Everything Is Content - Notes App Apologies, May December and The Giant Meatball

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

This week on Everything is Content - Beth, Ruchira and Oenone dive into: I THINK I LIKE THIS LITTLE LIFEIs this the most annoying TikTok trend of 2024? Or are we villainising people who are just romanticisng their lives?YELLOWFACEA Goodreads scandal has reminded us of one of the biggest books of the year… MAY DECEMBERTodd Haynes’ new film about a controversial age-gap relationship. Next week, we’ll be chatting about Monica Heisey’s new sitcom Smothered. Stream it now on Sky Comedy and Now TV so we can all chat about it next week, please!—INDEPENDENT: Ikea confuses customers with debut of turkey-sized meatballhttps://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/ikea-big-meatball-reactions-b2459596.html ALASTAIR GREEN: I Think I Like This Little Lifehttps://www.instagram.com/p/C0zNJs2s9zy/?hl=en THE GUARDIAN: Publisher drops author for using fake accounts to ‘review-bomb’ peershttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/13/cait-corrain-publisher-drops-author-fake-accounts-review-bomb#:~:text=A%20writer%20has%20been%20dropped,to%20apologise%20for%20her%20behaviour.  INEWS: Black and LGBTQ+ authors say they’re being harassed on Goodreads and trolled with one-star book reviewshttps://inews.co.uk/culture/books/goodreads-book-reviews-black-lgbtq-authors-harrassed-trolled-949179 YELLOWFACE by Rebecca F. Kuang: https://www.waterstones.com/book/yellowface/r-f-kuang/9780008532772 THE GUARDIAN: Rebecca F Kuang - ‘Who has the right to tell a story? It’s the wrong question to ask’https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/20/rebecca-f-kuang-who-has-the-right-to-tell-a-story-its-the-wrong-question-to-ask THE GUARDIAN: May December review - wildly enjoyable Todd Haynes melodramahttps://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/18/may-december-review-todd-haynes-natatlie-portman-julianne-moore YOUTUBE: Full Interview with Mary Kay Letourneauhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RezOEn0daNU ---Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Everything is Content. We're Beth. What do you mean we are? We're all each other. I'm one person with you. We've got a new thing in the show notes. I'm Beth. I'm Rachira. And I'm Anoni. And this is the weekly pop culture podcast where we pan for gold in the murky minds of content. This week we're going to be talking about trite TikTok

trends and May December. Remember to follow us on Instagram at everything is content pod for a mixture of memes and intelligent conversation what more could you want guys before we start i have to tell you i did have one two margaritas at lunch is it one or is it two it's two two lunch margaritas two lunch but they were 3 p.m so post lunch pre-pog i've got to ask spicy or well so obviously i started with the spicy because i'm basic and then on the menu they had um lychee and honey was this like lunch margarita instead of you had this as a liquid lunch or you had lunch you had these I was actually mentioning either I wasn't going for like all drinks I was going to meet up with my friend to see this you go working space I arrived put my laptop down she looked at me and

went the cocktail menu looks really nice and then the woman came in and she was like do you want anything and I said yes uh Tommy's and she said, I'll have the honey. And then that was it. And then we did no work, had two margaritas, and I had to have another lunch. Listen, it's Christmas. I feel like who's working? It's a new place. It's just opened up and it's like pitched.

It's like a co-working space. But it's also one of those places that does bottomless brunch. So everyone around us was just having bottomless brunch. And we were sat in a booth with laptops. Bottomless brunch? Really? Yeah, my brunches always had bottoms. Yeah. never had one should we go for one 2019 when it was like literally because we'd have 30 pounds for our name exactly i know i don't i don't think

you're missing out though because i feel like the one time i had it you end up feeling horrendous by 11 a.m you go home you feel confused you end up going on a night out and the whole thing is just a disaster i can't believe that you said the one time guys this is i know i'm so basic but we used to go and i'm not joking at one point we were like we need to be putting straight jackets one time we went for a bottomless are you selling this at 2 p.m we went out we lost like hours of our life and at some point is this good no but this is a way of life one of our friends has a dog and she was it was in the summer and she's like i'm gonna go back to the house i need to go after the dog i'm gonna buy stuff for a barbecue i'll meet you guys back at mine okay and then there was like three of us still there and we were like so drunk we randomly got on a rickshaw to take us to the tube but got

distracted when we got to the tube because these girls that were like in their early 20s told us we look beautiful we should go out we forgot our friend had gone home and bought supplies for a barbecue and we went out went for dinner she rung us she was like where are you guys we were like what and we'd gone for dinner and so i want to say this is actually not the first story you've ever told me where like a rickshaw was involved i know i know me and annie lord got a rickshaw all the way back to ballon once i know because that was the night actually that me and beth me and you met emily Ratajkowski. Yes.

And me and Annie, it was also like a Monday night in December. It might have always been like. It might have been like the 11th of December. I think it was. It was about that. Yeah. And I managed to haggle with this. We thought it was a really good deal.

Haggle with the rickshaw. How much is it? To take us from Soho. Tell us the price. I think 60 pounds. Oh. But yeah, so rickshaws and me. Okay, rickshaws I've not done and i've not

done the bombless brunch do i live in london no oh my god sometimes poppy and i when we'll just get on a rickshaw and just be like wherever you're not going we'll just come with you so like a few streets what this is not normal so when they're like that we're like out we're drunk we're going to another bar we're like can you just what your next destination is and they'll just drive you like a minute because it's just fun you know i love a rickshaw because you got especially when you play your music do you live in like a mary kate and ashley's team film it really sounds like it oh it's like the modern carriage and horses that's so fun guys you need to get on it but they do they are exorbitant okay so on the topic of fun christmas things i have seen for me it's very fun it is the Ikea 25 person meatball sorry I've seen

this it is gargantuan it is festive it's fun it's a meatball to feed the entire family and more is this is this real is this I don't get it is it a joke what is this it's real because I saw it and I thought it was also a joke in person no i saw it online i'm like made me feel a bit sick i kind of i love ikea meatballs i'm now a part-time vegetarian so obviously yeah but um they're basically they've made it and they're giving it away to like 30 people i think it's like a special edition yes so the winners have been chosen by now you had to like comment so in a group chat this is why i heard about it a a friend of mine was like how revolting does this look and i had already gone to the comments to like sign up and hopefully get one i was sprinting to the ikea uk page to so it was i

don't know how many winners like you say like maybe 30 um i haven't won because they've been at i haven't won beth no do you want to see a picture of it for sure yeah i absolutely do yes this is the meatball it's beautiful oh my god but how okay first question how how would you eat it would you get like an ice cream scooper how does it arrive at your house i seem like a big is it frozen it's frozen it's frozen it's 4.5 kilograms which is about the size of a one month old baby or a dachshund i'm sorry i love them why you love the meatball when i was little did you guys used to do this as a day out my dad would yeah yeah yeah that would be the day out i literally did that like a few months ago i need yes i'm waiting for an oh my god there should be a topic the big the big top shop ikea to open up i saw a street I saw a guy today with a big Ikea bag and he was in central interesting is it open

if that Ikea had finally opened which by the way it's been opening I swear forever but I think it is open in 2024 if they were selling this ginormous meatball would you buy it no yeah in this in this scenario does it cost as much as like a really big turkey i would i would what for the fun of it do you think it would be would you buy it because you think it'd be delicious i think they'd lead us wrong how would you cook it it's massive i think they say that it can fit into an oven okay i've read all the terms and conditions because i've ended the competition and i was so hoping that i would win i would buy it for the hilarity of inviting your friends around and having like

i wish i had one of those massive like dome metal things it wouldn't fit under that though and then just revealing it and then just that oh i know i really wanted it i'm i'm actually kind of hankering for it like they said on the on the website that it's just it's not going to be sold in stores now my heart dropped okay but on a more serious note what does this say about that consumer because i do think it is revolting it just makes me think of like they over consumption what they said was that it was in response to the cost of living crisis that what they were doing was providing i've got this written down so they said on the ikea website they said with the rising cost of the holiday season ikea have created a more affordable alternative to turkeys um and the roast we're familiar with

which makes no sense because they're not selling because you can't buy it so i think i do feel like they're sort of clout chasing that's not it is it's greenwashing yeah um but if they were selling it and they were selling it perhaps a discount then i would understand did you see the comments from like other brands no no i just because this is just making me think because everything now is kind of done for it's a bit like what we were talking about the other episode everything has to be like outrageous that we spoke about in the first episode there was this comment right so it's like

viral bait yeah I think and I think that's what it was because I saw it on my friend's story I clicked on it and I watched the video

like three times and everyone was like is this real and when it was real it was like everything's gone too far so on the comments on the Instagram post

who gives a crap who are that toilet roll brand yeah had commented when you're done passing the meatball dot dot dot we've got something for you two eyes looking sideways emoji ikea uk replied at who gives a crap tp we're gonna need a bigger toilet brush and then a toilet emoji disgusting

all right you're trying to sell something to someone and you're inferring that we're gonna get the sh i t s the sugar honey iced teas is what they're saying. I've never heard that before. I love that. How is this good advertising? If I was Ikea, I would have deleted that comment and been like,

get off my page. It's so cringe and it's so infantilizing online, just like these brands going at war with each other. I don't know. It's just the cringiest stereotype of content right now. I think the boomers are probably the only, like my dad would have been like,

oh, but it's my food. The clap back from but why would you want to associate it with about like having an upset tummy it doesn't make any sense don't talk about

the afterwards of food no okay well I don't really want it anymore no how do you feel about the people now Ikea should really grow up

give a crap toilet paper I think has solved my my craving I think that Ikea were class I would have thought they would be classier than that I would too

they've let us down. Savage. Notice I have an apology incoming. So we asked on our Instagram what you guys wanted us to talk about this week. And Laura Williams suggested we talk about the I think I like this little life tiktok trend which is driving us up the wall what the hell is that

what the hell that is is one of the most irritating tiktok trends that i have come across this year and that's saying something okay tell me everything i have no idea what this is well look i've seen about four videos and they've all sent me up the wall and this is borrowed thousand so for anyone who hasn't seen it it is a it's this song set to clips from people's lives and some of it is really sweet some of it is like moments from a little life and it's really sweet and romantic other times it's really lavish holidays and the message of the song and the content of the videos are just not matching up weird do you see what i mean like there's a real disparity and it's oh it's really jarring but like sometimes you'll see it it's really cute it's like a baby

a newborn baby and it'll be like that little foot and then it's like i think i like this so lovely because it is like do you know what this amazing thing's coming to life and like life is amazing yeah but then the new thing is everyone's doing these like three second clips but with like a wall of writing and it's like no disrespect to them either because i think what happens is someone sees a video it's going viral so they do that video so everything is sort of like self-fulfilling so people just keep making that content but once you've seen it so many times it just becomes like what are you talking about like it's so not everyone has to do everything i think like it's giving lydia millen i had to stay at the savoy because my

yes yeah oh my gosh is that is that the worst thing about that was when she kept replying to people in the comments very earnestly and i don't think she realized that everyone was basically calling her insane was that sponsored i never got to the bottom of that whether that was just like wildly i think it maybe maybe she was like gifted and she thought be like a funny way of like of doing the ratings of the cost of life just was it i've actually met her she's really nice i met her on a press trip like a few years ago and she was actually really she did seem nice but i think she's just i think she's but it's one of those things where sometimes people are like so out of the things oblivious where you're kind of like you actually probably

don't mean any harm no no but it's just and you're in a certain tax bracket you do forget or if you've never known you kind of like completely lose

80% of your audience because it's so unrelatable yeah and I feel like people become almost a projection for everyone's like

irritation about a topic so she became almost like a message for how the rich uh completely oblivious about like the realities of the cost of living crisis that was why it was so interesting her job is to promote luxury like i actually don't think she if it had just gone to her audience the reason it landed so badly was it because it was such a ridiculous thing to say it went outside of it her actual general content is that wild luxury kind of like aspirational content i also feel like it's when tiktok gets shared on x formerly known as twitter the twitter crowd are pretty vicious and i feel like it's always how that transition happens

when something goes astronomically big in the bad direction so has this got much criticism or backlash much like the savoy lady stuff that went viral there was a video earlier in the week from alistair green who's a really funny british comedian satirist if you haven't seen him you need to look him up and it's him kind of like just against again with that like wall of writing playing the song and it's like i'm a gemini blah blah and it's really funny so people are starting to satirize it i haven't actually seen it i'm talking about it on x but it's i song and it's like i'm a gemini blah blah and it's really funny so people are starting to satirize it i haven't actually seen it on talking about it on x but it's i'm sure it's coming because it is like i open the reels app and if i have my sound on i drive myself insane because i scroll and every song is that yeah i've seen stuff in tiktok being like well

i didn't realize how many people's little lives involved like townhouses and and and whatever else like maybachs and like stuff like that boyfriends exactly so i i think it's it will inevitably spread but like it used to be the x was the place that people got like the first like that's where criticism funny stuff started now i think we're getting it late yeah and so i think that'll be the newsreel or like the twitter stuff next week which is kind of sad for the site because it used to be like the breaking but i wonder if that's because Twitter is

like when I go on Twitter most of what I'm following is talking about Palestine and like the Middle East so I wonder if Twitter is slightly more the higher brow you're the first person

to say that yeah but I know what you mean it's breaking news it's genuinely like I think when there's important stuff going on Twitter will focus on it

whereas the other sites do allow themselves to just dissolve into basicness. And I never know, now that everyone has a kind of news feed that's generative or like is based on your own user experience, I can never tell.

I'm like, no one's talking about this and it's just because it's based on what I'm looking at. We will see. Yeah. Yeah, watch this space for next week. And everyone will be fucking horrible. And you know who's going to catch the flack? it will be like people just minding their own business making like cute little videos women making cute it will be straight to them

okay so one thing you guys know about me is i love some book top drama do you know about the thing that's been popping off this week with kate corain yes i know exactly okay and only do you know no i have no idea oh okay so juicy so it's so so juicy beth so right so online there was a massive story that popped off with a writer who basically was found out to have one star reviewed mostly people of color on goodreads and they got found out and they've had to issue an apology and the apology what do you think it's a no-tap apology and it's it's really it's a dud in in the sense that it doesn't take for the proper accountability i mean just to be clear they're white as well yes there's a white author um non-binary white author who had a really buzzy book coming out in next not anymore do i know the book um it's it's kind of queer um greek retelling of mythology so

unless that's your so like massive audience so like a really big audience for that but i don't read that kind of stuff you maybe don't i would i would read it but i don't think i've heard of but it had like a huge a huge buzz around it u.s based or uk so it was meant to be it was um delray was a publisher it was in the illumicrate which is like a book box a huge american north american book box distributor it was there it was one of their books for may 2024 when it was coming out it was basically poised to succeed and it's all gone because she was found out by her fellow authors her peers for like which era says one starring review so no reason for her to do this besides jealousy yeah you can assume racism you can assume like a kind Can I just quickly ask, so she preemptively,

one star reviewed competing authors, Yes. on Goodreads. Yes. But surely that can't have that much impact if you only do monster Goodreads. But I think the fact, one,

maybe not, Goodreads is its own animal, and its own monster, and I try not to go there, but the reason like, it was a big deal, was that it was, she was doing it,

pretending it wasn't her, and it was very obvious. No, but what I mean is, what was the point? Like how many... You can make multiple accounts. She did more than one yeah okay right to to tank other or to plant the seeds that these other computers want and these were often yeah as authors of color yeah um and and she she's a white author and it's it wasn't you can't just

chalk this up to like the jealousy and and only you'll know this like publishing a book is really hard work in the modern like publishing industry they encourage you to like be so and and only you'll know this like publishing a book is really hard work in the modern like publishing industry they encourage you to like be so online and to really like you need the buzz and it encourages this horrible like scarcity mindset you can't talk up to that because who she's targeted are but also and beth you'll be the same having written a book and i'm sure rachiri is coming asap but like i'm really supportive of other authors because it's like they're your peers in the industry i must say i've had some suspicious one-star reviews um they could just be real can i read some of the apology okay read us the apology okay yeah so the apology you'll just see dear friends family readers fellow

authors and members of the publishing community since june 2022 i've been fighting a losing battle against depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse, the full scope of which I've hidden from everyone in my life out of shame. Then it goes on to say, I started a new medication and on December 2nd, 2023, I suffered a complete psychological breakdown. During this time, I created roughly six profiles on Goodreads and along with two profiles i made during a similar but shorter breakdown in 2022 i boosted the rating of my book bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive then they go on and on and on to

kind of detail it more but people really took umbrage with the fact that they're kind of really bringing in a lot of personal detail about a breakdown that they had and almost suggesting that that kind of explains why their behavior happened and people are not okay with that i mean and i know you've like very openly spoken about your struggles as well but there's that really good phrase which i come back to all the time which is just because you can understand a behavior doesn't mean you can excuse it yes so just because I've done something because I've been depressed I've always apologized for the behavior and the the circumstances around it kind of inconsequential because irrespective of intention if you hurt someone you hurt them that's the that's the wound we're dealing with yeah the

intention is kind of by the by and they they do seem very reluctant to to express that what they've done is not just meanness and like abuse to all other authors like it's very targeted if there's a racial element to it if it's racism a medication and uh an illness does not cause you to do a campaign of harassment against authors of color it may make you act in ways that are completely out of character ways that are frightening they may make you say certain things but this is a ongoing campaign and it's just not it just doesn't hold up and it's it's such a go-to for when someone has um a breakdown and what they revert to as abuse which is misogynistic or racist we had this whole conversation with Kanye West in 2022

just thinking yeah and and what it doesn't do is implant ideas I mean it might in a implant crazy ideas we're having you know a psychotic break or whatever but what it doesn't do is cause you to have a you know a campaign of harassment against certain authors like it's this is not how it functions and it just kind of defied belief a little bit i already feel bad though because i've just said all of that and then i think god but we can't just we should never dismiss mental health we should never that and that's i guess why it's so tricky because it's like my immediate response to that is well you've put instead of apologizing first it should have been the apology first and if you wanted to you know and just to say i did this awful thing i shouldn't have done it as a side

note i have been really struggling it doesn't take away from my apology blah blah blah but because they didn't do it like that it has now i feel like god i shouldn't have said that like and that's and that's the kind of difficult thing with i guess talking about mental health is it's like i never want to discount no one's story and i never want to disagree with them but that's the kind of difficult thing with, I guess, talking about mental health is it's like, I never want to discount anyone's story and I never want to disagree with them. But that's where it's like... That's not what you've done though. That's not what you've done. When we say things like mental health makes us shoot up schools or it makes us target minority groups or like people are far more willing to admit these things that have been going on than say, also, I probably do have some kind of bias as a white person that makes me envious and feel like people of color shouldn't succeed i need to look

at that alongside this really devastating you know alcoholism and mental health those things can exist and that's just a little bit more kind of depth to plumb and they didn't want to deal with that at all that's that's the issue i think it's not even the mental health concerns going on so i think you're completely right to talk about the apology because what was lacking there was any accountability of the racial dynamics literally as you said Beth and also the internet is just built up to unfavor minority people so I wrote a piece for the iNewspaper in 2021 about goodreads where i spoke to multiple people of color i spoke to trans writers um bi and gay writers who've all been flooded with one star reviews before their books came out and that is a very common practice on goodreads this is one story but there are

multiple people doing this yeah and i would say if you find yourself in the position even if you are depressed out of your mind where you you come out of it and you realize you've propped up that behavior you have to take accountability for that and you have to take your role in that very seriously yeah that that without doing that i think it gets you nowhere completely and loads of the comments not to make light of it but loads of the comments were like what medication makes you racist and it is it is a joke but it's also i don't know there is something in that because you don't see everyone else shielding themselves against racism by using mental health it's not right no totally totally agree and and yeah going forward all you can hope that is that the

writers one that she kind of pilloried and the writers that she targeted do get a you know a kind of fair shot yeah or in an industry that's already so racist yeah that's already so disinclined to favor them yes it does really make me think about yellow face by rebecca f kwang which kind of deals with racism within the publishing industry underhanded sort of means of making a way into fame and notoriety in the literary space have you guys beth you've read it i've read this love this is one day i haven read it. I've downloaded it to listen back to you, but I haven't read it yet. So tell me, tell me all.

Well, I mean, I loved it. And it was kind of, it was a, I think I read it in the summer and I read it. I've seen so much buzz about it before it came out. I don't know if I had an amazing

like PR machine behind it. It was very busy, wasn't it? Yeah, I had to read it. I got it in hardback. I think the day it came out, I went and bought it. I read it in the sun in my garden. I loved it.

I thought it did something really fresh and new it's basically about these two friends and one of them is chinese chinese american and the other is yeah and the other is just like a white american girl and they both go to the same college and then one of them finds massive literary success and the other one really struggles to get there and this isn't a spoiler because it's in like the promotional material but one of the characters Athena dies in a freak accident and June her white friend kind of takes her writing on her manuscript and tries to pass it off as her own and so but it's a really I really loved it I thought it was very juicy it's very pacey it's thrillery it felt very current I think I was interested to know whether people that weren't in similar industries like i've written a book and gone through publishing and so i think i found it

extra juicy juicy but it was interesting that it seemed to transcend beyond just the media world like everyone's proper gossipy and it's proper like cringy oh it's so many moments you go this is so uncomfortable and i think i think it was um rebecca quang who said it's not it is a story about racism in these industries but it's also a story about how we're forced into these competitive spaces as female writers we're kind of given the all the fuel to butt up against each other and if we choose that if we choose to see each other as competitors we choose to believe that there's a finite amount of success the scarcity mindset exactly then we fail but of course also if you choose racism if

you steal a manuscript and pass it off as your own if it's like about chinese history you probably that's the line you know some stuff's gonna happen after that that might make you question oh yeah it's yeah i think you'll really enjoy it. She wrote Babel as well, which I've not read. I've not read. Now I want to read, which was, again, a huge hit. So I think she's a real writer to be reckoned with.

It was, you're right, Beth, in that it's one of those ones where you're kind of like, you close the book and you think, I can't, I can't bear this. It's so frustrating. You have to read more. And you're like, I'm going to die.

I can't, you know, and you're just like, oh. So invested. Yeah, not even just the investment. It's like you feel like you're getting secondhand, like you're there and you can't you know and you're just like oh so invested yeah you're not even just the investment it's like you feel like you're getting second hand like you're there and you can't bear that this is happening and you're so scared that it's all gonna get found out it's such an immersive first person like and very rarely like i don't know actually not very rarely but like an immersive first person is often like quite frustrating read whereas this is just like fully you know

that is cringing literally i'm actually like curling up in salt burn which we referenced heavily in the first episode when felix is driving um oliver back to the house that feeling you know and he's like dread you're really you're like no he has to be telling the truth he has to turn i was watching it my son and she was like i can't you're great for each other i'm gonna be sick we were like no and i read ahead in books and i i'm so guilty for this but i was like but don't read ahead don't and i was kind of like skipping something just because i need to do that it's a horrible habit i do also with like films on netflix because it apparently helps anxiety i do that with horror films i read synopses yes and it does help it's nuts how many similarities

there are with the cake rain story and yellow face I can't I can't believe it yeah it feels like a cautionary tale like and it's a it's a it's a shame both for the author and and like their community but she's completely blocked her blessings and will not be like it's just done on the website like they pushed it back to 2027 and then they've just said no it's it's not publishing the book no and like she had the art like the advanced reader copies i saw a video of her unboxing the the copies really excited like it has it's it's done i hate to break it to you guys though what a scandal this is going to be caroline calloway that book is going to come out in two

years time when this has died down it's going to sell a million copies she'll then write a book like so you've been published to shame but not that if anything this is actually there's no way that's not gonna happen because i am now dying to read her book because for the moment you know it does feel like justice in a way that's so rarely served to publicly racist people or publicly kind of yeah outrageous people it's quite surprised that i'm actually surprised they pulled it are you not with the backlash i think the backlash was so huge okay absolutely huge i i would be very surprised i imagine it might come out under a different name under a different title god but i do i just let's put a pin in this because i do have and i'm not saying it's right i just i just

the way this world is people are now going to be gasping for that book let's see do you know what i mean i think you'd have to court controversy like in in the way that caroline calloway did people have to and i that's what i mean she'd have to be like i think they might not i think reads trolls she'll come out with a memoir or something oh god we do love a villain story don't we which is such a shame yeah not that one though no ideally not okay so last week i asked you guys to watch a film called may december yes did you guys watch it i did okay so everyone has seen it um if you guys at home haven't seen it it's okay we're going to keep this relatively we're going to keep it spoiler free of course um but we will talk about the themes of the film and the performances stuff like that so you've still got time to watch

it go to cinema watch on sky wherever right so the film is it's a Todd Haynes film which is about a relationship between Joe and his much older wife Gracie with the interloper being elizabeth who's played by natalie portman so it's julianne moore as gracie and charles melton of riverdale fame which i never watched either i did this is my first is it is he playing a very different character and i mean obviously but also i cannot stress to you how different the character he is playing riverdale is like so it's based on, what are those comics? The Archie comics.

The Archie comics, right. And I cannot tell you, the writers took crack before they wrote it. It is the most insane storyline and Riverdale fans will know this. I could not keep up with it because I was like every episode, there's either a cult,

there's like two people who are like, like possessed by a devil. So completely a big diversion for Charles Melton to now be nominated for a Golden Globe, Oscar buzz. To go from a kind of teen, a strange teen show to this is a big diversion. So this is a film which is about a relationship between a much younger man and a much older woman. It's based on a real life story. I don't know if you guys know the story of mary kay letourneau um and philly falau i wasn't familiar with it until watching this and then doing the binge into research so yeah so it's it's i mean i stumbled

across this story when i was probably about 12 it was in those like glossy like lifestyle magazines of the dentist and i was horrified it was yeah i think they did a big interview together which was on australian news which went global so this is a couple i'll give a little bit of background it was mary k was a 34 year old teacher in seattle america she started oh she was caught with her student billy falau when he was 12 years old she was 34 in her car they both denied that any quote-unquote touching had taken place so this was 1996 I think um she wasn't arrested until the following year when they sort of admitted to having a romantic sexual affair she went to prison for a few months on the condition that she wouldn't see him she had their first child together when he was 13 she was in her 30s she left prison broke the terms of her parole and was sent back for her

full term until i think 2004 2003 um they had another daughter in that time and then they got married in 2005 so they had an ongoing relationship for about 20 years after her prison sentence despite the relationship beginning obviously and i'm so loathe to call it relationship 2005 so they had an ongoing relationship for about 20 years after her prison sentence despite the relationship beginning obviously and i'm so loathe to call it a relationship they did actually end they got divorced in 2017 and she died in 2020 so they weren't married how old was she in 2020 then early 60s so she was quite young when she died in the real life story they got divorced and did he did we ever hear anything about him did he ever recognize what he'd gone through so i don't know they did a very viral interview it's gone viral again recently obviously with the may december uh film press but at the time they didn't interview when they were married

which was really controversial because she really presses him in parts to say things like he pursued her he was just seducing her and he goes you know he's also similarity yeah so there's these themes of the older woman pressing this younger and also non-white child or non-white man to say that when he was the child he was aggressive he was pushing it and she was this innocent kind of flower where she was in her 30s in both cases she's an older woman so in the film Gracie is not his teacher she works with in a pet shop yeah so that's where they meet and that's where they're discovered and again in the film she's gone to prison and they forge this life together which is on the face of it really like typically domestic and idyllic exactly and Elizabeth Natalie Portman comes in to research her role for an upcoming film where she plays

Gracie and she kind of disrupts that and not for the first well maybe for the first time Joe really thinks about his role so he's 36 the same age as the actress his wife is two decades plus older than him his kids are barely younger than him He's closer in age to his children than his wife. Right. And he has this kind of arc of imagining. And it's such a fascinating film. I think it's a brilliant film. It was categorized by the Golden Globes as a comedy musical, which considering everything that we've just said.

Bizarre. The fascination for me was like, I kind of keep bringing up Salt and Bam, but in complete contrast, it's the exact opposite. It's so slow moving. The acting is so impeccable. The I kind of keep bringing up the song, but in complete contrast, it's the exact opposite. It's so slow moving. The acting is so impeccable. The story kind of stays with you. And I've been thinking about it ever since I watched it. The first thing I noticed though

was the music pissed me off. When I first started watching it, it was so loud. And I even turned to my partner, we watched it together and I was like, God, it's quite, because some of it

sounded like Succession. There was like bits where it sounded like that Succession theme tune. So that was a lot. And then after the film we watched it both very stony faced I mean anything to do with it I'm sure like anyone anything to do with sort of like child sexual abuse I find it very harrowing and like kind of I don't know I go into like a weird I watch it in a very weird way where I'm kind of like this is a really stressful and then we spoke

about it what do you think blah blah and I started reading reviews and this was the first time I found out it was a comedy. And this one review was like in The Guardian. Serpentine in its plotting, queasily unsettling in its subject matter and very, very funny.

Todd Haynes' latest picture is as deaf to tonal juggling act as you will see anywhere this year. And I was like, wait. You got zero comedy from it. I didn't find it. But I think I didn't have any preconceptions

prenotions apart from what you said to me in the last episode so I just went in and watched it because I knew the context and so I watched the whole film

through this lens of like I fundamentally find this all really disturbing so I didn't find any humour in anything I don't know about you guys Roshira what about you?

so I also read a review in the Guardian possibly the same one and I didn't really understand the notes of humor either somebody tweeted um the only joke in this was the hot dog thing right at the beginning so if you watch look out for that maybe but i yeah i didn't get any humor from it either i'm completely dumbfounded as to why it's listed as a comedy so i i agreed this on the first watch went and spoke to some friends and

they said if you want to see the comedy one read a bit of screenplay so i went and i did okay and you mentioned the hot dog joke so i mean we can give this in the first five minutes it's she's in the kitchen gracie with her lisp she sort of opens the fridge and there's this boom of music and she says i'm worried we're going to run out of hot dogs and then in the next scene there's an abundance of hot dogs and when you're watching this knowing that the the plot line you kind of go some odd moment i guess there's a little bit of humor that when you read it it is quite funny really so i would say to anyone who is really dumbfounded one go and go and read the script as it's written retroactively after then reading like some pieces about it i do see where

the humor was designed to be so like natalie portman's character is this kind of like soap opera actress who's taking on this indie film that's going to be about this very heavy subject matter and she's taking it so seriously she's gone to research them but she all she basically does is fuck everything up and make joe aware of his trauma basically that was hard for me to watch and that took me to the second viewing because i'm like oh she's shit she's so bad natalie portman obviously is this powerhouse and she's done these amazing serious roles and went oh she's a shit actress who's like taking this too seriously she's like an egomaniac yes she's acting like she's a journalist but she's

not at all she's just like yeah you realize then when she's kind of like mirroring gracie gracie's obviously awful but gracie's obviously got again it's like you can understand her behaviour doesn't mean you can excuse it. He's young but he's got this old soul. She's obviously been so traumatised we don't know whether what like why she's like that but she is obviously like this child whether she's a narcissist or been traumatised. And then you've got

Natalie Portman's character coming in what's she called? Elizabeth. There's a really jarring moment in the film which I think really gives you insight perhaps into Natalie Portman's character when she's on the phone to someone working on the film that she's working on when they're trying to cast the character of joe and she says can we find a sexier 12 year old so this is the point she's so blasé with the subject matter that she's wading into i saw people comparing it to the true crime industry and how heartless people can be when kind of wading into these subjects and you know coming into their lives and talking

about it and there is a moment where charles melton he has such an earnest outbreak of emotion which is really rare because his whole thing is he's he's so repressed in the show in the movie and he's just like this isn't a story this is my life so i mean to talk about charles man would be a whole other episode because he is so fantastic in this his the physicality of his movements i mean he's a big man in real life and he's obviously he's a very beautiful man he's he's very kind of large and he's he looks like an adult man when you see him in press in the film he manages to like to draw himself inwards to become a kind of trembling... Someone stuck between adulthood and childhood

because of a trauma. He's so in a rest of development. It's amazing. I thought everyone's acting was impeccable. I thought it was one of Julianne Moore's best performances. I was so captivated by her. But I thought that Charles Melton, when the first time he confronts Gracie,

his reaction to her i've never believed anything more for me the storyline i still i find it so uncouth in a way to have like i had it documented and it's also so matter because you're watching it you're watching a woman play a woman who's talking to a woman who's gonna play a woman playing her kind of thing so it's all kind of matter and packaged up in a way that's and because you know it's a true story as well i was kind of watching it flitting between being entertained but the main thing i could kind of i think i focused on was how i thought every actor in that was just natalie portman as well because she was so unlikable and that's quite unusual for natalie

and she gets her like yeah kind of monologue moment which anyone watching the film that will hook you there's so many long long scenes where you go surely they've got a cut surely they've got a cut and they don't this is one where she just stares into the camera and she kind of delivers it in the way that she does in black swan oh it's so fantastic the acting is it's very slow though like when i first yes so if you you have to be ready to engage but i do think compared to like saltman for example this would be an oscar nomination film yes and i think i definitely will be and and i think it's the aftermath of something terrible happening so what we're used to like in the tiktok true crime when

we kind of treat tragic victims as like our own players yeah we just talk about that we don't think about what happens 20 years down the line after a story like this we don't think about like the terrible like tragic mundane of like a man's life when perhaps he realizes he is a victim um and that's it's maybe complete diversion from how we normally engage with big stories like the sensationalism the tabloids but what about when no one's interested in the story what about when it's just like a tv movie what about then what about the rest of that person's life if you at home watch it i think it's going to be in conversations for like months to come i think it's going to be like big nomination buzz and i do just think it's a really worthy film i think it's beautiful it is maybe the

the best film i've watched this year i know even saltman even our beloved saltman yeah i loved it and i really do encourage people to go and see it. This is in Mar or on Sky. I think that was a really great episode, guys. Sounds like you don't think that. No, I really had a good time. Can I get a hug? Yeah, you did good times.

Remember, everything that we referenced today, we will put in the description line in the show notes. Actually, while I've got you, we really want to talk about Smothered next week it's on sky please watch it so we can all have some big discussions around it can we have some more context um so it's a rom-com written and produced by monica heisey author of really good actually amazing writer and oh i'm just obsessed with it so please please please can we talk about it i'm'm sold. I'll watch it all. Great. If there's anything else you want to tell us,

send us a message at everythingiscontentpod and make sure you're subscribed and please do tell all your friends. We'll see you next week. See ya. Bye. Bye-bye.