The Bechdel Cast - Eyes Wide Shut with Honey Pluton

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

This week, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Honey Pluton don their masks and cloaks and Gregorian chant about Eyes Wide Shut. Follow Honey at @honeypluton on Instagram and check out the podcast Up Good!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm David Boren. And I am his dear friend Langston Kerman. And we host My Mama Told Me, a podcast about black conspiracy theories. We just did a spectacular live show with some of your favorite comedians on the planet. David, tell them who was there. We had the Kid Mero, Marie Faustin,

and we had Jaboukie Young White. Some of your favorite comedians playing some of the most offensive and groundbreaking games. So listen to My Mama Told Me on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We want to speak out and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn, an investigative journalist, and this is my journey deep into the adult entertainment industry.

I really wanted to be a player boy, my doll. He was like, I'll take you to the top, I'll make you a star. To expose an alleged predator and the rotten industry he works in. It's honestly so much worse than I had anticipated. We're an army in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in comparison to him. From Novel, listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and my latest interview is with Wiz Khalifa. The craziest part of my life, I can go from performing in front of 40,000 people to either being in a dressing room, being in a plane, or being back in a bed all by myself. He is a multi-platinum selling recording artist, mini mogul, and an actor. Which of them are the one, the only? The Wings of the League!

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join iHeart Media chairman and CEO Bob Pitman for a special episode of the hit podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, as he interviews the iconic and prolific Martha Stewart in front of a live audience in celebration of her 100th book. Did you ever think you were gonna wind up writing 100 books?

Yeah. You did? Yeah, it's just a minor goal. Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's John, also known as Dr. John Paul. And I'm Jordan, or Joe Ho. And we are the Black Fat Film Podcast. A podcast where all the intersections of identity

are celebrated. Ooh, chat, this year we have had some of our favorite people on including Kid Fury, T.S. Madison, Amber Ruffin from the Amber and Lacey Show, Angelica Ross, and more. Make sure you listen to the Black Fat Fam podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, girl.

Ooh, I know that's right. On the back door cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. I am Illuminati horny overlord of the secret sex called Caitlin Durante. And I'm Caitlin's friend, Jamie.

And welcome to our sex party. You might notice our titties are out. That's gonna keep happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. I'm Jamie and this is our show where we take a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens, which will be so fun today.

Using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion. But Caitlin, what the fuck is that? Oh my gosh, it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, many versions of the test, the one that we use requires that two characters of a marginalized gender have names, they must speak to each other,

and their conversation must be about something other than a man. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So we'll just see about that for this movie, which is Eyes Wide Shut. A Christmas movie. A Christmas movie, mm-hmm. I really do, I mean, it is a Christmas movie.

This, I, you know, not to be all 2012 about it, because I feel like in 2012 people love to be like, did you know Die Hard is a Christmas movie? And it's like, enough. Calm down. You know, find a new struggle. Yeah. In any case, I as well tried canonically a Christmas movie.

I don't think the source material is, but. The source material takes place during Mardi Gras. Oh, oh, right. Yes. So no. But Stanley Kubrick loves a twinkly little light excuse. And so he was like, OK, we got to get these two. And it looks beautiful. I'm so excited to talk about this movie. So let's just get into it. Let's get our guest in here for crying out loud.

Yes, let's. He is a comedian, host of the podcast Up Good. You remember him from our episode on the Little Mermaid. It's Honey Pluton. Hello. Hey, I'm so happy to be back. Oh, welcome back. I know, I feel like the Little Mermaid

to Eyes Wide Shut pipeline doesn't really exist. So I am glad. I mean, maybe there's some similarities, I guess, within maybe the curious misogyny of both movies perhaps, but that kind of exists throughout media, you know, incarnate. I think you're innovating the space today. Yes, absolutely.

This pipeline will exist after today. Yeah. So thanks for joining us. Tell us what your relationship to this movie is. I watched it for the first time last year, actually, because I think it was one of the only Kubrick movies I had never seen. And I really was immediately enchanted upon first viewing last year and then watching it again over the past two days,

I really just felt deeper and deeper in lust with the movie to be honest. I think it's just like, it's so hot, it's so freaky. I love Tom Cruise. It's such, I wanted to know if y'all were Tom Cruise heads. Do y'all like him? Okay. Setting aside his- Not ethically, but performance wise, yes.

Of course. No, yeah. Scientology. I mean, it's so... And like also thinking about their relationship, like pop culturally. It's such a fun movie. I know. I was just thinking about the infamous picture of Nicole Kidman leaving the divorce office. I was the one the whole time. Oh my God. Caitlyn, do you know the picture? Yes. No. Oh. Oh my God. Show me. Pull it up. It's a famous picture of Nicole Kidman walking out of her lawyer's office the day she divorced

Tom Cruise. And it's like the most raw joy you've ever seen on a human face. It's like. Her hands are down at her side, palms open, her chest, her solar plexus is outstretched and her face is just that of joy and relief. Radiating a sigh. And for some reason it was taken from multiple angles. But I bet every paparazzi in the world

was just outside. Ready for that. Wait, Caitlin, pull this up. It's so amazing. I'm looking at it too. Oh my god. It's so good. Wow.

It's so good. I've wanted to get a framed photo of that for my house for a while. Oh my god. That would be a great Halloween costume. I was just gonna say, yeah. It's a signature look. Yeah.

Amazing. But yeah, despite Nicole Kidman hating being married to him and his horrible personal life, I do tragically love Tom Cruise movies. He's got the juice. Yeah, he's an amazing actor. He really does have the res. And how much taller is she than him? I think Nicole Kidman's like 5'10, 5'11.

She's pretty tall. Yeah, I really love the movie magic that's present, where they're always at eye level to one another. I know. I was like, I wonder at whose insistence that was. Impossible to say. Impossible to know. There's no way to insistence that was. Impossible to say, impossible to know. There's no way to really get that answer.

Yeah, no, men are famously secure, so it's kind of, you know. But yeah, I mean, the performances in this movie are, I think, both great and weird as hell. It's just weird. I can't wait to talk about this movie. So you are a recent convert to the Eyes Wide Shutterverse. Yeah, weird. I can't wait to talk about this movie. So so you you are a recent convert to the eyes wide shuttiverse. Yeah, definitely. And I watching it again over the past two days. I was like, it just is.

And watching it again, knowing we were going to be discussing it, obviously, I was just kind of starting to like call the themes like I'm just really obsessed with how how bad straight people are on infidelity. And I don't know, it's like straight people are obsessed with cheating. It's just like in this really unique way that obviously is still like present within the movie, this like psychosexual ringer of infidelity and how that is like a tether to completely unraveling your consciousness and your psyche. Yeah. Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie? Kind of complicated. I've seen this movie, I think this was my third time

seeing it. The first time I saw it was in college and I was like that movie it looked cool. I didn't really understand what was going on, but Sure, why not? Like I sort of but I think this is a movie that really Ages with you. Well, I guess because each subsequent time I've seen it I feel like I've gotten a little bit more out of it And then this time especially doing some research on the context I feel like I have a totally different feeling about it and I've come around to really appreciating this movie. Cause I think, when I saw it,

I also went, Gina Bloom, guest of the show, did an Eyes Wide Shut themed comedy show, I think like last year and I did it. So I rewatched it for Gina's show. She had the robe, it was great. I'll see if I can dig up a picture of it. Please. That was really fun.

But yeah, I don't know. I mean, this viewing in particular, especially with the context of the source material and really doing a close look, like I just, I have like a whole new theory of how I, what the, I think the internal logic of this movie is. And yeah, I mean, we'll talk about it,

but it's like, I used to be like, what a weird movie with stilted performances that are very, it's like pretty, you know, male gaze-y. And all of that is true, but I feel like I understand sort of the intention behind it. And we're like caught in this like Tom Cruise fugue state because he is like, and that every woman, like we're seeing the movie, I think from like

Bill's perspective and women are just bodies that are ciphers to him. And so all we see is bodies and blank stares from women. Not because that's how women are viewed by Kubrick, not to say that he was perfect, but like, I don't think that that's the values of the movie, but I think it's like, we're just seeing him how he sees women.

So it's just vacant stairs, robots, sexual propositions, and everyone kind of looks like his wife, and everyone kind of has a boyfriend that looks like slightly uglier Tom Cruise. And I just, I don't know, I got so much out of it this time, and I'm excited to talk about it. What's your history, Caitlin? I had seen the movie for the first time

in the great Caitlin movie binge of 2005. Never forget. Never forget. And there's a lot I didn't remember about it from that first viewing. Alan Cumming, for example. For example. What a Cumming, for example. For example. What a jump scare, love it.

I was under the impression that a much larger chunk of the movie took place at the like sex cult party because that's kind of the only thing I remembered about the movie so I just sort of assumed, oh, that was like most of the movie. It's mostly Tom Cruise walking around. Walking around. OK, I do like this movie.

I will say that the pacing makes me furious. It's such a slow movie. It is one hour longer than it needs to be. I could re-edit this movie to be a cool 100 minutes. But I do like the intrigue that it builds. And he goes to the party, and you know, intrigue that it builds. And, you know, he goes to the party and you're just like, Oh my God. And then I watched it again last year in a theater, one of these theaters in LA that just like screens older movies. I went to

one of those and saw it. And it was partially because so not to brag here, but last year around this time, I went to a few sex parties, wee woo, wee woo. And anyone I told this to, which was a lot of people, 99% of them would be like, oh, like an eyes wide shut, was it like that? And the sex parties I went to were nothing like that. But that's like everyone's frame of reference. Yeah, you weren't going to some like Illuminati descent

of the bourgeoisie where you're like, what? Are there other, I'm trying to think, are there other like pop culture touchstones about sex parties or is it really, we just have been culturally conditioned to think that every sex party is the Illuminati. I'm realizing that that might just be what I thought. It's like eyes wide shut or like Epstein Island. Right. It's like that's all that we know. Right. Right. So these sex parties were nothing

like either of those things. And it was just like horny, shy people going to a party and like trying to talk to each other. I love that. Yeah. I know it sounded like you had really good experiences there generally. Yeah, they were fine. I almost went once and then bailed because that's my vibe. It's a very interesting social experiment to go to a sex party, especially if you're by yourself. Did you have to answer a secret question like in the movie? Yeah, they gave me a series of passwords

that I had to know. I wanna be booked at a sex party. I'm not like, I don't think I would thrive as a participant, but if they have, if you book local sex parties and you're interested in maybe some light standup comedy. So one of the ones I went to has a focus on like performance and most of the performances were like, sexy, maybe. Yeah, they were sexy, someone doing like pole dancing

and things like that. But there was one comic. And I didn't even know that was an option or else I would have been like, interrupting the Gregorian chants with a tight five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just to just to make everyone feel safe. That would be yeah. That's that's now on my cursed gigs wish list. It was it seemed like he had a good time. And then I went to I went up to him afterwards. And I was like, who books this? No, anyway. Look, I mean, shows are shows are sparse in LA right now Show is a show a show is a show a gig is a gig stage time is stage time. Yep. It's true so anyway, uh

people kept being like oh Why is wide shut right and then I was like, right? I need to rewatch this movie and that's what prompted me to go to see it at the theater And then I watched it a couple times to prep for this So, you know, it's it's now very top of mind And I have a lot to say about it Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to do the recap. Let's do it Skylight frame is more than just a photo frame.

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And I'm his grandson, Langston Kerman. And we host My Mama Told Me, a podcast about black conspiracy theories. And more importantly, we are here to tell you about a very spectacular live episode we have coming out. It features some of your favorite comedians in the world. David, tell them who. we got the kid Meryl We got Marie Faustin and we have Jaboukie young white Truly a phenomenal episode featuring some of your favorite comedians playing some of the most offensive and

Groundbreaking games possible there the audience was amazing. We shot it all in Brooklyn. You're not going to want to miss it. Let's get nasty. So listen to my mama told me on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We want to speak out. We want to raise awareness and we want this to stop. Wow, very powerful. I'm Ellie Flynn and I'm an investigative journalist.

When a group of models from the UK wanted my help, I went on a journey deep into the heart of the adult entertainment industry. I really wanted to be a Playboy model. Lingerie, topless. I said yes, please. Because at the centre of this murky world is an alleged predator. You know who he is because of his pattern of behavior. He's just spinning the web for you to get trapped in it.

He's everywhere and has been everywhere. It's so much worse and so much more widespread than I had anticipated. Together, we're going to expose him and the rotten industry he works in. It's not just me. We're an army in comparison to him. Listen to The Bunny Trap on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Wiz Khalifa. The craziest part of my life,

I can go from performing in front of 40,000 people to either being in a dressing room, being in a plane, or being back in a bed all by myself. He is a multi-platinum selling recording artist, mini mogul, and an actor. Which one of the one, the only, Wiz Khalifa! Did you feel like a big break was coming? I didn't know what that big break looked or felt like,

but I knew that what I was doing was working. The gang banging and the drug selling, that's not really for me. But the looking cool, the having girls, and making music, I'm like, I like that part of it. How was that experience for you? Losing someone so close to you that you love? I am grateful that I was able to have like the last moments

that I had and to be able to prepare for it. And it was something that I'm still dealing with. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Martha Stewart has been a household name for over four decades and still isn't done. Join iHeart Media chairman and CEO Bob Pittman for a special episode of the hit podcast,

Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing, as he interviews this icon in front of a live audience to celebrate her 100th book, Martha, the Cookbook, 100 Favorite Recipes with lessonsons and Stories from My Kitchen. This intimate and wide-ranging conversation between friends covers the pivotal decisions in Martha's career, the philosophy that has guided her, and the source of so much of her creative inspiration. They actually looked at the July issue that I had prototyped, and they said, this is fabulous. What would you do next July?

And I said, well, living is a limitless subject matter. Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so here is the recap of Eyes Wide Shut. The first one second of the movie is Nicole Kidman taking off her dress and showing her bare ass. Yeah.

Okay. Look, look, by our metrics, not a strong start. From a horny metric, amazing start. Nicole Kidman is unbelievable levels of hot in this movie. This is not an original observation at all, but oh my God, oh my God. Yes. No, she's a star for sure.

She's like alluring and aloof, but still like with it and sharp, you know. She's classy. She's a bombshell for sure. She's doing so much, yeah, and I really like, I don't know, like I feel like I was able to appreciate her performance so much more this time, because she's not even acting like a person,

she's acting the way her husband sees her. It's just like, and it's her husband. And it's Tom Cruise. And it's her real life husband. And she secretly wants to divorce him. Right. Did they meet on set? Do y'all have that info?

Not this set. No, they'd been married for almost 10 years. Yeah, they got married. They were married for that long? Yeah. They were married, if I'm remembering correctly, they were married from almost 10 years. Yeah, they got married. They were married for that long? Yeah. They were married, if I'm remembering correctly, they were married from 1990 to 2001. So this was like.

That's so scary. I know, I mean, she really earned that fist. Yes, definitely. Yeah, they were married for over 10 years and they met on the set of a different movie. I don't remember why. Okay. But also, this movie started shooting in 1996

and it famously lasted so. It was like, has a Guinness Book of World Records record for like the longest consecutive shoot of a movie, or at least an American movie. Stanley Kubrick loves to. Take his time. Psychologically torture his cast and crew. I know.

And then I, like, to Caitlin, say that the movie was too long. I love a short movie, but I think because this movie is literally about Tom Cruise being a cuck and, like, unable to get his nut, it's like two and a half hours of him edging. Like, he's unable to ever... This is true. You know, I'm like, so I was down to be part of the plotting because it really felt like gooning at a certain point. Like, it was edging. I was, yeah, I was like, there was a really good video essay

about this movie by one of my favorite YouTubers, Broie Deschanel, who did a great sort of roundup of like the history of this production. And yeah, part of it was, I mean, it definitely was speculated that the length of this shoot and the intensity of their scenes together did contribute to the end of Cruz and Kidman. That it was just, it was a lot.

But also that, speaking to your point, honey, that Stanley Kubrick, a lot of crew also that like Stan, like speaking to your point, honey, that Stanley Kubrick, a lot of like crew members were like, he was really enjoying cucking Tom Cruise to the nth degree and like stuff that I don't, I wouldn't know or remember, but like once she said it, I was like, oh yeah, like there was a lot of speculation around Tom Cruise's sexuality at that time, which Kubrick makes sure to explicitly add. Like, and if you know, you know, reference of him, you know, being like being harassed by a bunch of all the apps where I was like, right. Like that.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. That was like more like a pop cultural, like top down. Let's include this. Yeah. I felt like he was sort of, I mean, and it's kind of hard to be like, oh, it feels so bad for Tom Cruise, but it was like, oof, that was, it was pretty harsh because that was changed from the source,

well, I mean, we'll talk about it, but like the source material was changed. It was an antisemitic group of men in the source material, but Kubrick changes it so that they're throwing homophobic slurs at a wasp. So it seems more like pushed at Tom Cruise specifically or that's what people speculated at the time. Got it. Um okay so that's the second one of the movie.

Yeah that's after the first second of seeing Nicole Kidman's ass. So this is Alice, she and her husband, her husband, Dr. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise, and their seven-year-old daughter Helena live in a very nice and large home in New York City. Ever heard of it? Poor Helena. I know. Helena left in the damn dust. This poor kid. So Bill and Alice go to this big fancy Christmas party and are greeted by the host, Victor Ziegler, played by Sidney Pollock. At the party, Bill recognizes the piano player, Nick Nightingale, played by sometimes actor, sometimes director of TAR,

Todd Field. Oh, interesting. Wiles. I know I didn't connect that until afterwards. Yeah and he tells Bill that he'll be playing at this club downtown for the next two weeks and that Bill should stop by sometime so that they can catch up. Meanwhile Alice is approached by a man named Sanders Savost who comes on very strongly and hornily. They dance a bit. On the other side of the room,

Bill is flirting with two young women, these beautiful models. Badly, I might add, which is like another like Kubrick cucking cruise moment where it's like flirt, but do a horrible job. But it doesn't stop them from being horny for him and they're kind of throwing themselves at him. But he's interrupted when the host, Victor Ziegler,

summons Bill to tend to a woman named Mandy who has just overdosed on a combination of heroin and cocaine. And Dr. Bill saves her life. And Victor is like, don't tell anyone about this. Wink. Now downstairs, Alice is still dancing with that guy. And it's again very horny. Her drunk acting in this part was some of my favorite scenes in the whole movie, where she's like, she's like so it's kind of like

Klana Penn baby, where she's kind of like Marilyn Monroe. You know what I mean? And really taking her time like it was so, so fab. Yeah, she's so good. But she seems to kind of come to her senses and she realizes that she needs to find her husband and go home. So we cut to Alice naked again.

She and Bill are back at home and they're kissing on the lips. The next day, the two of them are going about their lives. Bill at work, seeing patients, Alice at home with their daughter, and then that night Alice and Bill are in bed together doing marijuana. No! I know. No! And Alice asks him if he had sex with those two hot women he was talking to at the party. And he's like, what? No, were they hot? I didn't even notice. Anyway, what about the man you were dancing with? And Alice is like, yeah, he wanted to fuck me. And then they have a whole conversation slash argument about how men and women approach sex differently and Bill is being very

prescriptive and presumptuous about gender roles basically saying Women don't think about sex constantly the way men do and Alice is like, oh really? Well, how about that time that I saw a naval officer when we went on vacation and how I that I saw a naval officer when we went on vacation and how I fantasized about ruining my life to be with him for one night. And she's like, yeah, I was prepared to like throw everything I had away, my husband, my family, my daughter, just to be with this guy

who I didn't even meet. Again, Helena found dead in a ditch. Oh, literally. Justice for Helena. Literally. She's like, what's for dinner, though? I'm so hungry. She's like, I turned the oven on.

Exactly. Helena's raising her self. Yes. That, I mean, oh, god. That scene is so good. And yeah, this, like, I don't know. I'm sure that there's commentary to this too that Dr. Bill is the primary medical care

for so many women and he's 37 and just learned that women can be horny for not their husband. I feel like that moment, his brain is broken and then my theory is the rest of the movie is kind of a dream that he has. I don't believe that's my hot digs. I don't believe most of the movie actually happens. Okay. Also in that scene too, where they're arguing Nicole Kim, it's care, like she's the only one who's even able to tell the truth. Like he's so like, there's like a filter

between what he thinks he can acquire for himself with his sexuality and what he feels confident and able to say. It's like, he's just, like, this, like, liar. He, like, he's unable to, like, sacrament anything because he doesn't actually know what he wants, and he can't put that to word. Right. Yeah. Which feels so Tom Cruise-coded.

Like, it's so well cast. Yeah, like it's wild, especially like watching it more carefully to get ready for this. The like effortlessness that he lives with or like takes advantage of his own station power, how he's perceived. He's like, you have to stop.

I'm a doctor. With his doctor card. He's like, I'm a doctor. Do they have that? Like they're cops. No, literally I'm like, are you like, I'm a doctor. Do they have that? Like they're cops? No, literally I'm like, are you like, is this SVU? That was so funny. He's flashing his doctor's card.

He keeps flashing his like medical ID card as if he's like an FBI agent being like, here's my credential. Right, no, literally like men in black. Yes. What? Yeah, it's so great. Bill is listening to this story that Alice is telling about how she fantasized about

having an affair with this stranger, basically. And Bill does not like this story, and he thinks about it for the rest of the movie. But then he gets a phone call that a patient of his, a man named Lou, had just passed away. So Bill goes to pay his respects. He's imagining the naval officer having sex with his wife on the way. And then when Bill gets there, Lou's daughter Marion is sad, of course, but she also kisses Bill and tells him that she loves him. And he's like, um, we barely know each other. But this like reinforces what Alice had just told him as far

as like, if you men only knew how women are horny to right. And this is another moment. And then hopefully there's like, how women are horny too. Right. And this is another moment and then hopefully there's like fans of this movie are gonna be like, Jamie is a dumb ass. But I really do like, I was getting fully pilled as I was watching it this time where she's acting irrationally, right?

Her hair is styled to look like Nicole Kidman's and then her husband did be shows up and he is styled to look kind Nicole Kidman's and then her husband-to-be shows up and he is styled to look kind of like Tom Cruise. So I think he's just projecting mirror images everywhere he goes and once she says it, every woman acts irrationally horny towards him. And I just think that that conversation with Alice breaks his brain and then the rest of the movie is like him having

this weird protracted dream, trying to process and like failing to process that information. Yeah, I like that theory. I like that too and it just shows the like lack of totality that he sees any women as, where it's like, my wife is, you know, the mother to my children, it's kind of this like virginized Mary. And then you're just kind of like,

like you're saying project that onto every other woman that you see because you only understand women as a role that they inherently already negotiate with you. Yeah. And it's like his own insecurity too. Cause it's like, he's lying and almost cheating on her so many times, but he never closes to, which I found was interesting. He's a cuck, he can't close.

He is, he can't close. But he's somehow irrationally presented with infinite opportunities. Right. I'm just like, this isn't real, I don't know. I'm like, is this my favorite movie now? I don't know. It's good, it's good.

Yeah. Okay, so he leaves the home of this patient of his movie now? I don't know. It's good. It's good. Yeah. Um, okay. So he leaves the home of this patient of his who has just passed away. And a sex worker named Domino played by Vanessa Shaw of Hocus Pocus fame. Oh, what a career. Right. She approaches him and he goes home with her, but decides not to go through having sex with her because he gets a call from Alice asking

when he'll be home. So. A woman's intuition. Mm. Yeah. So he leaves Domino's place and goes to the jazz club where his friend Nick Nightingale had mentioned he was playing.

And Nick tells Bill about this other gig he's playing later that night. It doesn't start until 2 a.m., he won't know the address until like an hour before, he has to play blindfolded. So it's all very secretive, although Nick says he did get a sneak peek last time and the women at this party were

so hot. I think there's a fun moment in that scene too where like a lot of this movie is Tom Cruise being really naive and I think it's like I've been trying to like parse out what that is and like why this character has such like an intense naivete. Where in that scene where Nick's like, I'm blindfolded, and he's like, what? You're playing blindfolded? Where it's like, he goes for two and a half hours, he's just being defiled and defiled and defiled, and is unable to meet the libidinality of the world

for some reason. He can't quite find the dance of this like defamatory nature of society that he's been so repressed towards because he's been like a man who's a doctor with a wife and a daughter. Right. It's, oh God, he's a, Bill is a mystery. Yeah.

Not when I'm eager to see solved even. I don't care because I don't care about him at mystery. Yeah. And not when I'm eager to see solved, even. I don't care, because I don't care about him at all. Right. Yeah. You're like, whatever is going on with him is none of my business. I just am like-

100%. Best of luck to Helena. At least her family is rich enough that she'll be able to afford therapy later. Yes. She'll have a wonderful Lacanian psychoanalyst who she'll pretend to be her father or something. That has to be, oh god, someone had to have done that sketch at some point,

like if your parents were the eyes wide shut parents. I love that. I love that. Oh, that's great. Okay, so Nick is telling Bill all about this secret party and Bill is very intrigued, all about this secret party. And Bill is very intrigued, especially after Nick receives a phone call with the password for the party, which is Fidelio. Yeah, I thought it was gonna be Apple. I thought it was gonna be the Da Vinci Code.

Not quite the Da Vinci Code, no. Da Vinci Code heads, where are we at? It's really like Pee-wee's Playhouse. Like the word of the day is Fidelio. It's really like Pee-wee's Playhouse. Like the word of the day is Fidelio. Yeah. Ah! Ah!

So Bill begs Nick to let him join, and Nick is reluctant, and he says that Bill couldn't even get in the party with the clothes he's wearing because everyone is always costumed and masked. So Bill goes to a costume shop, even though it's like nearly 2am at this point, but he convinces the owner, Mr. Millich, to let him in. This guy.

And this is when Bill starts flashing his medical ID card around everywhere. He'll do it like three more times. You need to give me a sex costume. I'm a doctor. All right. It's an emergency. It's a medical emergency. I need to go to a sex party. On Long Island. As a notorious cheapskate, I was just keeping a tab.

Like I was trying to keep tabs. So was I. He was spending so much money. I did the math. In 1999 money. He spent like $700 or something. Like wall. I think that it's closer to $90.

I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. I think that it's closer to $100. He was spending so much money, in 1999 money, he spent like $700 or something, like wall. I think that it's closer to $900.

In that what, like two days? Just in that one night. Wow. Because he pays $150 to Domino. He pays $150 for the costume rental plus an additional $200 over the rental price, plus $150 for the costume rental plus an additional $200 over the rental price plus $25 for the mask that he loses, the $80 for the taxi to the party

plus $100 over the meter plus whatever the meter costs while the driver waits for him, which is probably another like 75, 80 bucks, plus presumably another $80 to take him back to the city. He's gonna write it off. He's gonna write it off. Research research.

Yeah, right. Yeah, as researching bodies. I'm a doctor. Exactly. Researching boobs. I'm a doctor. And that doesn't even include the beer he bought at the jazz club or the taxi to the costume shop. So when you do all that math,

I think it's around $900 that he spent that one night. Must be nice. Yeah, that would really put me back. Yeah, that would put me back. That would be a lot. That would be hard. I'd be upset. Especially if you spent it doing,

just thinking about cheating on your wife. Yeah, and you didn't even get laid. You spent $900, you didn't even get laid, babe. Oh, many such cases, I'm sure. Right. Okay, so Bill rents a tuxedo, a cloak with a hood, and a Venetian mask. There's also a part here which we'll just get to later

in the discussion where Mr. Millich discovers his teenage, question mark, daughter, played by Lili Sobieski with two older men. And we will address this, but I'm just going to kind of breeze past it here. So Bill heads to this party, still imagining the naval officer railing his wife, the party ends up being in a mansion, somewhere secluded, you said Long Island. Definitely, definitely. He gives the password, Fidelio, and is admitted.

Wearing his cloak and mask, he enters and sees what is clearly some secret society. There are dozens of others in masks and black cloaks. There's a leader in a red cloak doing some ritual with a group of masked women who disrobe and then choose a partner who they go off with for sex. and choose a partner who they go off with for sex. And one of the women who has this big feathery mask chooses Bill, but it becomes clear that she only approached him to warn him

that he doesn't belong there, he's in grave danger, and he must leave immediately. It is not clear how she knows this and it might just be because Bill is dreaming this whole thing but she seems to know that he doesn't belong there so she warns him to leave but someone else comes and pulls her aside. So Bill continues exploring, he goes into the other rooms of the house where several people are having sex, others are watching, he's like a wuga. And then the woman with the big and brings him to the main room where surprise, everyone is staring at him.

And the leader in the red cloak kind of puts Bill on trial knowing that he wasn't invited and he's not supposed to be there. So that doesn't happen at the parties, Caitlin. That doesn't happen. Yeah, you don't walk into a room and suddenly all eyes are on you and they're like, you don't belong here. Yeah, uniquely ridiculed. I love that that happens if you're like Cinderella or

Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut where all eyes are on you all of a sudden. Yeah, so they make him take off his mask, revealing his identity, and just then the feather mask woman says, stop, let him go, take me instead. Stop! Stop! Stop! She says, I'm ready to redeem him. And it's implied that she is sacrificing her life to let Bill live. So they let Bill go free but

warn him not to tell anyone what he has seen or try to investigate anything or else he and his family will suffer dire consequences. So Bill returns home and he comes into the bedroom where Alice is laughing in her sleep and he wakes her up and she proceeds to tell him about a dream she was having where long story short, she was having sex with the naval officer and then a bunch of other men in front of Bill in the dream and he does not like this either.

I'll be, now listen, I'm Alice till I die, but I was like, would I have shared that whole dream with him? I would have waited until coffee the next morning at least. I would have done it over continental breakfast, maybe some grapefruit with some brown sugar, that's a morning conversation, that's at nighttime.

I would need to, yeah, I would be like, let me let me just process that. Let me process that. Yeah. So cut to the next day. And Bill, he's running some errands, including going to try to talk to Nick Nightingale. And he finds the hotel where he's staying. Alan Cumming is at the front desk, telling Bill that Nick has already checked out and two big scary men were with him and it seemed like they were threatening him. And then Bill goes to return the costume that he had rented, although he forgot the mask

somewhere. There's more to this Lili Sobieski subplot that again we'll revisit later. And then Bill goes to the mansion where the party took place, or at least he's at the front gate, where someone brings him an envelope with his name on it, inside of which is a letter telling him to stop his inquiries. And this is his second and final warning. I it occurred to me. I mean, it's just it's because Halloween was two weeks ago. But I'm like the note another good Halloween

costume. Just the note to dress up as the note that Tom Cruise receives. No, that would be really good. It can be a couple's costume where it's that note. And then the other note that is in the Jersey Shore. Yes, I was thinking of that. The Jersey Shore note would also be really good. Wait, what's that? Oh, it can't be repeated.

Can't be repeated in full. It's a note that I'm pretty sure Snooki writes to Sammy saying that she's been cheated on by Ronnie. Yes. Okay. And it's read aloud equally dramatically. Caitlin, it used to be hung as a banner at the iHeart radio offices in LA. We had a banner of it hanging up.

If I saw it, I didn't register that that's what it was. Yeah, I think they eventually took it down. It's just some pretty fucked up stuff. But yeah, I did see someone dressed up as the note that Carrie Bradshaw gets, the post it note, the post it breakup note. It's like, sorry, I can't. Okay.

So many notes. A note of men being disappointing. Yes. Notes throughout history. Yes. It can start with like Magna Carta and it's kind of going on. Declaration of Independence.

I mean, we could keep going. Yes, it goes on and on and on. Anyways, the note, iconic. OK, so Bill returns home. Alice is helping their daughter with math homework, famously. And I think the only scene that passes the Bechtel test. But all Bill can think about is the dream Alice told him about all the men she was fucking. So he leaves again and pays a visit to Domino.

She's not home, but her roommate Sally is, who invites him in. And she's like very close to him and being flirty the vibe is horny but then she reveals that Domino just got some blood test results back and they were HIV positive so the mood shifts and he's like oh I'm sorry to hear that and he leavesices a man is following him, so he like ducks into a restaurant where he reads a newspaper clipping that a beauty queen named Amanda

was admitted to the hospital after a drug overdose. So Bill goes to the hospital, he's still flashing his medical ID card everywhere. I'm like, can that get you into the more, like, I mean that. Of anything, that would make the most sense to me. Why he shows a diner staff member. Waitress, no, it's so funny. But I feel like he was just trying to like,

class intimidate her there, to be like, I'm more important than you, you have to do what I say. I feel like he's really, really sly with taking advantage of people he feels are less important than you, you have to do what I say. I feel like he's really, really sly with taking advantage of people he feels are less important than him. Right, because he does the same thing to Alan Cumming at the front desk with the hotel. And Alan Cumming's being such a little weirdo,

and I love it. He's like, I guess something weird happened. I don't know. You're like, what is this trickster? What is this trickster persona? I read that Alan Cumming auditioned for this role six times before they cast him. I also love King,

cause he's doing like an American accent, which I think is so funny, but it's like, I feel like his lilt is really present as he's getting more kind of like curious in the way that he's discussing everything. Yeah. No, it's very much like Twink who has been up since the night before.

Yeah, like that's what's happening. My boyfriend works the night shift at a hotel and I made him watch the scene with me. And like, so it's like that. Right. And that happens. Is that happening all the time? He's like, yes, that is how I behave.

And that is the job. That is the job. Okay, so Bill goes to the hospital and discovers that this woman Amanda Who was admitted for the drug overdose died earlier that day and he sees her body in the morgue and he suspects It's the same woman at the sex cult party who had warned him and offered to redeem him. Then he gets a call from Victor Ziegler, the host of the party that happens at the beginning of the movie.

He invites Bill over to tell him that he knows what happened the night before at the horny Illuminati party because Victor was there. He's like come over I have some plot to share with you. Yeah and Victor Ziegler is like you've got the wrong idea about what's going on. No one's dead. It was all staged to scare you and to stay in quiet about what you've seen. And Bill is like, well, what about the dead woman I just saw at the morgue? Who seems to be Mandy from the beginning of the story. Okay. See, I think to me, that's a different woman.

I feel like they did not have the same face. I agree. Well, okay. Interesting because I sort of assumed this was the first time, but then I was like, Amanda, man, I'm like, is it the same person? Weird that they would give her such a similar name in that case. Well, Ziegler says, like, that is the same woman, and she dies. I guess I shouldn't have believed him.

Right, so he's trying to play it off as like, oh, you know, she has addiction issues, you know that because you saw her overdose at my party. And it had nothing to do with her sacrificing herself for you at the cult party. But I think he's lying because that, they have the same hair color, but I don't think that's the same woman.

Well, but also she's like completely blue, even though she died at 3.45 today, she's like, she looks like she's been smurfed. Cryo frozen. Right, she's more dead and she has a different face than the other woman, so. Who knows, who knows, yeah.

So, you know, Bill doesn't really know what to believe and everything is very suspicious, but he returns home and the mask that he had rented and misplaced is in the bed next to a sleeping Alice. Apparently she had found the mask and was going to ask him about it. And so he bursts into tears and he's like, I'll tell you everything.

Cut to Bill having told her everything. I kinda liked it, we didn't need to watch that. Agreed. I guess we saw it. Yeah. It's like the movie's already long enough. Yeah, no, that's true. So she's very upset, they're both crying,

and then they have to take their daughter Christmas shopping that day. So while they're like roaming around the toy store, Bill and Alice have a conversation about their future, if they're going to stay together or split up, and they're speaking so cryptically that I'm not really sure what they decide. But the conversation ends with Alice saying, I do love you. And there's one thing we need to do as soon as possible and bill is like What and Alice says?

fuck Blackout the end. I forgot that's how it ended and I was like, I know it's okay. He got me. He got me. Yeah no Kubrick's last movie ever ending with fuck is So good like I got his based. That's iconic. As a famously not fucky guy. Yes, it's just fuck. Yeah. So that's the great recap.

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. That's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss. making it the perfect present for anyone who values connection and family. Millions of families have fallen in love with their Skylight Frame. It's perfect for parents and grandparents with a simple, user-friendly design. This holiday season, give the gift that keeps on giving memories. Whether it's for grandparents who adore seeing the grandkids' latest antics, or a friend who loves capturing every moment, the Skylight Frame is the perfect gift to bring joy and

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Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, baby. We're back. With everyone's permission, I want to start with the source material for this. Sure. Great. Which I did not know very much about, but the title of it does support my theory because it's based on a novella called Traumnovell by Arthur Schnitzler, which translates to dream story. But I think, I mean, there are the Eyes Wide Shut does like follow the story pretty closely. The original story is set in Vienna during Mardi Gras,

like you said earlier, Caitlin, obviously it's switched to be in New York around Christmas. I think that the character of Victor Ziegler is added, but other than that, it follows the beats of the story, just adjusting for time period and location. But the thing that is worth mentioning, I don't feel like qualified to intelligently comment on, but it is something that has been written about a lot, is the fact that Arthur Schnitzler was a Jewish author. Their original work was published in 1926. I don't think it is explicitly stated that the lead character in Traumnivelle is Jewish, but it is heavily implied.

It's a character named Friedelin. And in that exchange we were talking about earlier, that is changed in Eyes Wide Shut to be a group of homophobic frat bros yelling at Tom Cruise. Originally, that's a group of anti-Semitic men harassing Friedelin. So it's suggested that he's Jewish. And like, Schnitzler was like, you know,

would frequently write about Jewish characters, was an openly Jewish author, to the point where his works were like, banned in Nazi Germany. Like, he was persona non grata. And was a close friend of Freud, which also, I feel like, explains a lot of the stuff we're seeing in here.

Yeah, I highly, so much of this information is coming from that Brewery Deschanel video. She did like an incredible job of contextualizing that. But just worth mentioning that Stanley Kubrick is a Jewish director who was in the sort of this weird infinity war with his co-writer, Frederick Raphael, who there's a lot of funny clips because I think that they were both kind of egomaniacs

and Kubrick wanted to change a lot of Raphael's script. Raphael was also a Jewish writer and wanted to retain the implied Judaism of the lead character, but Kubrick was pretty adamant that it be removed and that this character be changed to be like a wasp, which is obviously who we end up with. So there's been a lot written by Jewish writers

about Stanley Kubrick's relationship to his Jewishness, but I just think it's worth mentioning and that the character that he adds, Victor Ziegler, who is not a great guy, isn't the only character who's implied to be Jewish in the story. So yeah, I just wanted to start with that. I didn't know this was an adaptation of anything, but.

But most of Kubrick's work is, I believe too, yeah. And I guess there's other, I can't pull it off the top of my head because I am not a Kubrick completionist, but I guess this is not the only example of Kubrick taking a Jewish character or even an implied Jewish character and being like, I wanna change it.

So, you know, he was not like very into talking about his personal life, so we'll never know, but it is worth mentioning and has come up a lot because it like caused a lot of friction within the writing team. Cause I think Frederick Raphael was like, why the fuck not? Kubrick was like, no.

So we'll never know. But, and then the only other really shift from the source material is that Eyes Wide Shut does sort of shift the perspective to follow Bill throughout, where it's like the height of the dramatic action in the book is the, Alice is Albertina in the book, whatever, but like the height of the action is related to her, but in the book they add in another sex party

and his return and all that. So that's the source material. That's my little background. Yeah, very interesting context. I couldn't find anything to the effect of why Kubrick chose to remove the elements of Judaism from the source material. At first I was like, oh no, is it because he's anti-Semitic? And then I learned that he came from a Jewish family but did not practice. Like he decided at some point in his life that he was not

going to be a practicing Jew and considered himself to be an atheist. So I don't know if like that informed anything on that. Yeah, we don't know, but. I don't know, we'll never know why the change was made. But I was kind of pleased to hear that the story translated to dream story. And I was like, it's not real. It's all made up.

Well, if it is a dream, when does he wake up? I don't know. that's the word fuck The fuck rouses him back. He's like finally I can fuck it's been two and a half hours I know yeah We've this really is like a grand Odyssey of watching Tom Cruise not close edge. Yeah, it's an edge off Definitely really wild so that theory which I I like and I I feel like it makes a lot not close. Edge. Yeah, it's an edge off, definitely. Really wild. So that theory, which I like, and I feel like it makes a lot of sense, applying that lens to it, you're like, oh yes, this tracks as far as the way Bill perceives women and what

he thinks about them as far as their role in society and their role in his personal life and things like that. If you remove that lens, you're like, oh, this is a movie full of characters who are women who are not well-developed. Their functions in the story are to just behave bizarrely around Tom Cruise's character. And so if you just look at it very face value

through that lens, you're just like, oh yeah, this is a movie that doesn't seem to respect women. But when looking at it through the lens of, oh no, this is how this particular character perceives women and prescribed gender roles and all of that, then you're like, oh, actually this might be brilliant. The disembodiment of women is so on the nose where it's like there's that one quick scene

where he's at work and it's just like a topless woman and he has like a stethoscope like in between her boobs. It's like, we all know you don't actually have to get fully topless when someone's taking your heartbeat with a stethoscope, you know what I mean? Like it's just so on with a stethoscope, you know what I mean? Like it's just so on the nose that it does, it just is satirical, you know?

It's like, it's such a caricature, it's so over the top where it's like, women don't even have faces half the time when you're talking to them. Like it's just, yeah. They all kind of look the same. Like there's one type of body. Right, it's a-

For sure. They're all white. They're all white. It's all white all white New York City yes and also for so much of the movie it's like New York is empty yeah like that's the other thing that I was like this is not happening because there's no one on the street of like Manhattan right in the West Village Saturday night except for one man who's following him yeah but yeah I agree. It's like the way that I, remember when I saw that doctor scene

where she's completely topless. I'm like, I know a 14 year old boy saw this and was like, I'm gonna be a doctor. Literally, I'm gonna see so many boobs. Right. Yeah, you're like, you're in for a surprise, my friend. Not a sexy environment. But I also, I wonder how intentional this was,

but it did, I don't know, having had a lot of, I know we've all had our experiences with doctors who are not listening to us, or the fact that he is the first line of defense, and it doesn't seem like he's a bad doctor, to be fair. Anytime there is an opportunity, or if there's someone who needs his help, he does do it. I think that's part of what's complicated about Bill,

is he is deeply misogynistic and baffled by women, but he's not necessarily a bad person. He's just incredibly insecure. He's just so, so, so insecure. Because it seems like he's good at his job and he does care about it. And even in the opening sequence when he prioritizes, we have to take care of Mandy,

I was really struck by that when Ziegler is like, okay, can I get the fuck out of here? And he's like, no, you have to stay here for an hour and make sure that she gets home safe. And like he is, you know, very professional about what he does. But doing that all while having these like base assumptions about how his patients see the world, you're like, Ooh, that's a lot of doctors. Yes, I had a who, not a man, it was a doctor who was a woman, because women can uphold the patriarchy too. But when I told her that like my libido was disappearing, she's like, well, do you have

a partner? And I said, no. And she said, well, then how do you know that you don't have a libido? Yeah. Oh my God. I was like, what do you mean? And how can you be a doctor and also think that? Like what?

I'm like, where did you come from? It's still the most shocking thing that has ever happened to me in a doctor's office at least. And I'm like, is she a nun? Like, were you at a nunnery? I'm so confused. No, it was just a regular ass doctor's office at a nunnery? I'm so confused. I know he was just a regular-ass doctor, obviously, but it was truly, yeah.

We talked to, I think I brought this up on the show recently, but I had, I found a lump in my breast a couple of months ago that thankfully was nothing, but I went to have it tested and then I went back to my primary care and she was like, you know, you should try being happier because sometimes depression causes breast lumps. And I was like, no, you can't say that.

Cool advice. No, I'm good on that. Thank you so much. So there are many examples of doctors. What we're saying is women shouldn't be doctors. That's what Caitlin and I are trying to do. Or also women shouldn't go to the doctor. No, don't go.

Yeah. You're not safe either way. Don't go. Don't become one. Take your No, don't go. Yeah, you're not safe either way. Don't go, don't become one. Take your chances, take your chances. Yeah, exactly. So yes, Bill seems to be a decent doctor for all intents and purposes,

but he does have all of these assumptions about women that he is not considering from a medical or scientific point of view. He's just like, oh, well, I've just always heard that because I mean, the whole movie happens because he's made assumptions about his wife because of her gender. And then when he learns that Alice has sexual desires for other people throughout their marriage, which is a like normal and human thing. Which we know because he also does it.

He indulges in those all the time, right? Right. Yeah, that really is the catalyst for the entire movie is that she's like once I had a sex dream during fleet week and he's like, well, I'm going to enter a secret society now and I'm going to kill myself. How dare you do that? And then during that fight, he's like, well, I'm going to enter a secret society now and I'm going to kill myself. How dare you do that? And then during that fight, he's like, I don't get jealous.

And then it's like this jealousy fueled, like, underworldian event that like procures after. Yeah. He's so emasculated that he tries to join a secret sex cult about it. He cannot handle. Tries and fails, I find out. He failed to join.

Like, he is turned out of the Illuminati. They're like, sorry, you can't hang. He cannot handle trials and fails. I find out he failed to join, like he is turned out of the Illuminati. They're like, sorry, you can't hang. You have weird vibes. It's like you have weird vibes, no. And I mean, even his, again, I wonder how intentional it was, but like even his fantasizing about her cheating on him,

it feels like weirdly juvenile. Like even his fantasizing about her cheating on him, it feels like weirdly juvenile. Like it's like, you know, he's imagining her like basically having wild sex with a guy in a like Navy eye party outfit. Like it just feels very like his conception of sex is so. High school. Yeah. Like so, yeah, so naive and so.

It's very blue. Yeah. The flashbacks are very blue. And yeah, it's like this very muscular, handsome, fit man that she's having sex with. And I read that Kubrick directed those scenes to be as pornographic as possible. And I hope that there was an intimacy coordinator

and that Nicole Kidman and the man, and everyone involved felt comfortable, but. I was able to find this was, I was like, of course they didn't ask her. But that Tom Cruise was not allowed to go to those filming sessions. But it wasn't clear if that was Kubrick cucking him again, or if Nicole Kidman didn't want him there,

both of which are possible. Oh, that's so interesting. But like, of course no one asked her. Right, right, right, right. People speculate that Kubrick like wanted to stir up drama on the set to like make the performances more realistic. He's so messy. I'm like, okay, diva.

He is. He is a diva. Okay, diva. That's very like Andy Cohen of him. He's like, I'm gonna, okay, diva. He is. He is a diva. Okay, diva. That's very like Andy Cohen of him. He's like, I'm gonna stir the pot. Like you're, yeah, the Real Housewives of Eyes Wide Shut. He's like, I'm gonna stir the pot. I kind of love that he's like, okay,

I've got 18 months to live. What can I get done? Like, what can I? He's like, can I get two of the most famous people on earth to get divorced? I won't be around to experience it. It's like, why was that your of the most famous people on earth to get divorced? I won't be around to experience. Why was that your last wish? It's so dramatic.

That's so, that's Diabolical. I kind of am like, if I knew, because I also confuse it, because this is his last movie, but like unclear if he knew he didn't have much time to live while he was making it. But if he did, fan theory, he's like, as my last act,

I'm gonna make two famous people divorce. I also was on his Wikipedia before this, and I read in his personal life section that he was infamously distrustful of doctors. Really? Oh. Yes. So maybe that is present in this conversation as well.

He's like, I gotta cuck the doctor for my last movie. Oh, also, and, cause Caitlin, I know you were talking about this before we started recording, but this was like, this was kind of like Kubrick's Megalopolis, kind of? Like, this was a story that he had the rights to for like 30 years.

He envisioned it in all of these different ways with different actors. Like there was a point where he was gonna have Woody Allen in it, glad he didn't. Oh, interesting. There was a point where it was gonna be more of a comedy with Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Albert Brooks,

Alan Alta, Sam Shepard. He had 50 different conceptions of what this. Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, cause he was like really interested in having a real life married couple, play the married couple. But then he finally, I mean, in the nick of time, he did it, but it was interesting too,

cause I mean, I don't know, it's interesting to kind of speculate like, what drew him to this story so strongly, and I guess also his wife, whose name is Christian Harlan, she sort of was, he wanted to adapt this in I think the 70s, and she was like, it's a little too early into our marriage

to be making something like that for my comfort level, and he was like, okay, I'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait. And so it was like sort of in deference to her because she was like worried about how it would reflect on their marriage as they were raising kids together. And so there were all these reasons he waited, but it seems like it came together the way it should have. Yeah.

So he had to wait along too. So he was also getting cocked by his own movie. He was true. edging himself. Yeah, big time. Absolutely. He also apparently considered this movie to be his greatest contribution to the art of cinema. Oh, wow.

And I'm like, I mean, it's a good movie, but I'm like, you made like 2001 and Dr. Strangelove and stuff, but sure, this movie is the best of them He's I mean good for him that I mean imagine having a body of work that strong that you're like eyes wide shut It's kind of mid-tier like because it's so good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah yeah, I just I find the character fascinating as far as like his perception of Gender and sex and how men and women are different. I feel like we had a similar conversation about the inception episode where it's hard to evaluate

the characters who are women in that movie and specifically Maul, the Marion Cotillard character because it's like Leonardo DiCaprio's character's projection of his wife rather than who she actually is. And so a lot of that is also arguably present in this movie. That's the Christopher Nolan cheat code. He's like, I'll never need to learn how to write a woman character.

She's not real. She's a projection. Yeah. Right. So I think there's a projection. Yeah. Right. So I think there's a strong argument to be made that that's how to read this movie, that when we see Alice, she is mostly a kind of like fever dream projection of what Bill.

And she's also like always in bed. She's like literally like in bed. In bed crying. Wearing the same outfit. Yeah, she's just asleep or crying. Yeah, even the way, like the way, that's such a good point, like the way she's costumed is either,

it's very Madonna whore. Like it's either she is like in bed crying in a sheer top, which she looks great in, or she's like wearing her glasses and a turtleneck and she's being a mother and a wife. Like there's just, I really feel like he's just totally unable to see her as either a sex object or like quote unquote, woman doing what woman does.

And yeah, again, expanding on this theory, I feel like we see the real her at the very beginning of the movie, but the second they have that argument, he just like, his brain breaks. Cause we see her, I mean, it's like, you know, she's Nicole Kidman. She looks great no matter what,

but it does feel like it's very, like it's hard in one direction or hard in the other. Yeah, I think that's true. Cause I don't know about y'all, but I'm not sleeping in a sheer top. Like I'm sleeping in a large t-shirt. Yeah, cozy. It's good to be cozy.

Yeah, especially if I've been married for 10 years. Right. You're not catching me dead in a sheer top. I'm so sorry. But yeah, in that first scene where she's dancing with that older guy who's trying to sleep with her, she's really dynamic. You're watching a woman negotiate her morality,

her values, her ethics in real time, both as they reflect as her as a wife, but also like her as like a sexual being as well. But it really is, yeah, when Jamie's saying, I guess maybe it is a dream, even though I don't want it to be a dream, is that once she snaps and she's the only one in that argument that is honest about her desires, then she

just kind of becomes Sleeping Beauty and she's just kind of like relegated to the bed, the bedroom. Right. Yeah. And we see her at the beginning, we see her like on the toilet, we see her just like seeming more normal than she does for the rest of the movie. Totally. Yeah.

During that scene where she's dancing with that man at the party and you know, he's being, he's coming on very strong, but she seems into it, she's receptive to it. They're vibing, yeah. They're vibing and she tells him like, oh, I'm actually looking for a job. I used to run an art gallery in SoHo and he's like, oh, you like art,

let's talk about art and da da da. And so like, I could see why she would take an interest in him and she does seem to consider like going upstairs with him and maybe that would lead to sex, we're not sure. But then, you know, she's like, oh right, I'm married to Tom Cruise, I better go. Well, especially if you could, I hadn't even thought of that, but like if you're considering like, he, you know, we never't even thought of that, but if you're considering,

we never see Bill ask her about how she's feeling about work. He clearly has no interest in her having a career. And so it's like, of course you would maybe kind of, I mean, especially if you're kind of fucked up and it's a hot old guy, someone who asks you about yourself, of course you're gonna be interested in that person. Right. And then out of the corner of her eye,

she's watching him like Tom Cruise laugh with those models. He's like, ha ha ha ha, so gregarious. She's like, my cuck husband, I've gotta get out of here. Yeah, exactly. Right, and then just to kind of like walk through the beats of the conversation that like is the catalyst that gets him to have this meltdown fever dream kind of thing, you know, where she says, yeah, that guy wanted sex and she was perfectly honest about it again, because she's able to be honest with him about her feelings and about like, you know, uncomfortable truths or kind of taboo things that you're quote unquote not supposed to acknowledge, such as how even when you're in a committed monogamous relationship, many people still have

sexual desires for other people. And again, that's a perfectly normal part of the human experience and Alice is able to be honest about these things and Bill is not because he's like I'm never jealous meanwhile the rest of the movie is him being so jealous. Benji Jealous. Lauren Right. Lauren But anyway so she's like yeah he wanted to have sex with me. And Bill's like, yeah, men are like that. Not me though, I'm the exception. I wasn't even flirting with those two beautiful models

because I'm married to you. And she's like, okay, so you did wanna have sex with him and you just wouldn't fuck them out of consideration for me? Like, what are you saying? She's like trying to have a conversation with him. She's trying to get him to like, it seems like she would be happier if he just admitted that and they could talk about it openly,

but like he's just too closed off. For sure. She had her copy of like Polly secure, like right behind her back. Okay. Yeah, was about to bust it out, but then the conversation didn't go well, so she buried it.

This is a couple that probably should just, I don't know, try polyamory and see. Go to a swinger's party, put your keys in a bowl, figure something out. Yeah, yeah. And they literally did. And like, I just- Right. Yeah, and I think, Caitlin, you said this earlier,

I was like, in my mind, for some reason, there was another sex party and she went back. And so I kind of like, I was like, in my mind, for some reason, there was another sex party and she went back. And so I kind of like, I was like, oh no, she never gets to do fucking anything. And I think that like, it's interesting that, I don't know, my memory was that, oh, she must do something wrong at some point.

She never does anything wrong. She has a sex dream. That is all she does. Yeah. Right. She tells him about different sexual desires she has a sex dream. That is all she does. Yeah. Right. She tells him about different sexual desires she has or dreams, which again, normal human thing for someone who is a sexual being, right? And she also conveys like, I have never acted on this.

Like I'm not acting on these desires. I'm just having them the way a sexual person has sexual desires for people. And then he blames the pot. Yeah, okay. This pot's making you aggressive. The most hilarious line in the movie. Classic pot, classic pot.

Classic pot's always making people so aggressive. And then, yeah, she says like, what about you when you're with your patients touching their breasts? Like, and he's like, no, no, you're with your patients touching their breasts? Like, and he's like, no, no, no, I don't think like that. He's so offended. He's so offended. Meanwhile, we've seen him.

He's like, I do make all of my patients take their tops off. Right. So I can hear their heartbeat. I'm waiting for them to ask why, but they just haven't. Yeah. Right. And then she's like, well, what about those women in your office looking at the handsome doctor?

And he says, women don't think like that. And she's like, oh, so you think that women only care about security and commitment. And then this is when she launches into the story about the naval officer. And so it's just, yeah, him like making all of these very prescriptive assumptions about his partner because he just is like, yeah, this is how women are.

And then she sets him straight. If you men only knew, you're like, woof. And I think that's also like part of the cuckoning where like he's at this sex party and I feel like he's unable to close because it's the first time in his life that he's understanding women having sexual autonomy. He's like, oh, all these women came here alone

without their husbands, perhaps. They're here on their own volition because it's interesting too to think about his, the relationship of sex work in the movie too, where it's like these women's sexual autonomies are negotiated as part of their career where a man is soliciting them, so that's why they wanna have sex,

but then at the sex party, it's like, I don't believe it's implied that these women are sex workers, so it's like, oh, they just want to be here. Right. Like a man didn't ask them to be here right like he can't conceive a woman having sex for pleasure at all right totally yeah i mean his interactions with women i agree it's like it's either like if if you're just

looking at the movie like these are women in this world, it makes no sense. I feel like weirdly the Lili Sobieski character I found very kind of like clarifying because her character acts so irrationally, especially in her second appearance. Where in the first one I really wasn't sure. So she's, for listeners, she's the daughter of the costume shop owner. He finds her with two older men and like, you know,

basically threatens to have the two men arrested. But she like, she hides behind Tom Cruise and she's like, hey, hey, hey, I'm such a little scamp. And you're like, okay, that could happen in the, but it still feels very, I don't know, like conception of a woman versus a person who has reason to be afraid of her father, right? But then when we see her the second time,

I was like, this cannot be real because she says nothing. She just stares vacantly ahead basically. And the costume shop owner is like, oh, by the way, I am now my daughter's pimp. And so if you're interested in having sex with my possibly underage daughter, just let me know. And she's just staring vacantly ahead. I was like, I do believe, I mean Stanley Kubrick

is not great at writing women characters. Again, maybe this is his cheat code, but it's just so hard to buy into that we're supposed to take that scene at face value for me. For sure. Right. I was not sure what to make of these beats that involve this character. And I was like, okay, well, it seems like it's commentary on how people will abandon their principles for a large sum of money because it's implied that this guy, Milich, the costume shop owner, comes to an agreement

with these two older men who he had found his daughter with and that they were like, we'll pay you to not call the cops or we'll give you all this money and that's what changes that dynamic. And I think it's implied too that he's kind of like a sleazebag, valueless guy, you know, it's like. For sure. He was able to be like bought in

to Tom coming in after hours, like, you know, he's like a sleazy guy. Right, and so it's like, oh, well, this guy just, you know, for the right price, he'll like literally sell out his daughter. And I mean, we see things like this happening all the time in the real world, that people are corrupted by greed and wealth.

But what didn't work for me is like, upon first glance is like, well then, why is the Lili Sobieski character seemingly a gleeful participant in this scenario? That doesn't track at all, but if it's through the lens of how Bill's very warped perception of women is informing why she's behaving that way, then it tracks.

And we've seen him shell out a ton of money. I think it was very intentional for him to constantly being like, I'll pay you $200 over the rental price. I'll pay you $100 over the fare for the taxi. Like he has money to throw around and he knows he can use it to manipulate people into doing what he wants.

And he does not hesitate to do so. Yeah, class is really interesting in the movie where I definitely do think that this is like a movie about the bourgeoisie. It's like these are wealthy people with lots of time and lots of resources and they're a little bored and their boredom allows them the extra time to be able to get up to no good, you know what I mean? Where it's like, I kind of like got that too in the Alan Cumming scene where he's like a working person and he's like really like loving the juiciness of what these rich people in the hotel that he's doing

is getting up to and he's having so much fun kind of like recounting what he saw. And even that with like the waitress and even that with the sex worker, it's like all of these more working class people are just avenues for me to like get information or get what I want. And they're sexual too,

but they're of less value, obviously. Right, I was sort of wondering that with like, cause I don't, do we ever find out what Victor Ziegler does for a living? I don't think so. I don't know. We just know that he's very wealthy. Yeah.

So I also almost wondered if like, I mean, it definitely seems like, even though like Dr. Bill, he's like weird. I don't know, he's just weird. He's Tom Cruise, he's weird. He's weird. But it does feel like part of what's tied into his insecurity is like, he's rich and successful,

but not as rich and successful. He's still technically working for others. Even though he is in a different class, he still interfaces with people at the diner. His connection to the sex party is someone who works for the sex party. So it's like he's not invited or necessarily like openly welcomed by like the highest echelon

that it seems like he probably aspires to be a part of. You know, he's instead sort of like reveling in his power over people who have less money than him, as opposed to like, you never really get the feeling that he's fully accepted by the like 1%, 1% until he's causing them problems. But even then, like Victor Zegler's calling him over at the end to be like, you shouldn't have been there, you don't belong there.

It's another layer of a masculization for sure. I have to imagine that's why the change was made from the source material to have that group of like agro men call Bill a homophobic slur. Because that just emasculates him even further. And then, excuse me. And then when he comes back home after the party after like the sex cult party. That's when Alice describes the dream where she was like, yeah, we were naked together, I was scared, you left, I felt so much better

after you left. Then that sexy naval officer came out of the woods and we started having sex and it was awesome. It turned into this orgy where I fucked so many people. I don't even know how many men, but I was with so many. And then I love her performance where she's like, I'm sorry, haha, like, it's so good. Right, and then she describes in her dream,

like seeing him and laughing at him and like wanting to humiliate him. It's even worse in the source material, in the source material while she's fucking other guys, he's crucified. No, I love that. That's so good. Well, yeah, it's like even though he's a doctor and he's wealthy

and has a beautiful wife, it's like the ego wants more. It's like when everything when the only way that you're able to define your worth is by what you believe you've achieved and like acquired. And he's like my wife I like acquired her like that's my property like that's an investment and my understanding as a man and when you realize that when he realizes that she has desires and dreams outside of him he's like wait why is my thing thinking about anything else besides me I'm about to freak the fuck out. Like no validation is gonna be enough for him. Like no validation from anybody unless he is.

And I wonder, I mean, I don't know if in the source material like he, they have a daughter or a son. I know they have a kid, but it feels kind of also intentional that he has a young daughter and has no interest in her whatsoever. Right. Like another thing to have around the house. And doesn't the daughter look just like Nicole Kidman, too?

Same hair color? Similar. Strawberry blonde, yeah. And even though, I mean, I want to say, it does seem like Alice is a good and thoughtful parent. But it's like, if we're seeing her through Bill's eyes, we see what Alice is doing almost never. Like, we get no insight into what her life is like,

except that she isn't working right now and she's a stay at home mom. And we see her do that, we see her cooking, we see her helping Helena with her homework, we see her enjoying being a parent, but we get no insight into her outside of that. And it's just like, I don't know. I have no idea how we're gonna rate this

because I think this movie has so much to say about masculinity and insecurity, but also by design it has nothing to say about women because it's about a man who doesn't understand women at all. As total people, no, for sure. Right, I also wasn't sure what to make of the part where Domino, so Bill pays a second visit to Domino and also this is right after he has made

a phone call to Marion, the woman whose father had just passed away and presumably he's thinking, oh, she was throwing herself at me. And my wife keeps emasculating me. So that gives me license to cheat on her and try to have sex with whoever has showed any interest in me. And so he calls her home, her fiance answers.

So he hangs up realizing, oh, that's probably not a viable option actually so then he goes back to dominoes he's trying every angle it's like his roster is on zero he's like it's about to be cuffing season and like i have there's no one around miserable he's so he's so desperate it's like go, go home. Go home. Yeah, I refuse to talk to my wife. Right. Exactly. It's so pathetic. Right. But anyway, so he goes to Domino's and her roommate, Sally, is there and he's also trying to have sex with her. It seems like she's receptive to it as well. Again, probably because this is a projection of his and not what's actually really happening.

Right, because yeah, who would like come on to you by being like, by the way, my dearest friend, something horrible has just happened to her. No, for sure. Right, well, the dynamic changes after that, but prior to that, she lets a perfect stranger into her home, stands like one inch away from him. And also she knows this information about Domino the whole time. Like, why would you

behave that way? Right. That's how he behaves when he has to tell his like patients that they're like terminally ill. Yeah, exactly. Really close. Yeah, right. Bad news, babe. But I guess my question is like, why is that detail in the movie? And I was like, okay, is it that like, the movie has an anti sex worker prejudice where it's like trying to offer some sort of cautionary tale of like, don't cheat on your wife, especially not with a sex worker, because then you'll end up with a disease. Or what exactly? My take on it is actually further in the cuckoning,

which is like, it's Kubrick showing at, it's like he's getting cucked from like a societal perspective where it's like, you're not like rich enough. And then like, you're getting cucked from like an interpersonal perspective where it's like you're not rich enough and then you're getting cucked from an interpersonal perspective where it's like you don't have enough game, you don't understand your wife and then now you're getting cucked

from a cultural perspective where it's like, oh, there's actually a bigger conversation that you're not even aware of that could also impede you having sex maybe? I was curious about that, yeah, because I was looking into if there was a version of that in Dream Story, but it doesn't, in the book, it just says he looks for, her name's Mitzi in the book,

but he can't find her. So that was an intentionally added, I couldn't make Hazard Tales of it. I think, honey, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Cause Kubrick doesn't really like, he's not like a cautious man. Like he's kind of like, fuck caution. You know what I mean? No, this is the guy who whiffed Lolita at unprecedented levels. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I don't know. I thought that scene was curious too and why that detail would be relevant, but I guess my take on it was part of Tom Cruise's

character's narcissism, where he's like, oh, something else is getting in the way of my nut and it's AIDS. Right, and then he's polite about it, but then gets the fuck out of there, doesn't offer any further help or anything totally. Yeah And I mean, maybe it's also like part of him being like a medical professional or something. I don't know Right. Well the same way that he doesn't do anything to try to help the Lili Sobieski character who yes

Like he's just like oh weird the dynamic has shifted. It's like a concubine teen and he's like, gotta go. Yeah, and he's just like, well, sorry about the mask, I've lost it, bye. Yeah, what? Right, yeah, it's like he, I mean, I'm like, is this movie so amazing? Where it's like, he always behaves politely, but that doesn't mean that he's doing the right thing.

He's almost never doing the right thing. Right. Well, he only does at the very beginning where it's like his willingness to help the model, Amanda or Mandy? Mandy. Mandy, where it's like he was so willing to like meet and be the real medical professional.

But as the time is going on where he has yet to get laid, he's like, I'm kind of need to get out of here and go, sorry. Right. And even like it's implied that, oh, what's her name? Marion, the daughter of the patient who dies. Yeah, Marion. It's implied like he's again, very polite and extracting himself from that situation in the moment. But then it's clear he doesn't actually care because when he feels insecure and on his heels, he calls her. And so it's like he is not above any of this. He just can't close to save his fucking life.

Like it's, I don't know. Curious, a curious little movie. I wanted to mention that because this movie is so much about tumultuous straight marriage, that many of the paintings, most of the paintings in the Hartford household were painted by Stanley Kubrick's wife, Christia, and she was like an accomplished painter.

Oh, fascinating. Also, that set is a recreation of Stanley Kubrick's and his wife's real home. The apartment or the sex party? No, the apartment. Oh, I got it. Oh my God, he's so messy. I know.

I'm like, bro, chill. Good for Christian being like, we've gotta wait until you're basically dead to do this because I'm not carrying this. I'm not carrying this. Because he died, I believe, of a heart attack six days after showing the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to Warner Brothers. I also like to think about what Tom's character thinks he would gain spiritually, existentially from infidelity and from closing, where it's like this immense desperation that carries the entire movie that's exclusively inspired

by his wife having a dream once. It's like, it kind of seems like he was never even considering what a different libidinal reality for him would even offer him outside of it being like conquest that comes from being like emasculated. It's like, what do you think you would even get spiritually, like personally from doing this? It's all about male fragility.

Ever heard of it? Yeah, exactly. And it's like a lot of Kubrick's work is about that. The more I was thinking about zooming out on what his filmography seems to be about. And again, it's like not that he's making an intelligent comment on women at really any point. I can't think of an example where he is,

but it does seem like he has an eye for very fragile men lashing out. And ruining their lives, essentially. Yeah, right. The shining, perhaps. Yeah, right, if you will. Right, because Bill is, again, so emasculated by his wife, Alice, being a real person

with real desires and real feelings, by his wife, Alice, being a real person with real desires and real feelings and he just simply cannot comprehend or handle it except to seek revenge basically. It seems like he's on this quest to, oh well if my wife had a dream about having sex with someone else, well, it's payback time. It's like, you don't have dreams, babe.

Like, what do you do when you sleep? Right. Like, you just cut to black and wake up eight hours later? Mm-hmm. So again, it's all about, like, the ownership he feels over her. Yeah. And he can't handle this person

who he deems as his property, having any kind of autonomy or anything like that and so he goes out looking for a revenge fuck basically. Definitely. And it's kind of, I mean, it's like devastating from the Alice character's perspective where she is is genuinely reaching out and trying to get her husband

to be a little vulnerable with her, and he will not budge. It makes me sad for her too because it feels like this marriage has taken a lot from her, a lot of things that she wants, like someone who is supportive of her career, like someone who can have an honest fucking conversation,

like someone who respects her at a base level. It seems like she has none of this. And I think that at the end of the movie, I think she has the upper hand. Like I think by the end of the movie, she sees his insecurities so whole and knows that her admitting her truth sent him on a spiral that he will never be able to recover from. And she knows that her sexuality actually fully holds

the power in the relationship. Yeah. I was curious about that because like her being like, well, the way to address this marital issue we're having is for us to fuck. I'm like, is that part of his dream still? Or is that just her kind of like understanding that she now has some power in this situation? I'm not sure because when he tells her, like the next morning after he has told her about this whole, you know, wild night he's had,

she for the first time is seen without a full face of makeup. And I'm like, oh, this seems like reality again. It doesn't seem like he's projecting or imagining or fantasizing or whatever. So is the rest of the movie from that point on, which is only, I don't know, five more minutes, is that reality again or? I thought it was reality again.

Yeah. I did too because it's like, again, I'm like, maybe I'm overthinking it, but the store is crowded at the end. It seems like actually it's New York at Christmas. Like there's people where I feel like for all of the parts that feel very unreal, like there's no one around

except the person that he's talking to or reacting to him. But towards the end, it's like the lighting is more realistic and it's busy and I don't know. And once again, poor Helena. She's like, I want a teddy bear. And they're talking about the like libidinal exchange of like infinite regret and resentment. And they're like, we'll see. And she's like, I want a Barbie. Yeah. And they're like, go away.

Can't this kid a teddy? Come on. She's been through enough. They won't even teach her math. Like she's cooked. She should have been adding up all the cash that her dad was throwing around that night. The cuck budget.

It's built into the budget. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to chat about? I don't know. Let me look at my little notes that I took. Apparently in 2019, it was revealed that the voice of the mysterious masked woman, the party, it was done in voiceover because the original actor apparently couldn't do a convincing enough American accent.

So they had a non, another non-American do an American accent, but they had a Cate Blanchett provide the voice. That's so cool. She's everywhere at once. She really is. The only thing that I wrote down was I found that Tom's character was also extremely insecure when he was talking to men too. Where like he like there's like the series with Nick and they keep like slapping each other. It's like so this like macho bravado that I was really touched by how insecure he was even even in his patriarchal conversations,

where it's like, you could tell he was always trying to get above something, but he could never really find his footing. Right. Yeah, I mean, even his approaching Nick above anyone else at that first party is like, oh, this is a former peer of mine who I now perceive to have less power than me.

Let me go talk to him. So it's like, he's not comfortable talking to men he perceives to be more powerful than him. And it's like, it's men who are revealing these secrets to him as well. It's like this we as hazing, this like fraternal hazing that he's always one step behind. I'm like, you don't talk to your bros, dude.

You don't know about the secret society. Like, come on. He's got no friends. We gotta get. No, he's got nothing going for him. It's really a shame. We gotta get this guy some friends stat. Yeah, exactly.

Another just production fun fact is that the way it was shot originally probably would have garnered a more like NC-17 rating. So to ensure that it could be released theatrically with an R rating in the US, Warner Brothers digitally altered several of the like very sexually explicit scenes. And I think it's that they put in like CGI cloaked figures

in front of people having sex to sort of like obscure the more graphic stuff. I also, this is a movie, for how horny this movie is, I didn't see, I only saw, I know that we've sort of touched on this, but you only see cis women's bodies shown, which does feed into the theory that we're just seeing the world through Bill's eyes, but like anyone who is an assist woman, their body is obscured for the full movie.

Yeah. Right. Oh, there was a, I don't know if y'all caught this, but as he's leaving the party, there's gay couples too. Oh, I did see a glimpse of that. Yes. As he was leaving the party, it's like women in tuxedos with naked women. party, it's like women in tuxedos with naked women. And then it's like men in tuxedos with naked men with masks on for like what, for like 10 seconds.

I missed that. I was like, why not have some representation? Right. At the sex party. But it's just toughers walking past. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, I didn't get the download on that yet. He's like, I don't know about gay yet. We'll circle back. we'll circle back. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, anything else from anybody?

I don't think so. I do believe the movie passes the Bechtel test when Alice and her daughter Helena talk about math. Yeah, they're women in STEM. Women in STEM. We did it, we did it. Yep, we did it. We did it. Yep, we did it.

But as far as our scale, the nipple scale, where we rate the movie from zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, choosing to experience the movie through the lens of, this is very much the character of Bill's perception and projection of his very intense misogyny and patriarchal values

informing why the characters who are women behave the way that they do. Because again, looking at it at very face value, it doesn't fare very well on our scale. But I do think the movie is an indictment of male fragility and the toxicity of men being emasculated and how that manifests. So because of that, I mean, I don't know, I think like split down the middle, a 2.5 nipples, or does it deserve more?

I don't know. This one's really a head scratcher. I mean, I think that there's like inherent and hilarious patriarchy and having the nipple scale be a head scratcher because you have to understand it as through men, you know what I mean? Where it's like, obviously patriarchy exists

because men are really fragile and challenging and that's bolstered societally. So like, should y'all change the scale of the nipples in order to make room for that? Like, I don't even know if that's fair. It's blowing up the system. The system is collapsing. Totally.

Where I guess if the nipples could also be men's, it's like if the nipples are gender neutral, and we're talking about a movie that really does a perverse and wonderful job at trying to explain gender, then ramp up the nipple, I guess, maybe just like a four even. You know what, I'm gonna do 3.25. Yeah. Whoa.

I think that's very fair. Thank you so much. And I'll give them to Alice and Helena, because they did nothing wrong probably. What were they up to that whole weekend? We'll never know, the last weekend. I don't even know. I think I'm gonna abstain from nipples in this one

because I feel like this movie is doing something very weird and unique that I really appreciate. And also like, I really do like, I mean, I feel like this with a lot of Stanley Kubrick work I've seen accepting Lolita again because that's a trash adaptation and he should have gone to prison for it but he didn't and so we have Eyes Wide Shut. I think this is a really thoughtful,

it just makes traditional waspy American masculinity look like a fucking nightmare to have to uphold. And it's like, it's a zero sum game. Dr. Bill is suffering this entire movie, and everyone around him is suffering as an extension. And I was really taken aback by this movie this time around. And does it have anything to say about women? Not really.

But I don't think that that is the point. And I feel like this to me is Kubrick's cheat code, where he is actually talking about gender really intensely and thoughtfully, but from a perspective that he understands. And it feels effective. I don't think I really am interested in Kubrick's, I mean, I actually kind of know I'm not interested

in Kubrick's interpretation of women. I don't think he really, that ever really connected, at least in his work that I've seen, but I think he has a really good eye for like insecurity in these like masculine structures. And this is like a really great version of it. And again, like Tom Cruise, cult leader. However, like, I really I like this era of his work a lot where he was really willing to give up or give away pieces of this hyper masculine movie star persona and really seem vulnerable.

I feel like this movie doesn't work without his performance or without Nicole Kidman's performance because just the amount of layers of like she's performing, how the character sees her and it's her husband and it's a Kubrick movie so they have to do 3000 takes of every single shot. He made Tom Cruise walk through a doorway 95 times. Whoa, cuck.

Truly, he's like the most famous man in the world. What can I do? And this is sort of another conversation, but I know when we talked about The Shining back in the day that it was a more prominent cultural narrative at that time that he tortured Shelley DeVaul on that movie. And Scatman Crothers.

And Scatman Crothers. I can't speak to Scatman Crothers. I do know that later in her life, because Shelley DeVaul just passed, she kind of significantly pushed back on that narrative. Not to say Stanley Kubrick innocent, it really does seem like part of his process is kind of torturing his actors and the crew.

I mean, this movie did not need to take two years to shoot or whatever. But I don't know, I have been thinking about his work a little differently since I read sort of Shelley Deval's account where she was like, it was brutal, it was horrible, but I care about him and I don't hold any sort of animosity towards it,

which also seems how both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman remember this experience, where they're like, he was torturing us, but he was cooking. Which is interesting. And I think that there is a level of privilege encoded in that as well, of these cis men, auteur geniuses, are always given a way longer leash

with what is permissible behavior. That definitely factors into it. But anyways, I think, yeah, he was cooking here. And I don't know nipples. I quit for this one. That's fine. Honey, do you have any thoughts? I don't know nipples either.

I mean, there's probably like 100,000 nipples in the movie. So many. It's definitely a nipple heavy film for sure. But I think that what y'all are saying is I agree with and it's astute and to grade the movie on a scale of intersectional feminism seems impossible because women were only seen as projections of men so I don't think I can rate it on that scale. Yeah. But I think it's an awesome movie about gender. Right. And I know it's curious thinking

about what an insane cult leader misogynist Tom Cruise is then it's an awesome movie about gender. Right. And I know it's curious thinking about what an insane cult leader misogynist Tom Cruise is, then it's like, what did you think this movie was about? You know, I think it's all, you know what I mean. It's like, what did you think you were doing? He's the guy in the red cloak going, Literally. Mulan.

Yeah, exactly. You were the one Gregorian chanting. What do you think is going on? I feel that way about Dennis Quaid in The Substance, where I was like, what does he think The Substance is about? Because he gives a great performance, and he's a notorious piece of shit. And you're like, what did you think you were doing?

Totally. Baffling. Don't know. Well, anyway, that's the episode. Honey, thank you so much for joining us. Of course. Thanks for having me. This was so fun.

The Little Mermaid to Eyes Wide Shut pipeline is complete. We've done it. We did it, y'all. Yeah. Where can people check out your work, follow you on social media, plug anything you want to plug? It's all my name at Honey Pluton. I have a podcast that was mentioned up top called

Up Good with Honey Pluton. Love to pod podcast that was mentioned up top called up good with Honey Pluton love to pod we love pod listen up and Yeah, follow me excellent, you can follow us on Instagram and Patreon That's patreon.com slash back to cast to join our matri on community Q where you get to bonus, I know right?

You'll get two bonus episodes every month centering on a fun little theme that Jamie and myself cook up plus access to the entire back catalog of over 150 bonus episodes. So there's a lot of good stuff there and it's the best way to support the show. Also don't forget to check out our live shows coming up in January.

We've got one in LA on January 19th that is a big Bechtelcast celebration. Lots of fun segments. We've got stand up from some of your favorite past guests, plus from Jamie and myself, chats about movies, all kinds of fun stuff that's live in LA, plus it's being live streamed so you can watch that show from anywhere. Then we've got a show as a part of SketchFest in San Francisco on January 23rd.

That's a Shrek Tanik show where we're covering Titanic. And then the following night on January 24th, also at Sketch SketchFest is a Honey's show called Jeopardy which I am going to be one of the guests on so please come check that out and then finally we have a show in Portland on January 26th that's another Shrek Tanik show this time we're covering Shrek and this one is also going to be live-stream. So all the tickets and all the other details are on our Linktree, Linktree slash Spectalcast as well as the description of this episode. So please, please, please come out to the

shows especially if you live in those areas come see us live. If not tune in to the live stream shows. Supporting our shows is the other best way to support this entire podcast. So yeah, hope to see you there. Woo. And you can get our merch at teepublic.com slash Bechdelcast. Holiday's coming up, blah, blah, blah.

Give it to the eyes wide shut in your life. Oh. And with that. Should we hop in a taxi and go to a sex party? I was gonna say it's time to fuck. It's time to black. Yeah. That too.

Bye. Bye. The Bechtel cast is a production of IHeart Media hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrasensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash bechtelcast. Hi, I'm David Boren.

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