The Bechdel Cast - Mommie Dearest with Izzy Custodio from Be Kind Rewind

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

This week, Jamie Dearest, Caitlin Dearest, and special guest Izzy Custodio Dearest from Be Kind Rewind chat about Mommie Dearest (1981)! No wire hangers ever! Follow Izzy on YouTube at www.youtube.com/@bkrewindSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick you here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s.

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Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the pectocast, the questions. If movies have women in them Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands Or do they have individualism The patriarchy's effing vast Start changing it with the Beckdale cast Jamie dearest

Caitlin dearest Thank you I just wanted to show you my cool new wire hangers I got Oh yes, yes Was this a known thing about wire hangers Were people to I? Or was this specifically a movie thing? Is it like low rent to have wire hangers? I don't know.

I don't say we were a heavily wire hanger household. So was mine. I think. And the hangers in question, which are like those plushy hangers, I think are like kind of stinky and smell like mothballs. But what do I know? Sure. Yeah, I don't know.

Like I have a few wooden clothes hangers that I like hang my heavier coats on and stuff. And I feel so classy when I'm like, you know, putting my. wood hanger on the rack. And really with the with hangers there's always the floor which is where most of it is going to end up anyways. The hangers that I buy are is like it's a performance piece that I do every time I move is acquiring. Okay. Well that was a that was a classy opening to the mommy dearest episode. Welcome to the bectal cast. My name is jamie Lafdes. My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what on, Jamie Dearest? What on earth is that?

Well, it is a medium metric created by Alison Bechdel, friend of the show. Originally, and actually, it is like pretty relevant to talk about the context today. Originally was made as a one-off joke in her comic collection, Dikes to Watch Out for back in the 80s, has since been adapted to a sort of mainstream metric. A lot of versions of it, the version we use requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man. And that conversation can really be about anything narratively relevant. And so the movie Mommy Dearest, you know, it doesn't have to be a positive conversation.

That's what I'll say. It does not. It can be abuse. Yes. So you can, you know, know, know that it passes. passes the vectal test and we would probably call the podcast something else if we started it today. But today we have kind of a behemoth of a movie because it's a request we've been getting since this show has existed, I'd say. So for nearly a decade, we have been avoiding covering this movie

because it seemed difficult to prepare for. And that is in fact true, but we have the perfect guest to come and talk about Mommy Dearest with us. Let's get her right here. She is the creator behind the YouTube channel Be Kind Rewind. It's Izzy Castadio. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. I'm very excited. It is a daunting task to talk about this movie. Thank you so much for being. I mean, just to get the fan girl moment out of the way, I guess. Like, we cite your work truly like every other episode. All the time. Thank you. You are so present on the this show. Oh, thank you. No, I'm so excited to be here. I love this podcast. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we're so excited to have you. Yeah, so much of what I've learned about this movie specifically and also

just Joan Crawford as a cultural figure is from your work. I mean, we, I think we were talking about, we recently covered whatever happened to baby Jane. And so that, I mean, I just, I still have the, I bought the shirt with the cease and desist from Olivia to Havelin that you put out like six years ago. Just so much, so much lore. But to get people up to speed, what is your history with, I guess Joan Crawford as a cultural figure and mommy dearest? I would say, I mean, whatever happened to baby Jane was my introduction into Joan Crawford. I remember renting that at the library as a child. I don't think I knew anything about it.

amazing. But I was captivated by it. It's just one of those things that kind of hits to a core part of your personality that you haven't recognized yet. And so for the longest time, I just remembered it as like, what's, what is that movie with those two crazy ladies who have a doll? I couldn't remember what it was called and I kept trying to find it again at the library. But it just became such a integral part of my pop cultural consumption. And then from there, as I sort of developed my interest in Hollywood history and stuff. I mean, Joan was a really natural way for me to get into that through Joan Crawford and Betty Davis. So I guess I have like a strong relationship with Joan Crawford from my early days as a cinephile. And then I don't

know exactly how Mommy Dearest got into my life. I'm pretty sure my mom introduced it to me, actually. I think she had seen it at some point and sort of understood it as this sort of important camp classic and we would watch it together and we would quote it together. And she would always jokingly say, aren't you glad I'm not this bad? Great yardstick to pull out as a parent. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You're like, you should be grateful. Yeah. So we just have little, I guess, inside jokes about that. But yeah, and then, you know, I made that video about it. And so I've just kind of dug into it later on in life as well. But but yeah, it's just, it's been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Wow. Amazing. Incredible. Jamie, how about you? I had not seen this movie all the way through before, which I was kind of surprised where it's one of those movies, a huge movie, very different movie, but two movies that I was hoping to like wait to see in theaters for the first time were Mommy Dearest and 2001 a Space Odyssey.

I still have not seen perfect double feature. Yeah. I still haven't seen 2001 a Space Odyssey because I really want to see it into theater. And every time it's in theaters here, I magically get the flu or whatever. So a similar deal where I wanted to like experience this. I think of this movie in the same vein as like Rocky Horror where I wanted the experience. But this was my time. And so I watched Mommy Dearest. And holy shit. shit. I mean, I don't, it is like a full experience. I still would love to see it in an audience. Very brief history. I went and read the first hundred pages of the book. I didn't have time

to read the whole thing, but I was just trying to get a feel of like what the, you know, tone of the book was versus the movie. And it is very different, even though a lot of the set pieces are the same. I don't know. I'm kind of surprised that this book wasn't brought up in conversation more with I'm glad my mom died because I think if this movie or if this book came out 30 or whatever 40 years later it would have been treated quite differently but yeah I don't know I really enjoyed learning about how I don't know I'm interested in how like abusive dynamics especially with kids are like portrayed in movies and this is like such a huge example of it and yeah I don't know there's so much to talk about I'm interested to get into it Caitlin what's your history with Mommy Dearest had you seen it before I had

Okay. I watched it during the great Caitlin movie binge of 2005. Huge. Thank you so much. And at that point, I don't think I had much of a handle on who Joan Crawford was because I was only starting to make my way through classic Hollywood cinema. I remember it being a difficult watch. I am sure I perceived it as being like very over the top and campy, but I more remember being like, being like, oh my God, this is hard to watch. But since then, I forgot most of it, except for I

remembered the wire hanger scene. I mean, yeah, I feel like that's like almost a cultural osmosis thing. Yeah, definitely. I get a lot of TCM memes in my algorithm, which is great, but they like recently, I don't know on what grounds, but I learned via a. TCM meme that there was briefly like an Ajax like the bathroom bleacher that was a mommy dearest tie-in Ajax wow just um which we'll talk about but that was the most recent time I was thinking about mommy dearest before we settled on this episode when when was that marketing I think it would have been for the original run of the movie yeah yeah I think I think there were there was kind of a a pivot in the advertising where they sort of lean into the grotesqueness, you know, and with

wire hangers and things like that. Which I like, that was part of it. I was really surprised. I mean, we could talk about it later as well, but like I was really surprised how instantly the pivot was in being like, oh, this is a camp movie. Okay. I like, I assumed that that happened over a period of years. But it seems to have happened like inside of the first like week or so of release.

Yeah. Kind of like how. cats was just immediately it's true yes I did compare mommy dearest to cats but I don't know like which production is like

catching astray in that I don't know but yeah I I'm excited to talk about it I feel like I'm I said this off mic too but I feel like I'm mostly here to learn from the two of you so I'm I'm ready to

learn a lot that I think I don't already know. But yeah, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap. Hell yeah. Experience Megan Maroney live on her only Canadian tour date. June 20th in Toronto. Heart Radio wants to send you and a friend with travel from tripcentral.ca. The smart way to book travel. Two nights hotel.

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Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84's big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so. Thank you for finishing that sentence.

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Really? For child abuse. Just from beat one. Yeah. Yeah. So beware of that. Also, this movie was rated, I mean, this movie was rated PG, which just, isn't that crazy? Really. Is it because it was before they implemented PG-13?

Oh, that's a good question. I honestly don't know. But I mean, she drops an F-bomb, too, which I was like, that's a little surprising. Don't fuck with me. I don't think they'll be allowed in PG-D, right? I don't know. Oh, my gosh. You were definitely not. Yeah, the F-word. I think you're allowed one F-word in a PG-13 movie, and if it's more than that, it becomes an R rating. So PG-13 ratings were introduced in 84. So this is a few years. That's why. Shy.

But also just like really great indicator. Because I think the reason it got PG is because there's no like sex proper in it. Parental guidance needed indeed. I think we can say. If anyone needs some solid parental guidance, then everyone in this movie. Yeah. Yes. Okay.

So we meet Joan Crawford played by Fay Dunaway. who of course was a famous star during the classic Hollywood era. We see Joan doing a very elaborate morning beauty routine. Which is something you could see a 14 year old do on TikTok today. Also, the fact that this was received so poorly. They're like, what a vain woman. And now it's like everyone on earth is doing that. It's like a challenge to put your face in ice, you know.

It reminded me. Oh, yeah. She has so many like elastic bands on her head. And I'm like, what are it? But that's so normalized now. The like taping the mouth shut of it all. I mean, you could say she's a pioneer. Trailblazer.

God forbid a woman have a morning routine. God forbid a woman looks maxes. Jeez. This sequence reminded me of the like grooming sequence in American Psycho. And I was like, wow, if you have like a beauty routine in a movie, it's to indicate that that character is. crazy. Like a van freak. Nightmare person, yeah.

Is the logic that this movie binds by. Yeah. I do think, yeah, there's some sort of connection here, not just with whatever happened to baby Jane, but like the substance even, you know, just kind of like the desperation we cast on these women to remain young and pressure from the industry and all of these things. Totally.

Right. And then like use it as a shorthand for mockery and all this other, stuff where I don't know like there as we'll discuss there's so many reasons to criticize Joan Crawford having a facial routine uh that was intense for an aging woman in Hollywood I wouldn't say crocs the top like 500 right exactly but it is a shorthand for like this woman is unhinged yeah look at this ridiculous woman for trying to adhere to rigid beauty standards that society enforces upon her I've done worse than everything in the opening secret. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And will. And plan to. Yeah.

Okay, so we see her doing that. We also see her scrubbing her floors and berating her house. I think it's her housekeeper, Carol Ann, and her cleaner Helga for not doing a thorough enough job. So we start to realize that she has very intense standards for hygiene and cleanliness. and she's just a very intense person overall. A male suitor of hers comes over. This is an entertainment lawyer named Greg Savitt. She tells him that she plans to adopt a baby. And Greg tells her that she will likely be denied by adoption agencies

since she's a working woman, she's currently unmarried, and she's twice divorced. Which this, and it's, I understand why the movie doesn't get into like the, business of this, but I just think it's interesting, was definitely true because in California at that time, a single woman could not legally adopt a child at all. Like, she had to go to, per Christina Crawford, Joan Crawford had to go to Nevada to adopt Christina, which is definitely true. But per Christina, she had to do it through a mafia guy, like through the Jewish mafia in Miami. Yeah, there's like illegal baby markets, basically, for adoption.

It's human trafficking. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to the point where another thing that got, again, understandably cut from the movie, but that Christopher, her brother, is not even the first Christopher. She adopted a baby named Christopher that the birth mother returned for. Unclear what the situation was, but she was very upset. It seemed like the baby had definitely been trafficked to Joan Crawford.

So Christopher one point I was taken back by his. his birth mother. Another kid shows up that, um, not shows up is traffic to Joan Crawford, um, that she names after her husband at the time, Philip. And then Joan Crawford and Philip break up and Joan Crawford changes baby Phillips name to Christopher. Whoa. And so there is a Christopher Crawford, but it's the second one. Second Christopher. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I did not know that. And then there are twins who are adopted in 1947 who aren't even in the movie completely erased from the movie well and I think that's kind of intentional because they both very much believe that Christina is full of it they have a very different experience of growing up and so I think not to get into the the details of

that but I think you know that would have complicated the directness of the movie shall we say to have a yeah to have an opposing view that's that very Definitely. And so for like all of those things to be sort of like compressed into the line, you're too vain to be a mother, Joan. Yeah. Yeah, that's how this movie works. So as we were hinting at, she is denied by an adoption agency. The movie does not make it clear exactly what happens, but it seems like Greg pulls some strings, quote unquote, and arranges this adoption. And so this is baby Christina.

We cut to a few years later. Joan has also adopted Christopher by this point. Christopher, too. We skipped over Christopher 1.0. Yeah, we did. And then I'm also like, okay, we have a child named Christina and another child named Christopher. That's two men. Those names are two alike.

Well, Christina was originally named Joan Jr. Yeah. And then Joan was like, now we got. I don't know what the logic was for switching yet. I think she had said something along the lines of like it would just be confusing if she also wanted to be an actor because she had been married to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Whose father was Douglas Fairbanks Sr. And that caused some confusion. And so I think she was just like, well, maybe I was wrong about that and changed it to Christina.

Yeah. So when the baby gets to Nevada, it never mind. It's Christina now. So she's just changing her kids' names right and left. That is very bizarre. Okay, Christina at this point, I'm not sure how old she's supposed to be because the movie keeps jumping ahead in time, but they use the same child actor, Mara Hobel, for that whole time, even though she's supposed to advance an age. So I think she's probably around like five years old at this big birthday party that Joan throws for her. and Joan seems like a loving, doting mother,

but maybe that's just because there are a lot of photographers and publicity people around because things are very different when they're out of the public eye. Not all of the time, but sometimes Joan is very controlling. She is hypercritical of Christina. There's a scene by their swimming pool where Joan makes her daughter over-exert herself in the pool and then berates her for losing their swimming race.

My grandma had, not to put my dead grandma on blast, but my grandma had a, I don't know, an undiagnosed personality disorder because she didn't believe in treatment. Mental health. And that was, it was such a weird scene. Like, I hadn't been in that exact situation, but my grandma was, frequently challenging the kids to rigged contests that only adults could win. More mind contests. Like I was losing trivia to my grandma constantly.

Get alive. Rest and piss to my grandma. Just kidding. I do think that is one of my favorite line deliveries in the movie, though, is when she goes, you lost again. I'm just like, damn. And then she's like, I'll always be bigger and bigger. faster than you and I'll always win.

It's crazy. I love it. It's hard not. Like, I, I get why people are obsessed with Faye Dunaway's performance than this. Totally. There was no, they must have used every unhinged

because I read there was a lot of coverage of this movie. There was like a ton of footage shot. And maybe they just used the most unhinged take of every single angle. Like, she, it's relentless. It's intense. Very much so.

In this moment of the film, Joan becomes very physically abusive toward Christina. She's pushing and striking her. There's another scene where Joan finds Christina playing with some of Joan's things and like hair products and things like that. And she's furious and cuts off Christina's hair. Meanwhile, Joan desperately wants a part in a film. that she has not yet been offered. And it seems like Greg once again pulls some strings.

And Joan thinks she's gotten the part. And I'm not totally clear what happens here. But there's a dinner with MGM studio head, Louis B. Mayer, and some bankers. Louis B. Mayer gets off so easy in this movie. It was like genuinely shocking. Yeah. Yeah. But whatever their interaction is, Joan is humiliating.

by. And she and Greg get in a huge fight about it. And he basically says, like, you're a washed up actor. You're getting old. And your career isn't what it used to be. And she's devastated. They break up. Some time passes. Little Christopher is now several years older, but Christina has somehow not aged. I think it reminds me of madmen how the brother could be any age. Nobody really ages in this movie. It's like, I think they only put old people makeup like on them, on Carol Ann. Yes. Yeah.

And that's it. Caroline ages 20 years in like, I think six story days. Oh, in a jump cut. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to.

At Ritania Alda, who played Caroline, she really, she really had to deal with a lot. It sounds like on that shoot. Yeah. where Faye Dunaway just kept being like make her uglier. To me, part of the camp is the fact that Christina, until she's played by a different, much older actor, does not age,

but her younger brother, like, becomes taller than her at some point. And I'm just like, how is this, how is this happening? The wig, too.

The wig is a lot that they put on that child. Oh, yes. Some brutal wigs in this movie, I will say. Definitely. So the children are a little older, but Joan continues to be incredibly vindictive and abusive toward them, especially toward Christina, berating her, taking away her baby dolls. We find out at some point that Joan straps, I think maybe both children, but definitely Christopher, to his bed at night.

Which is, yeah, which is true, yeah. Oh, my gosh. then Joan has a meeting with Louis B. Mayer who fires her from MGM because her last few movies have lost money. And he's such a nice guy about it. He's doing her a favor by firing her. Just the Louis B. Mayer edit on this is really something else. Although I do, my impression of her leaving is that it is pretty much like a mutual. My understanding of it, I could be misremembering.

But I don't recall it being like. like a brutal firing in the same way that it's kind of portrayed here, although I don't think she was happy about it, obviously, because she was kind of, she understood what was happening to her, basically. Right. Well, in the movie version of it. It's like she just has to be the most unhinged person in every scene.

Right. And so it's like. Yes. Yeah. She lashes out. She destroys her garden in the middle of the night and makes her children get out of bed and help her. And this is the like,

Tina, bring me the axe scene. Great read. Great read. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I've been taking improv classes, so my performing abilities are really through the roof. We cut to some time later. Joan has signed with another studio, and I lost track, which one that was.

It's Warner Brothers. It's Warner. Okay. And she is preparing for her role. in Mildred Pierce. Then there's a scene where Christina does not want to eat her lunch because it's a steak that's cooked very rare. And we're seeing Christina becoming more defiant toward her mother as she gets older,

although again, she is visibly not aging, so it's impossible to tell how old she's supposed to be. In any case, Joan refuses to feed Christina anything until she has finished this steak. And this goes on for like a day or two. Cut to Joan and her children listening to. Because also like the moments this movie cuts away from and the time jumps, we're giving me such bad whiplash. I was like, oh, okay.

Now it's two years later, I guess. I don't know. Anyway. This is why I was wondering how you were going to do this segment because I was like, I feel like it's very hard to even. There's no real plot either. You know, so it's just like, it's hard to follow. It's just a series of scenes.

It's a series of unfortunate. Literally, yes. Yes. Okay, so we cut to Joan and her children listening to a radio broadcast of the Academy Awards. I think Joan has faked having pneumonia to avoid going to the ceremony. She wins the Oscar for Mildred Pierce, and there are paparazzi outside taking pictures of Joan when she opens the door. And Christina seems to enjoy some of this limelight.

And so maybe that will inform her career choices later on. Following that, we get the very famous scene of the movie. Joan comes into Christina's room. There's cream on her face that makes her look very scary. She's Joker mode. Yeah. Well, the scene is shot like a horror film. Totally.

I think. And Joan finds an article of clothing, I think a dress of Christina's on a wire hanger, and she loses it. She starts screaming and ripping all of Christina's clothes from her closet. Joan then beats her, forces her to scrub the bathroom floor, forces Christina to call her mummy dearest, which we've seen prior, but we weren't sure, I think up until this point, if this was like just what Christina happened to be calling her mom, or if this was like an enforced thing. Anyway, it's absolutely horrible to watch. And obviously this child is completely traumatized.

Yeah. And like you're saying, Izzy, like fully shot like a slasher movie kind of. Yeah. She's kind of like backlit by the closet light. Yeah. It's pretty haunting in a way. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely. I mean, there's a reason I remembered it. everyone remembers that like it's not subtle it's not subtle nope and then contrast that scene with the next scene which is joan and her children calmly sitting for a televised interview at their home at christmas time where they appear to be a happy loving family then we meet a new suitor of jones Ted Gilbert. And we barely see him on screen except for Christina

is responsible for serving him drinks as a child. And Christina interrupts Joan and Ted canoodling by bringing her mother a beverage. And this apparently infuriates Joan so much

that she sends Christina to boarding school. This was the wildest. Both times Christina goes to school, a wild time jump. Yes. Happens. Yeah. It's either a new person or a confusing wig.

New wig. Swap. Well, the crazy one for me is when she leaves the convent school later and she's in her new wig and she's like, thank you for like sticking with me through this trying time. And we haven't seen her at all since I'm like, what was happening to you? Which we have no idea. Well, it's like among other things, it's totally understandable why Christina Crawford hated this movie because it's not about her.

Like it's no. Exactly. Yeah. It's just like the gnarliest abuse scenes adapted in the broadest possible way. I wonder if there was ever any, I don't, do you remember, Izzy from like, I know that there was like a bagillion versions of this script. If there was ever more of a focus on Christina's life away from Joan or? Well, I know Christina had wanted to write the script originally. I don't know if she ever actually turned in a draft.

Okay. But that would be my guess if there ever were one. Because I think the other versions that I'm aware of did more to contextualize Joan or at least give more show time to Joan's life than is already in the film. Because even that, I feel like doesn't even do justice. Like what was happening with Joan either. Right. So I think it just sort of ends up doing a disservice to both of them as you're saying.

Like Christina's not benefiting from this at all. I think. No. No, certainly not. At both schools, there is like one woman, teacher and or none who clearly sees that something bad as a foot, but we never find out, we never find out if they ever talk about it or what happens. It seems like Christina definitely likes being away at school better than she likes being

at home, which matches with her story. Right. Although when Joan sends her away initially, Christina is crying and begging her mother not to send her away to no avail. And then this is a big time jump. We cut to many years later. Christina is now a teenager played by Diana Scarwood. She's still at boarding school, studying acting.

Then we see a scene where she and her mother go out for lunch. Their relationship is still very contentious. where Christopher is we have no idea he disappears I kind of forgot we don't know where Christopher he's gone and then Joan reveals that she's having financial difficulties she has lost her contract at Warner Brothers so Christina will need to do a work scholarship program to be able to stay in school but sometime later her mother is humiliated and pulls Christina out of school after she is caught making out with a boy, but she tells everyone that Christina was expelled, followed by Joan being similarly humiliated when a reporter comes from Red Book to do a cover

story on Joan. Is this Barbara? Is this Barbara? This is Barbara. That's Barbara Please, yeah. Okay. One of the five lines from this movie. Yes, exactly.

Barbara, please. who is played by Marlon Brando's sister, which I thought was kind of a fun fact. It's a little Easter egg. Yeah. Because they saw Jocelyn Brando. And I was like, surely not of the Marlon Brando's, but it is. Interesting.

Joan is trying to impress this reporter, but she absolutely blows it and then lashes out at Christina. Things become incredibly violent with Joan strangling and nearly killing Christina. We then cut to Christina at a convent. I wrote covenant, but that is not. A convent where she has been sent to finish out her schooling, where she will have no privileges or contact with the outside world. We skip over more years and cut to Christina has finished school and returned home.

She has new wig. New wig. Most importantly. Yes. I don't even know how, like we're not even, yeah, like I have no idea how old she's supposed to be at this point. I think by the time she's in the soap opera, in reality, she was 28. Yeah.

And Joan was like 63. But Fay Donoey looks the same the whole movie. So it's just unclear. It's really tough. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that I think is really interesting about this film is like, I think when we're talking about biopics, kind of of this nature now, what we're so used to seeing is these references that are kind of

winks to the audience to be like, remember this. And this film, it's not even trying to give you those little touchstone moments to be like, oh, the film that she is desperately trying to get is this film. Like they'll just not mention what it is. I think Mildred Pierce is one of the only movies they actually name. I believe so. In the film. And it's like you never see, it's like you don't see her like hanging out with Barbara Stanwick or like any of her friends or like directors or anything and these kinds of like world building things that we're so used to seeing in modern biopics just like doesn't exist here in a way that makes this story feel so like isolated and prison like totally and very bizarre like it's it's just kind of it's hard to

keep track of is I think one thing that it happens yeah it like just happens out of time yeah like it's you never know hold anyone is what year it's supposed to be. I don't know. I mean, well, like, part of the reason that this movie is, as you illustrated in your video, like the definition of camp is because it doesn't seem like this is necessarily intentional. Like, they really thought they were doing something with this movie.

But it is, I mean, it, like, it's a weird disservice to everyone, too, because it's, like, showing that Joan had friends doesn't only, like, give you a better idea of, who Joan Crawford was, which I'm imagining young audiences in the early 80s may have needed. But it also, like, I don't think does a very good job of, like, explaining how someone might be getting away with such abuse the entire time. It's not like she was a, like, unhinged person locked up in her house. Like, part of the reason that abusive parents can thrive is because they are perceived as a good person by the people around them and all this, I don't know. It's very complicated, but just every choice in this movie is so weird.

Yeah. The scene where she nearly strangles Christina in front of a reporter seemingly has no consequences. Like, and I don't know if that happened in real life, but like you would think that Barbara would have written about that or I don't know, but. Yeah, I don't know about the... I don't think that happened. I was like, I, well, it's like, that also, like, really makes it seem that, like, Hollywood columnists have such fealty.

I'm like, no, that's a, that's a story. You would definitely print that. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, Christina has returned home from her schooling. She meets her mother's new husband, Alfred, who is a big wig at Pepsi.

Oh, yeah. The late stage Pepsi. Every letterbox review of this movie is like, wow. Didn't know Pepsi was going to feature so heavily. That's so funny. I forgot about that. And Christina has gotten into acting. She's financially struggling and her mother refuses to lend her any money.

But Joan is frivolously spending money on other things like a New York City apartment. And then off screen, Alfred dies and leaves Joan with a bunch of debt. Pepsi tries to fire her from the board of directors, but she refuses to leave. She threatens them. This is the, don't fuck with me, fellas, which I'm also pretty sure is not how that went down. Yeah. I would say like 90% of this movie is not how I'm not accurate. But like another great example of like she always has to be the loudest, most unhinged

person in the world at every second of every day. Right. for however long this movie goes on unclear. Yeah. Yeah. 20 years, question mark. More. Basically, she bullies them into letting her stay on the board.

Meanwhile, it seems like Joan and Christina are maybe getting along a little better. Christina lands apart in a soap opera, but then has to take time off after being hospitalized for an ovarian tumor. and while Christina is in the hospital, Joan swoops in and steals Christina's role on the soap opera, even though her character is 28 years old and Joan is in her 60s or 50s? This did happen. Yeah, this did happen. That is, wild.

Yeah, if that happens, you of course have to include it in Mommy Dearest. I wish you saw more of the fallout. I guess the Christina in the hospital reaction shot. is pretty good. Yeah. Turn it off. That is it. That's nuts.

That was, I did, I had never heard about that before. Yeah. It's wild that she really thought she could get away with it. Yeah. And that she was like, no, I just didn't want Christina to lose the part. No, you wanted. I just don't. I'm not buying it, Joan.

I'm not buying it. But yeah, like you said, Jamie, there's not really. aftermath of that because the next scene is Joan receiving, I guess like a lifetime achievement type award and Christina accepts it on her mother's behalf because Joan is ill. And at the end of Christina's speech, she says, I love you, mommy dearest. And she's crying and Joan watching at home is crying and it seems like a very tender moment. I don't really know what the takeaway is meant to be there. Then we cut to Joan has passed away.

All of a sudden. You're just like cut to corpse. Dead. The jump cuts in this film are brutal. Such whiplash. It's wild. It's like literally straight from like her taking her firing on the chin to being like, the most insane person you've ever seen.

There's like no rhyme or reason. I'm like I have to imagine. a lot of stuff that was shot isn't included, but like there's just no gentleness to any transition. No. But she's dead. And Christopher's back. Welcome back, Christopher. To the-Robertsy.

Played by, I didn't look up this actor's name, but I was like, I recognize him from something. What do I recognize him from? And he plays the foster dad of John Connor in Terminator 2. Whoa. And that's the only other thing that's seen him in. That's such a poll that you remember that. That's crazy. I mean, I've seen.

that movie a hundred times. I love that. Zander Berkeley. Good name. Zander. True. Anyway, that's Christopher. He and Christina are at the wake or funeral or something, but there, but Christina is like next to the casket and she's crying and she's saying, the pain is finally over and then Carol Ann comes in saying. Caroleon, suddenly a hundred. Yes. She's like, your mother always loved you. And Christina is like, I need so much to believe that. Joan is snatched in her coffin.

Oh, yeah. Never looked better. Then a lawyer reads Joan's will to Christina and Christopher, saying that Joan left them nothing. The quote is from Joan, it is my intention to make. no provisions herein for my son Christopher and my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them. It is a gut punch and Christopher remarks as usual she has the last word and Christina is like, oh does she because I'm about to write a book about what a horrible mother she was. The end. So let's take another quick break and we'll come right back

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Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. All right. Where to begin? Iszy, is any where jumping out to you? I mean, could really be anywhere. I mean, I guess what I would say about it, just like having made that video about it and just observed the response to it, I do think this. is such a complicated, like deceptively complicated film to talk about because there are so many ways that people react to it and all of them I think are valid in a way. Sure. Like my experience throughout the my primary, the way that I react to it is through the camp lens where I see it is very over the top. It does make me laugh. I can't help it. But there are other people who see it as like legitimately terrifying abuse. There are other people who can't even stand the mention of this

film because they feel it besmirches Joan Crawford's memory. There are people who believe word for word what Christina claims happened to her. And it just becomes this really strange Rorschach test, I guess, of like where people are landing and thinking about like abuse and legacy and all of these things coming together at once. And I think like that is very difficult territory to tread in because like you want to give people grace. But I think it devolves very quickly. quickly into like a morality competition. It's just like, who are we believing and why and all of these things that are just so difficult that we can never really answer.

So I guess like I would just acknowledge that off the bat, which is like if anyone hears my take or like our take and is just appalled by it. Like that's fine. I think there's a lot of ways to react to this. Absolutely. And it gets into such tricky territory when it comes to who do we believe and what is to be believed because this is based on a book which is based on a real life account of someone experiencing abuse, which you should believe if someone says I was abused.

Yeah. But especially with a film adaptation where some things are likely embellished, some things are likely sensationalized because that's what like Hollywood studio movies tend to do. It's just, it gets into such murky territory. very tricky yeah i i totally agree that it's like there's no it's like not a productive discussion to like break down like well what do we believe and what do we because we'll just never know yeah no for sure yeah but what is interesting is like tracking their reaction and like and i guess like where this movie's priorities ultimately like lie and how that sort of seems to

have changed over time yeah i was thinking about because it i don't know it's it was interesting I was just like digging around on Reddit at 2 a.m. last night because people still talk about this movie a lot. And just seeing like you're saying, is he such a wide like it's because it's a movie about first being abused as a child. Second about having a mother. Like, of course, you can't not have a personal reaction to it. But you know, like reading accounts of kids that were like I really connected with this movie because my, you know, you can't. You can't not have a personal reaction to it. But, you know, here, like reading accounts of kids that were like, I really connected with this movie because my, You know, it's super over the top, but I experienced something similar and whatever. It's not perfect, but I didn't see it anywhere else. And then there's the, you know, huge camp following and the queer embrace of this movie. And I still really want to go to a screening of it. Like, you got to come. New York City, Hedell Lettis does talk back screenings.

Or she'll, like, talk during the screening and, like, point things out with laser pointer. It's really funny. I highly recommend if you're ever around for that. I would love to. Like, I don't know if I've ever seen an LA proper screening of it. Like, it's just, yeah, like, every reading of this is valid. I was also reminded of there's a recent video essay from Sarah Zed about sort of trauma memoirs and, like, their sort of history.

And this is an example of that, and I don't mean to sound dismissive in saying that, but just in how those works are marketed and monetized, like follows a very, very specific pattern. And that like, I think part of the reason it's like almost impossible to talk about is because of the time it was written and released too, where like the way that abuse was discussed and received in the public, specifically like maternal abuse, like it was just a completely different landscape.

And I feel like there was just like a far lower cultural understanding or tolerance for understanding what maternal abuse. could look like it sounds it I didn't go super deep on it but like this book was both very successful and widely dismissed as exploited it like exploiting her mother's memory as being like trashy as being even like as far as far as like saying that she is ungrateful like all of these really blamy narratives that like don't don't serve anything and and I think would be really unusual to see in a similar book published now. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it too, like Joan Crawford, speaking of the timing,

Joan Crawford died in 1977. So she died. This is a very freshly made film, like after her death when there would presumably still be a lot of affection for her. If we think about like when Joan Crawford was peaking, this was in the 1940s, let's say, like early 1940s. So imagine like somebody who was really big in the. the 90s died and the next year we find out like they were actually very different than we presumed.

Like of course you would see some, I think defensiveness I think is part of the reception to this film as well trying to understand and reconcile how your kind of parasycial relationship with this movie star is challenged by like what we're discovering. And I think you do have to take that kind of sentiment into account when I certainly feel that myself like I have to check myself and be like how much of how much of my beliefs or like dismissals of Christina you know have to do with the fact that Joan Crawford is an important actress to me you know what I mean like sure I think that's you have to take that into account when you're thinking about this kind of stuff totally I mean it's I'm you know it's extremely complicated I'm generally inclined to I mean Christina Crawford appears to have

been pretty consistent on what she's said. Not everyone likes the way she said it or the amount of time she said it. But it seems like Christina and Christopher have been pretty consistent. And I guess that's the last, I'll say about it. But it does, I mean, like, the fact that this book was written so soon after her mother's death, like it's like a really raw book. I can't imagine having to promote this book while you're still like kind of processing the fact that she's got like I whatever. I don't know how many people have had an experience like that. But I think also about like the power dynamic of it, right? Where it's like she is Christina Crawford is essentially an unknown. Like she was on a couple of soaps. Like you're saying is he like really challenging this carefully

this image that was carefully constructed over the course of like 50 years. And then yeah and like how she's sort of starting at a it's a difficult hill to climb to you know even if she's being a hundred percent honest um because i don't know like your average reader you're not going to be inclined to sympathize with her because you don't know who she is yeah which is like not a pleasant thing but that's just like sort of how people work like you don't want to believe the worst in this person that you grew up with. But I think it's also really easy on the other side of that. It's really easy to like quickly demonize a bad mother. Yes. Totally. Like culture kind of giddily wants to blame every woman. It's like, are you doing formula or like breastfed? Like that'll get you demonized. You know? Like then that's a

least of it. It's like so to find out that this perfect woman was apparently some hysterical monster, it's like just ripe for kind of dismissing or just completely reshaping her as a cultural figure and her cultural legacy as well. Right. In a way that like you're saying like does a disservice to definitely Christina but also Joan and and what the movie seems like it wants to do but ultimately doesn't because in the chunk of the original book that I read because I, because this movie takes place in this like weird contextless void kind of of like what Joan Crawford's life was actually like prior to the movie starting.

Christina is like acknowledging pretty consistently in the book and like including those I think like necessary benchmarks of like this is where she was at in her career. This is the way that she felt about it. And also that and I don't remember if it's like maybe sort of mentioned offhand. once or twice in the movie, but that like Joan Crawford was the product of a very broken home as well and like grew up in extreme poverty and had all of these traumatic experiences growing up. So there's like a cycle of abuse narrative that Christina doesn't seem to be shying away from in her book, but the movie like doesn't even really attempt to get into because it's more fun if Joan is just evil. Right. There's one or two lines where Joan will say like I had to do a work scholarship.

program too, but we don't know the extent. What do you mean about her backstory? Well, it just, it sounds like that thing where like your grandpa is like, I walked three miles to school. You like just don't really, it's like, okay, grandpa, you know, and it's not like that's not the reality

of what she was going through, you know. And so it's sort of exactly like you said, it's not, it's not a serious exploration of the way that trauma cycles. And ultimately, like the thesis of this film is, isn't she a crazy bitch. Yeah. And that's that's like sad to me because it it doesn't say anything really

about like what abuse is or what it means or how it comes about. It doesn't do Christina any favors because it's not from her perspective. But then it also just completely tears down Joan not to say that there's a way to excuse abuse, but to understand how it arises is I think valuable and maybe like at least giving a little sympathy to this person. Right. I feel like two of the truths and there are, I'm sure, more you can hold for this movie, but at least two of them are that there's an abusive parent situation happening and movies and society love to demonize women and make them seem nuts.

because I feel like this movie is in conversation with movies like Sunset Boulevard and whatever happened to Baby Jane in the sense that it's like, look at these washed up aging actors that have gone hysterical. And, you know, some of the like hagsploitation movies of this nature do a better job of contextualizing. Well, why would an aging woman, especially in an industry like Hollywood,

would be so concerned about her appearance or her legacy. Or how she's perceived as a mother, too. For sure. But with this movie, it mostly just seems hell-bent on like, look how fucking nuts this woman is. It's a mess. I mean, yeah, the ways that we were talking about this from like moment one of the movie where like the ice, whoever Joe Croft are taking the ice bucket challenge, but like her

complicated morning routine, like there's, it's not, again, nothing in this movie is subtle, but like the ways that it's telegraphed that she is unwell is so all over the place because it can be as extreme as overt physical extreme abuse. And this is sort of presented on the same plain as like being very conscious of what she looks like, which we understand is because that is like what her living hinges on. The way they, when she's jogging. Oh yeah. First of all, the way Faye Dunaway jogs makes me laugh so hard. She's like punching the air. Her form is wild. hilarious. Yes. But it's like it's like she kind of snaps. Yes. Sweating through sweats is in LA. That's crazy. Yeah. The way she kind of snaps and, like,

like starts off in a sprint like she's like I'm the biggest star he's ever had god damn it that she just starts like sprinting as what is she repeating to herself she's like I don't know if it's something like I'm a winner I'm a winner I will yeah I forget what it is but I wrote it down yeah it's she's she's doing she's doing a very like cursed affirmation right and it's just I I have such trouble imagining even a person as extreme personality as Joan Crawford doing something like that. Right. In the way that it does become, it leads into that camp territory of being, you know, quote

unquote Joan, you know. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, it's really interesting reading. There's another, if there's a book about this that came out a couple of years ago called With Love Mommy Dearest by A. Ashley Hoff, which I did some, some rapid libby scanning in preparation for this but just like pulling from how and you talk about this in your video as well is he of like how you know john waters said that this was the first drag performance of a woman by a woman

and that this is you know i think that it weirdly feels like and again we can't know if it's intentional or not but the fact that she looks physically the same the whole movie that covers 20 years where it's like this isn't this is like that's a clear indication that that is like not supposed to be actual joan crawford it's like the idea like the salacious idea of these you know secretly evil joan crawford yeah yeah and you touch on this in your video as well but that faye done away wanted to be involved and play joan crawford because she wanted to humanize her Partly because she felt so much kinship with Joan Crawford. And, you know, after all these drafts of the script and it finally went into production

and the filmmakers thought they were making this serious film about child abuse, but it was... But if it comes more about Joan than Christina very quickly, it seems funny. For sure. Because that's what sells. Like, no one knows who Christina is, so she's always going to be at a disadvantage. And I feel like, I mean, also speaking to, sorry to just regurgitate your video back at you. But I learned so much. It seems like critics of both the film and the book were like, well, there's kind of no attempt to contextualize why Joan Crawford was behaving the way she was.

there's no attempt to sort of understand what was going on. Which I kind of disagree with based on even the short section of the book I read, I thought that she, that Christina was like, I don't know, I mean, especially if we're grading on a curve for mother very recently died, I thought that she was going out of her way to contextualize the story of Joan's life as Joan told it to her. Like, I don't know. I think I get kind of like antsy or. around criticisms like that too where it's like she that it's the responsibility of one person to

completely give full context for someone they are alleging was extremely abusive to them. Right. But even with that in mind, I think that she does do, like, I wonder what would have constituted enough, like if not complete forgiveness. Yeah. Or something. I don't know. Yeah.

It's so tough. Because I agree with you. It's like, why is it my responsibility to give context to my abuse? to my abuser's life. To humanize my abuser. Yeah. I think it goes back to kind of what I was talking about before where we're dealing with a very personal relationship that is being told in the context of like a societally parasocial relationship. Yeah. So it's sort of like you're coming to us with this information about someone that we feel like we know. And so what do we need as an audience to make sense of this? And so like, no, it isn't her responsibility. But I also think that

think it probably would have been a better told story if that world building did exist to kind of understand who either of these people are because we don't really like yeah as we kind of keep saying as like I don't really know anything about Christina either tell me one thing other than that she wanted to act and we don't know why other than like that her mother did it maybe that's all she knew maybe she was never interested in anything else like there's a lot of conjecture I mean she had a pretty interesting life. Yeah, it's like it's, it doesn't really do very much to, I mean, whatever, she goes on to have like an interesting life after this and like works as an entertainment lawyer. She worked on the Clinton campaign in 92. Yeah. Not that they could have

known that then, but whatever. Went to have on, went to have a whole life. But I mean, all, all love to Diana Scarwood, but I feel like this like, I don't know. Christina doesn't seem to have a lot of like personality or, there's just not much for you to like, hold on to in a movie that's like allegedly she's supposed to be the co-lead of but she's not even credited as the co-lead it seems like gregg is second built which is wild yeah which is so weird yeah i don't know i was it's impossible to unpack in the space of a single back to cast episode but i i it does like the way that abuse and like specifically maternal abuse is like talked about and shown to us like over time is so interesting and does

still fall into like, I think your sympathies are always going to, you're going to be encouraged to sympathize with whoever was the more well-known or powerful person, um, culturally in that relationship. And having read Jeanette McCurdy's memoir, which is wonderful and also a very, like, personal story of maternal abuse, first of all, it's coming out over 40 years after Mommy dearest and is extremely and rightfully well received. And I think is being adapted into a movie or TV show. And I think that, you know, Jeanette McCurdy is the narrator and the well-known person, which I think for readers, it's easier to say, I believe her based on how we're like trained

to believe people. And Christine, so in that way, it's like I, it's not surprising to know that like Christina was having a hard time from the jump, regardless of the veracity of the allegations, because she's not the known person. And like, Joan, I don't know. It's interesting seeing how she talks about it now, too, because she's also still alive. She's in her 80s. In, like, 2019, she was trying to stage a musical of Mommy Dearest Question Mark. Oh. Don't know how I feel about that. No. I would up the camp factor even more, I would imagine. For sure. Yeah, it seems like she came around to accepting that it was camp, but someone asked her if she thought, like what she thought Joan would think about Mommy Dearest, just like the phenomenon in general.

And I just thought her answer was very interesting. She basically says that she thinks that like, whatever, Joan was like shrewd and understood how to play into cultural narratives. And like she didn't, she thinks that Joan would be showing up at Mommy Dearest. screenings and being like, ha ha, I get it. Totally. Yeah. And then like freaking out about it behind the scenes. I mean, that would have been my personal hypothesis as well. Yeah. Because yeah, she was incredibly smart. And that's what I think is so, I don't know, interesting about this too. And the way it kind of frames Joan. I think you're right. Like I think it's really interesting too what you're saying about how we're kind of more primed to be sympathetic toward the person we know more. Because I

like this narrative of abuse is also competing against a very well-known narrative of abuse, which is like the abuse of the studio system specifically. Sure. Yeah. So it's like we know just kind of anecdotally from like every actress that went through that was being, you know, drugged or like not given food or, you know, sexually assaulted, like all of these things that they would have experienced on a day-to-day basis. And so it's like we have already done a lot of work to gin up a lot of sympathy and like understanding of that kind of abuse, that kind of systemic abuse that Joan would have been suffering. And so now to have like

a competing narrative that shows her like in a kind of monstrance light, but also I think as part of that conversation about the way that abuse cycles is really interesting to me and how those kind of compete with each other, especially from someone like Joan who, you know, a lot of these women who were famous during that time were not, they didn't come from good places. Like, they were working up from extreme poverty in many cases. And in the cases of someone like Joan, like they weren't parented. So they were kind of the first generation of these like ultra famous career women who had no experience of what that kind of fame would look like, put on a, you know, pedestal that like they were terrified to fall off of. So I think like the whole context is like you're

just not being set up to succeed at all in your personal life. And then you have society breathing down your neck to have children when like by rights, many of them like probably didn't actually want to. Like we know that story. That story is very familiar. And so it's hard to kind of like further complicate that as you're saying. Yeah. And it's like so much is left on the table when you because I mean, even you describing those two competing narratives of abuse, it's like in a very different movie, it's like, oh, it's like they're so close to being able to connect how, whatever, in conversation, those cycles of abuse are where I,

again, this is from Mommy Dearest and I did not do any sort of further background on this, but I guess per Joan telling Christina in Mommy Dearest that there's like another bizarre layer to like why Joan did not have children in earlier marriages. Her first husband was Douglas Fairbanks Jr., as you mentioned, Izzy, whose mother was Mary Pickford. And there was a narrative that Joan shared that she did get pregnant, but was told to have abortions because Mary Pickford didn't want to be perceived as a grandmother. So it's another like ageist Hollywood narrative that like the cycle of abuse is like trickling down so that she wanted children earlier but wasn't allowed to have them because it would make a different I mean the older actress experienced the same

anxieties that Joan eventually experiences of like appearing old absolutely I mean the politics of motherhood for that generation of women is extremely complex and like scary to think about because the studio was like in many cases for example Judy Garland was mandated to have an abortion by the studio. Many of them experienced abortions at young ages that rendered them barren, basically, or unable to have children. Two of Joan Crawford's best friends were like that. Barbara Stanwy couldn't have children because of an abortion. Merneloy couldn't have children because of an abortion. These are all, of course, back alley performances of abortion. And then the studio is like, you can't have children at this age or with this person.

So you have to have these procedures. Or once you have one, you'll look too old, so that changes the things we can give you. Like, it's all so timed out and bizarre. And you have no choice at all. And it's terrifying to think about. And then the flip side of that or just a different branch of that misogyny is because Joan cannot have children of her own and chooses to adopt, but as we touched on a little bit, already can't because of these incredibly misogynistic standards for, oh, you're a woman with a job.

Oh, you're not married and there's no father. So you can't have a nuclear family unit. Like all these. Like legally either. Like, yeah. You cannot win. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I had no idea.

Because, again, the movie does not make it clear that there was like a mafia component to her adopting these children. Yeah. I mean, the American adoption system and most adoption systems are like disturbingly broken, which is like almost an entirely different. Another one of the many things that this movie doesn't have much interest in touching. But I mean, specifically like the Hollywood, it feels one of, I guess, well, I don't know. Let me know what you think. Getting rid of the studio abuse component is one of the few things that does feel kind of intentionally left out.

because if you include it, then Joan is less scary. And I think also Hollywood at that time might have been a little reluctant to tell on itself in that way. It's like, we'll tell on her. Right. But us is different. We absolve all responsibility. We never exploit people or abuse them. I mean, I think you mentioned in your video that there was an earlier version of the script that began with.

Joan Crawford as a young actor being physically like assaulted by Louis B. Mare in his office, which was like his whole thing, if you can call it that. And that that is like foregone in favor of the Louis B. Mayor scene we get is just like, oh, this movie has no interest in. They're not going to touch any of it. Like it's not even implied. Right. Yeah. And then it just like brings you back to like that that same kind of circular argument, which is like, like, do we need it to tell Christina's story? You know what I mean? Right.

Like you just get caught setting traps for yourself, I guess, along the way of like trying to make sense of this story in a way that feels fair. Totally. In a situation that isn't fair to anybody. Right. No, I know. Like, yeah, I don't know where to land on this because, I mean, and maybe the solution is, was to just center the survivor of the abuse far more

than the abuser because by centering the abuser, it's doing that thing of like, women are horrible, see? Yeah. And kind of not undermining the abuse, but I mean, as this movie does, like, campifies it in a way that abuse shouldn't be campified. And that wasn't the intention of the filmmakers, but, you know, it was directed by a man. it was written. The many, many drafts were either mostly or entirely written by men. And you just can't really trust them to handle something like this subject matter. At least not these ones.

Well, one thing that I do kind of regret about this is like Frank Perry, I think, has really great subtle films. Like, you know, Diary of a Mad Housewife is incredible. like one of his films that I recently became assessed with is called Last Summer, which is like one of those fucked up movies I've ever seen. It's a coming of age story about how this. Yes, it's like it's kind of, I guess obscure because it's been unavailable for so long, but they just restored it. And so I'm hoping a lot of theaters are going to get access to it in the coming months.

So look out for that. It's called Last Summer. But it's just a really fucked up like coming of age story about these teenagers who are kind of like abusive toward each other. But in a way that I think. think is really mature actually. And I'm just like, I know he has that story in him. You know what I mean? I'm like, I've seen you tackle similar things really beautifully and really subtly. It makes me wonder what this film could have been like if his ex-wife had also been a collaborator on this one, as she had in his previous works, because maybe like a female sensitivity or something like that could have aided in

telling this story. It's hard to say, but yeah, I don't know. It's like he's not a bad filmmaker and that's what sucks. It's very unclear who to point the finger at for this. I think Faye also should take some of that responsibility. Sure. Because I think like she obviously is a great actress, but I think in some ways, I don't know. I think people are also really torn on this performance as well. Like I don't think of Camp as a derogatory term. So to me, like the commitment of this is extraordinary, but it undeniably is not a humanistic portrayal. Like she is not trying to make her anything other than the cartoon in the screenplay. Right.

So I'm sort of like, I don't know, that was your choice. And I kind of find it an entertaining choice, but it seems counterproductive to her goals for the role. Yeah. That's what I was thinking too. Because again, her intention was to humanize Joan Crawford, but all. of the most memorable moments of this movie are Fay Dunaway playing Joan Crawford as the most unhinged person imaginable. So I'm like, well, Fay, then why did you do that? My operating theory that does take some of the heat off of Fay Dunaway because that's my agenda.

But also, she does deserve some smoke for this, is that they did 10 takes of everything. and on the last take Frank Perry said go big go big go big let's do a silly one yes he said just just do a silly one go full joker mode on this and then he just used all of those takes I don't know because it's like she won't she hasn't

really at least that I was seeing she like she's definitely she went on that like press tour years later to sort of illustrate that she felt that it had hurt her career and that like the part had stuck to her in a way that she felt was like not fair or reflective of who she is or her abilities. But it seems like most anecdotes I've found about her being asked about this are met with a fair amount of hostility,

which is a common Faye Dunaway reaction. Yeah. But I am curious, I'm like, I would, I know she's like also method, so, which is like a shorthand for like annoying and so like being hard to work with. Right. I feel like she's the one female actor who gets pinned with the negative. connotation of method. Yeah, kind of. Right, because when men do it, people are like, wow, he's so awesome. Unless the performance is bad. And then, you know, it depends.

Or it's like, it's like, oh, Daniel DeLewis lived as a penny to like prepare for Abraham Lincoln. You know, it's like, it's like all these crazy stuff that they're trying to like make these actors seem like they're really extreme. And often what they'll say, they'll use like examples of them being assholes. to say like this is method isn't that wild yeah as a positive yeah but i feel like you know nobody's talking about sally sally field is method nobody says anything about it because she's behaving like a person because she's not abusing people around her right yeah there's there's upper limits to what right

she's not mailing what was the jared let out of thing like mailing dead rats to people or whatever oh god yeah and i think especially when it's like not a well-received performance it just it's people catch a lot of smoke. But I mean, I'm just objectively so, like, what was going through her head? Because she had, like, very successfully played real-life people before with a lot of, like, sensitivity. Like, she played Bonnie Parker. Do we think, am I remembering this correctly?

You might have come across this in your research. But I feel like I remember her saying she felt like she was haunted by Joan or something like that. She said in a clip that I think was in your video, she said that she felt like, It took her months to get Joan out of her body and like use the word possession, which is like great method talk. Totally. But I just, I don't know. I can see that.

I mean, I feel like that sometimes when I'm writing about a person where I'm just so focused on that person's life or their filmography where it just feels like you're so in it that they can't get out of your head. Right. And like I could see something when you're pushing it to that extreme, when you have to live. that life and inhabit that body in such like nightmarish scenes as that I can't imagine pushing that out quickly that that would seem like it would be really hard to get rid of mentally totally I mean it's like in technically it is like the job of her director to like guide this performance to something I don't know I don't know it's like hard to say like I was going to be mean and say something like more coherent but like so many people love this

performance. I don't know. Maybe it was just made too soon. Maybe all this happened too soon. I don't know. I mean, oddly enough, I'm like, this is something that would actually be a good mini-series. I don't want to put that idea in the world. I don't want to see it. But I think the scale of the story is big enough. Ryan Murphy is just like his eyes just, I know. He's like, let's do it again. Let's do it again. Oh my God. That's just like the most cursed thing I've ever. imagined in my life. Wow. He needs to be stopped. It would be really, I mean, it would be interesting seeing how, like, an adaptation of this

would work or how it would reflect the way that we've talked about abuses, like, change. I don't know. I feel like it would be hard to get this version of the movie again, but we're really regressing as a society pretty quickly. So maybe we would get this. I don't know. It's true. I think AI could write this.

I, for sure. but AI could not do what Faye Dunaway doesn't. Absolutely, you're right. It's a hollow argument for humans, but it's true. Well, what is for sure, and we've referenced this earlier in the episode, is that whether this movie intended to be a more thoughtful portrayal of the people in themes involved, Paramount Studios did not care. They were going to change courses to whatever was going to get people in seats.

And this was, I mean, you talked about this in your video. It's also expanded on kind of like moment by moment in with love, mommy dearest of how like there's a series of test screenings for this movie that like an anonymous executive said that as they were screening it more, the first time they screened it, people started laughing about three quarters of the way through. The second time they screened it, it was halfway. The third time it was like a quarter of the way. And they realized very quickly that they should be marketing it as a comedy. God, that's so sad. Which is wild. Really brutal for all parties.

But, yeah, Mel Brooks went to an early screening of this, which I guess makes sense because Anne Bancroft almost started it. But there's just like all of these. And I was talking about him earlier. Harvey, who was I talking about? Bruce. Bruce. Bruce Valanche, yeah. Bruce Valanche was at an early screening of, like, everyone saw an early cut of this and was like, this is funny, unfortunately. And so the studio pivoted basically right away. It was allegedly given the green light by Barry Diller to start marketing this, like the competing taglines. It's marketed as a serious biopic that centers Fay Dunaway's performance and then quickly changes to no more wire hangers ever. They call her the biggest mother of,

them all. They've got the Ajax spawn. Paramount was very, very, very down to trivialize all of the themes that the filmmakers. And I guess to Frank Perry, or no, I think Frank Yablons' credit. Yeah. He was really upset about this and

tried to, I was kind of unclear on how it shook out, but like tried to sue the studio for pivoting on the marketing so quickly. But another thing I was surprised about is that this movie was financial successful. It made 25 million on a $10 million budget. So regardless of the intention, it was marketed as sort of how we think about it now. Right. Yeah. It is fascinating to see a movie that almost

instantly becomes a camp classic because I feel like it usually takes a little while, but it's this and again, cats. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it helps. I think just the presence of Joan Crawford as a cultural figure, you could imagine a lot of, she just would have been in like a cultural vocabulary that maybe like smooths the route toward Camp Classic because everybody kind of has these touch points with her in their memory, you know? Sure. Which is interesting. I do think it's interesting. I always think about this movie when I think about films like Wuthering Heights or something where it's like there's sort of a narrative going around on the, internet, I guess, about a film that people then enter the film with. Sure. Does that mean?

Like you hear about what people are saying about it first and then you go see it and your interpretation is kind of informed by that general consensus, you know? Totally. So I could imagine or what's like another example of that or the one that Harry Stiles was in kind of recently that everyone was like, he's the worst actor ever. Oh, don't worry, darling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I've, it's these kinds of things where you're kind of resuscary.

responding to the response. And I wonder if Mommy Dearest was kind of like that, if people just kind of heard it as, you know, a can't be funny movie. And then you go in expecting to laugh, you're going to see a different movie than you would have if you weren't told that. Yeah. For sure. Nothing illustrated that for me.

Like last year, I don't know what anniversary it was. But AMC released Rocky Horror Picture Show into a theater for like one night. AMCs but with none of the Rocky Horror frills. So I just saw and my fiancee had never seen it. So we went together and I was expecting the Rocky Horror experience. And if you're not watching it with the experience, he was like, what? He's like, that was all right. I don't know. I was like, yeah, it's really not as fun without all the other stuff. It's weird. Yeah. And that's like, and I just like, and I still want to go to a mommy dearest screening. I mean, one of the one of the one of the, one of the, the rituals that you cited in addition to this like I mean Joan Crawford's connection to

drag performers but also like Fay Dono ways Joan Crawford's connection to drag performers but the like dragging effigies of Christina in the street was something that was you're like well if we need further proof this movie missed the mark yeah the thing is I could see if that movie came out today and someone did that, I could see myself at that performance laughing. It's so hard. And I'm just like, am I a horrible person? Maybe. No, though.

I mean, maybe it's that like we, I mean, we don't know, but it would appear on the surface that Christina Crawford, like, turned out okay. Like, she went on, like, again, we don't know. Well, she's like an ultra-Christian, like, isolated on a farm. So, yeah. There is also that. Much of her whole deal now involves living in Florida. I see.

But yeah. I don't know. It's impossible to, because we were talking about Carrie Fisher recently about how like some of her writing about mental health was like it not necessarily well received by everyone who's like suffering from the same mental health diagnoses that she was. Especially when she was like fictionalizing that work. Which is like another thing that you discussed in a recent video of yours and her screenwriting career.

But that doesn't, I don't know. I mean, like, that doesn't mean that, whatever, people can receive work however feels right to them. And also, if Christina Crawford is upset about that, that is also completely valid and couldn't make more sense. Totally. I mean, the way, the reason I think it's funny is because, like, I take it so seriously.

Yeah. That to see it portrayed in this way is almost like, oh, I recognize this as minimalizing something very serious. and that's so off base to me that I cannot help but laugh, you know? Right. Like, it's like, this is like if a, if like horrific child abuse had been like explained to like an alien. Yeah. I don't know.

There are parts that are genuinely funny and we have to live with that. Yeah. It's, it's true. It's bizarre, but true. I do think one thing that does interest me about Fay Dunaway's performance is like, I think that Joan maybe got some, caught some strays for was that I think people think Joan Crawford acts like that in her films now. But she doesn't. She's a much subtler actor than that.

So I would say if this movie hasn't completely thrown you off of the idea of watching or engaging with Jen Crawford's work, you'll find a better actress than you might assume based on this performance. Yeah. Go back and watch Mildred Pierce, for example, or... Or even, I think that baby Jane, I mean, I think that she's showing a lot of her straightened baby Jane. She's got a lot bigger. Yeah. I mean, she's letting Betty Davis steal the show, I think. Yeah. And I think that's a good performer.

Yeah. Yeah, is there anything else that you wanted to touch on? Not especially. No, I think. I'm good. Yeah, we covered it. We did it. Yeah, my last thing was, this was a quote from Christina Crawford.

found in with love, mommy dearest, um, that sort of touches on what you were just saying, Izzy about like ultimately how much did this movie affect how we think of and talk about Joan Crawford as a cultural figure and how much does that matter and like people's mileage are going to vary there. I think Christina's perspective on it is interesting, but also I agree with you that like undeniably this is like effect. I think that you know if you're not like well versed in Joan Crawford's work and you're like there are probably people who picture Faye Dunaway before they picture her. But she so Christina Crawford was asked about this specifically, which again, it's like if you're being asked this about your abuser, it's a very frustrating question. Oh sure.

Yeah. But she takes it in stride when asked about how Mommy Dearest and having published it, affected Joan's legacy or if it did. And she said, that's not true. Her public image is preserved on film. Nothing will ever change that. The work she did as a professional, the image she created on screen will live forever. Mommy dearest is not about that and doesn't in any way touch that. In fact, I deal very briefly with her career. In each and every case, I think generously. But it is not about Joan Crawford's career as a public person. As far as her behavior as my mother and my life with her, that belongs to me. That is my right and it is not my responsibility, nor was it possible for me to change how she behaved during the time she was alive.

So not only do I have an absolutely clear conscience about the information in the book, but I believe I have the right to my own life, and that's all I took, the right to my own life, which I think is completely fair. But, and I feel like we've sort of circled around this, that's the book. The movie is able to do things that the book kind of can't, and it chooses not to for all these different reasons. Yeah. I mean, I think the way that I sort of experience it, like going off of what she said, her legacy is preserved in these films. But I think what's kind of sad about what this film did is that so much of, you know, if you're participating in classic film communities online or whatever, like it's ever present sort of this like defensiveness of Joan Crawford in that way. People who are like very aggressively against this film for reasons of their own, you know. But like it sucks at that. that will always be attached to it.

Like it is, it is, you cannot enjoy the films without interacting with that in some way. Right. And it's not, it's like, I don't think you should enjoy the films and not reckon with it. I mean,

that's kind of like one of the main quandaries of like all of classic film. Is there, you encounter situations like this all the time. So it's not burying it, but I do think like this strain is so predominant with her because of this movie when there are so many parents who are, just as bad or worse. Right.

So it is sort of like it dominates in an outsized way, I think, with her. I mean, there's also this matter of any biopic or any movie that's about a real person. Because it's a movie, it's going to be like cinematicified in some way. They're going to alter details, embellish things, just make it more cinematic. or they'll leave things out or like any number of things that won't do justice to what the real story is. I would say in most cases, almost every biopic gets some kind of backlash about, well, they didn't do this or they didn't talk about this or they left this out or they added this

or, you know. So it's just, it's really tricky. Yeah. And no one wants a biopic that's like a Wikipedia page. That's like the worst kind of biopic. which is like all of them, you know, mostly these days. Yeah. Yeah, it's just very, it's very tricky. It's tough, yeah, because it's like they, you know, there's not to like diminish any of

Christina's account, but it's like money exchanges hands with this too. It's like that's unavoidable where it's like they're, you know, the timing of this matters. Do you get as big a kickback if you sell this 10 years after? No, you don't. I don't know. The selling of like life rights. and stuff like that. I think about it. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a dirty little business. Yeah. And she sold the rights to her book for $500,000 in the late 70s. And I don't say that as a

judgment. I just say that as a, I think more as a statement. It's more than that. It's a part of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think like in total she earned from selling the rights to these books like more than Joan had when she died. Oh, wow. Or around that number. So, yeah. Which is like, Like, I don't know. That's better than the will. This is true. Like, well, the will hair gave her nothing. It's all.

Yeah. Dealing with this movie requires what so few in like online communities are capable of, which is like holding many truths at once. Right. The last thing that, I mean, even including with the dispute between Christina and Christopher and the younger siblings, too, of just the concept that every, especially with like age gaps and siblings. Every kid grows up with a different parent basically.

Which is definitely not a conversation that was happening in the 70s. It's just revisiting how black and white the conversations were at that time. Like you think it would go differently now, but I don't know. Well, it also makes me wonder what Christopher's experience was because this movie like really skims over it. But because he's left out of the will at the. end. I'm just like, what was that experience like for him and based on the movie? We have no idea. But also like are we owed that too? Is like that's the tricky like, like, I don't know. Because it doesn't, it doesn't seem like, well, it seems like, is he correct me if you have

conflicting information? From what I was able to gather, like Christopher has backed Christina on her account, but has never wanted to get more specific or like be a public figure. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because he didn't have an easy life either. Right. I mean, because he, I believe he went to Vietnam. Oh, okay. And then had like several arrests for kind of like petty crimes and things like that, which of course, I mean, Joan's a perfectionist.

So that immediately puts a rift in their relationship. But it's all kind of stuff like, you know, I'm reading the new Joan Crawford biography actually that just came out, which is extremely antagonist. toward this film. It describes this film in one paragraph and it's like the only good thing about this movie is that it ruined everyone who's involved reputation. That's all he wants to say about it. Written by a Joan head, I see. Yes. But I think like one of the things that I've found kind of disappointing is like it spends a lot of time kind of correcting the record on Mommy Dearest, I guess,

and the claims in the book, which I think are valid, like these are quotes from like the twins and all of these things which we should take seriously, but it also doesn't want to make, it doesn't want to take the analytical view. For example, why would a kid who was chained to his bed as a child perhaps get arrested for stealing a car? Right. You know what I mean? Like, he like doesn't want to go there and he doesn't want to think, like think about maybe the consequences that like happened through these kids' lives and how it affected them. Even if it was, wasn't as extreme as Mommy Dearest portrays it if it's like just very strict parenting like that is something to reckon with yeah but like again it's like this is a biography you know what I mean like these

are coming out as like factual accounts and they're conflicting like I've read this is probably my third Joan biography and they're all slightly different on this topic and that's what's so tough you know and then like having written a nonfiction book they don't fact check books like you can really like you get a legal pass so that the publisher doesn't get sued but like if you're paying for fact checking that's out of your pocket not the publishers and so the way that like certain information is canonized you know it's not surprising there's so many different interpretations of it because you can kind of just let loose at some point as long as the publisher doesn't think they're going to get sued over it that's yeah that's so frustrating and it's like that is like why this movie and so

many other movies and pieces of media obviously like I think about Lolita a lot but like that they're unable to have a productive cultural conversation around abuse and like child abuse specifically because there's like this unwillingness to deal with how like you're describing is like how messy and how how frequently these like cycles of abuse overlap and that a product of abuse can become an abuser and that like if you can't accept that or talk about that then there's like never going to be a productive conversation about it if someone has to be the bad guy or even just to see people that you admire as flawed is like very difficult for a lot of people absolutely which I get but it's like you just kind of have to live with it and I think that's being an adult yeah most traumatized

adults came by it honestly yeah Yeah. Well, the movie does pass the bechdel test. Technically. Yeah. In all manner of ways. And as we alluded to earlier. Famously genderless wire hangers.

And now our nipple scale where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh, boy. Who? I know. This is a fun. I'm like understanding why we avoided this one for so long. Yeah.

I'm so sorry, guys. No, it had to happen. No. I think I might forego the nipple scale. I don't, because I don't know. Right. It's both off the charts and not, and below the charts. Yeah, exactly.

It does not fall within the spectrum. Yeah. Of the nipple scale, this movie. Okay. I'm happy to forgo it. Yeah. Yeah. And if you want to know what we think about it, listen to the past hour and 45 minutes that we spent talking about it. Yeah.

So, Izzy, thank you so much for joining us. Oh my gosh, of course. Truly, we're such huge fans. Come back anytime. True. Yes. Yeah, I'd love to. I'm always available. I love talking to you guys about this. So this was fun. I hope we don't totally get canceled for our views on abuse. People will love this.

You are going to love it. I can't wait. Send it. Fire off an email. See what happens. Yeah. We just won't respond. Where can people follow your work, check you out online, etc.

Yeah. You can find me. I mean, the bulk of my work goes on YouTube. Just the channel Bekind Rewind. And then I'm also on Instagram at BK underscore rewind. Nice. We are also on Instagram at Bechtelcast. And you can also find us on.

on our Patreon, aka Matrion, where Jamie and I do two bonus episodes every single month. For $5 a month, you get access to the back catalog of around 200 bonus episodes. And we always do a fun little theme. We're just wrapping up Catherine O'Hara. Buery. Yes.

Buery, yes. So check us out over there, patreon.com slash spectralcast. And with that, should we, um, let's swap wigs. Let's swap wigs. Okay. And go to Bob's funeral. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Bye. Bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me.

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