This Had Oscar Buzz - 113 – Running With Scissors

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Annette Bening remains one of our most beloved actresses without an Oscar, and one of the most notorious (assumed) second place finalists after losing to Hilary Swank twice. This week, we’re looking at her turn as a mentally ill poet and mother in 2006′s Running With Scissors, adapted from the famously outrageous memoir by Augusten Burroughs. … Continue reading "113 – Running With Scissors"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada water. Where do I begin to tell the story of how my mother left me? Your mother is in a state of crisis.

What is this? Adoption papers. Dr. Finch has agreed to become your legal guardian. You're giving me away to your shrink? No doctor lives here. Shh. Dr. Finch is sort of an unusual shrink. Would you like some of these?

What are they? Just got some samples in the mail, so I don't know. Words cannot describe these people. Just a little kibble. It's for dogs. Well, I guess you're afraid to try new things, August. him. Dr. Finch has two daughters. Of the daughters, Hope is by far Finch's favorite. I know this because... Hope, you are by far my favorite daughter. And then there's Natalie. Are you ready?

For what? Play doctor. What are you guys doing? Electroshock therapy. Awesome. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast putting Natalie Portman to the question about why the hell she wore those fake teeth. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations. but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed.

I'm here, as always, with my poetry circle protege, Chris File. Hello, Chris. Good morning, Joe. Are you tapped into your creative unconscious? I am very much tapped into my creative unconscious. Oh, boy. This movie is... I'm so thrilled to hear your opinion on every single bit of this,

because I've seen this movie more than once and you, I believe, have not seen this movie and we haven't discussed anything since you've watched it. I had definitely seen it before this time, but only the once, so this was just my second time watching the movie. As we will get into, I was a big fan of the book of the Augustine Burroughs memoir, as was I.

I read it at a very interesting slash crucial part of my life where I had just come out. I was sort of a late coming out. I didn't come out until after college. and I didn't really have this like long extended clandestine closeted life. When I was closeted, I pretty much kept that shit under wraps. So I think my coming out, I had really started to investigate a lot of queer art. I think that was around the time that I saw Hedwig the movie for the first time and really sort of like started to let myself

in on a lot of these sort of queer texts in certain ways and this was definitely one this was the memoir running with scissors really popular around that time in the early into mid-aughts we will put it in all caps at that time

yes oh yes for sure like it's definitely one where like hindsight really has a much more sort of jaundiced eye towards that we'll get into it get into it. Um, but I, I remember being thoroughly fascinated with it. And then not too long after they announced the movie adaptation. And they announced that it was going to be Ryan Murphy, who at that time, I had, I mean, speaking of getting into allowing myself to explore sort of

queer texts, I had already seen, uh, his WB series popular, which was very, especially for its time, very queer, very sort of, uh, can't be, although he probably would object to that term for that show. Um, I loved it. I didn't watch it while it aired, but I watched it not too long after when it was on, uh, available on DVD. And I think I, I think I rented those discs through Netflix. I think that was one of like my early Netflix TV show binges, um, that and the early first season of 24, um, was super, super, super into popular. and then it was also into niptuck, although in a less, like, I loved popular. It's tough to love niptuck just because it's so...

Once again, at that time, we liked niptuck. Right. I will still say, I still look back on niptuck, and I feel like there was a lot, it was very interesting, fascinating television, probably a lot of stuff, certainly a lot of stuff that we would now look back on poorly. It's the kind of, like, high-end trash that I wish Ryan Murphy made now. Well, we'll certainly get into the Ryan Murphy of it all. Right, right.

When we get into it, I think there's a lot to talk about. I think I will probably be doing a good bit of defense attorney work, working against prosecutor file here. Fantastic, fantastic. I will be, I will be the DA prosecutor. You will be, yes, you will be the, um, uh, Oh, what's, oh, no, she was a defense attorney. I was trying to think of law and order. This is primal fear.

I and Laura Linney, you are Richard Gere. There we go. And the murderer is Ryan Murphy. The multiple personality murder. Well, we'll get into questions of possible murder when we talk about the Bill Condon story, which I will bring up for sure. Amazing. Yeah, but yeah, this was. a book, and then, so then this movie, I was incredibly interested in seeing how it turned out.

It had a long development history because the, like, first announcement of the movie, which I think happened around, I forget when it would have been first announced, but it would have been, like, hours far from heaven era, Julianne Moore. So I'm, like, fully in the tank for, like, Julianne Moore. everything, obviously I still am, but like, waiting on bated breath with anything that is announced that she will be involved in. And this came out. And so, of course, I immediately had to read the book so that I would know. Yeah, Julianne Moore was attached to this for quite a long time. I feel like Annette Benning didn't get cast until pretty late in the development process. And, yeah, I feel like this is one of the... those books where you could see where somebody in Hollywood would have read this book and

immediately been like, this is a movie, because there's so much peculiarness to everything, just the idea of this family, the Finch family, and all its many quirks, and then this very fraught relationship, I know I say fraught a lot, I apologize, between this, you know, boy and his mother and obviously the Deirdre character is incredibly eccentric slash damaged slash damaging right which is like seems like pretty much catnip I when we get into it I'll talk about the fact that I think the gulf between what makes the book special and compelling and good and what makes what they went for in this movie I think just in terms of like sheer conception, I think there was, there's a disconnect that really dooms the movie in that I think

what is special about the book, to me at least in my memory, and I didn't go and reread it, but I know I'm sort of fascinated to reread it. What was fascinating about the book to me was Augustine, was about how all of these circumstances in his life, the Finches, his mother, everything, how he processed that and how he sort of, how all of that helped make him, into the person he was and helped him sort of like grow into himself and and realize things about himself and like to me the thing about auguston burroughs and reading his memoirs is always um his perspective is what's fascinating not always not always good not always you know admirable but fascinating especially to me as i said um being being just sort of recently

out and I didn't know gay people. Like, weirdly enough, like, this was a very early experience sort of like seeing the world through the eyes of another gay person. A very, very important. A contemporary gay person as well. Exactly, exactly. So, and I think what the movie does is,

and it's kind of surprising because Ryan Murphy, and we'll get into this, once we get past the plot description, Ryan Murphy brings a lot of his own self into this movie. Yeah, there's stuff that is, that diverges from the book, that apparently Ryan Murphy infused some of his own experiences into it.

But it fits in a lot of ways. Like there's a lot of Ryan Murphy's childhood that fits in with Augustine Burroughs's, or at least the version of Augustine Burroughs' childhood that he puts into his memoir. But I think what the disconnect is, is that the movie treats this story as a story about a mother with issues and a really weird family and puts this kind of like Augustine the character

is a narrator in this but he's not he's in many ways not the main driver of what happens in the movie like he is an observer of so much of this movie and it's you don't get into his character and I think part of that is the limitations of doing a movie where if you do this story as a film

you're really limited by the fact that you have to funnel this all through a very young actor who probably is, you know, as, and I don't think Joseph Cross is bad in this, but like, it's, it's tough to be a match to this material when you're that young of an actor. And I think the movie instead just decides to be about, in the Finch family really weird, isn't Deirdre, you know, doing the most? And to me, that robs the movie, the story of everything that makes it interesting. Mm-hmm. Because so much of what's interesting on the page and this memoir is his point of view and his kind of very dry, acerbic, like, a perspective on everything that had previously happened to him. And, like, of course, that is, like, exacerbated by history. So it's like, was he necessarily a teenager who viewed these things this way? You don't know. But, like, to kind of piggyback on what you're saying, it's like, it just makes him so, uh, just like a vessel for all of these other people's story in the movie,

because he never really has much of a point of view. Right. Like in the story, of the Finches, the only one who really, like, stands out as a character, like, as a real character is Natalie. Like, that's, like, to the point where I remember being very surprised that they cast Gwyneth Paltrow as Hope, because it was like, Hope is not really a character in the book.

Like, Hope is there. Yeah, she was like the second person cast or something. thing. Right. And this is, of course, the origin story of Ryan Murphy. Well, not really the origins, because the origin story goes back to popular, where, like, that show was obsessed with Gwyneth Paltrow as a avatar of fame and glamour, right? But, like, this was the first project he ever worked on with Gwyneth Paltrow, and obviously that relationship would continue throughout his further, um, shows and projects. But, um... All the way to, uh, the Gwyneth resurgence of singing Celo Green on Glee.

Well, right. Yes. and also her being the only good thing about the politician. She's so fantastic on that show, and the rest of that show does not deserve her. Maybe we'll get into that. There's a lot of Ryan Murphy to get into. We probably won't cover it all. But yeah, I was surprised that they would cast such a major actress as... Also, by the way, this is the weirdest Shakespeare and Love Reunion I have ever come across,

is Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fines both being in this movie. barely interacting in this movie except for him to say like horribly like aggressive gendered comments to her but I think the fact that they cast

the role of hope with Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty emblematic of the problems with the movie which is it really thinks this movie is about the Finch family more than it is I think it also has like this weird like

sentimentality. That's not not there in the book, especially towards the end. But it's a very Ryan Murphy tonal imbalance that we will also get into. Yes. There's going to be a lot to talk about. We've got a lot of

sort of big box topics that we'll get into for sure. Do we want to sort of lay out the basics and then we'll go into the plot description? Sure. Why not? Let's do it. All right. So we are talking about the 2006 film Running with Scissors,

directed by Ryan Murphy, written by Ryan Murphy based on the memoir by Augustine Burroughs, starring Annette Benning, Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, Evan Rachel Wood,

Jill Claiburg, Joseph Fines, Alec Baldwin, Gabriel Union, and introducing Kristen Genoeth as herself, I don't know. As Fern.

It's Fern. Oh, God, Fern. Fern the pastor's wife. As secret lesbian Fern Fern. Exactly. Aren't all ferns, secret lesbian fern. Okay, premiered on October 27th, 2006.

There was a book when I was younger where the main character was named fern, and now I can't remember what that was. I never read that book. The red fern's a character, right? I don't know, I never read where the red fern grows, maybe. It's an odd title for a book about a character named Furn. It's about Soviet plants.

fascinating. It's about Stalin's garden and his secret passion for gardening. And yes, where the red fern grows. Well done. Christopher, would you like to stop thinking about communist gardens for one second? Yeah. And deliver a 60-second plot description. Oh, boy. Sure. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's print. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's All right. All right, Catherine. Ready? Yes. All right. One minute for running with scissors starts now. All right. So we meet the teen Gaby Augustin Burroughs. His mother is named Deirdre. She has a whole lot of mental health problems. And her husband leaves her and Augustin and kind of abandons them. He's also an alcoholic. Like, anyway, her therapist, which is Dr. Finch, has this whole, like, crazy house, and he ends up treating her over medicating her, blah, blah, blah, blah, eventually he takes, he adopts Augustin and Deirdre decides she cannot no longer care for him. So he ends up in this very eccentric house of a lot of mentally unwell people, including Hope, as we ever mentioned, who ends up, like, cooking the cat.

they also like dr finch thinks that god speaks to him through his shit um they uh he also enters into a uh abusive relationship with an older man in the family who uh sexually molests him and then eventually augustin's like you know what eff this and moves to new york city f this indeed jill clayberg says bye bye to him at the train station okay jill clayberg is i like jill clayberg in this movie even though it asks the most of absurd stuff of her and like that is maybe the character even more so than hope it kind of feels like that gets really expanded from the book into this whole other like the movie becomes about like secondary mothers who take care of you it feels like the movie really needs somebody

to be kind to to augustin yeah yeah this was the character that they chose this was one of those biographical details, though, from Ryan Murphy's life that when I read, I read that New Yorker profile of him before we recorded this, re-read that New Yorker profile, about how he was very close with his grandmother

and his grandmother was very into dark shadows, and we see this one point where Jill Claiburg's character is watching dark shadows. I think we also get a lot of Ryan Murphy's father in the Alec Baldwin character in this book, where I correct

me if I'm wrong, but I feel like that father was absent for the majority of the book. Yeah, I don't think it ever really revisits him. And that's because Augustine Burroughs wrote a whole other book about his father who was, like, a violent alcoholic, was very abusive. Right. So Ryan Murphy. Yeah. Ryan Murphy also had an abusive father, I think, but I think the parts in this movie where Alec Baldwin sort of looks at young Augustine and says, you know, I don't see any of myself in you and sort of, that is almost verbatim, a quote

from Ryan Murphy's father. And so there's a lot of that there's a lot of dovetailing of their experiences. And I think one of the things that always not necessarily has me on Ryan Murphy's side, but like I always tend to give Ryan Murphy a lot of rope, which is his experiences were so formative to him, his experiences of being this sort of very particular, very, you know, into fine things.

And there's, I want to avoid the term pathology, but there is a way that, like, gay kids are reared because they are hated by their parents in a lot of ways, that forms their personality and forms a lot of sort of not bad personality habits but like personality habits that are more that cause you to view the world as a hostile place

and I think a lot of what Ryan Murphy comes from is he views the world as essentially a hostile place and even when he's writing things that are more or less happy they come across as sort of aggressively manufactured or almost like so so extreme that you can't quite trust it do you know what I mean and I think his world

It should all manned fast really interestingly at the end of the year when we get a sunshiny musical The Prom from him Right but that's but this and the stuff with Glee too where like Glee has this sort of like veneer of everyone's coming together, everyone's, you know, expressing their individuality and But in a hard world or like very harsh. A very harsh world, a very, a world where like, you know, I don't know, his, and I think

this is a thing that has somewhat softened in him as his career has gone on. I think also it has, he's allowed his collaborators to sort of help him mold this worldview. I think all of his collaborations with Janet Mock recently have become a lot more sort of hopeful. I think a lot of people got down on Hollywood last year for being, or maybe it was this year, who knows what years are anymore, for being so unrealistically Sunnyside about this kind of alternate path for Hollywood to have taken and to have become more inclusive. But I think that kind of stuff it fits in with the shows that he's collaborated with Janet Mock on recently, where Pose is sort of like this too,

where it takes this sort of horrible circumstance and finds this defiant, hopeful path in them. Anyway, I'm getting far, far, far away from our central subject. I want to talk about, I want to start with Augustine Burroughs, and you had said before we'd started recording, I was sort of, I didn't quite know this about you, that you were very into his memoirs and his writings. Again, all caps at the time.

Sure. Well, we'll go into this, though. Talk about this. Okay, so the thing about Augustine Burroughs, he has, like, a lot of books. And, like, the other really famous one besides this one, and I guess the really successful one is dry, which charts his drug and alcohol abuse struggles

and his, like, journey to spriety. Uh, this, I mean, like, I probably read this book at least twice. I was really into it, not just because I was coming to it as a Julianne Moore fan, um, expecting her to play this role. But this is also the era of memoir that, uh, its veracity comes into question. Right. Obviously, James Frey being the huge example of this. I remember after the James Frye, uh, controversy happened. He was the author of a million little pieces. He went on Oprah. It turns out he fabricated a lot of that story. Oprah got very embarrassed and then called him back on her show to essentially scold him for an hour, and it was really something. And by that point, I think Augustine Burroughs had already published both running with scissors and dry, but I remember reading somewhere, it must have been, I can't remember whether, because there wasn't Twitter at the time. But somebody

who was just like, wow, after this whole A Million Little Pieces thing, Augustine Burroughs is being suspiciously quiet about everything. But he did kind of emerge from it unscathed. Like, he's published many books since then, including the one about his father. But

he was actually sued by the real life family, and he had already changed their names and such, but apparently, like, locals knew that he was talking about them. And the terms that which they settled, because both Sony Pictures and the publishing company settled with this family, it didn't really rescind anything that he claims in the book, other than to acknowledge that they feel like they had a different experience. Yeah. So it's like he has kind of emerged unscathed from this, but like,

Part of the whole selling point of this book is some of the outrageous details that he said happened to him while living in this household. Like, it's the whole selling point of the book that, like, we can't believe that it's true. Well, yes. So maybe that's part of it. Like, that was part of the appeal for us is that, like, we were already, like, questioning this and he was sticking by it. I think, I mean, and this goes into issues that are probably well above my level. in terms to talk about, in terms of the literary industry. But I think the thing with a million little pieces that felt so almost not quite dangerous,

but particularly villainous was, it was talking about drug and alcohol recovery in a very specific sort of prescriptive way that, like, if you are. And if you're fabricating this, then you could be doing active harm to people. people who are trying to begin to recovery. And I know that, like, Dry was, as you said, about his experiences with drug and alcohol abuse, but it wasn't like, um, I got out of it and here's how you can to kind of a thing that I think was a little bit of the angle. And certainly was the angle that like Oprah promoted a million little pieces, a million little, what is it?

It's a million little pieces, right? I get that confused with the title of the ABC show that I think it's called a million little things that I've never seen. Um, and I think around this time also, generally was the J.T. LaRoy thing, which also was a fabrication, but that also felt like an ongoing thing where we were sort of being literally like sold this fabricated person as a celebrity. Yeah, that was performance. Whereas I feel like with Augustine Burroughs's memoirs, and I think maybe this is why it was never sort of like hauled out in front of the court of public opinion at any

point, which is you could just call these novels and they would lose none of their impact to me. I get what you're saying about like a selling point that like this, you know, I can't believe this is a true story. This is a popular book because of the excessiveness of it, of the outlandishness of it. Yeah, but I do feel like I don't think it loses any of its potency. Like I watch a movie like Running with Scissors and I don't ever have the sense that any of this actually literally happened. It feels very, very fictional to me. And I think if you, if, you know, I think the fact that running with scissors was sold as a memoir, I think you're right in terms of,

like, there's a hook to it, but I don't think the substance of it or the enjoyment of it changes much. I don't, if it would be different if like Augustine Burroughs had like then, like, gotten, um, I don't know, like money from people feeling bad for, you know what I mean? for the way he grew up or something like that, or had some sort of, like, fraudulent charity or something like that. Like, I think, ultimately, the line between memoir and fiction to me feels so fundamentally blurable anyway that I don't think I would have cared as much.

I think, I don't know, anyway, I think, to me, a novelist can put so much of the, their own life and experiences into a story anyway, and it can be autobiographical while still being fictional, that might as well be, that's how I interpret Augustine Burroughs' work, right? Because here's the thing is the choices, because he's written so many books, like every time I look at the list of books that he's written and that they're all memoirs, or at least most of them are memoirs, I'm like, well, now you're into like nine or ten books, right? nine or ten memoirs at this point. So the choices are either you are a quasi-fabulous and they're

sort of like, you know, making up a lot of this up, or you are legitimately the most interesting person who has ever lived, whose every waking moment something fantastical is happening to and just wildly interesting. It becomes more about how have you survived and then that takes on its own life. And it's just like, I can't believe all of these things keep happening to you that you now must like must write another memoir because like well once again all of the craziest things have happened to me or that you are the kind of person who lives your life as if you are writing the novel of your life as you live it where which i sort of just compare to um a real housewife who like people talk about those shows as being scripted and i always have to be like

it's not that they're scripted it's that these women have been conditioned to live their lives like they're on a primetime soap opera, and that's just their lives. That's just how they behave now. They behave like characters that they are writing as they go about their lives. Their brains are re-hardwired to always be producing. And I do feel like if you met Augustin Burroughs in real life, that would probably be closer to the truth than it is far away from it. Noted Real Housewife of Literature Augustin Burroughs is what you say. Kind of. And And it's just, and I remember, because I think I read running with scissors, and I read Dry, and I think I read maybe the one that came after that, and then maybe stopped.

Like when he pivoted more towards just like essay books. Right. And I do feel like there was a point in Dry. There is a Sedaris comparison to be made for sure. But I think much as I loved Dry and was sort of riveted by it, that's another one I think I would like to go back and read again. I remember feeling like, as I was reading it, I was like, this is fascinating. I don't think I would ever want to know Augustine Burroughs in real life, just because he seemed like somebody, again, who was like always, who would, you know, was living his life so that he could write his next memoir. And there was something caustic and harmful about him and the way he treated other people as supporting players in his own life, which I,

also kind of is how I feel about Ryan Murphy. Not that Ryan Murphy writes about his own life so much, but, like, that... That's how he treats his characters. Yeah, and like, yes, yes. And, I mean, all of these people he works with, Ryan Murphy, he works with again and again and again. So, like, I can't exactly imagine that he's a horrible person to work with, or else why would these people keep working with him? Well, he almost worked with Annette Benning again because they almost did the... Oh!

Katrina. You know, it's funny because I was making my notes and I was like, and that Benning never worked with Ryan Murphy again, and I wonder about that, but you have corrected me. Yeah. That's very true. So where do you come down now when you look back on all the Augustine Burroughs that you've read? How do you feel like, you talk about, you know, things look differently from this perspective? I think it's certainly complicated. I mean, it's not like a book I would pick up now because it just doesn't feel, I mean, new anymore. not to like be mean about it but also like there is a certain complication like his mother got some publicity especially around the time of the movie of like having her point of view of saying i i don't think she ever like said any specific things were lies if i remember correctly but she definitely felt treated unfairly and they still remained estranged and like one of the sticking points i guess for the family and his mother was that he changed his name.

Shocker that Augustine Burroughs is not someone's birth name. But, like, I don't know. To me, I guess that's a little bit of, like, gay liberation. Like, if you feel freed from a toxic... As gay people, we get to choose the names that we live with. Thank you, Paul. But also, like, the lawsuit didn't... There's not contentiousness for, like, the actual wrongdoing that was done.

It just seems like it was more about, like, God is speaking to me and my poop. We live in a house that is falling apart and a mess, and we keep a Christmas tree up because we won't take it down. It seemed more about that and not, like, you have accused us of complicity in child sex abuse towards you. Right. Right. It wasn't about that. So I guess the, like, substantive, I don't, how, I mean, like, how do I phrase this? The, like, things that were clear wrongdoing didn't seem to come into question in this. Otherwise, like, if he claims that he was abused sexually as a child by a member of this family and there was complicity elsewhere, like, that seems like the type of thing that could be libelous. Well, but the interesting thing about that, though, is, and maybe I'm, speaking of memoirs, maybe I'm remembering things not quite exactly correctly. But I feel like in reading the book, that relationship is drawn far more, not necessarily complicated, but I think the Augustine narrator in that book envisions that relationship or remembers that relationship with him having a lot more power and a lot more.

he's very cruel, he's very sort of like, it takes a lot of pleasure in his cruelty towards Neil and how he can sort of manipulate him and, um, because he's also, he's a schizophrenic. Right. And so, which doesn't take away any of the, uh, sort of legal ramifications of a relationship between a 30 something and a 13, 14 year old boy. Um, but it definitely, I do wonder if Augustine, the writer, even with all that like later perspective, Because you know how when you read that Joel Schumacher profile in New York Magazine, a cup from a year or so ago before he died, where he would talk about all the relationships that he had as a young teenager with older men and how he would never, he would refuse to sort of characterize that as abuse or anything sort of criminal? And that reminded me a lot of the way that Augustine described his relationship with Neil in running with scissors, where I don't think, I think the movie is a lot more explicit about framing that relationship as, like, capital B, bad.

Yeah. So, I don't know. I mean, it's also one of the, like, story elements of the movie that, like, it's never, the movie's never going to be able to achieve what the book can achieve because it's different when you're actually watching that depicted on screen, rather than filtered through the voice of someone who experienced it, right? And the same is true for like some of the other things like hope cooking a cat, which I forget is in the book or not, but like definitely I'm pretty sure she kills that cat in the book. And just like the general mess of that home, it's like it's, the movie has a hard time

striking the balance between like, okay, we know that like this is traumatic. But, like, how can we make it funny? Right. And then it, like, swings into sentimentality in a way that, like, the book is written from a very clear voice and point of view and perspective. Right. I think the humor in the book comes from, again, you're so burrowed so deep into Augustine's voice and his perspective on everything. And the movie, perhaps, like, I don't know if the best version of this movie can ever quite get there. But, like, this one, I think Murphy really struggles with tone in this movie.

You mentioned it goes from, like, unconvincing comedy to sort of limited drama. And it never does either very well, but the balancing of it is also bad. And I think you lose a lot of characters. I think you, as I said, you lose a lot of Augustine's character. You lose a lot of the Natalie character, who I remember being so close to in that book. And aside from a couple of scenes where Evan Rachel Wood sort of gets to emote, I don't quite get that in this. And again, this book is, or this movie is so fascinated with the Deirdre character in a way that the...

I mean, Augustine in the book is, of course, like, so much of the book is about his relationship with his mother. But it's, again, so much more about him that it is about her. Yeah, this is way more compassionate to think. the mother than the book, I think, ever is. And I think that's kind of largely true to most of these characters, even, like, Dr. Finch, who is, like, manipulating these people and, like, not, you know, he takes their money, such as that. Some of that is, like, I feel like Ryan Murphy can't help the fact of indulging the fact that

he cast uniformly likable actors in this movie. Yeah. Like, it's really confusing because there are parts of the movie that it feels like it's working. And some of that is that everybody in the movie is so likable. And they're like people you like to see, even down to, like, Gabrielle Union showing up for a few scenes as the angry, like, lover to Deirdre in, like, the third act of the movie, even though it's like, they're towing the line with being a racist here. But, like, you're happy to see Gabby Union in a movie. Totally. Kristen Chenoweth, as we mentioned,

Gwyneth Paltrow has Bo Derek braids at one point. She sure does. That what, okay, the cut to her with the braids, because that comes in a scene where he's really struggling to, he wants to be a hairstylist, and he's struggling with Joseph finds his hair, and it doesn't look right. Very period hairstiles.

He puts Evan Rachel Wood in a, near, like, beehive. I don't know what she would call it. You cut to Evan Rachel Wood, and it very much is that still of Bart Simpson with the hairspray wig dancing around in that Simpson's episode with John Waters. And then this smash cut, because you don't know that Gwyneth is in the room during the scene. It really seems like it's just the three other characters. And then you smash cut to Gwyneth Paltrow at the stove, cooking the cattle. They don't know that yet. In these like Amy Polar and spring breakers braids and it's so like that's incredibly funny to me there are a couple

sort of things where like there are edits in this movie that are very funny to me that are funny yes but like that scene in particular is like the prototype for everything that's a problem with this movie um in that like it can be funny sometimes inappropriately funny and then like you have the weird like toxicity towards women that like joseph finds his spouting, and then it becomes incredibly aggressively serious when it's revealed that she is currently cooking their long dead cat. Right. And feeds it to her sister?

Yeah. Yes. All right. So I want to get into the Ryan Murphy thing, though, because this is his first feature film. This comes, I think, I'm pretty sure Niptuck is still a going concern at this point. I think he left Niptuck. to do this movie. But then the show was still on.

Because he left after like the third season or the second season, but it was still ran for way too long. That Carver storyline withers on the vine when he's gone. They cast, uh, God, the two people they got to be in. They moved to L.A. eventually. Right. There was an L.A. season. I think that was the season I didn't watch. There's a whole season with Sinawathan, and she was great on that season and the only reason to watch it. Yeah. Niptuck was very much early Ryan Murphy in terms.

of like stretching out his stunt casting limbs. I know Jill Claiburg, speaking of Jill Claiburg, she shows up on NipTuck in the early seasons at least once or twice. He brought back a lot of his popular cast members to, I feel like Leslie Bibb might have been the first victim of the Carver or one of the early victims of the Carver. The Carver being this ongoing storyline in NipTuck that was super scary and for a while very effective. It was genuinely scary.

He did that whole thing where he stuntcasted Joan Rivers as herself. Alec Baldwin was in the second season of Finalea of Niptock playing a plastic surgeon in a part of a very problematic storyline with Fomka Jensen as a trans woman. As an evil trans woman at that. Yeah, yeah. That is the thing that most will prevent anybody from rewatching Niptuck with any degree of comfort or. yeah but so at this point Murphy's on niptuk he gets this movie it largely fails and he doesn't get another movie to do well I pray love is how long after this three years after this 2009 I think um you pray love well no maybe it was like hold on I'll look it up yeah I want to say it's

2009 but I'm willing to be wrong it might be 20 10 or 11 anyway no I think it was 2010 Okay. So another four years after this, but he mostly, it's after running with, so there's an, and after NipTuck, there's a little bit of a break, and then really it's Glee in 2000, I think Glee is the one in 2009, that reestablishes him as something major. He had won a Golden Globe for Nip Tuck, but it still felt like he was like super niche. And like Glee happens, and it's, and it It has this amazing, to me, mainstream crossover. And all of a sudden, he's almost immediately a brand unto himself. And then the next year or two years later comes American Horror Story.

And that one is, to me, I think American Horror Story, I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions on that. I think it's incredibly underrated when it comes to its impact on television. and I think in... Oh, absolutely. Because it had... We kind of forget that the first season was a... We didn't really know what it was.

It had this, like, fetishistic marketing campaign and, like, subplots to it. But we didn't know that it would be a limited series. So once that finale happened, and they were like, nope, that's it. We are...

This was a self-contained thing. We are going to be doing different ideas every season. The fact that he ushered in the... era of the limited series is, I think, cannot be underestimated. It really opened up television to a whole lot of other types of storytelling. I think also that American Horror Story, in conjunction with The Walking Dead, really opened up the kinds of genres that network and

major cable networks would be able to tackle, I think, in terms of content and character types and character identities and all this sort of stuff was very much that world was opened up through the success of American Horror Story. But I feel like just in terms of the way he really kind of cracked the code on this idea of, because you watch a television show, especially a longer running television show. And one of the problems they run into often is that characters stick around long past their usefulness and shows become sort of too enamored with their what they are. They don't change enough. They don't progress enough. And a lot of it, to me, on a very human level, makes sense because you have

these working relationships that you want to continue. You enjoy working with these people and you want to keep them on. So you don't want to kill their characters off because you enjoy working with them. And I think the way that American Horror Story found to work around that is every season is a season and then we start over with a whole new story the next time. So you can keep working with these people you love to work with, you're Sarah Paulsons and Evan Peters's and Jessica Langs and all these people. And you can

still, like, kill them off at the end of a season. If you're doing a show about horror, it would be incredibly realistic to have a show about horror where you don't kill off any of your major characters. So, I don't know. There's credit that is due to him

for what television was able to sort of flourish into through the last decade that I I don't think he gets because American Horror Story's reputation is the outrageousness and the goryness and, you know, the campiness. And I think because it is a show that is largely anchored by actresses, I think people give him credit for giving roles to these, you know, we talk about the term like actress of a certain age or whatever. You're Jessica Langs and Kathy Bates and, you know. Actresses that are not getting roles of their caliber. Right. This underserved demographic of actresses, Angela Bassett has gotten some great work with Ryan Murphy stuff. I think he's rightly complimented for that. But I think that also allows people to, when talking about television as an ecosystem, sort of like put him and his shows into a box of queer stuff, lady stuff, you know, and it's easy to not give it its due. And the other side of that coin is because the

I mean, he also doesn't get enough credit for how many out-gay actors he casts in his projects. We always sort of bitch about gay characters being played by straight people and not enough out-gay actors in Hollywood. He casts, he kind of aggressively casts for out-gay performers. And I think the gay television-watching community, the sort of like vocal, amateur taste makers among us can be pretty vicious and can be pretty difficult to please when stuff seems targeted to them

and when I say them I mean us, I mean me. I don't exempt myself from this in many ways. But I think sometimes when things seem targeted to us, we, I don't know, there's almost like a distrust to it. Am I wrong? Am I up a creek? Am I self-pathologizing too much? Um, I think some of that is true.

I think some of it is also, um, a certain degree of, like, who he, though he does cast out gay actors, he cast the very, like, mainstream gay actors, right? Very fair. Um, which, like, uh, he perhaps, I, I'm reticent to give, I mean, like, yes, that is something that should be accredited, but also, like, you're also talking. about actors that probably would still otherwise be working, to me at least. Sure.

I don't know. I am not, you are a bigger fan of Ryan Murphy's TV output than I am. I think sometimes there is a questionable level of taste. Oh, I would never deny that. I would absolutely never deny that. I mean, it's absolutely true in the movie that there is a questionable level of taste. Nina Garcia would have a field day questioning the taste level. of this and most Ryan Murphy projects. I would never deny that. Smash cut to a I question your taste level super cut from Nina Garcia.

You won't get that sound drop in this episode, I'll tell you right now, because YouTube has a shameful dearth of project runway clips available, and I don't know whose fault that is, but it's get your act together, internet.

I'm going to make you hop on over to Daily Motion. Why can't I find a clip of Nina Garcia saying, it's aesthetically not pleasing. It's aesthetically not pleasing. I need it in my life. I question your taste level. Yeah.

I'm confused. That's my favorite Nina Garcia. It's just like, I'm confused. Anyway. Yeah. No, you're totally not wrong. How is Ryan Murphy never cast Nina Garcia? Also that.

No, his projects very wildly from show to show or from season to season in terms of taste level. And I think the best shows that he is associated. to often have more looser association to him, in fact. Like, Pose is not really his show. I mean, like, he directed the pilot. He's a producer on the show. But, like, everything that works about that show is not, like, him writing it. I think that is true.

All right, I will let you, you know, continue. I think an important caveat to that, though, is I think we, um, a a lot of his successful shows to his collaborators when we like them, and I think we don't when we don't. Because a very recent example is Ratched, where and I reviewed it, and I

put a lot of it on Ryan Murphy, so like, again, I am not exempt from this. But that is as much his show as Pose is his show. But the shows of his that are associated to like, the ones that people are like, this is bad, are usually

Porte's level They're on one and they need to calm down And those are like traits that we associate with Ryan Murphy So I don't really know how to reconcile that I agree where it's like if something does feel like It is approached thoughtfully and with a certain level of I mean I don't want to keep saying taste but like It doesn't feel like it leans into just extremity for extremity's sake, things like perhaps People v. OJ., too.

People versus OJ and the assassination of Gianni Versace, which I think in many ways are two of his very best shows, have the benefit of they both had very strong writer voices on those. but also they had a beginning, middle, and end story from the fact that they were true stories that really benefited the structure of those shows. And I think structure is often a really big problem for Ryan. And I wouldn't, I don't deny that. Like, I genuinely don't deny that. I just feel like, I do feel like he gets more hatred, for lack of a better term, within the community. than probably he should.

He does show restraint sometimes. Like, I don't want to talk about E. Pray, Love too much because we can do an episode on E. Pray Love at sometime. But, like, I do think, like, premise aside, I think that's a movie that largely works. I've never seen it. So, I mean, I'm sort of eager for us to do it. And then he also did the normal heart for HBO.

That is his other sort of major film. And that is, again, I think it's one of those things where the fact of him doing that project was almost the greatest sin of all because so many people revere that play by Larry Kramer and the idea of somebody who is seen as crass and as sort of a goche almost as

Ryan Murphy felt like an insult. And yet, I think the normal heart comes off pretty well. By all telling, unless anyone can contradict me, Larry Kramer had a good relationship with Ryan Murphy, so that's probably, you know, the... He does seem to have very good relationships with both collaborators and actors. I feel like by now we would have gotten some interview with some sort of embittered former cast member talking about him if, even though he's incredibly powerful. But I still feel like we would have gotten some, you know, whatever, these Ellen rumors about how like... Yeah, the rumor mill is not running around Ryan Murphy.

no no it's not and you would think by now that if you know there was you know stories to be told that at least some stories would have been told but there's a certain level of like giving his actor something to do like even running with scissors has a certain level of intensity to it that like you can imagine like Ryan Murphy actors having an incredible experience on set but then when you assemble the footage it's like what is this, like, tactless wild swings of tone assemblage, you know? There are also moments where he reminds me of, he makes me think that he's, like, the gay Quentin Tarantino, and it's not quite exactly that. Like, I think Tarantino is a much more accomplished and skillful maker of films. But in terms of the fact that, like, when Tarantino's work, are always kind of a hodgepodge of his influences, and he, you know, takes on these, you know, actor projects because he loves them from such and such that they did, and he puts them in his

movies, and he's incredibly indulgent stylistically, and, you know, again, wears his influences on his sleeve. And I think you get a lot of that with Ryan Murphy in terms of the way that he is just like, well, I loved this, you know, I loved whatever happened to baby Jane when I was younger and I was obsessed with it. So now I will make the season finale of Popular, the show about high school kids, into a full on black and white homage to whatever happened to Baby Jane. Or, you know, I will turn my tabloid obsession with Gwyneth Paltrow into like a years-long professional obsession turned into professional relationship. And it's sort of fascinating to watch him on that level and this sort of assemblage of, he's very much reminds me of a lot of queer people

that I know who are sort of, you know, older and have amassed this like lifetime of being enmeshed in this queer culture that was what they had to, you know, to identify with and to hold on to. And now we're in this age where, you know, these, we can, turn these things into projects and films that will be seen by the mainstream. And I think sometimes there's a little bit of knee-jerk thing where we don't want the world to see the kinds of things that Ryan Murphy is putting out into the world, because it feels very, like, intra-community, like, you know, I don't want the straight people looking at this shit. You know what I mean? Kind of, right?

This does not stand for us. We cannot be, this cannot be the one gay thing that straight people experience. I think there's a, I think there's a really interesting conversation that has always had between we resent things that feel too heteronormative, gay things that feel too heteronormative. And yet, I think some then things that become very much, like inward looking, feel gaudy. well but there is a lot of like pressure still uh in terms of like what straight people are consuming in terms of gay narratives right so like a we don't want it to be something that is offensive that like doesn't stand for us but we also don't want it to be bad like right i i think that's uh that's still fortunately a worthy you know i think listen i'm not i i feel i i feel like what

you're looking at as my enjoyment of Ryan Murphy things is just like well Joe likes bad things like Joe doesn't have any taste. But I that's not at all what I think because you are very smart. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah. Whatever. Whatever. But I do think there's a certain element

of melodrama that Ryan Murphy leans into and he misunderstands even some of his own influences as like melodrama and character as he misunderstands them as just loud um like this movie like a lot of the scenes i'm like these actors are good but this movie is just

so damn loud and it kind of doesn't allow for the actual humanity of these people to come through it's also just not a pleasant experience to watch i don't think it's not fun it's not like there's no there's no moments of sort of like joy or levity or even like like melancholy in a way that I would find... I'm not sure it's usefully painful in a way that some movies can be.

Right. I just don't enjoy the experience of watching it. Again, my Nina Garcia coming through. It's just like, it's aesthetically not pleasing. It's also

narratively not pleasing. I just don't enjoy... And I remember very much... And I remember feeling that way about the movie even back then, and that was much closer on the heels to me

very much enjoying the experience of reading, running with scissors, even when it was about not enjoyable things. like it was a very satisfying experience watching or reading that book and the movie is just not that fundamentally. I've been avoiding the question all episode for you.

I think it's time to ask you that question. What do you think about Annette Benning in this movie? Oh, all right. I'm glad we're getting into the Annette Benning of it. I think she's great. I don't know if I would say great, but I think she's the best performance in the movie by a good measure

and I get why she would want to take this role and I do feel like she gets the most out of it. I think she approaches the closest thing the movie has to like genuine humanity. Yeah. And I think like there's even times where she strikes the balance

of comedy and tragedy of this way better than anything else that's like on screen. where, like, she can just be really dryly funny, but also just, like, you know, it's still truthful to the psychosis that Deirdre is going through. Yeah, I think that's true. There are certain times where her styling is sort of asked to communicate things for her. I always feel like I laughed.

I remember laughing originally at this moment, and again, watching it again, the moment where you realize, like, oh, she's so far gone. and it's because she has a mullet haircut. And it's like, and you're just like, oh, well. It's like the movie has a very clear time of when the mullet took over because Deirdre gets a mullet and Dr. Finch gets a mullet at the same time. Yeah, this movie tells a very interesting series of hair stories. Yeah, I think she's, I think she's good in this movie. I don't know if I would take it, take a moment to, you know, put her up for awards.

she was nominated for a Golden Globe for this for Best Actress in Musical or Comedy but yeah I think she's more than solid in here. I don't think she has anything to be ashamed of. That Globe's comedy

lineup is fun. It's a good one. So this is 2006. I'm going to bring it up as we discussed. This was the year that Meryl Streep won for the Devil wears Prada. She gives a very good speech about um this is the one where she's like if you want to see these movies you have to demand them of your of your movie theaters right where you have to go to the manager she's

harnesses her i know going to the manager has become very fraught yeah because has become a very fraught uh topic these days but in this way she was harnessing it for good where she was essentially being like if you're not seeing uh what was essentially smaller movies starring women what she was talking about. I remember she shouted out Sherry Baby that year. Maggie Dillon Hall was nominated in the drama category for Sherry Baby. It was sort of akin to her Iron Lady's speech, right?

Where she's talking about pariah and Jane Eyre, where she has sort of taken the lay of the land of the movie landscape. And I think this was pre-Irondman, but it was still a point where, you know, blockbusters were already really taking over

the multiplexes. And the Devil Wars Prada was a hit, right. But opened against Superman. Right. Ah, that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there was a sense of, there was a struggle to get audiences to want to, especially male audiences to want to see a movie.

Well, and like it opened against this, I explicitly remember that opening weekend where it's like, you have critics calling Superman returns like the champagne of superhero movies, which. Okay It's burned Is it? Champagne was obviously frozen in the bottle at some point Go to your Masturbatorium, sir And Devil Wears Prada was like

Oh and there's also this thing Opening for women Like Right Turning their nose down at the movie Before they even see it Talking about the line between memoir and fiction Where this, the Devil Wars Prada

was showing the benefit of the fact that, like, oh, we'll just call it a Romano Clef, like, it's fine. And it's, you know, it's fictional, but it's obviously very much about... Anna Wintour shows up to the premiere of the movie, decked head to tow in Prada. So, Merrill wins for the Devil Wars Prada, a very deserving win, would go on to an Oscar nomination. We definitely talked about this category before, because also nominated this year was Renee Zellweger for Miss Potter. the incredibly memorable and definitive role of Beatrix Potter in Miss Potter. Also nominated Annette Benning for Running with Scissors, my beloved Tony Collette,

giving a very great but non-spotlighted performance in Little Miss Sunshine, and an actress whose name is Beyonce Knowles in Dream Girls. The one and only Beyonce. It's so, I will never get over talking about the differences. in the way that the culture talked about Beyonce in 2006 versus the way that we talk about Beyonce now and for the last decade. She's so good in that movie. She was, she got no respect for that.

She was absolutely everything. She was compared negatively to Jennifer Hudson constantly. People talked about how she was the weak point of the movie. Which is stupid. And it wasn't for another probably four or so years. whenever, I feel like four was almost the turning point for Beyonce, when all of a sudden everybody started to just be like, you need to shut the fuck up with your complaints about Beyonce, because she is absolutely untouchably flawless and nobody can say a word against her.

And it's, I think probably being in the movie awardsy sort of sphere, that probably was the sphere that held the lowest opinion of Beyonce at the time, both because she was breaking into movies and it wasn't going great up until... This was shortly after the Oscar ceremony where, like, they didn't let any of the performers of the song, original performers of the song sing, and they had Beyonce. Yeah, she's saying the song from the Phantom of the Opera. She's saying the song from the chorus, the choir, what did they call the movie? Yeah, the French song.

That was terrible. And then, I can't remember what the third one was. Shit. It was believe or when you, some, some dumb thing about believing from Polar Express. Right. Thank you. Did she do a duet with Josh Grobin at the Oscars? Yes.

Yes. Okay. Wild. So, yeah, a very interesting actress in a musical or comedy. I feel like the right performance won. I feel like history judges that correctly. But she's the, Merrill's the only one from that category who goes on to an Oscar nomination. I feel like Benning was sort of talked about on the.

outskirts of that best actress conversation for a while. This is like a quintessential The Globes reflecting what the early conversation was in the year, because by this point, like, running with scissors had bombed, it was kind of like a whiff of a release. So, like, once the actual, like, the heat of Oscar season was happening, like, people had forgotten about the movie. This is also one of those all-time great. to me, at least, best actress categories

where it's, I know not everybody likes Helen Mirren and the Queen. I think she's... I don't care about it. I think she's very good. I don't know if I would have given her the Oscar, but I think she's very good. She's my least favorite of that

Oscar lineup. Probably for me, too, but I... Probably, I think it's probably less of a wide margin for me, but yeah, she's the least of those. Fine. Marilyn and Devil wears Prada. Penelope Cruz and Volver, who finally,

You know, that she's finally clawed her way back from that disastrous introduction to American audiences that she did with all the pretty horses and vanilla sky and that whole sort of moment. She's back now. She's with Almodivar. She's, you know, the mountain has come to Mohammed, and we have decided that, you know, we're not going to require Penelope Cruz to be an American movie star. We're going to let her be a movie star in her own sphere. And that is great. The global star. Judy Dench in Notes on a Scandal, flawless.

Probably my winner. probably who I would have voted for to win. Someone has died. She's so good. And then... Kate Winslet in the movie that at the time, not a soul, saw Little Children. Little Children barely opened.

It had, like, the shittiest release. And, like, I still maybe think that that is her best performance or, like, tied for her best performance, possibly. She's so good in that movie. That movie deserves better, too. Yeah, that's when I've been looking to rewatch for a while. while, mostly just because it's, I mean, that sort of Todd Field double of in the bedroom and little children. And I remember, I rewatched in the bedroom semi-recently and was enthralled by it,

probably even more so than I was the first time. And I'm eager to see if that experience replicates. Speaking of little children, Patrick Wilson shows up for a little cameo in running with scissors as a law, legal person, perhaps social worker, I can't remember exactly. No, IRS guy, right? He's looking for tax money. Yeah. Patrick Wilson, also known as Mr. Dagmar Domenchik, who shows up in this movie. Who shows up in this movie, indeed, as Alec Baldwin's new girlfriend slash fiancé, yes. Yeah, this is a very, as most Ryan Murphy projects are, this is a very well-cast endeavor, for sure. Oh, can we talk about Plan B entertainment for a second?

Yeah, Plan B, we like them. They usually produce good stuff. So this is the production company that was formed by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and Brad Gray in 2001, when Brad and Jennifer were still a thing. They divorced in 2005, and Brad Gray and Brad Pitt sort of stayed on. Brad Gray eventually left for Paramount. But anyway, this was sort of the early days. I think this was maybe their second or third year of producing films. Their first film ever produced, speaking of Brian Cox, was Troy, the Brad Pitt in short skirts, action adventure, Troy.

With Rose Byrne. Peter O'Toole is in that movie, Eric Banna's in that movie. It's a whole thing. Diane Kruger. Has I Hank Kruger, like, talk shit about that movie? Probably. I don't think it serves her very well, so yeah. No, she's like, they just wanted me to be pretty, and I wanted more than that.

Good for you. Their second movie, weirdly enough, is Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, the Tim Burton, Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, which is... I'm sorry, what? Yes. Yes. First film Troy, second film Charlie on the Chocolate Factory. Then they follow that up in 2006 with Running with Scissors, and also a little film called The Departed that goes in wait. the Best Picture Oscar, their first of three Best Picture wins in their short yet successful

lifespan, one of which has won Best Picture Oscar for Brad Pitt specifically. He was a producer on 12 Years of Slave, whatever the gymnastics that it takes to name producers on a film, why he, you know, has an Oscar for 12 years of slave, but not either the Departed or Moonlight, which are the two other Plan B films that have one best picture. I don't know. I don't know. They keep changing the rules on the amount of people that can, like, be considered producing a movie. It's three, right?

Because he's one of five listed people for 12 years of slave. That's interesting. I feel like this, I think plan B these days is, it's Pitt, obviously still, and then D.D. Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, who I feel like were the producers who won when Moonlight won. I remember Dedy Gardner being up there. It's an incredibly successful run of movies, though, and it's an incredibly eclectic collection of kinds of films where there's these, big sort of autourist things. They've had the Tree of Life and Moneyball and Selma and Vice, which I know we didn't like Vice, but whatever. Obviously last year they had Ad Astra, but also they're doing stuff like Brad Status, Last Black Man in San Francisco,

aforementioned Moonlight, Okja, and then sort of less even, you know, stuff that's not even pointed towards Oscar like the kick-ass movies which I don't like but like you know whatever but genre-wise it's genre-wise it's you know it's an expansion

of that kind of stuff it's an incredibly very if you have a second go on to the Wikipedia page for Plan B entertainment it's a really interesting collection of movies and then of course

the 2020 movie was irresistible the John Stewart Irresistible which by all accounts was terrible Abysmal. But their upcoming ones are all, all seem really interesting. They've got, I mean, again, I don't love Miranda July,

but they've got the new Miranda July. I'm really curious to see your opinion about that movie. Well, it's going to be a while. You're going to have to wait a while, because I have no rush to see it. Right. I think it has a planned VOD release date. It's opening the week this episode drops.

Oh, that's interesting. No, or the week before. Plan B. It's fine. Yeah. I'm trying to decide to what degree I should allow my love for 20th century women to filter into enjoying Mike Mills and then thus by osmosis Miranda July and we'll see how that sort of filters through things but whatever

I don't know how you're going to handle the next Mike Mills movie that has Joaquin I know I don't even want to talk about it yet I don't understand why the universe insists on tearing me apart this way. Speaking of 20th century women, looping back to the un-Oskered Annette Benning. Yes. So the thing about Annette Benning, she's got four Oscar nominations to her name now.

Yes, right? It's the grifters and the kids are all right. Wait. American Beauty. Being Julia. Right, being Julia, the one I always forget. Okay. So the thing that I always say about Annette Benning, and it sounds mean, but it's not because I love Annette Benning, like unequivocally.

She's never deserved to win an Oscar in any of her four nominations. Not that they aren't good performances, but she's never been the best in her category of the nominated actors ever. I mean. Make your case if you want to. No. Had she been nominated for 20th century. That's the point. That's the point.

That's the point. Easily been the best person nominated. That is the point, yes. She was, that was, that's what she should have her Oscar for, is for 20th century women, and she wasn't even nominated for that. And that is, uh, infuriating. I think she comes the closest with her performance in American Beauty, which for all the things we can say about American Beauty, she's a goddamn dynamo in that movie. I just think Hillary Swank is a little bit better in Boys Don't Cry. I, I do think Annette Benning, like,

when you're watching that movie, if there's any way that that movie works even by today's standards, it's because of her, because that character is written so reprehensibly. Yeah.

And I think she... Kind of a Ryan Murphy character. You know what I mean? Very much so. And again, like the things that, like, I think she works very well at in the way that that...

It's very similar between these characters and this one and running with scissors that is like she seems to find the humanity in this like very like labored attempt at humanity as far as the movie is concerned. I agree. She and you know, she will sell this house today.

Like that's all there is to it. She's really, really fantastic in that. Again, I say that is one of, it's interesting to think of the Benning Swank, uh, dyad. Because I think they're both Oscar worthy in 1999. And neither one of them are, I don't think I would have thought about giving it to either one of them in 2004. I think Annette Benning and Being Julia is not a bad performance, but it's such a forgettable movie.

But like they were the first, they were the top two in that movie. And it truly was like Annette Benning was screwed over for American Beauty. So here's a movie we could give her an Oscar for. I remember nothing. Yeah, how about this? How about a costume drama? No, thank you. Swank beats her again.

And obviously, Kate Winslet should have won that year for Eternal Sunshine and Spotless Mind, possibly Amelda Staunton for Vera Drake, but no, apparently we don't get to have nice things. I think a lot of people... Net Benning in American Beauty is screaming that is funny. I think about the scene, the dinner scene, where she's, like, fully just screaming the whole time about Kevin Spacey quitting his job. And it's so funny. Yeah. She's fantastic.

Also, there's that shot of her in the doorway or in the archway of the living room where she's sort of got her hands on each of the sides of the door to have and just sort of like glowering in on Kevin Spacey that is just like such icon pose. Carolyn Burnham was right. She was right. That's your t-shirt. That's our, that's our t-shirt. Carolyn Burnham was right. I think a lot of people got behind Benning as a should. win for The Kids Are All Right in 2010, when I think, especially once the momentum had sort of

coalesced around Natalie Portman for Black Swan, I think all of the contrarians, and there are contrarians among us, sort of like, well, we need to add something that we can all agree on that should be winning instead of, you know, Natalie Portman. And it sort of... And that was just like a really well-liked movie. I never got on board with that because I was always in the very seemingly minority, at least the way it felt during that season, that Julianne Moore was the performance of that movie. I agree with that, and I agree with you that that that definitely felt like a minority opinion that year. People just can't get on board with Julianne Moore being funny. I think she's really funny sometimes. She's incredible in that movie.

Yeah, no, I think she's incredible in that movie. I think they're both very good. Like, it's like no slight against Annette Benning, I know. Sure, sure, sure. What does she sing in that that was the big highlight of that movie? She sings all I want by Joni Mitchell. That's right. I knew it was a Joni Mitchell thing. I couldn't remember. Amazing. Yeah.

That's a movie I would like to watch again. I know a lot of people got very up in arms about Julianne Moore having sex with Mark Ruffalo in that movie and it being very sort of problematic in the, that bad trope of the, you know, a lesbian just needs a good man to turn her around or whatever. I don't think that's what that movie is doing. or about the trope, but, like, all of that is, um, text to the movie. That's the thing. Like, this is my whole thing with, like, anytime a character, a gay character dies in anything, everybody is just like, lesbian death trope. And I'm just like, gay characters can die in things.

Like, it's sometimes, it's not always, you know, um... Sometimes things are toxic and sometimes things are being, uh, grappled with in the text of the movie. Yes. Um, yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Uh, what else? What else? What else? Anything else about this movie that we want to talk about?

Brian Cox is good in a very not likable role. I think everybody except for Joseph Fines is good in the movie. Well, Joseph Fines has an impossible character, too. Like, it's good. It would be, it would be a lot to make that character work, right? Right, right. In terms of, like, what the movie offers him to do. It's weird that he really never is scripted to have any of the, the wit that the book has. Yeah. It's still very strange. It makes it very hard to see why Augustine would be attracted to him.

Yeah. And he's very much attracted to him in the book, is the thing. Joseph finds another actor who ends up recurring on a Ryan Murphy project. He's on the second season of American Horror Story. Interesting. I did not know that. That's Asylum? Yes. Asylum. He is one of the priests who is

in charge of Asylum. Islema is the best American Horror Story season. Did Chloe Seveny ever do another Ryan Murphy thing? Yes. Where does she show up again? Hold on a second. She absolutely

does. I'm almost positive. She, by the way, is in the new Luca Guadino show on HBO at playing a wild character indeed. but one who is very much worth what she's a she's essentially been made commander of this army base in italy but she has this like very uh sort of transgressive mother-son relationship with Brian grazer's kid who's the actual name i'm not going to remember at this point

oh yeah she's in um is it hotel Ah. I think it's hotel. Oh, with Gaga? Yes. Yes, she's in hotel. Did they get to share a scene and nobody told me about this? Do I need to go back and watch American Horror Story Hotel?

They might share a scene, actually. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Hotel was the one I never watched till the end because it was unpleasant to a point where I just didn't want to keep watching it. But, yeah, she's definitely on it. Golden Globe winner, Lady Gaga. Yeah.

Disrespected by Leanne. out of Decaprio on her way to the stage. So mean. So mean. Anyway. She did it for the German autos. He's not respecting his fellow Italians. All right.

I'm going through my notes now. Gwyneth's Cornrose. Deirdre's Mullet. Oh, I wrote this down and I don't know how much I stand by this. Is this Ryan Murphy trying to do Todd Haynes in any way? No. Okay. I'm willing to accept your no as divinative.

I didn't quite know how much I wanted to stand by that statement anyway. I hate to just abruptly be like, I don't think so dear. I'm trying to remember now what made me think that. What little aspect of it made me think that. Sometimes I feel like... I guess a lot of Augustine's character reminded me a little bit of like the young Christian Bale character in Velvet Goldmine. Maybe, but maybe that's just like era details.

I wonder if the costumes Because the costumes are great in this movie Yeah Sometimes I think that Ryan Murphy is trying to do John Waters in a way that misunderstands John Waters I think so

Or like CERC in a way that Misunderstands CERC I don't know if it's necessarily that misunderstands I do feel like he incorporates parts of that But definitely I don't think he tries to imitate it so exactly that it feels, like, to that level, like, wrongheaded.

I do feel like he just sort of, like, that's part of his kind of patchwork of influences. Anyway. I would like to posit Annette Benning, with maybe this movie as an exhibit A, as our, like, finest living smoker on screen. Well, that is true. when she is mentally unstable in this movie just like make you want to smoke, she makes smoking look like a natural extension of your body. The top

five Annette Benning smoking performances. All right. We're going to go with this, for sure, running with scissors. 20th century women for sure. Oh, definitely. She is a like, all-star smoker in that movie. In excellent smoke actor. 2016, the greatest year for smoking

in film in the last decade, for sure. Bugsy, I think, is iconic smoking in that. Still got to see Bugsy. I want to see Bugsy again, but I definitely remember. Even her big, like, clip scene, I'm pretty sure she's smoking. She's kind of be a smoker in the Grifters, right? Probably. That's another movie I need to see again.

I'm just going to go with the top three. My top three, running with scissors, 20th century women, Bugsy. That's your iconic. Anette Benning Spocker. smoking. She also has to smoke, I feel like, in film stars don't die in Liverpool. A movie I definitely saw and don't... A movie I definitely did not see.

Oh, didn't you? I thought you did at... I did not. We could do an episode on that, but like that year I was like, I don't know about this, man. And I was waiting until the last minute because I was certain that she wasn't going to get nominated for this movie. Speaking of iconic types of acting, I feel like that. like you get a little bit of it in this movie, but Brian Cox, one of the great screen yellers of all time. I feel like Brian Cox is able to just really holler in a way. I always think of that scene in the ring that I adore, where Naomi Watts is accusing him of killing his

child, and he just says, my wife was not supposed to have a child. It's so, like, it's very stage trained and whatever. And also that same year, his great year of 2002, when he was in adaptation, and he's he's just like hollering the character. Yelling at Nicholas Cage in his

symposium. About plot details. Nothing happens in the world. Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day. Somewhere in

world, somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every fucking day, someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches a mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the fuck? Are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? Oh, wonderful. All right, do we want to do an IMDB game?

Yeah, let's get into it. Do you unexplain what the IMDB game is? Sure, every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of these titles are television or voiceover work, we will mention that up front. after two wrong guesses we get a remaining title's release years has a clue that's not enough it just becomes a free for all of hints and clues in the terms of our own poop messages from god excellent love a poop message from god that was that scene was truly it's way earlier in the book and it's so late in the movie that i'm like this is too late for this we've already had enough we've already gone to the masturbatory

Well, and it turns it into this sort of... We've already had the electroshock therapy machine. Yeah. It turns it into this sort of harrowing moment for the Jill Claiborne character, too, where... Yeah. You know, this is now her life. She's fishing her husband's poop out of the toilet. I don't know.

So he can display it. In the driveway, of all things. Yes. Okay. Yeah, a movie... Imagine a movie nominated for Oscar where it involves displayed poop. Sure. At least we don't see it.

Anyway, maybe that's part of your John Waters' theory of all of this. I don't know. It's something. He's trying for something. Yes. All right. Would you like to give or guess first? How about a guess first?

Okay. So the one I have chosen for you, I obviously had a bounty of options in terms of Ryan Murphy's projects because he casts everybody. and one he has cast multiple times this actor was in a normal heart he was in feud Betty versus Joan the great Alfred Molina

The great and very sexy Alfred Molina Is there any TV? There is not There's not TV, okay So feud also known as Betty and Joan food They sure were eating the scenery and that.

That's what Eat, Pray, Love is. It is Eat, Pray, Love, Food. It's Feud and Food. Love it. Okay. Frida. Frida, the one he almost got an Oscar nomination for, correct. Should have gotten one for.

Spider-Man 2. Yep. Doc. Okay. Very good. Do I think? Boogie. is on there.

Very small role in Boogie Nights. Very small role. So good. Should have been Oscar nominated for Boogie Nights. I think what you wanted to get nominated in Boogie Nights from that is just Night Rangers Sister Christian. I think that is the, uh, that's the Oscar nomination. Yeah, but he gets it, man.

Like, he understands the assignment. What is happening in that scene. Yeah. Um, do I think even one of the, um, a lot of pondering. I think Love is Strange is on there. It's a lead role. It is. He's usually in an ensemble.

What else might he be top build in? Okay, I'm just going to say that. I'm going to say love is strange. The great love is strange. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. All right. You're wrong. Love is strange is not one of his note for. That is your first strike. You have it. T. Um, um, okay, fine. Boogie Nights.

No, it is also not Boogie Nights. Okay. All right. So your years on your two missing films are 1999. and 2000. Oh, okay. So both of them pre-Frita. Correct. He's in a lot of movies. He's in a lot of movies.

I would argue he has seldom been bad. 1999 and 2000. And this is an especially sort of busy time. I feel like he's working a lot in this era. Although I guess the early 2000s are his biggest Wait, I know what 2000 is. I don't know why it's on his known for. It has to be Shakala.

He's like the villain of Shockala. It's Shakala. Yeah, I know. I'm, uh, yes, it's... Amazing. Is Shakala on anybody else is known for? I guess we'll have to... I don't even think it's on Juliet Benoche's known for.

Now, have we done Benoche? I feel like we have. sure we have. And I don't think it is. Yeah. Benosha's are... No, it is on her. Okay. I absolutely feel like, I absolutely feel like her known for is different than when we did it originally. Maybe. Because I don't remember Clouds of Sils Maria being on it either. It's got to be on Lina Olands, right? Maybe it's not even on Lina Olands. Well, now I'm going to check that. Anyway, okay, I have one more title to guess, 1999. Ah. It is on. Lena Owens. Maybe

Chocolat's just one of those movies. Yeah. Is it on Hulu or something right now that people are watching that movie? I don't know. One of my worst qualities is that I would probably sit down Oh, it's on HBO. It's on HBO now, so maybe that. Yeah.

Maybe I'll watch that today. Maybe I'll be stupid and watch Shaggla today. Oh, amazing. I would watch that movie at any given moment. I am part of the problem. 1999. I'm going to need more hints because nothing is coming to me. You were very close to this with one of your incorrect guesses.

I will say there is a 1999 movie that I would have thought he would have been on, that would have been on this. I don't know, maybe it's not 1999. Oh, you know what? He's not in that movie, but that's another movie with that. But I think that's another movie with Diego Rivera as a character. I was thinking Crayal Will Rock. Because doesn't that have Diego Rivera in that? I've never seen Cretel of Rock. But I think...

I've never seen it. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. A million people in that movie, though. Okay, so I was close. So my wrong guesses were Love is Strange and Boogie Nights. So love is strange.

I mean, it's not going to be a Sax movie. So is it Magnolia? It's Magnolia. I have no memory of it. him being in Magnolia. I don't think I do either. Maybe he's in like one scene. He's credited as a character named Solomon.

He yells a lot. Well, Solomon, Solomon. Yeah, he fires Bill Macy. Okay. All right. There we go then. Yeah. It's so early in that movie that it's like,

granted, early in that movie could be a whole two and a half hours into it. Yeah. Yeah. Wild, wild stuff, Magnolia of all of his movies. I also went the Ryan Murphy route for you. I was not going to make it as easy as doing, say, like, Julianne Moore, you almost start in this movie. However, I did not go into the Ryan Murphy past. I went into the Ryan Murphy future.

I chose someone from the major motion picture coming this December to Netflix, The Prom. What about the prom? What if that's in somebody's Golden Globe speech this year? What about the prom? I chose for you. Postered prom ensemble member. Keegan Michael Key. Oh, I knew you were going to do this to me.

Damn. No television. How there is no television here? That is the wildest thing. There's got to be a voice one, though, right? There's no voice. Are you kidding me? So literally the best things that I have for Keegan Michael Key were going to be Key and P.L.

and Toy Story 4. Okay. Okay. All right. I see how you're doing this. You who likes to pretend that you're never evil to me? By the way, I'm going to remember this. I'm going to bring this one up the next time.

Just like, I'm... Michael Key, who shows up in a bunch of movies for one scene. I'm never evil to you, Joe. You're always so mean to me. And I'll remember it. I've been nice to you recently. So I had to make it somebody who is usually in bit roles. Is Tomorrowland one of them?

Tomorrowland is one of them. Oh, thank God. Tomorrowland, a movie I have famously never seen, a movie that famously is not real. Many people bought a ticket to that, and they did not play a movie because Tomorrowland does not exist. All right, there's one that I remember him in, but it's so small.

I can't imagine, and I'm trying to remember the title of it. But it's not the Mike Barbiglia Improv movie. is it? Don't think twice, no. I liked that. I did too. I just couldn't remember the title. He's good in that

and Gillian Jacobs is good in that. Okay, Keegan Michael Key. I am going to be so up a creek on this. I hate it. This is the wildest assortment of unknown four I've seen in like so little time. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay.

And it's no voice. voice performances. I feel like he's doing a ton. Wait, is he in Dolomite? He is. That is not on... Of course, they never do Netflix. Uh, I will give you years then. Your years are 2014,

2016, and 2018. However, one of these, like, it's obviously evil that there is no TV, but there is one that is, like, it's it's not from the TV show, but like...

You know, there's a lot of association. There's a lot of association. You know, it's with perhaps somebody he was famous for being on a TV show with. So with Jordan Peel. It makes sense that you've maybe forgotten this movie was a thing. Is it Keanu? It's Keanu. Oh, my God.

The Kitty movie. I hate you. I hate you so sincerely much. I kind of liked Keanu. I never saw it. I kind of liked it. Okay, so you got 2014, 2018.

Both of them slightly problematic, but like nobody noticed that these movies happened. I didn't know he was in one of them. One of them is a horror movie. Keegan Michael Key in a horror movie. Perhaps a reboot of a horror movie.

Oh, I was going to say he's not, definitely not in any of Jordan's movies. A reboot of a horror movie. He's not in... Is this 2018? Is the horror movie 2018? Yes. Is he in Halloween?

There's a whole... In what? Is he in Halloween? No. No. I hate that movie. There's a whole trend happening, especially with like genre movies where it's like, we went away from using this word in movies.

And now we're going back to using this word in franchise movies. Um... Are you going to force me to say a word I'm going to get canceled for saying? no it's it's a simple three-letter word that movie titles used to have and then it's like oh it's cool if we don't have this word the and now yes the word the is in a movie called the no it's the blank oh i see so like the batman it's a horror movie sort of like how we're saying the batman right yeah like the next batman movie is not batman it is the batman it is the batman okay all right right so it's the the Frankenstein, the wolfman, the wolfman. No, that's not 2018. Oh, sorry, right, 2018. Kate Blanchett did not say, that's gross on the Oscars in 2019.

Okay. It's gross. The, the Robocop, the Fright Night, the... You're getting closer because it's like sci-fi-ish horror. Perhaps because the villain is an alien. The predator. The predator. The predator.

I never saw The Predator. He's definitely in that, though. Yep. Yeah. Okay, so your other movies... The Predator also played at Tiff, by the way. Do you remember that when the Predator was in the Mid-N-N-Madness? It absolutely did, and it played at Tiff immediately when the controversy about it happened.

Oh, God, right, the controversy about it. I forgot about that. Yeah. Okay, so your 2014 movie, it is a comedy. It is a summer comedy that bombed and got terrible reviews. 2014. Turns out people don't want to see the... These types of characters be funny.

These types of characters be funny. It's all centered around a job. Like, what is this profession that we would not want to see funny? A profession that we don't want to see funny. Oh, God. It's the cop movie. It is the cop movie. Do you know, remember the name of this 2014 cop movie?

It's like, it's like, let's be cops or something like that. Let's be cops. Yeah, oh boy, did nobody want to see this movie. It's him and Damon Wayne's Jr., right? Or it's Jake Johnson and Jamie Wayne's Jr. Keegan Michael Key is not a lead. It's Jake Johnson and Damon Wayne's. All right, what a decidedly unwell known for for Keegan Michael Key?

Like, for God's sake, he's done such good stuff. Oh, it's Damon Wayne's Jr. It's not even Damon Wayans. I know. It's Damon Wayne's Jr. I didn't know that. I know, because... As you can imagine, I avoided that movie like it was the plague. Your inability to tell Damon Wayne's credits from Damon Wans Jr.

credits has come up before on, what you call it, Cinephile. Our Scatigories, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I missed it. Couldn't, yeah. Yeah, that was very difficult, so thank you. Well done. Oh, it does say, I'm now on his Wikipedia page.

It does say he has an uncredited cameo and get out, and I'm trying to remember where that is. Oh, it says he's NCAA prospect, so he must be one of the photos on Allison Williams' little collection of former victims. ah you know when she's like going through when we see in like all the yeah she's yeah she has the glass of milk and she's like very terrifyingly and hilariously chewing a fruit loop yes uh fruit loop singular great movie all right so do we feel like we've uh we've gotten everything that we can get at a ring with scissors can we talk about for like half a second about how much i hate that poster where it's the hand

stupid poster imagine a movie with that poster not making any money. It's such an off-putting poster. I don't want hands to have legs. I just don't. It made $7 million.

I'm kind of surprised. Because it turns like the palm of your hand into a butt. It turns to like the bottom of your palm into a butt and I don't like it. Look at that poster. Tell me I'm wrong.

The bottom of that hand is a butt. The uncanny valley of butt hand. Thank you. That's, man, if we had special titles for episodes, that would be, if we did, like, Las Culturista style, like, that would be frontrunner for title. The uncanny Valley of Butt-Hands. The Uncanny Valley of Butthands. That's also merch, by the way. That's going in the episode summary. That's our next merch, the Uncanny Valley of Butthands. All right. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's it for. Let's, let's print. Let's end. Let's do it. All right. Let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's Why did we decide to do this bit just this week, like 15 times? So stupid. Let's let's let's let's let's go.

Let's let's God's sake. All right, that's our episode. If you want more of this at Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this at oscarbuzz.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you and your stuff? Uh, you can find me, uh, walking with scissors. I don't know, something that's not dangerous, like running with scissors. On Twitter at Chris V-File, that's F-E-I-L, also on letterbox under the same name.

I am on Twitter at Joe Reed, Reed spelled R-E-I-D. I am also on letterboxed as Joe Reed, read spelled the exact same way. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievous for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility. So climb out of the uncanny valley of butt hands and write us a nice review, won't you? That is all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. All right, this had Oscar Buzz addendum because I know we promised, we might just throw this in at the end, honestly,

rather than me trying to find a way to, like, squirrel it in. I told you we need to have, like, post credits. Yes, this is our first. This had Oscar Buzz post-credit scene. I promised at the beginning of the episode to talk about the Bill Condon story, and now I realized that I didn't, and I can't leave you guys hanging like this.

And Chris has never heard the Bill Condon story, which is... I think I haven't. Okay. So when I mentioned that New Yorker profile, which was done, I think right before Pose came out, the Emily Nussbaum profile of Ryan Murphy in The New Yorker from May of 2018. One of the stories in it,

She talks about sort of Condon coming to Los Angeles and sort of making his way. And he was living at the time with his boyfriend, Bill Condon, who was pre-Gods and Monsters at this point. I think he was a couple years before Gons and Monsters. And Murphy was kind of the house husband. They had like a human-sized bird cage in this backyard, apparently. that they had birds in and it was the whole thing but one of the things

Murphy talks about the end of the relationship and he said he looked at this bird cage in the backyard and there were two lovebirds and one of them was gone and he said I took that as a sign and I left and I went and I lived at the Chateau Marmont for six months and then so Emily Nussbaum's like

another angle on that story is from Condon so Bill Condon remembers the story as the end of the relationship differently, he said, when visiting Laguna Beach with Murphy, Condon got caught in a riptide, and when he thought he saw a flash of hesitation on Murphy's face, as if he might let him drown,

he knew that the relationship was over. Everybody talks about Rupal letting a man drown. Indeed. Maybe Ryan Murphy is the person who's like, what is this with the upper echelon of gay elites and television, letting people drown? Ryan Murphy didn't even send thoughts and prayers to This is gay, forcing, sure.

So anyway, that story, I literally, I am shocked that more people didn't talk about that because it was goddamn shocking. And I just love that, like, and it's just like a difference of opinion. Ryan Murphy would have let me die. And just Bill Condon just saying it. Like, you can imagine what he says in private if this is what he says. in public to a New Yorker columnist. Like, amazing story.

What an amazing story. Oh, wow. Yeah. So anyway, that is the Ryan Murphy Bill Condon story. Let's go. So now you have heard it. And thank you listeners for indulging our little post-credit scene. We hope you enjoy the rest of your week.

Try not to get caught in a riptide in anywhere near Ryan Murphy because you may not have savior. Yeah, exactly. All right. Bye, guys. Bye. Olao.