see the enactment to the same old winter story. The icicles weeping away their inborn tears, and if they only knew it, their identity. you