The Bechdel Cast - Sunset Boulevard

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

This week, Caitlin and Jamie are ready for their close-ups as they discuss Sunset Boulevard. We're doing live shows in early February in San Francisco, Sacramento, Dallas, Austin, and San Diego! Grab tickets at linktr.ee/bechdelcast! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

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Mr. Jamie, I'm ready for my close-up. Bad news, you're under arrest. No. No. ACAB includes particularly the cops that arrested Norma Desmond. She did nothing wrong. All she did was have a dream murdering a male screenwriter is not against the law brutal brutal i feel like the movie does feel that way a little bit but maybe i'm just projecting

welcome to the bechdel cast. We are washed up podcast stars. They're, oh God, you know, really, is it like the second you turn 30 that you're like, oh, Norma Desmond, you know, was she wrong? She's got some interesting ID. You know, maybe she's onto something. Maybe I should live with a little chimpanzee at my house. And would that be so bad? Oh, I felt so bad for that really weird looking chimp. I don't know what the prop department was doing, but it was like, what? Okay, I'm not even gonna say it. There's something. No, nevermind.

Okay. Yeah, I'm washed up podcast star Jamie Loftus. And I'm washed up podcast star Caitlin Durante. And this is our washed up podcast. Hell yeah. Where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. Oh, this movie has a fun pass there. Yeah yeah what just happened to my brain holy shit happy new year yes and here's what the bechdel test we're too washed up to even talk oh my god sorry our brains are just so old and decaying that we don't even know we think we're on the set of salome or whatever can't keep spacing out in the middle of this recording and being like, solo? Where are we? What? Anyways, sorry. Our feeble old brains aren't working.

The Bechdel Test is a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel with her friend Liz Wallace, which is why it's often called the Bechdel-Wallace Test. It was originally created just as a one-off joke in her excellent comic Dykes to Watch Out For as a way of drawing attention to how little queer representation there was and how infrequently women spoke to each other. Lots of versions of the test. Our version is this. We require that a character of a marginalized gender with a name speak to another character of a marginalized gender with a name about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. Most movies don't do it. Past, present, and I'll say it, future. I don't think we moved the needle very much, but that's okay. And today we are discussing a movie that has been on our request list forever and one that just felt like it would be fun

because it features the most depressing new year's party ever committed to film truly and we just hit the new year and so it's high time we cover sunset boulevard 1950 directed by billy wilder that's so true who is german not australian yeah wait huge news caitlin and i were talking to an australian guy the other night at a new year's party that was not depressing it was very fun it was very fun and he complimented your australian accent he did and i felt so honored it was truly like in the seven years we've been doing this, the first time we've received active encouragement from an authority. And it felt really good. Yeah.

So thank you, Trent, for the encouragement. For the compliments. That did not pass the Bechdel test. So, you know, hope you're taking notes. Hope you're keeping up. Correct. You know what is going to pass the Bechdel test, though, is when we take a little detour to plug the tour that we have coming up. Yes, it will totally pass

the Bechdel test because a tour is famously genderless. And it's about Barbie. The Barbie movie. I'm really excited. I just don't have a bone of hate in my body for the Barbie movie, except for the few that we'll talk about at the show. Yeah, we were touring five cities. Coming up at the beginning of February, we are covering the Barbie movie in every city. February 1st, we'll be at SF Sketch Fest in San Francisco. February 2nd, we'll be going over to Sacramento.

Ooh, Greta Gerwig vibes much? Everything about that. Wow, Lady Bird. Our Barbie show there is sold out, but we still have tickets available to our second show, which is about the Wolf of Wall Street, which is like basically the same movie, same experience. You'll be fine. Too much. Bring the ludes. Yes. Then after that, we are heading to Texas and doing a show in Dallas on February 3rd, a show in Austin on February 5th.

And then we are circling back around to Southern California and doing a show in San Diego on February 10th. We're covering Barbie at all of those shows and tickets are still available, although they're going fast. So make sure you grab your tickets, which you can do at linktree.com. And you're going to want to see us live because here's the thing. We put on a show. It's a spectacle, okay? We are ready for our close-up at these live shows, you know?

We are certainly. We wear outfits. We do slideshows. If if we have time we do audience q a that didn't sound really exciting we wear clothes and there's we play games we've sung we've danced we really put on we eat sometimes on stage we do demand to be fed it's kind of like you know a crossover between like a fetish video and a sexy college lecture so uh so so come on down and then we always uh we have tour exclusive merch and then we do meet and greets afterwards so yes it's it's always a fun time and we hope to see you there indeed don't believe we could have a fun time talking about a movie? Well, listen to this. Caitlin, what's your experience with the movie Sunset Boulevard? So I saw it for the first time either late in high school or early college. I would have been like 17, 18, something like that.

I knew that it was a very culturally significant movie. You know, one of the greats from the classic Hollywood era. So it's been on my radar for a film school assignment. And then maybe even a second time for a film school assignment when I did go and get my master's degree in screenwriting at Boston University. A fact that I never mention. And you know who probably doesn't have a master's in screenwriting from Boston University? Me? Is Joe Gillis. Oh, I was like, why are you yelling at me?

Yeah, it's true. It's true. and that's why he's such a failure exactly and maybe that's why he died makes you think yeah i have a similar experience with this movie i hadn't seen it in a bit but i would consider it in sort of my top tier of movies i've seen it many times i saw it for the first time, I think in college. First, just for fun or like the film program, like we've discussed like, oh, you have to watch this movie because like this movie is I think like fantastic. And it's also heavily assigned. I feel like a lot of people watch this movie for school. And maybe more people should watch it for fun because it's fun to watch but yeah i i think i've mentioned this in the show in past years i took this class in college that not only aged tremendously poorly but at the time students were like what the fuck i had a

class called wilder allen and kaufman right and i took heavy objection to exactly one of those uh directors i didn't want to i wanted to study the other two and not the middle one blah blah And I took heavy objection to exactly one of those directors. I wanted to study the other two and not the middle one. Blah, blah, blah. It was like 2013. And they were like, shut up. Anyways, I quite enjoyed the Wilder portions of that class and the Kaufman portions. But for the sake of this conversation, I sort of became a proper Billy Wilder fan through taking that class. I think he's a really fascinating person, complicated, certainly imperfect, but like

I really like his work. And I mean, I think this is my favorite Billy Wilder movie. But I mean, it is like kind of not to like, start the episode out by like handing it to a man but i really really like i mean the amount of incredibly influential movies that he turned out in this course of his career is absolutely i'll say it is wilder wow i mean you've got double indemnity which we have covered a couple years ago on the show with anita sarkeesian we have not covered but other very notable movies of his include The Seven Year Itch, The Apartment, and Some Like It Hot, which is probably my favorite Wilder movie. I mean, like, it's almost like a three way tie between because we were also talking about covering The Apartment this week, because it's also like a holiday time movie. It might be a

tie between Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment for me, but Some Like It Hot is also so great. He also directed Sabrina. He did a lot of great work. And I was trying to read more. I know that he had contentious relationships with actors and actresses, it seemed like, but I think he's been through several rounds of film buff discourse of is his work pro-women is his work anti-women I think the answer as with most people is like somewhere in the middle and it depends from text to text and it depends on the years coming out all this stuff I love Sunset Boulevard I love the performances in it. And I really, I mean, I hadn't watched it, I want to say for maybe like three or four years. And there's so much to talk about. But I think

as it's probably my favorite movie about movies. It's a good one. Yeah. And I feel like it still has a lot to say in a way that feels like kind of depressingly not dated. This movie is over 70 years old and it still feels like what it's saying is still very relevant to how the movie industry works, but also very specific to the silent era. And like, I'm really excited to talk about the context of this movie because Norma Desmond is such a complex character

that I feel like you can view a million ways, some of which are, we'll talk about, all one million. I just have such, I can't imagine being Gloria Swanson and having this experience and then being like, here's the character. And then not just being like, okay, I can compartmentalize my entire life and career and play this caricature of an actor while watching my movies that were directed by Max the Butler.

Eric Bond, whatever. Yeah, and that movie was directed by him and compartmentalize it and not just be able to compartmentalize it, but deliver such an iconic performance that like is so stripped of artifice and like it's just and i have issues with that in some ways but i just like i don't know i can't watch this movie and not be like oh my god i don't know if i could even consider doing something that would require compartmentalizing your ego to that

extent. It's unbelievable. I know, right? Well, shall we get into it with the recap? Let's do it. Let's take a quick break first, and then we'll come back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered there are crooks everywhere you look now the situation is desperate my name is Manuel Delia I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere

a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds.

What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRad seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions.

Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus, we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is. And we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune into Part-Time Genius. And we're back. All right. So here's the recap of Sunset Boulevard. But before that, I'll place a content warning for suicide as well as emotional abuse in a partnership.

If you're triggered by a character named Hawgye. Hawgye. I have so many questions about Hawgye. What was going on hog eye there are a few lines in this movie that are obviously like very famous whether you've seen the movie or not but hello hog eye you're like whoa that's uh the greatest line read i've ever heard because it's also not clear because he identifies himself i don't think she remembers yeah he says hey it's me hog guy and then she responds hello hog guy but it's we don't know if she recognizes

him and knows him or if she's just like being like i'm gonna guess she doesn't i'm gonna guess she's actively listening but just like the way she greets hog guy and he's so thrilled iconic oh my god yeah hello hog all right so the movie the movie opens on sunset boulevard in los angeles california ever heard of it oh i can see it from my freaking house oh my gosh i can't wait to die in a pool. Okay, so the police are heading to a huge mansion on Sunset Boulevard to investigate a homicide because the body of a man was found floating in the pool of a movie star. Yes, I feel like, you know, narration is so often like overused or like as a lazy tool but it rocks in this movie and there's also that sort of moment where like Joe the William Holden character is like this isn't a famous thing to say yet but he's like you're kind of wondering how I got here huh well it's kind of a weird story here we go let's take it back you're like let's flash back to six months earlier where we meet and we

get voiceover narration from a struggling screenwriter who again i can only assume is struggling because he doesn't have a master's degree in screenwriting it's so yeah watching this i mean just like individually you're just like wow i don't like that i can relate with joe and norman no bad and betty like i know i know oh there's it's almost like it's a really good movie okay wow okay so this screenwriter is joe gillis played by william holden and some men show up at his apartment to try to repossess his car because he's several months behind on payments. He needs some quick cash.

He mentions $290, which is nearly $4,000 in today's money. Bad, bad situation. Yes, so he's trying to go around town and borrow money from friends. No luck. He also goes to Paramount to pitch a story idea hoping that he can sell a script but the producer isn't interested because a script reader named betty played by nancy olsen is like yeah i read that script and it sucked so i honestly feel like you have such betty vibes I kept writing down Caitlin vibes when

he was like what do you think and she would just be like no it's trite and boring yeah and then they meet up again later and you're like oh she's good but she's just as harsh she's just like no it's bad I still don't like it but then she's also like but I've heard you're talented and I can see your potential so let's collaborate and right which is like at least grounded in the fact that she's seen work of his that she liked but like none of the work of his that she liked has ever been produced which does feel true to far yeah i really like that exchange between them where she's like i heard you had talent he's like not this year i'm trying to work this year like damn me too me too man relatable yeah okay so joe leaves and while Me too. Me too, man. Relatable. Yeah. Okay. So Joe leaves.

And while he's driving down Sunset Boulevard, he spots the guys who were trying to repo his car. So he speeds away and ends up in the driveway of what appears to be an abandoned mansion. And he hides his car in the empty garage. His plan is basically to skip town, take a bus back to ohio and kind of just like give up on the hollywood life but as he's there examining this mansion he hears a woman's

voice and it turns out the house has not been abandoned then a butler named max played by eric von stroheim right who if you don't know is a prominent silent film era director who directed a movie starring gloria swanson and don't worry they show a clip of it they'll screen it later this movie is so good god yes so anyway max the butler shows Joe inside and the woman whose voice we heard had mistaken Joe for being an undertaker who's there to remove the body of a dead chimpanzee. A monkey undertaker? Yeah. What? And the chimpanzee has been dead, dare I say, for a while.

It seems so grotesque. It looks dry. Uh-huh-huh yucky it's nasty anyways real meet cute at the top oh yeah they kind of do like start vibing immediately like you know it's fundamentally an abusive relationship but this first encounter i'm like are they vibing right now over the whole dead monkey situation they're vibing but in a very it's like a very neggy yeah like both ways with yes yeah it's a two-way negging street they're weirdos they're they're sick so anyway joe is like you got the wrong guy but wait a minute i recognize you because the woman is norma desmond played by gloria swanson a silent movie star who used to be very famous but hasn't worked as an actor since talkies became popular which is something that

we learn she deeply resents that you know she's not working anymore and and that she hasn't completely accepted that she is no longer a big current star and also that she struggles to accept the fact that she's aging and accept her own mortality because of how older women are treated in hollywood which i feel like this is one of the few movies of this era that like well we'll get into it but like it's at least suggested and clear that there is a systemic reason that she's trained to see herself it's all over the place but like i feel like it's clearer than you know normally you see a woman over 40 much less 50 that the call is coming from inside the house and this is just something that happens at least this movie i think does better job than a lot of current movies do to contextualize it yeah

true but it doesn't free her from you know the tropes all that stuff right it's so weird because we're covering well yeah i guess this will come out in sequential order we're covering may december coming up next week and i know it's just because we've been sort of preparing for these episodes beside each other but there are these like interesting parallels uh between you know just like an older woman or and by old you know a woman over 50 right yeah whose whole life has been constructed to protect her from reality amongst other things but it was just interesting watching those movies side by side and being like oh obviously i know that todd haynes has seen sunset boulevard but there is like just the haunted house feel to it for sure yeah yeah

i was also getting some misery parallels sure yeah a movie we covered some time years ago yeah and i was like wow i bet stephen king watched sunset boulevard yeah it's like oh i love having the genius thought that maybe a famous director has seen one of the most famous movies ever like could it be interesting I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, so Joe recognizes Norma Desmond and she's like, oh, wait a minute. You're a writer? Well, I wrote a story about Salome that I want Cecil B. DeMille to direct. And she wants Joe to read her very long handwritten script it's got santa university vibes i was like wow literally norma desmond wrote her santa university and also she's like and no one will produce it it's 600 pages yep she won't take notes certainly not and so joe starts reading it and it turns out to be like poorly written

melodramatic drivel but joe realizes that he can try to squeeze some money out of norma if he offers to rewrite the script yeah and she's like well you're a sagittarius so I can trust you again I was just like no no that's the worst reasoning I've ever heard there's another scene later on where she's talking about like today is the exact right day to drop off the script to Cecil B DeMille because of like the alignments of the planets and how she's a blah blah blah and he's a leah or whatever like she's like la women are gonna la women it doesn't matter what decade it is exactly the position of the stars is what is going to make or break their flopping career you know sure yeah yeah yeah and also like we don't even need to ascribe a gender to it that's just simply

what it's like out here in general it's true and if you live in la and you think you're immune to it you just haven't lived here long enough i don't think i quite recently was like okay fine i'll finally figure out what my like rising and moon signs are oh my gosh wait you should get a chart reading from my friend cameron shout out cameron farmer's chart my boyfriend just got his chart read by them because he also was like okay you win la you win i will find out about the start i know and then also a few years ago i bought crystals i went to house of intuition i remember and i bought crystals because i was like these are gonna change my life and did they certainly not but they're pretty a bunch of people just uh threw

their phone across the they're just like god damn it they're all like this it's kind of true but like you know victimless crime unless you get into like a wellness cult don't do that don't do that just don't do that just don't yeah yeah exactly anyways norma desmond not immune i was just it was funny to be like oh wow 1950 and yeah yeah it's just always been like that yeah i didn't realize it but it's true good for her okay so norma has jo Joe read the rest of her script. She makes him stay the night to finish reading it because she won't let the script leave her house. She sets up a room for him. And he's like, okay, this is fucking weird, but whatever, I need money. Then he wakes up to discover that Norma had her butler, Max, bring all of Joe's stuff to her home. Basically, she wants him to move in while he's working on her script. And he's upset and freaked out,

but he decides to get to work and get it over with as quickly as possible. But Norma is like hovering over him.'s being very controlling and it's also clear like you previously mentioned jamie that she's like she's been very sheltered she's perhaps delusional she's also very egotistical and there's a big twist that like triple validates this late in the movie but like it still feels very like max is like her protector it's how i think of my eldest cat uh flea flea has max vibes where he's like don't disturb her she's working but yeah she she's very like-absorbed. She's always responding to fan mail from her adoring fans. She always insists on watching her own movies, things like that. The fan mail thing was another May-December overlap for me

where the Julianne Moore character, it's the same three neighbors keeping her bakery in business to appease her. And yeah, just sort of this like privileged but contextually upsetting and like fundamental like just the bubble that you're stuck in yeah granted i have far more empathy for norma and you know she did what she had to do yeah so more time passes and a dynamic starts to emerge between norma and joe where basically she becomes his sugar mama whoa i said it i don't think i've ever heard you say that phrase out loud it felt so weird coming out of my mouth i'm not gonna lie

someone clipped that is that even the term sugar mama is that i think so sugar mommy sugar mommy i don't know i don't know i think sugar mommy sugar daddy yeah but then sugar mama is a character on the proud family and so how do we square that we don't know the bottom line is joe is her sugar baby that's definitely true that's okay okay and we're back and we're back and norma seems to be into him but he at present is not into her yeah we also around this time find out that max the butler is the one who is sending all of the fan mail to norma and so joe is like yikes okay then he attends norma's new year's eve party except that joe is the only one who norma invited and because she's in love with him yeah and she's like being actively predatory creepy yeah and so he's creeped

out and he leaves and goes to his friend's new year's eve party hosted by arty who says that joe can stay with him for a few weeks because joe's trying to get the hell out of there arty really gets the short end of the stick i mean i guess Joe dies. So that doesn't end very well for him. But there was like a poor Artie later on. I'm like, Artie did nothing wrong except ask someone to come to Arizona, which is like generally. Don't do that. No offense to all of our treasured Arizona listeners. Wow, we just got so many unsubscribes.

Someone else just threw their phone at the wall. Oh, you L.A. people think you're better than Arizona? And here's why the stars are on my side just kidding i don't know what i'm talking about let's continue yeah don't listen to us anyway artie's girlfriend is betty the script reader from earlier who mentions to joe that she has read another one of his scripts and she's like it does suck for the most part but there's this flashback with a teacher character that has a lot of potential yeah so they're talking about that betty's good at her job like she's direct but she's also constructive like the lady knows what

she's doing exactly and she's only 22 She's got a future in this town. Tell me about it. Well, we'll get there. It's just like, God, I mean, I guess you already know that Joe dies. I'm just like, you know, he really would have been dead weight and her life. So, sorry. Sorry about it. But also, like, what's she going to do?

Move to Arizona? I sure hope not. I hope she just was like, hey, I just need to be single for a while. I think that that's what I want for her. I bet she does do that. I hope so. But before then, she and Joe are flirting a little bit, even though Artie is in the next room.

Ugh. And so there's that. That's not very nice. And then also, I'm like, well, she's 22, whatever. Yeah. so that's not very that's not very nice and then also i'm like well she's 22 whatever yeah so then joe discovers that norma is horribly distraught and that she attempted suicide after he left her new year's eve party so he hurries back to her house to comfort her and then they kiss and then it fades to black which i feel implies they have sex i'm on board with yes yeah yes so now norma and joe are like together i love what it says on scholarly journal wikipedia that made me laugh joe returns to norma and their relationship becomes non-platonic oh

they fuck like they definitely do fuck yeah hard i mean i don't know we don't know we don't know the production code wouldn't show it yeah i'm like the writers knew the writers do i i believe billy wilder knew how norma fucks but we just weren't privy to that information yeah so joe and norma are together now but also joe bumps into betty again and she is urging him to work with her on this script idea. And he's like, I don't know, we'll see. Then the script of Norma's that Joe has been rewriting is finished, and it gets dropped off at Paramount Studios. And then a few days later, Norma and Joe go to Paramount to see Cecil B. DeMille. And Norma thinks that he wants to direct her movie. But it's clear to us, though not clear to Norma, that DeMille thinks she's a nuisance and he wants nothing to do with her. I'm excited to talk about this scene. It's a devastating scene. It's yeah, yeah, it's brutal.

Really is. And this is also where our friend Hawgye shows up. So we have to get, hello, Hawgye. He spins a spotlight around and shines it on her. And she's like, yes, this is where I'm meant to be. You know, Hawgye got an earful from old DeMille. He probably got fired for that. God. I hope not. I hope not. He's worked there for years, Caitlin. He probably got fired for that. God. I hope not. I hope not.

He's worked there for years, Caitlin. He's worked there since the silent era. Please. Exactly. You can't fire a hog. I let him off with a warning. I seriously, I know. Anyway, so thinking that she is going to star in a movie soon

and make this triumphant return to the screen norma starts getting all kinds of facials and massages and beauty treatments she starts counting calories things like that meanwhile that women are still encouraged to do today well and also any actor but right yes yeah but especially the pressure because women are so highly valued for their appearance and their youth that pressure is especially placed on women and femmes yes okay meanwhile joe has been sneaking out every night to meet up with betty so that they can write this script about the teachers together and also also, they're vibing, even though she is now engaged to Artie, who is, I think, working on a film in Arizona.

Anyway, one night, Max catches Jo as he's returning from sneaking out. And Jo is like, Max, we have to put an end to this charade. What happens when she finds out that there is no DeMille movie? And Max is like, she'll never find out. I was the one who made her a star and I'll keep her that way. And then this is where Max reveals that he directed all of her early movies and that he was Norma's first husband. Wild. Wild. and that he was norma's first husband okay they're wild that twist never ceases to be like so you're doing what right and i think let me know if i have this right but it seems as though

they were together and then it seems like she rose to stardom and then left him and he couldn't handle it and he came crawling back and then she made him her servant is that what happened it seems like he i would say he certainly is still in love with her yeah and also has this sort of paternalistic control over her life, too. Because it's like I hadn't ever really thought past, well, what would Norma's life look like if Max wasn't there? And I think that he clearly thinks that she would be actively suffering without him preserving this delusion and kind of keeping her trapped in this house to an extent by taking you know making sure all of her needs are met but i you know it's like possibly not like you will never know because hard to say you know she's been preserved in this place i don't know yeah like the push and pull of like norma is absolutely an emotionally abusive person and like extremely manipulative sort of by any

means necessary while having serious mental illness problems will also by any means necessary keep the people she wants around her around her to preserve these delusions of grandeur that she has. But it's also like there is so much patriarchy that surrounds her. And like she has this enabler who is like playing into this delusion so it's yeah it's i mean it's such a good movie yeah because it's just like yeah the cycle of abuse is present in every single character and like you can argue that the you know joe being straightforward with her is a gift in a way but it also is like it's what gets him killed it's oh it's good that cecil b demille sequence that leads into max revealing that like she's grew i'm kevin and you're just like huh got it uh-huh it is kind of a grew kevin

situation if there was like 300 Maxes, it would be identical. Think about that. Right. So Max is the Kevin Le Mignon in this scenario. He's the minions. He's all of the minions in one guy. If Gru had married one of the minions.

Anyway, it doesn't quite work. In any case. No, no, no. we can make this work okay so we get all these like intense reveals and we're like oh my gosh meanwhile betty is talking to joe and she's like i'm not in love with my fiance already and my fiance yes anymore i'm in love with you joe and then they smooch on the lips and so now joe is trying to figure out a way to leave norma but oh no norma unbeknownst to joe has found the script that he's been working on with Betty. So Norma calls Betty to tell her what this situation actually is with Joe, who he lives with, how he lives, who's bankrolling his life, basically. And then Betty goes over to Norma's house to see for herself what's going on also norma has bought a revolver and we're like okay checkoff's gun alert yeah literally i think that that scene with betty is so i mean like joe it makes sense what

joe is doing and i think like he is so overcome by like shame and frustration. And at least, I mean, one of the few men in movie history, maybe, that can correctly identify when he's no good for a woman and she's out of his league and he is like, and I will move to Ohio. And you're like, wow, more men should do that. So like he understands that that like even though he would like this relationship with betty actively in a way that i think kind of plays on movie tropes

where it's like you know usually if you have the like no we can't they will by the end but like he at least has the presence of mind to be like this relationship with norma is too fucked up yeah and it like speaks to like what is norma really a symbol of but like by extracting himself from that relationship he's also extracting himself from like the hollywood machine right and everything fucked up about it and extracting himself from this cycle of abuse because he has been lying to Betty and withholding all this information from her. And that's so much of what's been happening between like Norma and Max. And I think Joe realizes that he is like perpetuating that same cycle onto Betty in a different way, but totally. And he's still very much like withholding information

from her so he's like I don't I can't keep doing this I don't want to be a part of this period yeah and I think it's really interesting and like speaks to her naivete as like a younger character that like he brings her in tells her exactly like this is the way I've been lying to you it is tempting for me to stay for these very cynical reasons and she you know I think again it's like a little bit of a play on what we expect where she offers him forgiveness you know I could see that going either way like she's horrified by it but offers him a fresh start essentially but again he rejects it he's like no I can't you know because yeah i think

you're totally right like him staying with betty first of all will absolutely make her life worse and also will keep him in this hollywood cycle of abuse and it's like i feel like we're led to believe weirdly that like betty is maybe it's not even, you know, fast forward 30 years. Betty is likely extremely jaded as well because that's just what happens. Yeah. But that like it seems like she for reasons that it's like, you know she is better suited to this life because she's like it's a generational thing with her family and she's had this experience with acting and leaving acting and like she has the healthiest attitude about Hollywood out of anyone and I think it's

because she's from there and like her parents do behind the scenes work so it's like the less ego-driven positions that are are sort of better suited to understand this is just how it goes if you work in this shitty garbage industry so i don't know i sort of went into this viewing being like uh how do i feel about betty is she an underwritten character but like i don't know coming out of it as like, I'm never going to argue with more. But I feel like it's really clear where she's coming from. And like, not that she is like higher functioning in this industry. And like, and it has a healthier attitude and avoid like, it does make sense to me why she's kind of letting things roll off her shoulders, but still works hard kind of vibe. Yeah, Yeah.

And I'm excited to talk about her more just because of her attitude toward the film industry and just kind of how that informs different things about her character. But yeah, it's all very fascinating. Anyway. So, okay.

Betty is there at the house now. She's trying to encourage Joe to like run away with her and like escape this scenario and leave and he's like, no, I've got a decent setup here. So Betty runs off heartbroken. But Joe decides it is time for him to leave and actually like go through with moving back to Ohio and just getting out of Hollywood in general. So he starts packing his belongings. And Norma's like, what are you doing? Why are you leaving me? And he's like, wake up, Norma. There is no DeMille movie. The fan mail you get is fake, and you're not a star anymore and that's okay but you gotta face facts and then he goes to leave but norma shoots him and he collapses in the pool dead great gaspy

vibes good for him yes so then after this norma goes into a kind of like fugue state where she completely disassociates and she's ignoring the cops and the press who are there interrogating her until the newsreel guys show up with cameras. And she's like in the middle of a scene that she's like back at the studio that she has made her triumphant return and this is where we get the famous line from the movie one of the famous lines from the movie often misquoted mr demille i'm ready for my close-up and that's how the ends. So let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now.

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Yeah. Part of what I find fascinating about the ending of that movie, just like reckoning back to other movies we've covered and, and like that takes place in the same sort of span of years is that the ghost of joe who's telling us this story clearly thinks that norma's life is you know he's like well i don't know what happens to her she probably won't serve a lot of prison time because she's so famous but like essentially his ghost is like she's fucked but i'm like kind of worked out for the the ladies in chic Chicago who were trying to pivot from vaudeville

into being moiteras. So I feel like maybe she's got another act in her. Could be, depends on how it gets spun. You just need Richard Gere to be your lawyer and you can really make things work. That's how I feel. I wouldn't count Norma out. I wouldn't count her out. Oh yeah. Is that a good thing? i wouldn't count norma out i wouldn't count her out oh yeah is that a good

thing i don't know okay where shall we begin oh boy let's see i mean i want to do a little context for this movie because it is like the context of it is very important yeah So this is, you know, as we've already talked about, a Billy Wilder movie. He was born in 1906. He is a Jewish director. He was born in Austria-Hungary. Either way, yeah, he ultimately moved to America and began working in films. I believe that he did do some work in The Silent Era, but mostly worked in the talkies, which exists to this day. What? In any case, this movie was extremely polarizing and sort of disliked in Hollywood communities. When it came out, it prompted Louisis b maire to say something very xenophobic to billy wilder he said you have disgraced the industry that made and fed you you should be tarred and feathered and run out of hollywood and he kept going oh i he like said get out of the country essentially implied that like he should go back to germany which to say that to a Jewish director in 1950 is unfucking believable. And like Louis B.

Mare notorious monster. Right. But also speaks to like, uh, Billy Wilder was a very successful director within the studio system and within the star system. And this was viewed as like, how dare you bite the hand that feeds you or criticize the hand that feeds

you. Right. Which is like, fuck you, which is exactly what Billy Wilder walked up to Louisis b. meyer and said he said go fuck yourself girl he was right okay the other thing that is like we've already referenced is the fact that so many people because this came out in 1950 this was the time that like silent film stars that did not make the crossover into sound pictures were getting older and hadn't worked in a while this was gloria swanson's first movie in like nine years at the time that she had kind of switched to i think it's an interesting point in history and like the fact that this movie is as

like brutal as it is it's really interesting because it's we we were seeing around this time and like would continue even for like old hollywood stars that did cross over into talking movies people like betty davis and people like joan crawford like they would be pushed into television back on stage or if they stayed in movies would often be cast, you know, the only way to really get a leading role would be to do older woman body horror, which you see, you know, as the years go on, like, I think whatever happened to Baby Jade is a huge example of that, where it's like, well, if you are a woman over 50 working at Hollywood and you want to work outside of like the kindly mother role what are your options and it is sort of like Norbert Desmond is like the best role available because at least it's self-aware but like in most cases there's a whole sub-genre that still exists in certain ways there's a great video essay about it from be kind rewind that talks about whatever happened to baby

jane specifically but basically it was like a whole sub-genre called hag horror that you know just capitalizes on the star power of incredible actresses when they were younger and you know allows them to be in movies with the contingency that they are perpetuating the idea that being an aging woman is horrific right it's really interesting because like we've talked about like gloria swanson this is her lived experience we are seeing not norma desmond's story but like she you know was a silent film star who never quite broke out as a talking film actress before sunset boulevard she went back on stage she was still working she worked she did stuff on tv she worked on stage you know she wasn't rotting in a house which i think is pretty fucking insulting yeah Yeah. But her career, and I think we still see this with women and femmes today,

the types of roles she was offered changed. The types of mediums she was welcomed in changed. And then, you know, Max is played by a silent film director. Buster Keaton is in this movie. DeMille plays himself. And DeMille is often credited as the director who kind of made gloria swanson a star so there's all these really interesting parallels between gloria swanson

and the character she plays again to our knowledge gloria swanson wasn't you know didn't have a very warped view of reality and wasn't like living in this kind of delusion. But no, she was like living in New York acting on Broadway. Like she was okay. But it's still like, I honestly haven't studied DeMille as a person very much. I know that he was a notorious conservative. I know that he was, you know, obviously deeply complicit in many of the sins of early Hollywood. But it is, I think it's really kind of admirable that he was even willing to be in this movie as himself, kind of acknowledging the system that he was still complicit within, because that like that DeMille scene was shot on the set of a huge movie he was directing like it

was exaggerated versions of the actual reality where it's like he still hadn't even directed you know the 10 he hadn't even directed his biggest hit yet when this came out and you know as far as Gloria Swanson's career goes that like Sunset Boulevard is a huge success for her she's nominated for an oscar it's an unbelievable performance but it's like the question is at what cost like you know cecil b is not asked to make these huge ego compromises in order to continue working in an interesting way and right yeah that scene is like just so brutal and like the way that he comes off i thought like it worked where it's like he clearly has sympathy for her but not empathy and not enough to do anything about it where to be direct about like i actually didn't like your

script and he just sort of like lets her believe what she wants to believe and he's too much of a coward to like be clear about what's gonna happen and instead he's like get gordon cole on the phone and tell him to stop because the reason that right he's like someone else take care of this i don't want to take care of this right yes but then also like i think he doesn't come off as a complete monster and i thought that was an interesting choice too i mean i guess that kind of makes sense where it's like that's where like it's particularly gross where he has sympathy for her he understands her predicament but he doesn't want to deal with it because he does sort of defend her before she comes in the room where

they're like oh wasn't she a fucking nightmare to work with and he was like not really like she was great to work with at the beginning of her career she was really smart and then you know the more famous she got the more difficult she became to work with which also plays into stereotypes around actors especially women especially the further back in history you go of like being characterized as being difficult could mean just being assertive and not rolling over advocating for yourself yeah exactly and so we don't really know we don't know enough about the period between you know norma as a young woman into a woman in her 50s but he has that really good line a dozen press agents working overtime can do a terrible thing to the human spirit yes which is a great line and also is like it makes set like who but him would fully understand what is

happening to her and he does have the power to do something about it as does any highly influential director you know does her script suck certainly seems like it like offer her a part that is not in this you know it's i i feel like because norma's whole world is designed to protect her from rejection or change there are all these missed opportunities for potential compromise right to get her back out into into the world and so it does feel like these paternalistic men who want to appease her but don't actually want to help her in any way like she's completely doomed our girl is and there's so many layers because like they're feeding into this ego of hers that is almost bound to form in a scenario like this where you're so doted on and you have all these adoring fans and especially when you

get famous super young like she did i think yes it's mentioned that she was discovered when she was 16 so you know she's a very young person when she becomes a star. Just like my theory holds that you become frozen in maturity at the moment you become famous. Yeah. And so she's still acting like a kid. And it is like they don't shy away from the fact that her, I mean, it's like funny the way that she it's sad but it is funny how she talks to demille where she's like all right uh i don't care about budget uh you figure that out and i won't work more than six hours a day it's just like norma come on well yeah we got okay but like that level of entitlement i like i don't know. I kind of like that the movie doesn't make her tragic in the way

that it's like, and she's not even asking for much. She is asking for a lot. She's a diva. She's not being reasonable. Yeah, she is a diva. But that doesn't justify the way that she's treated. And it also doesn't justify the way she treats people. Like it's just extremely messy. I think what I've seen talked about with Norma a lot over the years, which I do agree with, but it's like because it's such a complicated movie, I don't think that there's any like simple way to be prescriptive about her. But there are, like we've sort of been hinting at, there is the tropes around older women are fully present.

We see characters like this all the time, even now. The idea of like, this is a woman who has not accepted that she's aging. And what I think this movie does well, even though I think it is way over the top and like the Norma character is more a symbol of how a whole generation of actresses were treated and discarded as opposed to like an actual experience that happened to anyone my favorite quote about this was from a former silent actor named May Murray who saw the movie and said none of us floozies was that nuts. Just a very old Hollywood way to say that. But so obviously, it's not not even reflective of Gloria Swanson's experience. It's an exaggerated version of how women are discarded. And I think

that what works about Norma's character is that you get the full context. I think with other older women, it's just presented that this is how older women are, not this is how the world treats older women. Right, right. That's the thing with this movie that I think makes it so great, which is that a lesser movie would say, yeah, this is just how older women behave. Why? Doesn't matter. The way that, you know, women are conditioned to feel about themselves as they age. What's that? Never heard of it. You know, not, but this movie, okay, so it presents

a woman who is quote unquote past her prime and who is characterized as being delusional she's controlling she's very conceited and self-obsessed but there's also this component of like we said she came out of this like system where like which is fundamentally abusive super abusive so focused on image and so heavily values youth in especially women it does tend to chew people up and spit them out and again especially women as they age this is clearly what had happened to norma and again like we mentioned there's the component of she became a star when she was super young she like you know came into all this money it seems like she invested in oil boo and real estate also boo which is like i mean that's some rich lady shit like and i also think that it is a good choice that she still has money because it's like yeah it's not like she's

down on her luck in the financial sense but it's like all of the loneliness and like isolation in her life is fueled by feeling discarded. And it feels like whatever underlying mental health issues she may have had when she was very famous are so exacerbated by the predicament that she's in. however well-intentioned you know you could debate all day but by people like max who are like actively preventing her from trying to live life a different way because of how he is enabling her current lifestyle that is killing her it's like i it's upsetting to hear the repeated attempts to take her own life and that like this has happened before but there are no changes made to her life and certainly so it's like max is a really difficult character for me because i like he doesn't have her best interests at heart at least in a long-term sense like maybe in the short term it's more comfortable for her to believe these things. But it's clear that like, I don't know.

And it's painful to see Norma seeking out this validation from people where it's, you know, I don't believe that she loves Joe, really. They think that she has. I think that he and maybe I, you know, feel free to roast me in the comments I don't think that she loves him I think that he is someone that comes along when she is extremely lonely who has a skill that she needs it's a mutually beneficial relationship and that like ultimately I don't think she kills him in anything but like anger and jealousy which are not love right yes he's the one of the first people to reject her in a way that she actually is able to interpret it as rejection

because she's so surrounded by this like sheltered enabled life where you know he's the first person that who comes along and i really like his line toward the end where he says you know norma you're a woman of 50 grow up and there's nothing tragic about being 50 not unless you're trying to be 25 which is what Norma is trying to do. But I also like that line. It's another amazing line that is so loaded because it's coming from a man because it's like he is like on paper

in a perfect world, he's right. But it's like he doesn't, I feel like even though he understands that the world has done Norma this injustice and not in a way that feels underwritten in a way that I think is kind of genuine to a lot of people who don't have that experience of just being like, well, why don't you just snap out of it? And it's like, well, you know, it's presenting like, well, what are her options? Certainly what she's doing is not working for anyone, especially her.

But it feels like the alternative that she's being presented with is disappear gracefully. And that is what women are, especially women the further back you go. And it's like, she is operating at the highest privilege level. She's a rich white woman and she's still nonetheless being asked you know can't you just gracefully disappear like why can't

you do that and i think that this movie like i don't know i think in this movie maybe it doesn't make an overt suggestion of like what is the alternative because i don't think there is an alternative for norma at this time i mean if we if we're being pragmatic, the alternative is go to TV, go to the stage. But like, I don't know. Norma is an ego monster in a way that a lot of actors are ego monsters. I don't think that it's like a, you know, a gendered thing. I think that the way that people with big egos are treated is in a gendered way you know for sure no one's calling a man a diva they're like he knows what he wants and he doesn't take

shit from anyone and like he's just going method and blah blah blah oh my god yeah but you know when women do the same thing they're difficult to work with they're whatever but she is an ego monster nonetheless yes but yeah it's like what are her alternatives and it seems like joe's like why don't you just quietly like you know can't you just be normal and you're like she kind of can't like not that that makes that justifies any of her actions but her whole life has been constructed in a way that it's like what does normal look like what does normal norma look like you know know? What does normal look like? Garfield's friend.

I used to have a cat named normal because I used to love Garfield so much. Hell yeah. He was a really good cat. Shout out normal. Yes. Like she is an ego monster, but she's a product of this environment that turns people into ego monsters. And Joe, yes, he's right when he says,

grow up, you're behaving like a child, basically, and there's nothing tragic about being 50 unless you're trying to desperately cling on to youth, which, again, she is doing because she is a product of this you know nasty hollywood machine yeah but he's also complicit in this in the sense that he is a writer actively working in hollywood and his just complicit in this system that does value youth and beauty yeah in women and that like chews them up and spits them out so and it like makes sense that he's finally comfortable saying this when he i feel like i mean obviously

not to this extent but like you know what like your friend is like i'm leaving la i'm fucking done and then and then they just start saying shit and like this is his his moment for that where it's like you know he's done with this industry he doesn't need to preserve any bridges he's done and so he can finally just be like this is fucked you like i'm fucked you're fucked this is bad pops the bubble because he decides he doesn't want to benefit from it i don't know why i didn't remember like it's a small detail but i was like he better not take that stuff he doesn't he leaves the stuff he's just like fuck it i'm gonna go work a desk job in ohio and you know at that point in the movie i wanted that for him it's it's too bad that he

gets killed two minutes later there's something to be said though for like look at this man who is able to accept that he didn't make it in hollywood and so he's gonna go back to his you know humble beginnings and do whatever it takes for him to survive but he's accepting that the hollywood thing didn't work out for him whereas well i mean but i guess where i would contest that a little bit is like, because he's like halfway. I mean, I think the Betty character helps to balance that out. Yeah. And also that like Norma has such a wildly different experience of Hollywood than he has.

He hasn't even been successful. So it's sort of like, well, yeah, it's kind of like you can't be doing much worse than you're doing. You're like kind of a prisoner, you know. So it's not like I didn't feel gendered to me that it was easier for him to leave because there was nothing for him there anymore right and then like it seemed like his only way to stay there is to be in this horrific i don't even know if you can call it a relationship this like cycle of abuse that he is a part of but is also very much a victim of and i don't think that that

is something to shy away from i think that again if we're going back to like movie criticism of the mid-2010s uh which is where we came out of and then we you know grew up uh like norma can't uh but that like there is a hero and villain of this story there's not like norma is tremendously abusive and manipulative at times joe is like lies and manipulates people as well betty's kind of the only person who's chilling and like give her time too because she's 22 she'll probably you know become a monster if she hangs out in hollywood long enough it's inevitable but i liked going back to your point about like the writer being complicit in this system too it felt like this movie also had like a pretty layered approach to that because it's true but it's also like demonstrated how the way that the system is encourages that where it's suggested

and it's like we don't really get a clear idea on like what joe would be writing in a perfect world um so like is he brilliant probably not but like he's trying to sell this shitty bullshit idea that almost sounds like someone pitching a netflix movie right like they're like um i don't know someone famous isn't it baseball something is this anything but how it sounds like or it's at least suggested that like this is not the kind of work he wants to be doing he would rather be doing something creative and different but that's not the sort of thing that's going to allow him to make a living so that's also like drawn attention to god yeah that the line about being like yeah yeah i know you've heard i have talent but i want to work this year like vibe that i get it i get it i get it yes yeah there's that and

but i also just i mean representation of a woman telling a male artist that his art is bad and trite i loved it no matter like if they're flirting or not like she's just like i cannot tell a lie at that point they're not flirting because that's like their first meeting and she's at work and she's just like giving her honest professional opinion and she's like oh yeah i covered that script and I passed on it because it was trite. And I was like, hell yeah, dude. And then also later, DeMille calls Norma's script awful, but presumably he read the version that Joe rewrote and like punched up and it's apparently still very bad. So I think Joe is a flop flop he's not a good writer see again i'm gonna come to joe's defense here as someone who's done punch-up work

some things are unsavable sometimes fair fair and it also sounds like if she's hovering over his shoulder being like no you can't take that scene out it's like well how much work did he even really get to do true i say I say Joe innocent in that instance. I do sort of wonder why, because there are multiple times in the movie where Joe is like, Hey Betty, like you can have this. I don't really want to do it.

I'm like, why doesn't she just do it? He's given her permission multiple times. Why doesn't she just do it? But maybe that's a good, I don't know. As far as Norma goes to sort of wrap up that discussion yes to really fully explore her we would have to talk moment to moment how she's behaving i think that there are many tropes

present in her character undoubtedly i think that her character uses these tropes to really exaggerate the point it seems like billy wilder is trying to make about how hollywood choose actresses up and spits them out and i think that in that exaggeration there are moments that are like feel almost like i felt bad that gloria swanson had to act them out because it's suggesting that this could be her own experience when she was a person. And like, it was really interesting reading about her process of becoming involved with this movie because she was a huge star at Paramount. And there is like a degree of truth to that like line that norma says when she goes into the paramount lot of like you know why should i have to check in

i'm the reason this place exists and gloria swanson was such a huge early paramount star that there is like some tongue-in-cheekness to that she didn't want to have to audition for this part she's like why the fuck would i have to audition? That's silly. And George Cukor, who is like another big old Hollywood director, was like, just do it. Like, you'll regret not doing it. But she had to make ego compromises in order to play this ego monster. And I just like, that is not the fault of Billy Wilder. But it is just an example of like like even to make this movie that is hyper critical of Hollywood practices those practices still had to be in play in order for it to even

happen and there were a lot of silent film star actresses who were like fuck you I'm not doing this uh Mary Pickford said no yeah Mae West said no I think and you can't fault them at all to be like well I don't think I would be able to. They're like, hey, do you want to play a podcaster who's a huge fucking loser? I would be like, I'd rather not. I don't know. I'd rather not. I was like, is there?

Yeah, it's not even hard no. It's just like, is that really my only option? Which it seems like for Gloria Swanson to get back into a major movie, this was the option. And like that fucking sucks. Yes. But that, okay.

So this is interesting where the reason that a lot of stars who were considered or offered the role of Norma Desmond, the reason they turned it down informs something which i'll talk about in a second but so like may west who portrayed herself as a sex symbol even into her 40s 50s beyond she was offended that she would be asked to play you know a quote-unquote hollywood has been because she's like i'm still fucking hot like that's not the image I want to portray. The Mae West rejection is the best one. Yeah.

Then you've got an actor named Clara Bow. Yes. The It Girl. She was, yeah, famous. Remember her? Silent movie era star. She declined the role saying that she didn't want to engage in the film industry again

because of how hard it was for her to transition during like sound films and I think it just like rung too close to home yeah Norma Shearer also rejected the role due to like I think similar reasons she retired and she just had a distaste for the script she just didn't feel like the character is someone she wanted to portray. But that brings me to this movie and how it does acknowledge the effect of societal expectations that are placed on women as far as like, you know, you always have to be young forever. If you age, you are rendered irrelevant. There's this strong pressure to stay young and beautiful, and all of this stuff, which is a societal pressure, but also like, very, very prevalent in Hollywood, which is so image based. Yes. This movie also, again, acknowledges what probably led her to become such an egotistical

person. Do I think that there could have been a few more explicit lines of dialogue that address this a little bit more explicitly? Maybe, maybe they would have been too on the nose. But I feel like there are ways that the script could have addressed and acknowledged those things a little bit more thoroughly. But the movie, for the most part, does acknowledge all of these things. yes of course an older woman is going to be delusional and she's going to be jealous of the younger woman because there's that part where norma calls betty who becomes joe's new love interest and she's like well you don't even know what's happening he's actually with me right and things like that but these tropes are know, tropes often come from some grain of something that's true, which we see from the reasons that those other actors rejected that role. So like, it's all very interesting. And it's just handled, and I think of a more nuanced way than a lesser movie would have done. I mean,

I mean, I, I really, really love this movie. I just, I also like, I can't fault any actor for not wanting to play that role because I mean, it's so,

you know, reflective of what's happening within the movie of like, this is Norma's big comeback. And this was Gloria Swanson's-unquote big comeback into film that yeah required a level of ego compartmentalization that we don't ask of male actors is all i'm sort of getting at but it's still like i think one of the best performances i've ever because it's like it's like sad and it's also goofy and scary what she's doing with her eyes i still am big it's the pictures that got small oh she's just iconic i

love things were queer but they were about to get queer always true with this performance uh she oh god there's moments where she goes like she does this little gremlin voice that i love where she's like you know i'm not afraid to die and you're like oh my god hello uh she can go big in that way but also have these moments of like complete deficit it's just so fucking good she's so good but yeah norma i i think that what you just said is a great sort of bow on the norma conversation oh thanks but we've got a betty we've got a betty here we sure do we've got miss betty i like betty i like her i like i think she's got a good head on her shoulders i like you said before i like that she is and again i think it is just an element of because i just think of

like people i know and work with who grew up here tend to have a healthier attitude towards the sort of bullshit that takes place because it's just like you're brought up knowing it's bullshit right it seems like that is sort of where betty's coming from where she's referenced that she's like a third generation hollywood worker not a hollywood star and then we haven't even talked about her experience as an actor which i thought was a really really interesting narrative decision to just add that because it's like in like the space of a scene completely helps you understand where she's coming from and why her attitude. Like it was almost like she was spared this potential Norma future.

Right, right. family in the sense that her parents and grandparents worked in hollywood but were never in those huge roles either as performers or like directors yeah like lighting costuming stunt work stunt work yeah stuff like that so like she's a hollywood the real she comes from a hollywood family but it's not like nepotism necessarily it's not like all that ego is not present in her character and her kind of line of work. Then you learn that she, because she came from this, you know, like working class Hollywood family, it would maybe be expected that she would also work and, ooh, let's try to make her an actor. So her parents had her take like acting classes and all this stuff. And then when she went to do auditions and screen tests and things like that, it's mentioned that they didn't like her nose. So she had cosmetic surgery, it seems, to

quote unquote fix her nose or, you have surgery performed on it and then you know the casting people liked her nose now but then they didn't like her acting so she never made it as an actor right and it seems like this is something that she accepted and went to work as a script reader right but as she tells joe she's like, I don't want to do this forever. I'd like to advance in my career. And that's one of the main reasons she tries to like, strike a professional relationship with him because he says something like, he's like, thanks for your interest in my career. And she's like, no, it's not your career I'm interested in it's mine like I was hoping to get in on this make some kind of deal because I don't want to be a reader all my life

it seems like she wants to be a screenwriter right and it actually like is if she's quote unquote just a reader at this time it makes a lot of sense that she would try to find a writing partner who has at least had some work produced right to get her first screen credit and then you know like if she's smart kind of ditch joe and start doing her own thing right yeah what she's doing makes complete logical sense i love the story about her almost becoming an actor and then having that taken away but like she i think because she has a more grounded view of how brutal the industry is because she's grown up around it it's not this devastating ego blow like she's she's adaptable and that's why she survives and because of and

again it's like i think that there would have been a time where I would have watched Norma and Betty and thought that it's like suggested that one is adaptable and one isn't. And like, there's a good kind of woman and a bad kind of woman. But you still have all the information you need as to why Norma was not adaptable. She never got an opportunity to be adaptable. She became really famous when she was a kid. It's all she knows. Are there people who become really famous as kids who are adaptable people? Certainly.

Like it's always going to be a person to person thing. I think what is generally true is people who become famous very young and then are fairly well adjusted as adults tend to have a good support system around them, which Norma very much does not. It's not. So as exaggerated as her fate is, I do feel like you're given all of the information as to why Betty is comparatively well adjusted. I don't think it is a like youth equals good old equals bad situation. Then they add in this love story,

which is just like, I't know i think that this it undercuts like we've been saying for seven years adding a love story is not an inherently bad thing it's just like well what is it adding to the story i think that like you don't lose anything in this story if it is like a professional relationship dissolving and not a romantic one developing completely agree and that is like as close as i feel like you have to just a trope being a trope i agree because like the two main female characters in this movie both fall in love with joe and i'm like first of all why although i understand why norma and we already talked about this whereas like does she actually love him or he is useful you know what's going on there exactly like she probably you know thinks she loves him but i'm sure she has a pretty warped perception of what romantic love like healthy romantic love is yeah so she kind of had like

she loki had no problem killing him she the second he that is to me what indicates that you know i mean obviously taking into account the mental health cliff that she is falling off of the entire movie i think that that like demonstrates that this was not love it was like i want someone around me who will help preserve this reality that i live in and once he doesn't do that she kills him exactly that's not yeah it's that it's she's deeply lonely it seems and he's a young good-looking guy who comes along and he has also william holden like he's i mean he's hot yes so yeah it stands to reason why she would be drawn to him yeah but why betty is drawn to joe i don't quite get in a romantic way i can understand why she's like oh like this is someone who can potentially help me in my career and she's

not going about it in any sort of manipulative way like this is how just networking happens in hollywood where you're just like oh this is someone no and it's like she's not pretending that she's doing something she isn't she's very honest about right I mean in the same way where it's like it would be very easy for her to bullshit him and be like oh yeah I'm interested in your career but she's honest about it she's like no this is like a mutually beneficial thing And they're collaborating in a way that felt like progressive of like, you don't see women professionals acting that way in movies of this time very much. And so like, it's cool.

And then I don't know. Yeah, I guess it's like the only thing I can chalk it up to is like being 22. Like, I, you know, certainly like in speaking speaking from personal experience not out of the realm of possibility that a 22 year old can become infatuated with someone just because they're like older and kind of doing something they want to do and are nearby but i don't think it serves the story i don't think it serves her story i think it serves his. In a kind of male-centric writer way where it's like, oh, well, he has to make the choice between two women and it has to be a romantic choice where it doesn't. I think that the choice that he's making is ultimately a professional choice anyways, because he's only with Norma for his career. And like Betty is offering him a different version of that career i think

the choice is still like adding the romantic element is just like not necessary i mean it didn't take up so much of the plot that it derailed the movie for me it just felt like thrown in suddenly and i know that they were like flirting and vibing the whole movie i wouldn't have minded if it was just kind of left there or it's like they have this like horny I don't know I just hope she didn't go to Arizona and I also kind of felt bad for her boyfriend I was like that was he was so nice to Joe he's like yeah you can live at my house I'll do whatever you're my bud and then he's like all right time to hit on your girlfriend you're like come on men be better at being friends anyways yeah i think that the romantic element like did the least for me of any relationship

in the movie yeah i mean hollywood has been wedging in hetero romances for decades i know we see it here and it still happens to this day i wonder if that was like an original part because billy wilder's so funny and interesting and i just i really admire him and i know that probably there's something horrible i don't know about i mean i really admire him but I really love him and I like hearing about just like he was just a little rascal where like he would submit the pages for this script to get them approved a couple of pages at a time just to trick people and then he said he was adapting this from a text called a can of beans and they were like okay like he led people to

believe that he's like oh yeah it's based on this book i read called a can of beans which is so funny you're just like wow you really can just don't ask people who live here to read a book if you just tell them the book exists they're like yeah totally a can of beans i heard about that i just thought that was really funny yeah uh do you have anything else you want to touch on for this movie not really i just that norma engages in like as she's i guess seducing joe or like what however you want to define that or what predatory yes she is engaging in predatory behavior because there's that like line of voiceover narration from joe where you know she would be showing him one of her silent films and he says something like, you know, sometimes she'd clutch my arm, forgetting she was my employer.

And then, you know, that escalates, which I feel like you could argue is leaning into a trope about older women that they are inherently predatory because no one sees them as romantically viable people anymore. So, of course, they're going to engage in, you know, sexually predatory behavior. You're like, now listen. I don't know what exactly to make of it, but... I think that it is, like, i am inclined to agree with you and also like yeah like that older women will prey on younger women and that's like one of the few kinds of older women that you see or just like an older woman who is single there has to be this air of inherently like she's desperate right and it can't be like i don't know like you could even be an older woman and be lonely and

have it not translate to that behavior but i mean i guess the only thing and i'm obviously not trying to justify the behavior i think to contextualize the behavior i feel like that behavior is somewhat in line with norma's entitlement right to how she treats people so it didn't feel like out of step with the character but then that speaks to like well who is the character it's norma desmond she's a menace but also she is wounded and she is a product of her environment hurt people hurt people damn damn wow someone tell billy wilder that i i think that's all i have to i i just i love this movie i love how challenging it still is and i love how it interacts directly not even like just with like the history of hollywood up until this point in a really brilliant and smart way also edith head costumes just shouting that out oh

that's that's always a good detail but does it pass the bechdel test wow like low-key it does like i think i'm giving it the edge i think you could make the argument that you know the ground context is joe but there is a brief phone conversation there's it passes like once kind of back to back with like betty and her friend who we do get a name oh we learn her name at some point her roommate right who like drives her to norma's house yes she is weirdly given a name in the car when she's driving her either way we do get her name we could argue she's sort of like someone's on the phone that's important because it's norma oh yeah and then it also there's like two lines of dialogue at the beginning of that phone call that pass between norma and betty

before joe inevitably comes up right so it's a it's a loose soft pass i'm gonna give it but only because i just like this movie but it does demonstrate how little women interact in the movie but that's not what this movie is about if norma had more female friends yeah maybe she wouldn't be in this i think she'd be in better shape i think her life would be in better shape yeah but society you know conditions women to as we've talked about many times be in competition with each other and not have you know support and camaraderie so norma probably was just like although i think there are those scenes where she like invites other silent film era stars including buster keaton playing himself and a few other people that i didn't recognize who they were um but they were real silent film

stars yes yes and a couple of them are women so she does seem to have some friends who she plays bridge with but it doesn't seem like they tie i think that's like part of what makes that scene sad is like they're all together but they're all kind of like again makes me totally understand why silent film stars would be like fuck you billy wilder because it does sort of present the entire silent film actor generation is kind of like checked out and zonked yeah and just like drinking shuffling their thumbs around you know and i also understand why it's like oh well that's a fun part for buster keaton to take because he survived that era so it's like well you know he's fine so again i get why it's a challenging annoying thing yes in any case our nipple scale our nipple scale no one talks about

that yeah how come the nipple scale isn't the most famous media metric of all time which of course is our scale where we rate movies zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. It's true. Keeping in mind that this is a movie exclusively about white people and this white woman and her white privilege, which is in step with Hollywood at the time the time yes there was very very very little space for anyone who was not white yeah to achieve any kind of stardom in hollywood in this era but the fact remains that this is an entirely white movie about this very privileged white woman. In any case, the movie presents this very nuanced examination of what an industry like Hollywood does to people and particularly to women who are getting older and it acknowledges the various context that kind of creates

this kind of egomaniac character in norma and again i do think there could have been maybe a few more moments of more explicit examinations of that the movie presents it visually without being too explicit about it but again you know there's always the like you know you don't want your dialogue to be too on the nose and too preachy right and i think that also like part of the reason it may have been more obvious to audiences at the time as well. Sure. Right. Yeah. Cause this movie is old as shit.

It is very quite old, but even so the movie, you know, presents these things and whether or not it, how much judgment it is passing on Norma is not super clear to me. You could argue that. Also is still like kind of eye of the beholder-y like i don't know right because it's like she doesn't come off as very you know sympathetic or empathetic by the end on account of her murdering someone and then being like completely dissociating about it but also she's so iconic i know so but it's also not like a i don't know i think like a trope i'm getting burned out at right now in contemporary

movies is like just a kind of like good for her ending to a movie of like and then she killed him good for her and that is well we'll cover it eventually but that was like the end of poor things for me whereas like it's another you know good for her movie that i think like whatever whatever different discussion but like yes whether you like it or not this it's not good for her at the end of this movie it's actually quite bad for her it is not great for her but yeah yeah i don't know i i wish there was just and maybe this is just like you know us examining the movie in 2024 a movie from 75 years later oh my goodness yikes but i think if this movie not that it needs to be remade at all but if there was a more modern

future adaptations there's like like been Broadway adaptations. I think Glenn Close won a Tony for playing Norma Desmond, which I wish to God I could see. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. If there was a more modern retelling of this story or a similar story, I think that it would be more explicit about examining like gender bias and all these things that the movie isn't super explicit about but it's like

also i think like fundamentally hard to extract this movie from this time because of how even though it's like you can age up in history the things we're talking about where it's like well what there's the you know silent film stars you know someone who was famous 30 years ago you'd be like oh easy one-to-one is like a 90s sitcom actor that is considered washed up now and trying to adapt with the times but it's also so specific to like i don't know i think that that's why they're so like there was just an attempt to comment on this in babylon last year where it's like the jump from silent pictures to talk like it's just so metaphorically works so well right and it just reminds me that we still need to cover singing in the rain because that is also a movie about the transition from silent era movies to talkies and how a lot of actors

struggle to make that transition and are discarded along the way anyway sorry really quick so sunset blow i did know this because i was recently i don't know why like bi-annually i have to like watch every video that exists about glenn close i just love glenn close i mean and you're right to do that over the holiday break i was just like time has come. I need to once again watch 500 video essays about Glenn Close. So I knew that she had played Norma in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation from the early 90s. Whoa. And then so she played the part in 93 and 94.

And then again in 2016, 17, iconic. But do you know who is currently playing Norma Desmond on the West End is Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussy dolls and i just think that whoa i would go see that i kind of baffling to me but also yeah i'm in i'm in i want to see i want to see pussycat dolls boulevard bring it loosen up my buttons baby loosen up my buttons joe gillis yes well i will finally say what my nipple rating is after so much preamble want to give it 3.5 okay it's a very white movie but it is handling this subject matter with more nuance than movies from 50 or more years later handled this subject so it's cool and interesting in that way. It's really cool. So three and a half nipples.

And I will split them between Gloria Swanson, the actor who plays Betty, which is Nancy Olsen. And I'll give Billy Wilder, who hopefully was not problematic the way that basically everyone from that era was by default. I did a light scan. He said some kind of insulting things to Marilyn Monroe's intelligence that people feel one way or another about. And also, you know, he was the seven year itch director that did the famous skirt up shot you know he is not right he's not without sin but uh i unfortunately am a big old fan i want to give

this movie four that feels too high because of how cartoonish norma is but i also don't want to go much later i'm gonna go 3.75 because it's just vibes based i think this movie is fantastic i think that there are elements of it that feel studio notesy i hope like adding in a love story between betty and joe felt unnecessary especially because as i was watching it i was like betty could easily be a male character yeah and i don't wish that but just because of like it just felt like the layering on of the love story was not necessary as one of the few things i really don't like about the spoofy but norma is iconic again for all the complicated reasons we've talked about that also have to do with the production and the time you know is it reasonable that this is the best possible, you know, prestige part available to a woman over 50 at this time? No, I think that's incredibly fucked up, but it's an incredible part. And it's like, I feel like you, for the most part, and I know

we've had discussions of the shades of gray, you sort of within that but like you are given context for the ways in which norma is a product of her environment and it is not empathetic to her environment to the point where this movie actively makes a famous director look bad which is amazing i mean like i can't really think of a contemporary example of that happening in such an explicit way i like it's a you know big old cautionary tale about why it's a heap of garbage to work in the entertainment industry and you know fair enough i mean not wrong not untrue and i also i mean i think i know that billy wilder is kind of known or was known for a long time of being somewhat cynical in his outlook of the world where it's like, there's no suggestion on how to improve the entertainment industry,

but I don't think that that's the job of the movie. You know, I think that it really paints a bleak picture of the Hollywood system at this time. And like it works. And I think the fact that it is aged this well speaks to how little has actually changed true so i yeah i just i think this is a wonderful movie 3.75 nipples still got a lot to say gonna give one to norma she did what she had to do. I'm going to give one to Betty. I'm going to give one to, hmm.

I'm going to give one to Hawgye. Of course, Hawgye. Where's my Hawgye spinoff? Now that we're scraping the bottom of the barrel of IP. I'm like, Hawgye, what about that guy? Let's give him six seasons and a movie. I'm going to take back everything and give my three and a half nipples to the dead chimpanzee.

Oh, bless their heart. We don't know. And then I'll give my 0.75 to Billy Wilder because goddamn, I love him. I can't wait to cover the apartment. I can't wait to cover something like it hot. And that's Sunsetlevard baby i'm going to celebrate by walking down sunset boulevard and buying one diet coke yay that's my sunset boulevard walking down the street and getting a diet coke four times a day why because i can't have more than one soda at my house why obsessive compulsive disorder

fair i'm gonna walk down sunset boulevard and nerd melt used to be on sunset boulevard r.i.p folks it's a long street it's many miles i was like also the sunsetset Boulevard Norma's living on is not the Sunset Boulevard I live on. Not our Sunset Boulevard. No, we live on the pee-pee side of Sunset Boulevard. Yeah. But I love it. I imagine she lives in like the Beverly Hills. She's, yeah.

Brentwood, you know, all that stuff. If you take the two, if you're a bus head like myself, you take the two far enough, you'll get to Norma's zone. But yeah, we're closer to downtown. Anyways, you didn't ask. This is a great movie. I would highly recommend it. And also, it's streaming for free on the Internet Archive. If you haven't seen it before, you can watch it for free right now.

Anyways, that's our show. Happy New Year. You got a Shrek. You got a Sunset Boulevard. And next week, spoiler, You got a Shrek. You got a Sunset Boulevard. And next week, spoiler, you got May December. We're casting a wide net this year, so enjoy. Indeed.

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So we hope to see you there. Yes. And you can also go to tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast to grab some merch. So what you're going to want to do, grab some merch, wear it to the live shows, and then we'll take pictures together and it'll be so cute. Exactly. In conclusion, we love you. Happy New Year. Happy 2024.

It's going to be such a regular year. We can feel it. So normal. So norma. So norma. So normal. Goodbye. Bye bye. Bye-bye.

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