The Prestige TV Podcast - 'American Gigolo’ Premiere Recap

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Bill Simmons and Mallory Rubin dive into the series premiere of Showtime’s ‘American Gigolo’ remake starring Jon Berthal. Later, they give predictions on what to expect for the season. Hosts: Bill Simmons and Mallory Rubin Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, my name is Kevin Clark. I'm the host of a new football podcast called Slow Newsday. I want to tell you about it. On Mondays, Lindsay Jones and I will recap the weekend in football that was, as well as look ahead to what's next. On Wednesday, the normal Slow Newsday, the thing you've been watching for years, current players, current coaches, current analysts talking about the football world. And on Friday, it's a wild card.

Could be some college football. Could be more pro stuff. It's a video podcast so you can watch it on Spotify or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Follow on Spotify. It's Slow Newsday. Prestige TV podcast. My name is Bill Simmons. I'm here with the Mother of Dragons, Mallory Rubin.

They created this show just for her. It's the American Gigolo remake on Showtime. It is our guy, John Berthal, our beloved guy, playing a former male escort. Getting back into the business after spending time in jail is a remake of the Richard Gear movie. Can we talk about the Richard Gear movie first? Have you seen it? Did you watch it to prepare? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I think that movie is elite. So I was very nervous about this TV show because Paul Schrader, it's Gears breakout. Richard Gear, his breakout movie that leads to Officer and a gentleman and then a bizarre nine-year drought and then he turns around Pretty Woman. But there's a feel to that movie. It's a great L.A. movie.

It's got the Call Me, the Bondie song, just one of the most iconic songs from that era. And there's just something sleek and cool about it. So I was nervous that the show wouldn't be able to pull that off. What did you think? Did the show pull that off? The sleekness is a difficult thing specifically. I thought that the opening montage where we moved in and out, not only of time period, but of mood,

was specifically intended to assure people on that front. Hey, here's a little montage of a bunch of sex scenes and a bunch of shots of a convertible driving near water just in case you were worried. about whether we were going to do exactly that. With Blondie playing. Yeah, exactly. Here's the musical cues. And because it's this modern-day reinterpretation, trying to tap into that 80s energy was also a challenge,

but I actually thought they managed to do that while anchoring it in the present timeline. I agree with you. And I actually was way more interested in the present timeline than the flashback stuff. I mean, we'll talk about the flashback stuff. but I could have spent more time with him in prison, I'll be honest. Just Bernthal in prison, I feel like that could have been two episodes to how he navigated his surroundings there.

Maybe we'll get that in future episodes. This is just the premiere. We've only seen one. And we weaved in and out not only across the episode, but in like five minutes stretches, you would hit three different time periods. Right. So I wouldn't rule out future prison era flashbacks. I think those are inevitable probably.

It's clearly a formative time in his life. Well, we had four time periods because we have his last run at being a jiggleau before he goes to jail. We have jail. We have him coming out of jail. But then we also have him as a kid. Yes. Even within his childhood, we had multiple time frames. There's like young Johnny and then teen Johnny.

I never got lost. My only quibble, I guess, with the jumping around was Bernthal looked. the 15 years, he basically looked exactly the same. I might have gone with like six years, something like that. Let's start with Bernthal. So Richard Gear, one of the most conventionally handsome leading men we've had. My mom's number one favorite of all time. My mom hit on him in a New Canaan, a fundraiser once, and it's still like one of the highlights of her life.

Oh, my God. Also one of my mom's all-time favorites. Yeah, see, there's something about that, dude. And him playing a jigolo, I think, was one of the reasons. he's great in the movie. He's basically Richard Gear, but he's like, there's two Richard Gears.

There's the Richard Gear from that movie, then there's the Richard Gear from Internal Affairs. And those were like his two basically personas. So Bernthal, kind of different, different handsome. I actually think he's a handsome guy, but he's a handsome guy.

And like, I got in some fights in high school and when I was in the Army for two years. And I've seen some things. Like there's a ruggedness to him. So compare and contrasts Gere and Bernthal for you. I think you summed it up nicely.

Richard Gere is kind of a quintessential, a Hollywood, handsome, leading man. You talk to anybody's mom, they're going to list them right alongside Harrison Ford and Robert Redford. Oh, yeah. My mom would, right? And inside of American Gigolo in particular,

you have the kind of unvarnished sexiness of something like the workout scene hanging upside down from his. ankles in his apartment. Put that unloop for me on TV and I'm just content forever. But you also have the fancy suits, the glitzy car out on the town, knows how to order a cocktail. There's this like real allure. We also should not go through the podcast without remarking upon the fact that we get a solid, multi-minute stretch of him standing, completely nude, gazing out the window, side dick in full of view, talking about how he'll work for three hours to bring a woman to

So that's memorable. That's memorable. We haven't quite gotten that from the John Barronthal experience yet. But I think you're right that he has a palpable magnetic energy. He is just such a charismatic performance. And there's a rugged quality to him that really lends itself to this particular reinvention of the story, I think. Yeah, you get the feeling whether he's like this in real life or whether he just pulled

off with the character that this particular character in the TV show has a voracious sexual appetite. He pulled that vibe off that this guy likes to get it on. He likes to bang the boots. Now, you know, in the flashbacks, they go into some of the damage that might have led to, including, you want to talk about it now? Sure. Including the scene where he starts having sex with the neighbor, he seems like he's like, what, 14, 15? And that scene kind of pushes the envelope. For 2022, I was surprised.

They basically showed everything but him having sex of the neighbor. And, you know, that sets the tone for him to start getting pimped out. But it's a little Eddie Adams-ish in boogie nights, right? Everybody's got that one special talent. Maybe that was his one special talent. I don't know.

That was a, that was the big surprise to me. of the premiere just in terms of the way they were going to change the story, right? Introducing this element that Julian is Johnny and has this deeply horrifying and traumatic childhood and backstory where his neighbor was taking advantage of him and abusing him. And his mother was allowing this to happen, knew that this was happening. There's this scene later in the episode where we hear Johnny say that everybody knew what he was doing to pay the rent. And it's this really, like, horrifying thing.

And then his mom, who we had previously seen in the present-day timeline, him returned to and attempt to revisit and reconnect with, we see that she sold him, sold him to the queen when he was a teenage boy, sells him for an envelope full of cash into... Life is a sex worker. So this was a really horrifying aspect of the story. And it made me think of like every time you ask on rewatchables, you know, could this movie have been an eight or ten episode television show when they sat down and decided to adapt this, figuring out what the character's backstory was. And what led to this kind of life had to be one of the first things that they workshopped and identified as like a core distinction for this television.

show compared to the movie. I'm not positive. I love it. It's intense. But, you know, maybe they could have gone with plan B, which was this guy just liked to get it on and ended up getting framed for a murder, basically.

So that part's the same. In the movie, he gets framed by his, played by the Great Bill Duke. And in this one, it feels like we're heading toward him realizing he got framed by somebody. But there is a framing. They've leveled up here, though.

by having him in the bed covered in blood. Yeah. And he has this real doubt that he can't remember. And we learn about a later in the episode about a childhood incident where he also blacked out and genuinely doesn't remember this really traumatic moment. And so that fuels his sense of uncertainty where he actually is like, maybe this is a thing I did and I'm capable of doing. Or as Richard Gere in the film is like, I can tell you that I wasn't there at this time and did not do this thing.

Yeah. So that was an interesting distinction, too, the extent of the framing and the way that that really works itself into his psyche and his doubt. That also is the kind of, like, dramatic tension that I think will work over a multi-episode television show really well. I love the character wakes up covered in blood with the dead person next to them. Works every time. Most famously in Godfather, too, with Senator Geary.

Oh, my God. Yeah, Berthal did a good job of being horrified. A couple of my notes. Yeah. The name Julian. Yeah. Great name for TV characters, lead singers, and baseball closers. I don't know what else for whatever purposes there are for Julian, but those are my top three.

Maybe it was supermodel. Wide receiver is not number one on your list? A wide receiver, yeah. I guess wide receiver? Yeah. Just a great name. I wrote down prison Bernthal serving food with some prison berthal of facial hair. But then we got to scene play basketball.

Pretty convincing. Yeah. The food line scene was amazing. And that could have absolutely been an entire episode. Yeah, I hope we go back. Hopefully we'll go back to the prison. And then the other shocker was old Rosie O'Donnell as the, as... Detective Sunday.

Yeah. I didn't even know she still acted. I thought she was pretty good, though. It was awesome to see Rosie. Yeah. I wasn't sold on her apology to him, but... There was definitely more I thought I should tell you unless I would like to sincerely apologize for robbing you of these 15 years of your life.

Yeah. My bad. I'm going to sleep poorly tonight. No, we didn't get that at all. The other big surprise for me was the great Gretchen Mall, who was terrible in Rounders, and it was a terrible character, and we've litigated it with Coppulman and Levine and Gratlin and the ringer and we've talked about it forever. And there was a vanity fair cover, and she almost became like the QB that got too much hype

in year two and didn't do that well. and then everybody says, that QB sucks. And then she kind of patched together a pretty good career. I thought she was great in this pilot episode. Like, first of all, she looks fantastic. She is really aged really nicely as just an actress. And there's something classy about her, but a little bit of damage there too that you feel like.

But that was the big surprise for me. I just really liked all the scenes she was in. I thought she was great with Bernthal, too. She's an old-timer. anytime you want to revisit her work on Boardwalk Empire, I'm around. Just waiting for the call. One of the truly most shocking television characters

in the history of pop culture. I also thought that she was great in this. And yeah, the chemistry that she and Berenthal had together was like crackling. And we have these really intense moments with them across multiple timelines. I loved the little meat cute on the beach. Like you really do buy right away

that these two people are just drawn to each other. And that actually is something they had to get right right away because you have to believe that somebody, you know, we switch from the political realm of the film to tech bro energy, right? With the husband in the adaptation, which I thought was a really smart, clever update. You have to believe that she would follow him,

that she would follow him into that room in the club scene. And you buy it. the husband just wasn't keeping her feet tingly. Leaving the door open for America Jigolo to step in. I thought they were, I really thought they were great together. And one of the reasons I really, the original movie is a little flawed,

but I do think it's a rewatchable. Like, I have considered doing it. And the biggest reason is the Richard Gear, Lauren Hutton chemistry. And Lauren Hutton, I just feel like is a demigod. I just, one of the all-time,

I would just put her with Zeus and pick some Greek gods from all time. Just one of the best-looking person who ever existed. It made me so mad when she covered her space. The space was like, that pushed her over the top. I never understood why her movie career wasn't bigger. Her and Maude Adams were the two from the 70s and 80s. I just felt like, why weren't they bigger stars?

But she's awesome in American Giglo. And they had the same kind of thing. So I feel like if the chemistry with Bernthal and Gretchenol doesn't work, the show doesn't work. So at least we have that. We have some good foundations. I see a glimmer in your eyes. I don't know if you've since the affair that you've had a show like this that

check so many of your checklist boxes. Oh, my God. I have felt an emptiness inside since the affair concluded, as you know. Every now and then, I think, is it time? Is it time to dive into a completely ill-advised five-season rewatch for literally no reason? And I can't quite bring myself to do it, but now I don't have to. And that's a gift. That's a gift.

And same channel, showtime. Same kind of, I do feel like they're going for, I don't know what the word would be. I guess the same corner that the affair lived on, which are flawed characters, some moments and scenes that don't maybe totally make sense in the big picture, but it doesn't really matter. And then really chemistry. Yes. And a mystery. Because there is a mystery. There's a conspiracy that we are going to parse the clues and try to figure out how it will unfold and maybe our first guess will just end up being the right one and that's okay. That is okay. The melding and entwining plot lines and tones when you're also trying to juggle so many different timelines, it was a lot in the first episode. But I agree with what you said that it actually felt like fairly well balanced and acceptable. because they're not really, they're not making you work too hard for any of it.

And I don't mean that as in a dismissive way. I mean it is a compliment. Like you're kind of in real time when Detective Sunday is visiting the hired killer. You're, okay, I'm filing this away. What might this mean? When Michelle pushes Johnny slash Julian away and says, he'll do it again. Okay, we file that away. You know, the look on Lorenzo's face when Julian asks him to take him to

the queen, okay, we file that away. But we're also just like sinking into the silk sheets for a multiple minute flashback of just two people lying in bed rubbing their noses against each other. And it's all kind

of working together in harmony. We didn't mention the show was written and created and basically the showrunner of it is this guy, David Hollander. So he was was a Ray Donovan guy.

And did that, was involved in that show, The Guardian. But obviously a guy's showtime felt comfortable. We also didn't mention Wayne Brady. Yeah. It's the pimp. Wayne Brady has done a really nice job of kind of flipping the perception of whatever Wayne Brady was. And a couple, like, the Chappelle sketch, obviously, that was like a seminal moment

for him. But for the most part, it feels like there's a darkness lurking Wayne Brady. I'm not even sure there is, but he's done a nice job of that. So him playing a pimp was a calculated career move that I liked. He was great in the first episode and unlocked a lot of the secret sauce of what they're trying to, trying to maintain this delicate balance where you're thinking about trying to solve the riddle, solve the puzzle of what actually happened, but mostly you're there for the vibes. Like, I thought his character and their relationship summed up that balance well because he's kept the car.

tuned up in the garage ready. He's got this like gorgeous ocean front home, but also is putting sheets on a couch instead of offering up some sort of guest suites. You're like, okay, what's what exactly is going on here? And he's happy to to shoe everybody away at the club to welcome Julian in for whatever he needs at the exact moment. But the tension and the car ride over to the queen is so palpable that you can't help but let the suspicion seep in right away. So I thought that their relationship kind of nicely captured the duality of what the show is trying to achieve. All right.

Predictions. Do we get a Bernthal side dick scene? Where would you put the odds on? Two to one? If we don't, then I don't know what we're doing here. I'm sorry. Because if they're going to pay this many homages to the movie, there has to be the standing naked. I asked this because this, I already know, as you know, my mom is just a complete lunatic.

She's insane. Like her favorite actor is Richard Gear. Her, The Affair was one of her favorite shows ever. She's just. She has great taste. A very strange lady. She's going to absolutely love this show. And I cannot wait.

I wonder if we could do for a future prestige. I bet we can pull her on as a co-host. Oh, my God. Because she's going to have a lot of thoughts. but it scares me to say this, but I think one of her notes would be, I don't think they went far enough with the sex stuff.

Oh, I agree. I think they could have dialed it up. It was like almost the PG-13 version of where they could have gone. That would be one of her first three notes to me, and then I'm going to pour hydrochloric acid on my face. Well, I'm going to be on her team and in her camp because she's right.

She's right. In the present day timeline, we need more sex. We definitely need more sex. Think back to the film. One of the strangest, most surreal but also most hypnotic sequences in movie history. I know what you're going to say with the husband.

The sex scene, no, not that one. The Michelle, that one also, but the Michelle Julian scene that unfolds. Basically, it looks like Michelle is standing in front of the pale blue backdrop that they take your NFL Combine photo at. Yeah. Yeah. And we just have like close up camera angles of people standing still and heads slowly moving up bodies and here's a kneecap and what limb is this? I can't really tell. And it goes on for minutes and you're like, should I have been on LSD while I was watching this? Probably. We absolutely

need more scenes like that in this show. Has to happen. Well, we also need a scene like the husband hiring him to in the movie to have sex with basically his seems like half dead wife. She's kind of lying on the bed and he's there and it's just super weird. And it's one of the other. It's one of of those scenes I probably shouldn't have seen when I was like 11 years old watching WHT at my stepdad's house. With that age, when they have no idea you're watching the movie that you shouldn't be watching. And I'm like,

what's going on here? Dad, why is Richard Gear petting this woman and saying, I know what you like. I know what you need? I'm going to go do my sixth grade homework now. My guess is they're going to get dark with some of the sex stuff. But I also, in 2022,

in this whole, like, intimacy coordinator era. I wonder, like, where the lines are with this stuff. You know, and I'm sure, like, with House of Dragons, same thing, right? House of the Dragon? House of the Dragon. House of the Dragon. Can I call it House of Dragons? That's in the 1100s, right?

Yeah, I'm glad that you, I'm glad that you paid attention to the fact that it's a prequel. And you know, as you've said many times, the Game of Thrones is set in the 1300s. So, yeah, great work. Is this 1100s or 1,200s? Yeah, two, six. centuries before Game of Thrones. You nailed it. Did you hear my theory on House of the Dragon that they should have, the HBO 2 channel should just have all graphics for dumb people like me who don't know what's going on?

Almost like the Amazon X-ray Vision, where it's just constantly- Character names. Yeah, it's just constant, it's just constant Kiron, so I know who's who. I mean, it's not the worst idea I've ever heard. Why not? Why not? What's running on HBO2? Chris Ryan covers this show professionally. still believes there's only one dragon in the show, even though we've seen three and they're all different colors.

And they all have different shapes and names and writers. So I'm sure Chris would like this. So on HBO 2, Dragon number three comes in and it's just Kyron as like, this is dragon number three, Bob, or whatever they named the dragons. Bob. Bob. Yeah. Seesmoke, but close.

Yeah, close. Predictions for the next six episodes of American Jingle. First of all, do you think we're going to like this show that we end up just recapping it every week, even though it's probably a couple of complete waste of both of our time. A 15 to 20 minute recap every week wouldn't rule it out. Wouldn't rule it out. As soon as we fire up the second episode, I think we'll feel the poll. Predictions, I want to throw one your way. Okay.

This can't happen soon because we need to let the mystery play out. However, given how many time periods we've been in and given the affair touchstone at the heart of this experience, a future time. timeline at some point. Will we flash forward? Will we be sitting on the beach with adult Julian at some point trying to then reverse engineer how he got there? That's pretty good. So episode six takes place in like 2025? No.

Like 2050. Old Julian. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. The way we got old Noah selling lobster. Bisk in my talk.

Well, I mean, that was one of the craziest decisions ever made in a television show. My prediction is I think Gretchen Mal's husband will probably die by episode six and either it'll be one

of those he's abusive and self-defense and she gets murdered and then Berthal has to help her or she just decides I hate this guy I'm killing him. Oh. Or he dies mysteriously, and it seems like it might be Bernthal and Gretchen Mal, but

actually he's got these weird business interests in, like, Qatar, and somebody else killed them, but it seems like, and it'll just be a mystery of who killed him. I don't think that guy makes it out of season one. You and I have only watched the first episode, but that's one of my guesses. I like it. We've been introduced to his henchman because of the situation with their son, sleeping with teacher. So that's the clue. When you have a henchman, you're not totally on the level with your business interested. Like one of whom is there exclusively. Yeah, exclusive henchmen

means somethings up. Yeah. That's it. Right. Yeah. But so, and again, we have no idea. Do you, are you assuming based on what Michelle said, the, the, the movie's influence on the show, all of the clues that the Richard Stratton character is the one. who organized the frame job in the first place, perhaps in conjunction with Isabel or Lorenzo? Or do you think that's just what they want us to think and know we will be thinking? And it's actually going to be something else. So I think it's something else, but they're going to set us up to think that's what it is.

And then when he dies, there's going to be all these breadcrumbs. But almost like a second framing. You know, why not have another frame? I like this. Through a second one in there. But I think that guy. we'll dive into a little bit like taken three with Liam Neeson

where the the second husband, Fomke Jansen's second husband ended up being like the bad person in it. I think that the unnecessary 24-7 henchman to me is always a red flag. Okay, here's my prediction on the henchman front.

Michelle will ultimately ask Julian to help her find Colin, the runaway son. They will then run into the henchmen out on the road. And in order to defend the shell in a moment of conflict, Julian will actually commit a murder. Interesting.

I like it. Yeah. And then so and what is the Queens role in all of this? So that was the character, that was the most ambiguous character, I think. Yes, Isabel, who we first meet as a haunting child at the, at the pool side. Yeah, she's basically the two girls from the shining elevator just put outdoors in a little round chair.

Oh my God. And when Julian arrives at the Queen's house toward the end of the episode, Olga is, at least they want us to think no longer capable of being the mastermind and in fact, a prisoner in her own home. We have entered the Isabel era,

but was she was she pulling the strings at that point or has she seized an opportunity to move in? Well, I also am not sure how old that person is as a grown-up because the little girl in the chair seems like she's six. Yeah, that's a small kid, eight maybe, yeah. And 15 years have passed, so she's supposed to be 22.

More time has passed than that, though, because the 15 years is the prison. So that's from the murder. So maybe it's like 18 years. Because he was, how much time passed from when he first arrived in California to when he eventually was framed and went to jail? We've got another decade in there.

Good point. So she might be like 2930. Yeah. All right. I can't wait. Yeah. American Chiglow. I was really worried it was going to be terrible.

And I felt the opposite. I can't wait. I feel like the affairs void has been filled finally after three long agonizing years for Mallory Ribbon. And I can't wait to get my mom's review. Who knows? We might be back for episode two. Thanks to Jonathan Kerman for producing. Thanks to Mallory Rubin.

Thanks to Showtime for creating such a weird goofy show. And we'll see you around. And don't forget to listen to Mallory on the Ring ofverse podcast, Bring It Down, House of the Dragon, every Sunday night right after it goes out. Thanks.