This Had Oscar Buzz - 144 – Possession (Focus Features – Part Two)

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

Our Focus Features miniseries continues with the first official Focus release, 2002′s Possession. Adapted by Neil LaBute from A.S. Byatt’s celebrated novel, the film follows Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as poetry scholars who fall in love while unearthing a secret love affair between two Victorian poets, played by Jennifer Ehle and Jeremy Northam. The … Continue reading "144 – Possession (Focus Features – Part Two)"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Heck. I think you know. I'm from Canada water. I found something today I think is pretty incredible. your face. I cannot let you burn me up. Nor can I resist you. Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart.

Possession. No mere human can stand it. in a fire and not be consumed. Hello and welcome to the This Head Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast ordering a Waldorf salad at 3 a.m. Every week on this head 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're here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host Chris Fyle and I'm here as always with my favorite bisexual Victorian poet Joe Reed. Hello, Christopher. I am, as you know, very British and always British. No, sorry, you are not a bisexual Victorian poet. You are studying the Victorian poets, who you might be related to...

It's very true, but all I know is that I am always British in all of my roles, and that is how I am known as incredibly British. It's very funny. to revisit this era of Gwyneth Paltrow's career, because this was, you forget, you really do forget now that her public image has become goop and forgetting that she's in Marvel movies and like all the other Gwyneth things that we know, that at this moment in her career, post-Oskar, even when like, because we've talked before about how she wins the Oscar and immediately the backlash sets in.

But like, even like with that sort of a show. The thing about Gwyneth at this point in her career is, she always plays British. To the point where she hosted Saturday Night Live, and that was her monologue gag, was she starts speaking in her British accent and pretending that she's British, and different people sort of come up and just like, but Gwyneth, you're American. I miss home already. So many wonderful memories of England, the smell of sweet meats and scones on St. Crispin's Day. Excuse me, Gwyneth, aren't you from New York?

Pardon? Well, I read in People magazine that you grew up in New York City and your mom is Blythe Danner and your dad produced staying elsewhere. Well, I simply don't know what you're talking about. Would you like some tea, love? Hold on, Gwyneth? Yes? Yeah.

Alright. It's me. It's me. It's me, Ben. I'm sorry. Sorry? Ben, Ben Affleck. Oh, Ben Affleck, the charming American actor I worked with in Shakespeare in Love.

Uh, Winif, why are you speaking in an English accent? English people always speak with English accents, love. Oh, you yanks are so humorous, spelled with an O-U-R. Her whole aura was very, like, horse girl, but instead of a horse, it's British. horse it's British dialects like it's just it's a certain level of weird that like you can't quite explain what it is it's just like it in this movie is like the the pinnacle of like okay Gwenith you got it you got she keeps like uh leveling up in the like uh kind of buffoonish version of this British dialect like I was going to say this feels like a very S&L British

dialect in this movie. It is so clipped to the nines. It is so pruned in her meter and in her inflection. And it is... And yet, at the time, we all were like best British accent in the business. Like, that was sort of her reputation, right? People loved it because it was, this was Emma sliding doors. Was she British in that movie? Hush? Or am I thinking of Cousin' I'm thinking of that. I only remember that movie for the terrifying trailer where she's like having this really traumatic delivery and Jessica Lang is like just sitting in a corner in a rocking chair like verbally torturing her. Right. So it's mostly Emma sliding doors, Shakespeare in Love and this. This is sort of the last of them. I guess but and then like at the same time she's in a handful of movies where. you feel like it's conceivably possible that she could be British, but she's not. Like, she's in great expectations, but it's an American in great expectations.

She's in, like I said, hush, which is just like when, like, you could conceive of that as this sort of, like, British, like, castle thriller or whatever, right? Ripley, which is, like, obviously about American people in Europe, but, like, it has that air of it probably because it's an Antony McGillowell. movie. And even Sylvia, where it's just like, oh, a movie about like, uh, uh, because like Craig is British in that, right? Yes. Maybe not. I can't remember. See, but this is the thing. It's one of those things where it's just like, oh, like she's playing a like famous like tortured poet or whatever. Like that all just seems very, if not British, than like the Britishest parts of New England and that kind of a thing,

Where it's just like, it's like the new in New England is like barely visible. It's just, it's, it's one of those kind of a thing. But this is definitely, her vibe has never, she's always seemed far to standoffish or like maybe like just to standoffish to ever seem like a theater kid like Anne Hathaway does. You know what I mean? Like, like it's, there's always a little bit too sort of removed from that to be. be like theater kid and yet whenever I see her do sorry go ahead no go ahead go ahead well I was going to say whenever I see her do the British accent it's the closest thing I ever get to thinking of her as a theater kid that's fair I almost feel like it's almost like everything Gwyneth does

feels like it's kind of like a lark to her like you know I guess I'll try it even like something like shallow hal it's kind of like I guess I'll try a bawdy comedy or like the anniversary party. I guess I'll play myself. Right. But like this era of her career after the Oscar, we don't really give her enough credit for trying as many different kinds of things

as she did in that like, like Ripley was already in the works by the time she won the Oscars. So like we can't like fully put that in that era of hers. But like... She's incredible in that movie. And, like, that's not the performance anybody talks about when they watch that movie. But she's, like, secretly amazing. Yeah.

Oh, I mean, everybody in that movie is. Yeah, like, there's nothing bad about that movie whatsoever. We've talked about Ripley before and about how Ripley really was a unfortunate timing for everybody involved in that because everybody was in their Oscar backlash at that point, except for Jude Law. And that's why Jude Law was the one who got the Oscar nomination. But, like, when you're in the Oscar back. portion of Mingella and Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, like, that's, it's really unfortunate because, I mean, whatever, we've had this exact conversation before.

Well, and Blanchet, it wasn't in a backlash stage, but, like, for that performance and what it is in the movie, aside from being a small role, like, yeah, it's too small of a role for the academy's not cool enough to nominate that performance at this point. Exactly, exactly. but like so but you look at movies like duets say what you will is a really interesting movie for gwyneth paltrow to take on as oscar winning actress gwyneth paltrow right the anniversary party you mentioned like that's a great you know small budget interesting role and that she's playing some version of herself um royal tenem bombs and the sort of the way she stretches in royal tenon bombs And, like, that is a different performance than anything we've ever seen her given that movie. I think she's just absolutely, you know, phenomenal in that. You mentioned Shallow Hal, which is a terrible movie and a despicable sort of choice, but it's a choice. And then so that sort of leads us up to where we are with possession, which feels like a little throwback, right?

A throwback to, like, 1998, Gwen. How dare you overlook her performance as Dixie Normas and Goldwater? which like I think is actually important to bring up because yeah with all of this stuff that we've said about Gwyneth feels totally true I do also think that like things she's done like that like show up as a cameo in Austin Bowers movie shows that she like it's a reminder because this is something I do think people forget about her because she is so much is that she doesn't take herself too seriously as all right right she can be very fun and she can and she she takes a lot of supporting roles like she doesn't have this thing where it needs to be a gwyneth paltrow movie for me to do it like she's in a lot of movies that are either like you know something like well we talked about running with scissors several months ago or like she's in infamous the non-capote or the other Capote

movie besides Capote and she gets the and credit in Iron Man right she does as we were all reminded in my last trivia night yes and then like

and she's still doing lead stuff obviously you know Sylvia and proof and that kind of stuff country strong of course how can we forget country strong but like she has the lack of vanity to just be like yes Stephen Soderberg, I will play a corpse in your movie. And, like, I will, you know, absolutely do that.

And, and, and what do we remember from that movie is we remember her horrifying death visage in that film. Like, you know, so everybody's sort of all the better for it. This, this movie, Possession, is the second movie we've ever done that features a psychic and Gwyneth Paltrow. However, the last time. time the psychic was Gwyneth Paltrow with running with scissors. Good point. I was wondering where you were going with that, but very good point, yes. Her Bible flipping. Yes, what a strange movie. But yeah, so we're talking about possession. Why are we talking about possession? Because it's the first ever focus features movie.

And that's sort of, in retrospect, because if you watch the movie, it is it is introduced as it is credited as a USA Films production so like this was just after the turnover from USA Films to Focus Features which we talked about last week it has a lot to do with Barry Diller and you know mr. Diane von Furstenberg and yeah in 2002 USA films and why am I now blanking out his name James Seamus and Ted Hope's

Good Machine are combined into focus features and everything that sort of was USA films now gets turned over to focus features but before we get to this point let's talk a little bit about the very brief era of USA

films because it's a real interesting like year and a half you know what I mean well and we also last week when we did the muse it was october films so right yes we did yes we talked about october films last week uh if you haven't listened to it go back and listen um but yeah the very brief era of USA films was incredibly successful particularly you know with the Oscars where it has best picture nominees in two straight years traffic for 2000 and Gosford park for 2001 And even beyond that, it has some really interesting movies.

I mean, Lars von Trier's The Idiots is incredibly controversial, but like it's a noteworthy sort of Lars von Trier movie. That movie Joe Gould's Secret, the Stanley Tucci movie, Joe Gould's Secret, that I keep meaning to see and haven't. And I can't remember, it must have been one. of my independent spirit awards viewings or whatever i was it was watching something and somebody was like stanley tucci couldn't be here he's making a film in new york city and i was like oh i wonder what that was and i looked it up and the timing was it was joe gold secret um uh series seven the contenders

is a usa film's movie i think we've talked about that before and we've talked about brook smith brook smith rules in that movie freaking rules she's it's a it's a very much like post uh post survivor post reality TV boom film where it's about a reality TV competition where people like hunts each other for sport and she is playing this pregnant assassin essentially and she's

she rules in that movie. She was like the former victor of like several seasons and the thing about like this fake show is if you win you have to go on to the next seasons right who is it is it I hate to butcher her name because she's amazing too is it it's not Mary Elizabeth Burke but it's

Mary Louiseburg. Mary Louiseburg. Also incredible and hilarious in that movie as like the sweet old lady who becomes the most bloodthirsty because you're also, you don't apply to be on this show, you're like forced to be on the show. Also, you know who plays the college student in that is Merritt Weaver.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Like very, very early Merit Weaver. That's a killer films movie. That's Christine Bichon. joint. I don't know how available it is, but that movie needs like a midnight revival when theater is reopened. People should check it out, for sure, for sure. It's a movie that people should talk about when we talk about like the history of reality TV because like we've had reality

TV enough now that it's like, it feels intrinsic to all of that. Yeah. Another USA film's movie from that era, Session 9. Have you ever seen Session 9? Have you ever seen Session 9? You keep telling me to watch this, and I haven't watched it. It's creepy as hell. It's David Caruso and Peter Mulan and Josh Lucas. And it's people, it's an asbestos removing company. It's such a simple premise. An asbestos removing company goes to remove asbestos from a haunted asylum,

like an abandoned psychiatric hospital. And it's, you know, when they uncover these audio tapes, and they sort of get, you know, fall down the rabbit hole. of like what had gone on in this uh in this asylum it's just very very simple and good um and then the cohen brothers movie the man who wasn't there which got some kind of oscar nominations i know it got uh i think i'm pretty sure roger deacons i'm pretty sure that's deacons yeah uh it is roger deacons but like that is a movie people don't when people talk about cohen brothers movies and people do their inevitable rankings of coan brothers movies which happens whenever there's a new one um i'm always

most interested to see where the man who wasn't there sort of shakes out in the list. Because it's usually like either upper middle or lower middle and I feel like I characterize the list by whether they put it upper middle or lower middle. It's a movie that I remember watching initially and I was just like

well that was kind of boring and then the more I thought of it I was just like oh well like the boringness of this is kind of radical right where it's just like that Billy Bob Thornton character like could not be more unflappable and steady and sort of like but that sort of becomes the point of his character

and around him it's tony shalube who got the most like critical reactions for that movie right because like that's kind of a bunch of precursor stuff yes um but like yeah shalub is the very sort of animated uh you know character in that movie but like francis mcdorman plays billy bob thornton's wife and she's really fantastic in it that was part of the scarlet joe Hanson sort of breakthrough year because it was this and ghost world both in the same year. And yeah, it's a really interesting, interesting movie that I would say go revisit it. But just like have, you know, have patience with it. And then obviously Gosford Park is a huge Oscar success.

It's on everybody's IMDB game, as we have discovered through the last few years doing this podcast, gets Best Picture, director nominations wins the golden globe i'm pretty sure for robert altman yes and and as happens every year when people start surmising whether best picture and best director will split because that was 2001 best picture we remember it now is like a beautiful mind winning and everybody is sort of like now it's just like oh it was inevitable ron howard was always going to get his Oscar and it was going to but like at the time for polygon yeah at the time lord of the ring's fellowship of the ring was very, very much considered a major contender. It had the most nominations, right? Yes, it did. And 13. So people, there were a lot of people talking about like, well, will it split? Will it be

a beautiful mind best picture? Maybe Peter Jackson best director. Maybe the other way around. Maybe Robert Altman will win director and one of these two movies will win best picture. Because it really felt like a career capper moment for Robert Altman, that he had sort of like, he was back on top he was you know this very like typically robert altman giant ensemble you're very very sort of like interested in all these characters as they go about their business and um so that's like two years in a row where USA films is very close to you know the very top of the Oscar list right traffic wins best director almost probably almost wins it won every other award it was nominated for besides best picture so you imagine it probably came close and so now USA films is sort of like

riding high atop the like indie film the landscape and gets merged with good machine and becomes focus features cue again soothing title card the music The Wayback Machine was not my friend this week because I was trying to get, like, exact timing, exact production histories, and it couldn't happen. Because I will tell you, I watched this on a DVD. So I'm sure, like we mentioned last week with the Muse, if you rent the Muse on, like, iTunes right now, you're going to get a Focus Features logo. Possession didn't have the focus features logo as we know and rely on it to come It had a very prototypical, yeah, it had a very early first draft. It was basically a slide.

I wanted to flip my desk. I was pissed. So that probably means the first movie that had our beloved focus features, logo was Francois-Ozant's eight women, which, like, I'm going to credit Isabella Pair with that. Of course you are.

Yeah, Possession was so early on in the Focus Features thing that the trailer still has the USA Films logo on the trailer. Interesting. Yeah, so it was very, very early, but it is the first Focus Features movie from summer 2002. I remember this being,

we talk about Entertainment Weekly movie previews. This is obviously not a fall movie preview, but this would have been whatever their like spring summer movie preview issue was. I remember this getting, and maybe I'm fully up a creak on it, but I don't think I am. I think

this caught like a full page. And that's sort of how you know, you sort of got your information as to what was going to be sort of major and what wasn't going to be. And I think the Neil the Butte of it all was a big part of that, and also, obviously, the Gwyneth Paltrow of it all. And it just arrived very quietly and never really got any louder in 2002.

Yeah. And it's like, as soon as it released, it was just very quiet. Which, like, people talk about these kind of August, August movies as being like a wasteland. And maybe less so after, like, Guardians of the Galaxy made a shit ton of money. in August. But like August counter-programming, in terms of Oscar, there are a lot of examples where it has worked, things like the help, because like these type of movies meant for more adults or like people who are maybe interested or like tired of all of the summer bombast. Like a movie can go down really, really well if it's programmed well at the time.

this movie was released yeah yeah no it's true and like by this point we're only a few years removed from something like the six cents getting a best picture nomination from august so like obviously these things you know can and do happen but it does like it takes work you got to put the work into it and the reviews were not in a position like you look at the reviews you look at the reviews for this movie and even the positive ones are like oh huh that's that's a cute little thing that neil the you wouldn't have expected that from you know the in the company of men guy and it was like muted good reviews or else people who were like this didn't work at all like the tones of this were really at war with each other which i do kind of agree with and so like it was like muted positive

less muted negative reviews. So even though I think it's rotten tomatoes percentage was like in the 60s or something like that. Yeah, it's like 60s Rotten Tomatoes, 50s, Metacritic, which is exactly what I would have expected after I watched the movie. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And we'll get into later on how it was very easy for focus to sort of like quickly move on to their other movies in 2002

because they, you know, hit the ground running with Oscar, especially with some of the... Yeah, like you can see how this would have had like a more prestigious release when it opened and then quickly got buried by the rest of the things they had that year. Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that for sure after we, you know, get through,

talking about the movie itself, which it's an interesting movie. I didn't love it and I didn't hate it, which sort of feels sometimes like I'm throwing my hands up and just being like you decide um but i think there are like specific things about it that are interesting in terms of like what kept me from really liking it how what was your experience watching this movie i mean i it's it's less that i don't know where i felt with this movie as as it is i hated half of it and i really enjoyed the other half did it fall along like julia

lines were like, I love this plot line. I love this, you know, era plot line, and I hated this plot line. See, I don't hate the Julie stuff in Julian and Julia. Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't mean to say that I don't either, but I think that was the vibe of the reaction to Julian Julia, right? Where people were like, love the Merrill stuff, hate the Amy Adams stuff. And right, those people are wrong, but yes, it's basically that. The modern day stuff in this movie, I think is actively bad, actively boring. And most of the Gwyneth movies

we've talked about, it's like, she's actually one of the better things about this not great movie, and I think it's the opposite. I think she's one of the movie's biggest problems. I kind of want to see the version of the movie where the four leads swap roles, because I

think it might make it for, make for a better movie, but like the period stuff relies so heavily on, Jennifer Ely, so I was all game for it. Of course. You are. Noted slut for Jennifer Ely. Yeah. No, that is true. I feel like the movie takes us away from them too often for it to ever like build up the kind of momentum that I need for me to become fully wrapped up in it. I, because this movie so often reminded me of the French lieutenant's woman, um, in,

it's sort of, you know, where, you know, a modern day story that is being commented on by a fictional, or, you know, in that case, I think French Lieutenant's Woman, it's a fictional story. In this case, it's a, you know, historical. They're looking into, you know, these poets who were from the Victorian era. But, like, each one sort of comments on each other. And in that movie, in the French Lieutenant's Woman, the characters are played by the same actors. So it's Streep and Jeremy Irons. I also kind of wanted it to be that. that's the thing and also the other thing is that scene of the train station where Jennifer Ely shows up in that phenomenal sort of billowing green thing with the hood I'm like this is very French the tenant's woman but yeah I wonder if it would have been better if Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ely were the actors in the modern day portions as well obviously I can see why you would want to have a big star like Winif Paul Trow and obviously like Aaron Eckhart is Neil Lebutte's security blanket. So, you know, I get it from that point of view.

I think I agree with you there. I have, I may be a little bit more mixed on both halves of the movie, but we'll, you know, we'll get into it maybe on the other side of the plot description. Which I was going to say we should get into it because we're starting to like wade into the waters of actually like unpacking this movie. So guys, once again, we are here to talk about possession, not the one where Isabella Johnny freaks the fuck out in a train station tunnel. We are talking about the one about...

Also not the one where Sarah Michelle Geller, who's in the other possession. There's one from like the 2010s or whatever. Who's in that one? We are not talking about repossessed the Leslie Nielsen, Linda Blair, Exorcist spoof. Yeah, there was a 2009 sort of creepy horror movie called Possession that starts Sarah Michelle Geller and Lee Pace that was like, I'm pretty sure just like never actually released in the United States. Like it took forever for it to come out.

And we are not talking about Sarah McLaughlin's song possession yet. Yet. We probably will be. We are talking about Neil Labute's possession written by, we'll get into it, several drafts over a full decade, David Henry Kwong, Laura Jones, and LaBute based off of AS by its novel, starring Aaron Eckhart, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ely, We'll Get Into It, and Lena Heady. The movie had a limited opening August 16th, 2002, before opening wide August 30th of that year. Joe, if we haven't confused our listeners enough already with what this movie is about, would you like to give us a 60-second plot description? description. Yeah, yes. All right. Let's get into it. Your 60-second plot description for possession starts now. All right, Aaron Eckhart plays an American poetry scholar with a but chin working in London

who comes across a here-to-fore undiscovered letters by a famous Victorian playwright named Randolph Henry Ash. The letter suggests that Ash may have had an affair outside his marriage with another poet, bisexual legend, Christabel Lamont. Eckhart steals the letters from the London Library, wanting to drop this scholarly bombshell, but to confirm it, he seeks out Gwyneth Paltrow, who is a the poetry scholar herself, who has descended from Lamont. They don't get along at first, of course, but then they dig deeper into the Ash Lamont romance, and they become closer, of course.

They discover further documents as we in the audience watch Ash, played by Jeremy Northam and Christabel, played by Jennifer Ely, fall in love and have a clandestine affair and kind of ruin her lesbian relationship with Lena Heady, and then they get torn apart by secrecy, of course. Erinac Hart and Poltro are able to outfox their scholarly rivals in getting the documents that prove that Ash and Cristobel had a secret daughter, and Gwyneth has actually descended from the daughter,

and so she's the rightful heir to all these letters anyway. And so she and Eckhart make out in their cozy-looking sweaters, having just won the literary nerd lottery. And that's time. Hey. First off, thank you for bringing up the sweaters. This very quickly, like, I've made fun of other movies for this way, but it's very true for this.

This movie could have very quickly had, like, an L.L.B.N. logo show up at any minute. I was happy for it. I will say that era of 2002 sweatshirt. sweater that Aaron Eckhart's wearing where the sleeves they're very like they're on the sleeves are not cuffed and they are made to fall like right around the like second knuckle of the thumb like one of those sweaters are a real mood for me like an absolute like if I was never made able to really make those look good but I was always into any guy who was able to make those look good And then Gwyneth, of course, her look, when she's not wearing, by the way, at one point, a short-sleeved turtleneck sweater, legend.

But it's also those sort of turtleneck sweaters with the big sort of doughnutty bulkiness at the turtleneck collar part. It's just, it's very, very error-appropriate for all of it and very cozy looking in general. so I was very happy about that. Yeah. Not quite a candle movie, though. No, not quite a candle movie. So here's the thing with the Eckhart-Paltrow romance, beyond it being very predictable,

where they meet and they're like, they're oil and water, and she's sort of, you know, buttoned up scholar, and he's like rock and roll American, like, eh, I didn't even do the research. I'm going to make a little joke. about lesbians like I'm gonna steal this from a museum market right br-na-na-na-na-n-air like you want to have like the guitar lick happening as he's just like he's the rebel American he's not American in the book I believe which is interesting an interesting sort of change that this makes

and as they sort of like they research and they're sort of placed in these things where they're both reading the letter at the same time so they're like physically close and then they go to a little inn somewhere where they're like looking for something else and they have to share a bed in a room because it's the only one available and it's just like y'all we have seen this there is a point this is interesting there's a point that scene where they're both in the bed together and you can tell like they're about to start kissing and he like is like why do you always wear your hair like that because she always wears her hair in this like tight scholarly bun and i literally wrote down in my notes i'm like oh no is he going to literally have her let her

hair down and it doesn't it doesn't happen in the book but if you look at the trailer there are scenes where her hair is down and they start making out and I'm like oh they actually did film that scene and somebody at some point must have been just like this is too cliche like this is one step too far we cannot I think that's what like the poster is like the international posters for this movie are way better than the US one which is like floating heads in a city and then smaller heads making out And it's like, no, Eckhart and Paltrow are the ones making out with the big heads on the international poster, which definitely sells you on the wrong movie. Right. Thank God for the little heads, or we wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big heads.

Thank God for the little heads. Yeah. Where did you? You did not enjoy their storyline at all. No, for all of the reasons that she said, it's very boring. I don't think that they are interesting fits both together and in their role. It does feel vary by the numbers, not just the way it's plotted, but also in the performance. They don't really have the right chemistry for it.

And part of the reason why I say I would rather see either the same people in both roles, because A, it will help, you know, I don't think this movie does a really good job at, like, charting these two romance. as like being parallel in a way. It's like they're just two different timelines. And like I think if you had the same actors, that would help. But also if you flip the casts, I thought Jennifer Ely and Jeremy Northam had great chemistry. I thought like there was actual palpable sexual tension in what they were doing.

They have a good sex scene in that movie. They have a really good sex scene. You see some sidebut from Jeremy Northam. And Jennifer Ely is in one of those giant linen like sleeping gown. It's wonderful. It's hot. But, like, their plot line is way more plotty than the other one. So I think, you know, if you had, like, heat and chemistry in the modern day couple,

like, you already have this interesting movie going on in the other timeline, right? Where it's still, you know, it's doing its own narrative thing that, like, even if you have more boring actors, it'll still work, right? Yeah. Well, and then you can do the thing that you almost want the movie to do, where you want the modern-day couple to be living their romance through this Victorian-era couple. And it doesn't quite get there. The other thing, I think, is an issue is, because I don't think the Victorian-era plot line is interesting enough either. That is my other problem with this, is that, like, I don't think it maintains a momentum. We cut away from them for too long. They're these, like, jumps in time where, we sort of revisit them at a later stage and you're just like okay well what was going on all of this time all of a sudden you know she had a kid maybe and he's mad at her and then they reconvened at the seance and yada yada yada um but i think there are times in the modern day plot line where it feels like a richard curtis movie is about to break out and i deeply want that to happen because i feel like that at least be fun and sort of like all this stuff with the rival the rival art or uh poetry scholars

where it's like the the guy who seems like he was at the beginning of the movie it seems like he's gwyneth paltrow's boyfriend but he's not he's just sort of with her at a auction and he's he's erin akart's sort of professional rival and he sort of defects to this been a more bland actor no oh my god as he has like shockingly bland um and he sort of defects to this other scholar who is also looking to, at some point they catch on to the fact that there are these secret letters that are being uncovered. So now they are trying to, like, rob graves and look for it. And, like, it at times feels like the tone is starting to get, like, plinky silly.

And I'm like, that's sort of what I want, but you have to, like, go there and you have to, like, sell it. And otherwise, it just seems like tonally off kilter. And that's what it felt like to me. And I wanted it to be, like, let Tom Hollander, who was in this movie for, like, one scene. And I'm like, bring Tom Hollander around and let him be silly, too. Like, we want that. Like, and at the very least, then, I would have enjoyed myself watching that plot line.

But I also feel like at the same time, the Victorian era plot line could have used a little more, like, if that's going to be like your heavy sort of panting romance. I needed that to be like throw more melodrama into that then if they're talking if it's meant to be a contrast really contrast both of those things and it didn't do that to a certain point and there's like you know there's other levels of melodrama to it to like

you know a secret child that is sent away and uh this kind of sexless marriage um I don't know. Like, I thought, like, it wouldn't have been enough for its own movie, but... Yeah, the sexless wife, I did not think sort of popped as a character, which was too bad.

I was into the idea of, like, Lena Heady playing, like, the She's All That version of Searcy Lanister, where it's like the first act where it's just like, she's got glasses. Like, what's going on with her? And then... That is how we distinguish lesbians in cinema, especially during the aughts as they have glasses. They have glasses, exactly. and dark hair, and, yeah. I wanted more of that, of course. Obviously, as I said, in my plot description,

Christabel is a bisexual legend, and I wanted much more of that. And instead, like, very early on, we get one scene where they're, like, together, and then the next scene, she's just like, I can't believe you hid those letters from me. Now I'm going to go be with Jeremy Northam. And then we find out at the end

that, like, like all lesbians of Yore in England, And Lena Heady walks into the sea, walks into the river and drowns herself, Virginia Woolf style. I was going to say, not the most famous movie of 2002 where a lesbian walks into a body of water. Did not realize that that was a trend that year. What other 2002 movie could have, like, completed that entirely? What could have, like, Spider-Man? Like, maybe, like, obviously we need Mary Jane to, like, survive at the end. But, like, maybe James Franco's character, because he sat his dad.

like walks into the Hudson with rocks in his pockets or something. I mean, why not the two towers? I'm sure, is Galadriel a lesbian? Probably. I mean, let's just say it. All those elves are bisexual. All those elves are bisexual. I've decided.

I knew very early on that Orlando Bloom in that movie was bisexual because he had to be. For me to be happy. And yeah, of course Galadriel's a bisexual. Absolutely. That is canon as far as I'm concerned, and nobody will tell me different. J.R. R. Tolkien. and can, you know, have all his religious hangups that he wants. You know, it could have happened in Frida,

but, like, that never happened in real life. Like, you want some authenticity to truth and history. Right, right, right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, listeners, tweet at us what the best third movie for someone to walk into a river from 2002 would have been. And we'll be interested to hear from you. Yeah. I felt bad that that's all that that sort of storyline became, you know, came to.

I don't know. I was just weirdly dissatisfied with that, even though, as you say, Jennifer Ely rules and is great in this movie. So good. I mean, okay, so let's talk about Jennifer Ely. This is our first Jennifer Ely movie. There are other ones we can and probably will do. But, like, talk about a performer who has really not ever been given their due. she never really leads movies

she's always kind of a supporting player and she is always perfect she's always exactly what the movie needs to be and like a lot of those roles are still very very different I probably would have had her on my ballot for Contagion even something like Vox Lux Lux

she gets exactly what the energy is supposed to be and the kind of absurdity and blandness is supposed to be she's able to play to play she's so good in zero dark 30 zero dark 30 is a movie that um doesn't seem like it feels like it needs to have or like from the outside you wouldn't think that it would need to have an emotional beat like an emotional sort of a core to it because it's you know

it's a essentially a procedural about hunting down Osama bin Laden right but like Jennifer Ely provides the emotional core for this movie, which you end up, it turns out you do need because Jessica Chastain's character becomes such a goddamn psycho by the end of that movie that you need to have a justification for it. And Jennifer Ely really sells being the justification for that and does a very good job with that.

She's, her career so, like, you look at all of these roles that she's in. Including shit that I, like, had no idea that she's in, like the Robocop remake. Right, right, exactly. Or I've never seen a quiet passion, so I didn't realize she's in... She's amazing in a quiet passion. Is she her sister?

Yes, everybody rightly talks about Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson when we talk about that movie. But like Jennifer Ely, this is the other thing about Jennifer Ely. She's an incredible scene partner in building chemistry with the people that she is on screen with and like their relationship is just so good um in that movie um in terms of just like the layers that like jennifer ely brings to like complicated and play off of this like very large performance that cynthia nixen is giving um and like even that's a movie but i mean like that movie had a really small muted response but like even in the discussion of

Like Cynthia Nixon, not a lot of people made space for Jennifer Ely either. We talk a lot about how we want to do Wilde at some point, which we really should. She's in that. She plays Oscar Wilde's wife in Wild. She's also in this movie that I saw a long time ago that I keep wanting to revisit, this British gay rom-com called Bedrooms and Hallways, which stars Kevin McKidd, who people probably know from Grey's Anatomy, who plays Owen Hunt on Grey's Anatomy. and even though Owen is terrible as a character,

and we all agree, Kevin McKin's very good. And James Purifoy. So it's like Kevin McKin and James Pierfoy are like, you know, really, really sexy together. And, but Jennifer Ely is in this. Like, the cast of this movie is fantastic.

Tom Hollander is also in that movie. Hugo Weaving's in that movie. Simon Callow's in that movie. Harriet Walters in that movie. It's a really, really well-cast film. I need to watch this movie. Of course, like, the biggest launch that Jennifer Ely has had

had and probably the one that she's most remembered for is playing Elizabeth Bennett in the BBC Pride and Prejudice in the mid-90s that like it was so beloved that when the Joe Wright one came out which is still pretty straightforward of Pride and Prejudice you know especially in terms of what Joe Wright has done with his career and like that movie comes out and it's like how dare they from the like fans of the BBC version um And I mean, it's kind, it's kind of a bummer that Colin Firth, who plays, obviously, Mr. Darcy and that Pride and Prejudice, his career went where it did. He's, you know, won an Oscar by now. He's, you know, that, that we didn't see a parallel path for Jennifer Ely into quite that degree, which is, like, it's a bummer. I mean, it's a bummer because she hasn't gotten, like, the type of, you know, trophies and, like, spotlight recognition as she has. But, like, That's what I know. But at the same time, like, she works constantly, like, to the point where she's doing six movies a year.

Yeah. She's going to be in the HBO. Is she right? Is she going to be in the HBO, Oslo? Or am I making that up? I think I'm making that up. She was in the stage version of Oslo. Interesting.

I guess she's not. That's a bummer. I always, I just assumed that they would have been bringing her along. She's in that movie St. Maude that I haven't seen yet that I heard is very good. She's the reason I went and saw that at that, too. She's also in the Sundance movie from this year that we both hated, John and the Hole, where it's, you know, completely wastes her talents. But, like, she's Dakota Johnson's mother in the 50 Shades movies.

Like, it's a lot of really different kind of stuff for Jennifer Ely. Yeah, like, she's had a really, like, this kind of hard-to-pin career where, like, she can kind of be thrown almost anything, it seems, and come out on top and be one of, like, your favorite, quietly one of your favorite things about the movie. I suppose, like, and this didn't even get that far, I suppose, like, the closest run she had with awards in terms of films is that movie that we also have talked about doing

because it's just like this weird outlier in 1999 or 2000, that movie Sunshine with Rachel Weiss and... The It's Fonsabo movie Sunshine. Yeah, Golden Globe. multiple Golden Globe nominations. Well, the thing about that, and I think I would have to go back and really research this, but they

tried to campaign her and her mother, Rosemary Harris, together as one performance. They shared a golden satellite nomination for that. Not the satellites. I know. I know. But to my memory,

they tried to pull off this thing where they were campaigning them together as like one performance. and obviously, like, rules and such, it didn't, that was not allowed to happen. Her awards tab is very interesting. That's her only Satellites nomination. Her only Screen Actors Guild nominated, or no, it's a win with the cast of the King's speech. She shared in that SAG ensemble win for the King's speech.

A movie I always forget she's in. She got a couple runners-up citations for supporting actress for St. Maude this past year, which is really interesting. British Independent Film Award nomination and a London Critics Circle Film Awards nomination, both for St. Maude. She was nominated for a BAFTA for supporting actress for Wild. We really do have to do Wild. And the Village Voice film poll twice had her on their top 10 list for supporting actress for Contagion and Zero Dark 30 back-to-back years. So that's cool that someone at least was out there recognizing how great she was in both of those movies back to back. At this point, I do wish we had done contagion before the pandemic.

I know. We can't do it now. We will never do contagion. I know. It will just never happen. I know. Because, yeah, like, that movie got screwed at the time, and I think she specifically got screwed.

She was also nominated for a Genie Award for Sunshine as a lead actress, just her, not her mother, Rosemary Harris. Rosemary Harris, by the way, in 2002, was having a hell of a year, because this was the first Spider-Man movie where she played. I had pulled Rosemary Harris to do IMDB game, but it's three,

God, throw some respect on Rosemary Harris's IMDB. It's just the three Spider-Men movies and before the devil knows you're dead, which is a good movie, but like, she's had a more interesting career than playing Aunt May. Oh, no, I know. I'm just saying, this was a big year for her. One last Jennifer Ely role that I neglected to mention, and I should. She's the wife in Little Men, the Arisax movie, Little Men.

Irisax's Little Men, incredible movie. We will find more ways to bring up that movie on this podcast, but rightly so. We will find ways to bring up Iris Axe wherever we can. Love his movies. Guys, check out Little Men when you can. I guess my button on the Jennifer Ely thing, and I tweeted this last night, truly one of the best days of the early pandemic was when Jennifer Ely on Instagram

she since deleted her Instagram probably because people were a lot when she started reading Pride and Prejudice like post going live and reading the book I don't remember this oh it was like I remember the time that it happened and like me and a few errant homosexuals were freaking out online and like

sending it to each other immediately. And it was just, like, so pure and so comforting in, like, the early scary times that it was, like, just one of those days that I, during the pandemic, where I just, like, cried because something was nice. Oh, those moments were hard to come by, but yeah. Jennifer Ely, come back to Instagram. Read anything else you want to us. So talk a little bit about the sort of development journey of this movie, because this is based

on a novel that was a thing it was published in 1990 and it did they had been trying to make this into a movie basically since then and it was a long winding road to 2002 for this movie. You watch this movie and it to me

makes sense that it passed over several different hands in getting adapted because it doesn't ever feel like it has you know one clear vision of what it should be. And it feels like it's picked up elements like as it sort of moved along, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And, well, it started with David Henry Huang, who, like, instantly, you know, that's going to give the movie an air of prestige because in the late 80s, he was Pulitzer finalist, won best play for M. Butterfly, and he's just, like, stayed.

Right. Incredibly successful and a great playwright. Yeah. Genius writer for the stage. I saw Golden Child off Broadway a few years ago, and I thought he was very good. very jealous meanwhile like the directors that were getting attached were people like Sidney Pollock I could easily imagine him being attached when Huang was attached

Jillian Armstrong who like listeners will probably most know from the Winona writer Little Women she comes onto it I imagine that's how Laura Jones that's attached that's what I was thinking as well

because Laura Jones did the screenplay for Oscar and Lucinda, which was the Jillian Armstrong directed movie that starred Ray Fines and Cape Blanchet the year before Cape Blanchet broke through with Elizabeth, which obviously will always be cosmically tied

to Gwyneth Paltrow because that was the, she was sort of Gwyneth's big Oscar rival that year for the Shakespeare and Love Oscar. Yeah. And eventually it makes its way to Neil Lebutte, who I couldn't really find anything,

thing. I read an interview where like when he took a pass at the script, he talked about how he had found some like version or notes by the book's original author on like what a movie should be like of this book. And then he really took a lot of those notes to heart. And you can kind of really see how that makes for some disjointed things. But I couldn't find anything on why this for LaBute? Because this is still at the incredibly caustic point of like the things that Neil LaBute was writing. And we've talked about that in our episode on Nerf Betty. But like this movie comes out in the same year that the play of a shape of things premieres.

And I can't even watching the movie, I kind of can't reconcile it. I mean, it could be as simple as he was just looking to do something. very different than what he had been doing to try and, you know, sort of shake up his professional reputation. Obviously, you imagine that when Lebutte came on to the film, that's when the Roland character becomes American because, you know, he wants to cast Aaron Eckhart, who had starred in his previous films. Has he An Anincard ever done a dialect?

Oh, gosh. I don't think he has. Let me see. Now I'm going to take a quick perusal through because he had just been in Aaron Brockovich. So he had been in the Le Butte movies in The Company of Men, which was his big breakthrough,

Independent Spirit Award, all that sort of stuff. Your Friends and Neighbors and Nurse Betty in 2000. But like most people at that point knew him for Aaron Brockovich. The other thing about Aaron, in this movie is it's so close to when he was in the core that I kept sort of picturing when he would show up on screen. I'm like, but when is he going to tell Gwyneth Paltrow about the mission to drill to the center of the earth? Because like, they got to get to that. It's got to happen. Um, uh, what else? What else? I'm going through. Thank you for smoking was a big

one for him. Um, he's in Black Dahlia. Yes. Uh, obviously the dark night was like pretty huge for him i remember there being like some serious like people were saying like no aaron arch should be a supporting actor contender for the dark night um that year like there was a lot of sort of heat behind him i'm kind of surprised he's never gotten an oscar nomination right um maybe when he's the monster and i frankenstein he has a uh an accent i doubt it because i've seen that dog shit movie he's the president of the United States in the in the has fallen movies both Olympus and London fell in those movies and he was the president of the United States in those isn't Morgan Freeman also is he maybe just the president in the third one you are asking the wrong person I will never see those movies I don't know man yeah Aaron Eckhart seems like decidedly American but yeah he's been

in enough things and acclaimed in enough things that it is somewhat surprising to me that he's never pulled an Oscar nomination whether it was something like rabbit hole or obviously he was the only contender for best freeze frame

in a movie for Sully but that they voted at the very last second they voted that that should not be a category that year even though it really would have helped burnish the ratings for that um yeah oh that's interesting he's going to be in that uh the that showtime series the first lady where uh viola davis plays michel o'bara and michel fifer plays betty ford

and he's playing gerald ford in that yeah the cast in that movie is insane uh viola davis Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, our good friend Dakota Fanning, Judy Greer, the great Judy Greer, should be interesting. For the longest time, my friend Mark and I had this idea to write a pilot script for a series where all of the first ladies, fictional first ladies of the United States, were in the years since they were, First Lady were recruited into a CIA-like organization where they performed spy missions. And we were like, it would be like the Golden Girls meets alias. And we thought it was a very good idea. It's not too late. It's not too late.

I would watch that show. Anyway, yeah, Eckhart in this movie, when you mentioned that you think Paltrow's performance is a problem in this movie, I don't disagree. because I shouldn't watch scenes with her and Aaron Eckhart where I think he's the better of the two of them and I do feel like that in a few of these scenes in this movie. I don't necessarily feel that because I do like Aaron Eckhart

and I mean I love Gwyneth too but it's just like it it feels like I mean we spent maybe too much time making fun of her dialect but like it feels like that's the entire characterization like I don't and like it's I feel bad even

saying that because I don't think that her she clearly has the weakest character of the four leads yeah um and like what the hell else is she going to do with this like it's just we get to the point in the movie where they have to have because like the script books said they do they have to have conflict in at the like you know hour maybe like you know hour and five minute mark of this movie to sort of send us into our third act and the conflict they get into this argument and he sort of says like oh and now is the now now now is the part where you you know get frosty and put up your walls isn't this what you always do with men and yada yada yada and i'm like is that who she is like is that her character because like at this point i guess we had been told that by

this Fergus guy, this, you know, the Toby Stevens character who was like, be careful, they call her a bowl buster, like these kind of things. And it's like, and I'm like, I guess that's what like on paper we're supposed to know about this character. Maud and then there's Maud. I mean, maybe at some level she's miscast then and that's part of the problem because like, maybe, but I just don't think like they do enough work with the scenes with her character specifically to make that like she just seems like she's being professional. She doesn't seem like she's being like unduly frosty or anything like that. Oh, yeah, imagine a movie written and directed by Neil LaBute where a woman is merely professional and all of the men interpret that as cold.

Like, imagine. Yeah. No, my, I mean, I guess she's also not playing cold, but that's why I say maybe she's also miscast. because, like, when I think of Gwyneth as a screen presence and as an actress, like, cold is, like, one of the last things I would call her. Like, if anything, she's, like, has this kind of inner warmth that sometimes, like, in things like, bounce, she's maybe suppressing, you know? And, like, cold, I think of, like, unemotional or, like, unexpressive, and that is not what Gwyneth is. She played those notes really well in the Royal Tenembaum. though, where she played, like, reserved to the point of comedy in that movie, and, like,

that works really well for her. So, like, I think she could do it. You know, you're not wrong about that, you know, being sort of, you know, a thing that she doesn't really do in most of her other roles. But I think she's, you know, she's definitely got that in her. But, yeah, it just doesn't work. And I'm, I'm, you know, at a loss a little bit to fully explain why it doesn't work, but it really, really doesn't work. Yeah. I don't know. I think, like, again, like, I was rather compelled by the other story, even if it was just like, you know, not fluff, but even if it was just like I enjoy watching solid melodrama. And, like, I thought Jennifer Ely kind of fucking ruled um but she always does but like yeah i don't know it it's a very very mixed movie

i think i enjoyed gabriel yarad's score to the film yeah that was pretty good it made me uh wish for the mingella version of this movie mingella would have been a great person to do this movie and you know reuniting with gwyneth paltrow would have been very cool with how hot this movie would have been if it was a mingella movie oh what was he he doing in 2002 pause please uh he was prepping cold mountain oh god you're totally right oh no see let neil lebutte make cold mountain and ooh ooh and can you imagine can you imagine neilabute's cold mountain i don't even know i don't even know what i would make a joke about um uh yeah i don't know what would zellweger's character have been like in Nealabute's Cold Mountain.

She would have been played by a man. Boy, that's an alternate history. Nealabute makes Cold Mountain, turns Ruby Thuse's character into a man, and Shori Agadashulu is an Oscar winner now today because of that. And Tim Robbins isn't, so also... Also great. Yeah. Wow, all these problems could have been solved if you just get Anthony Magella onto this project.

And listen, Sidney Pollock was attached, so, like, that pipeline probably existed because Sidney Pollock and Mangella obviously had a very, you know, long and fruitful professional relationship, so it could have happened. It's true. It also says that Ray Fines at one point was approached for the role that Jeremy Northam ends up playing, which feels very correct. Like that is a, that is a Ray Fines English patient era movie role for sure, before he became known for playing, you know, creeps and villains.

you know I was just I was just on Martadal El Fottles podcast for Sundays with Kate which is a Kate Blancheb podcast and we were talking about an ideal husband

where Jeremy Northam is like the other guy it's Rupert Everett and then one other dude and it's Jeremy Northam and we talked all about like where the hell is Jeremy Northam like Jeremy Northam really didn't have like you would think

think of that movie? I really had a good time with it. Did you? Okay. I got to give it another shot. I started watching it earlier in the pandemic and I was so off put by Julianne Moore's performance, which is like not a thing I ever say. I was not on board with it. I got to maybe try it again. Oh, I think she's great, especially in relation to what everybody else is doing because I think like everybody, it's a movie that they really could have pushed for broader characterizations or like she could have been more like outwardly villainous but like every horrible thing out of her mouth is said with this smile and like she doesn't lean in too hard to everything

in a way that I'll give it another shot. Really delicious and funny. I was, listen, Lord knows my emotional state during the pandemic was all over the place so who knows what I was feeling on that day. It's a good movie. All right. We should talk about the rest of 2002.

for Focus Features because it's the first official Focus Features here. This is the first Focus Features movie and like you could see how even if we don't think Gwyneth is very good in this movie like you know she was kind of what the movie was hinged on in terms of like promoting the movie

so like they could have like tried to do a best actress thing but like I remember the reviews for this like having Jennifer Ely be the standout and like they could have pushed for supporting actress but Focus actually had a lot going on in their first year they have um like i mentioned eight women which was the french submission for uh what was then foreign language film uh did not get nominated you can see why it's a musical it's this like frothy comedy i think it's great it is so much fun have you seen

that movie uh wait sorry which movie eight women i've never seen eight women no you would have a ball with that i should no sorry i was just distracted because i was doing the math. And a full three days after possession opened wide in the United States was the Venice Film Festival premiere of Far From Heaven. So really, like, possession, like the clock ran out on that one in a full 72 hours. And it was just like, and no. And now we've found our... No, because you do have these two big, like, festival plays that become their big Oscar movies, which are far from heaven, goes to Venice, I believe Julianne Moore won best actress there. I think that is right.

Yes, and Latchman got a special prize for cinematography, as he should. And then you also have Roman Polanski's The Pianist, which won the Palm Door and is like one of the end of the year movies in 2002, which like that whole Christmas window is blocked full. of the best picture lineup and other Oscar plays too because like Chicago comes out then the hours comes out then Lord of the Rings comes out then Right Yeah weirdly far from heaven is like the early movie that year And it ran out of gas

Because it opened in early November in the United States And at the time Everybody was like Well here is one of your big best picture contenders Obviously Julianne Moore is a slam dunk To win Best Actress And also it's going to get nominations for Dennis Quaid and probably

Patricia Clarkson and it'll get picture and director and all of this and like early November was way too early that year because all the heavy hitters opened in late December and it just ran out of gas in a way that was like a real bummer

like for as much as I mean obviously you know how much I love the hours and you know how much I love Nicole Kimman in that but like Julian Moore gave the best performance by an actress that year and it's things worked out fine for Julianne and we talked about on screen drafts which will maybe be out by now

maybe not it should be out yeah um how much we love Julianne Moore and still Alice and think very highly of that Oscar win but like it was a bummer because this was like the year of Julianne Moore repressed housewife because it was this and the hours in the same year and then that Golden Globes happened and Kidman beats out Julianne Moore for the globe and And in that instant, I remember thinking, oh, no, yeah, it's going to be this. Like, oh, oh, right.

No, Nicole's winning that Oscar. Like, it's over for Julianne. And, but it's funny to think of what a frontrunner that was, far from heaven, and, like, you know, in the fall before December sort of descended upon everybody. Maybe I am since hardened by the Academy's relationship to Todd Haynes movies, but I also, I mean, I also think maybe we were probably naive at that time, too, because, like, I mean, his movies are not straightforward movies. Even far from heaven, like, you do have to have a certain level of understanding that it is a riff on these, like, movies from that era. It's a riff on Douglas Cirque where it's, like, it's using the language of those movies and the limitations of those movies and what they could express or say outright at the.

the time and like doing it in this kind of knowing pointed way that like the type of audiences or academy voters that really just want everything underlined and spelled out for them are just not going to get that movie or his movies you know it's you're not wrong and I think hindsight definitely plays into it where you look at something like you know Carol which again as I always have to remind people was still a six-time Academy Award nominated movie they did not hate carol but there was sort of a far from heaven it had right five but i think with both of them there's a ceiling there was a ceiling on and i think if 2002 is a top 10 movie a year far from heaven as a nominee but um there was a ceiling we should

play that game by the way if we haven't already is what the top 10 of 2002 would have been i was thinking about this but uh and what just what but like the thing with the thing with the You know, in retrospect, yes, we've seen, you know, the response that Todd Haynes movies have gotten from the Academy since then. But I do think because Far From Heaven was so, it wasn't reverent to the Cirque movies, but it, but stylistically it was. Like, you're right in the fact that, like, it does things and it, you know, offers critiques and it doesn't sort of give you the narrative the way. that you want but like because it was such a stylistic ode to those movies i don't think it was um out of the question for us to assume that hollywood would you know that oscar voters would have been very into the hollywoodiness of it all and that's sort of what i remember thinking at the time

well it's also worth noting too that like the academy didn't go for douglas cirque at the time You're right. This is a genre that, like, it takes a lot for the Academy to get behind. These, like, type of melodramas and, like, because especially at the time, like, those were seen as, like, fluff movies, the Cirque movies. And I think they're, I can't pull it off the top of my head, but I do think there was a movie or two that was embraced by the Academy in terms of Douglas Cirque's filmography. But, yeah, like, people also forget when talking about that movie that. You know, it's a genre that they kind of look down their nose at. But Hollywood does tend to, with enough passage of time, they tend to adopt things that they didn't

adopt at the time. Like, if you look at an Oscar montage, they'll include movies from like 20, 30, 40 years ago that like they didn't touch back then, but because time has sort of made those movies canonical. Like you look at like, I remember that wonderful montage at the 90th Oscars, the Shape of Water Oscars, where they did like 90 years of Best Picture, the one where it breaks into the Love Actually score for the last like 30 seconds of it. Oh, well, and it breaks into that after, right after the voiceover from Shawshank Redemption where it says hope is a good thing.

the best of things and no good thing ever dies and as it says no good thing ever dies they show anton yeltsin and star trek and i just like start bawling um but phenomenal because he had just died and it was just it was so sad um uh great montage but anyway so many things that are in that montage i remember people like bitched about it at the time they're like well the oscar's never nominated x y and z and it's like no but they have come to acknowledge the fact that like the fullness of cinematic history, you know, encompasses, you know, all of these things that maybe they didn't at the time. And so I do feel like sometimes Oscar voters won't remember that necessarily, oh, no, we didn't like Douglas Cirque back then, because it wasn't, you know, we, it was whoever

was voting back then. And now they're like, oh, yes, yes, these movies that we obviously loved at the time because they're classics. I don't know. All right. two Oscars, the 75th Academy Awards. If this was, so let's remind the listeners what the, what the best picture nominees actually were, because the Royal No. 5th. Chicago is the winner, incredible winner.

Also, our beloved the hours, the year we were radicalized. The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, the pianist, and gangs of New York. So if you're talking about an additional five, The, I think the big contenders, as I'm looking at it off of the bat, are probably going to be talked to her because it got the best director nomination for Pedro Al Motivar and one best original screenplay. I think if it was just the best director nomination, I could have been like, well, it could be a Thomas Winterberg situation where, you know, he's a lone director. But because it won original screenplay, I think Talk to Her would have made the top five. I'm going to really disagree with you on that because part of the reason it's all wrapped up in Pedro and it was all wrapped up in that movie not getting submitted by Spain so for then foreign language film for foreign language film and so they pushed really hard to get Pedro nominated somewhere for this movie that they probably weren't going to recognize elsewhere.

I think that movie's a masterpiece It's one of his best movies If not his best movie But don't you think that narrative Would have also then just translated it to I really don't Because it was just about him And it wasn't about the movie

And that's truly one of his strangest movies I just don't think That would have ever gotten that far All right So let's say that there were nine Best Picture nominees this year To go with like What would have been the four then for you?

If we were doing nine Yeah The way we do nowadays, where it's, you know, between five and nine, but it's usually nine. See, I love... Or between five and ten. Okay, let's do ten. So what are your five? What are your other five?

The next one, I would guess, is probably about Schmidt. This is when Oscar was starting to get on the Alexander Payne bandwagon. There were multiple nominations for this movie. Did it win a best picture at the globe? Did it win best drama? No. I believe the hours won best drama, although now, yeah, the hours won best drama. It was nominated. And it was also nominated. I'm pretty sure for director. It was at the Globes. My pushback to this is it wasn't even nominated for best screenplay at the Oscars. Oh, it wasn't? No. I think talk to her head of about Schmidt. I think maybe the one I put ahead of the boat. I think maybe the one I put ahead of the bow. of them is adaptation. I have adaptation on mine as well. I think adaptation makes it. I also think

that my big fat Greek wedding makes it. My big fat Greek wedding would be a contender for my tenth because the thing is the Oscars respect money. They absolutely respect money and they they've done things like four weddings in a funeral getting nominated for I think just screenplay and best picture. So it makes sense. And I I would probably put that in my 10 above, like, Road to Perdition, which was a movie that, like, everybody respected the craft of it and no one liked the movie itself at the time. Except for me, but yes, I didn't have a vote. Well, yes, you are noted Academy member. You are a member at large of the branch, so you voted for Road to Perdition.

That should have been, by the way, Thomas Newman's Oscar. I know that was a very, very good original score year. one of the best actually of original score lineups of my lifetime it's eliot goldenthal wins for frida john williams for catch me if you can where even if you bitch about like john williams getting nominated for sighing heavily um it's a really great john williams score um it's an atypical john williams score which is what i find exciting about that score almer bernstein was sort of the again the early favorite for far from heaven because it was this you know a genre pastiche of a score Philip Glass for the hours

who I fucking adore and I listen to that score all the time but I do feel like for me the absolute best one it's Thomas Newman's best score it's Road to Perdition it's so so so good I would give it to Elmer Bernstein but speaking of original score

perhaps this might surprise you I think Frida would have been a best picture nominee it doesn't surprise me Frida had you talk about momentum Frida came on so strong at the end of that Oscar campaign where for a while it was just assumed that it was just going to be

Salma Hayek and even the narrative was Salma Hayek is like pounding the pavement to get this nomination and all of a sudden nominations happen and it gets six nominations and like wins what two right wins makeup and score and but it's also nominated in costume design and song right burn it blue uh alfred malino was absolutely sixth place in supporting actor he was probably yeah that was probably the case yeah so no i don't think that's crazy at all and then what is so my so i've got mine are talk to her adaptation big fat greek wedding i do agree with you on frida maybe my fifth is about schmidt then maybe that maybe that's where that happens what other none of the animated like spirited away is not going to do it would be catch me if you can yes i think

that's right i think if you look at the top 10 years um you know a spielberg movie that is well reviewed like that like um like bridge of spies gets nominated war horse gets nominated like something like catch me if you can you know probably you know makes that cut for sure i think that's right so if you don't have talk to her is yours instead of talk to her? My five would be adaptation, my Big Fat Creek wedding, about Schmidt,

Frida, and Catch Me if you can. Right, so about Schmidt and talk to her are our two differences. Yeah. Yeah, all right. And now we fight it out on the battlefield of whatever. We fought more over this

than we fought over anything on our screen drafts. You know what would have, no, we were very, well, we were uncommonly in sync. Like when we were done recording that, we'd text each other, And our lists were pretty much the same.

It was kind of amazing. Go listen to us in screen drafts, though. It's a whole, lots of moments. It was a time. It was a moment for unity. There was tears. I bled. There were actual tears.

It's true. God, I'm such a sap, but it's true. I almost cried talking about the hours. Well, yeah, go and listen and see what movie actually got me to cry. The other thing, as I look at this 2002 Oscar ballot, What would have actually, and it's, you know, there's a reason why it wasn't because the divide between when it was a foreign language contender and when it was an actual contender makes it impossible to sort of slot this in. But like, Zhang Yemu's hero is such a best picture nominee waiting to happen. It was such a crossover hit when it did finally get released that you can't help but think, if fucking whineering

had just released it when he had it. Like, who knows how well it could have done. Right, because it's one of those movies that is, in the year we're talking about, it is a foreign language nominee, and then I believe a nominee for, let me look this up and see how many nominations it received, but it was a nominee in the next year, I'm positive for other categories. Hold on. But, yeah, it took a long time.

wasn't it released in like the summer? No, I guess it wasn't nominated. It wasn't released in the United States until 2004. That's the thing. It sat on the shelf for a, yes, that's the outrage of it, is it did not get released in American theaters until the summer of 2004. And like, yeah, fully wild.

And that's why everybody was so pissed because they were just like, why can we not, you know, see this movie? movie. Yeah, did not ever get any other Oscar nominations, unfortunately, because it's, it's so good. Anyway, that's a great Oscar year 2002. It really, really is. And I don't say that just because my favorite movie. This Oscar year is why I'm like this. Yeah, basically. Yeah, this is why I'm like this. It's because of you. Even like gangs of New York, which is a bad movie, like, I was so wrapped up in even the gangs of New York of it because, like, it was

another Scorsese movie that was delayed a year. Yep. Which, like, that's been part of his career. That was also Age of Innocence, too. This one actually did better at the Oscars than Age of Innocence, which is bananas to me, because this is one of his worst movies. Age of Innocence is one of his best. I still think the Daniel Day Lewis performance in that movie makes it worth watching,

though. I wasn't into Daniel Day Lewis in the movie at the time. I do need to rewatch this. Maybe I'll be kinder to it, but, like... Yeah. What a bummer. Do you think bowling for Columbine would have had a shot? No, right?

That's a no. That's just a documentary. Especially documentary, the rules have changed and the process for nomination has changed so much. Because, like, was it Fahrenheit 9-11 that they submitted it for Best Picture, which meant that they couldn't submit it for a documentary. Oh, that's interesting. It makes sense that they would have submitted that for Best Picture. But it's really hard to, like, keep it locked in my brain.

but I do think that there was some type of eligibility thing there. And then I think Fahrenheit 9-11 was ultimately ineligible anyway because they aired it on like PBS or something, like the night before the election, something. Oh, right, right, because it was necessary for the American public to have that information before they voted. That's always Michael Moore's thing. I have to speak to the American public before this election.

They have to know. Right, because the only person who can sway our minds is Michael Moore. Jesus. Right. I have this note. Maybe you can help me explain this. Normally, I see my notes and I remember exactly why I wrote them down. I have this note that just says Mod checks herself in the mirror,

and now I can't remember what that was in the movie. Probably just a great acting beat by Jennifer Ely. I did take... Oh, that was right. That was when they were, you know, she goes to retrieve. the manuscripts from her room and then she like goes back and she like checks herself in the mirror

to make sure she's like all like I don't know it all felt very I don't know cliched or something like that I did love that as I mentioned the French lieutenant woman ensemble that Jennifer Ely's character wears at the train station the sweaters

the turtlenecks yeah that's all one of my similar notes was Gwyneth Paltrow and a British dialect saying the word bisexual. That's true. Aaron Eckhart saying microfish. That was what maybe my favorite joke in the thing is when she first mentions to him that Christabel had a lesbian relationship.

And he goes like, oh, I have, I got nothing against lesbians. And she's just like, yes, well, they probably didn't have videotape back in those days. So your interest would be muted or something like that. It was just like, good burn. It was a pretty good burn, Patrice. I enjoyed that. The only other note I would say about focus features in this year and this Oscar year is the pianist was probably second place for Best Picture.

Sure. Yes, I agree. After the director win, the best actor win, it did not win. It won Adapted Screenplay, that's right. Yes, Ronald Harwood. Yep, it sure did. Yeah, that was another one, like Freedom. really came on strong at the end of that year,

which is like, it's interesting that, like, Chicago still won, but, like, Miramax, for as much as they were the ones who took the momentum away from far from heaven, almost got the momentum sort of nipped by them by Focus by the end of that movie. It's really interesting how Focus sort of surged to the lead at the beginning, Miramax took it back for most of it, and then Focus almost makes it at the end. I would not have been happier with a pianist win over Chicago, so I'm happy.

It's so funny that we end up, we're ending up arguing on behalf of, like, Roman Polanski versus Harvey Weinstein. And I'm just like, God damn it. Well, I mean, and then there's the hours, which is Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein. As we mentioned on screen drafts, truly, how did something so wonderful come from a pairing so cursed? I mean, they're not the authorial voice on that movie. They're not. No, absolutely.

on that movie isn't even Stephen Daltrey. It's the actresses and it's Michael Cunningham. I do sometimes I do sometimes feel like we do that as a convenient sort of you know, I don't like this movie because of that terrible person. I like this movie because of the other

things and they're the reason why. I mean, in fairness for the production of the hours, Scott Ruden had more of a hand than Harvey Weinstein did. He definitely did. But it's like, it's not like, it's not to the degree that like you can see Harvey Weinstein in gangs of New York or at least you can see the struggle between Scorsese and Harvey Weinstein in Gangs of New York, you can see Harvey Weinstein's thumbprints on Chicago more.

And again, I love Chicago, and I'm not going to stop loving Chicago because of Harvey Weinstein. He cannot do that to me. So I'm not going to stop loving the hours just because two of the most notoriously terrible people in Hollywood both produced it. So, yeah, yes. Anyway.

Anyway, should we move on to the IMDB game? Yeah, let's. Okay, listen. explain to our listeners new and old what the IMDB game is. Sure. So every week we end our episodes with something we call the IMDB game. What's IMDB? Well, it's a website on the internet where you look up actors.

You should know this by now. We challenge each other with this game each week with an actor or actress and try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they're most known for. If any of those titles are television shows or perhaps the movies where they give a voice over only. We mentioned that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. If that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hits. That's the NPD. Joseph, would you like to... I should have done that in a British accent. I should have done that

in my best Gwyneth British accent, but I didn't. You should have done it like Jeremy Northam in the sex scene. You should have had some tasteful side butt. Oh, no one wants to see my tasteful side but don't worry don't worry about that um well luckily either way this is um uh you know it's a it's this is an oral medium right yes we disagree with your tasteful side butt or one hopes you cannot we disagree with our friends at las cultureistas uh we we are adamant that podcasting remain an audio medium only so yes um anyway yeah why don't i guess first okay cool so we talked about our love for Jennifer Ely. So I went back to

the thing that launched her, the Pride and Prejudice BBC production. Notedly, her co-star was Colin Firth. Have we never done Colin Firth? It appears we have not. Crazy. Okay. There's no television, no

voiceover work. All right, so no P&P. Colin Firth is not into P&P, I will say. He's into the party, not the play. No, he's into the play, but not the party. He will be in a play.

He doesn't need to be into the party. He already brings the party, okay? He brings the party, but he will start at a play, for sure. I mean, King's Speech, for sure, obviously. King's Speech. I'm going to put a pin in a single man because it was an Oscar nomination, but it was small. I mean, obviously, at least one. of the Bridget Joneses will be in there.

I'm going to first guess Bridget Jones's diary. Correct. Two for two so far. Dos for dos. How about some Kingsman the Secret Service? God damn it, you got it. Ha ha! Okay. So now we've got some sequel considerations,

whether Edge of Reason shows up or whether Kingsman 2 shows up. Sometimes they do sequels. You're not even considering Bridget Jones's baby. How dare you? I'm not. I'm really not. Nor am I, well, is he in the Kingsman prequel?

Probably not then, right? But that hasn't been released yet. No, that's just a, that's been a threat on the movie calendar for a long time. They truly, it truly has been just a looming threat. Wasn't it pushed from before pandemic? Yeah, I think it had already been pushed once, right? My demon theory about if cats had been pushed because of the visual effects, is actually true for the king's man.

All right. One that I really don't want to guess, but it's not leaving my brain, so I might just have to like purge it. He is, I believe, I'm trying to think of which one he is. I think he's Taylor in Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy. But anyway, I'm going to guess Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.

Incorrect, not Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy. Yeah. Eh, all right. All right, Firthy. Oh, is it Shakespeare in love? It is not Shakespeare in love. Damn it. All right, so your year is 2009.

2009. Is that? No, Bridget Jones' Edge of Reason is like 2004. Oh, single man. It's a single man. God damn it. I had it right there at the beginning. Shit.

I was going easier on you after going hard for a few weeks, so I'm glad you at least didn't get a single man. a perfect score. Yeah, well, shut up. Okay. For you, I have, so I went down the Gwyneth rabbit hole. The year after possession, she was in, obviously, Sylvia, which we talked about in our 2003 miniseries, she wasn't in anything in our Naomi miniseries, was he?

That would have been amazing if, like, Gwyneth shows up in every miniseries we do. Get ready for the next Gwyneth, because we'll have a, we'll have this out for retro quiz because it'll be for sixth movie. Yeah, six-timer coming up next for Gwyneth. Okay. But her next movie after possession was, of course, the rapturously received view from the top where she plays a flight attendant.

And passes us on the wrong syllable. In a kicky orange outfit. But one of her co-stars in view from the top is, of course, the great Candice Bergen. So I'm going to, to have you guess, Candice Bergen, one of hers is television. Which is Murphy Brown. Correct.

Miss Congeniality. Correct. As the great Kathy Morningside in the Miss Congeniality. I do think Candice Bergen's going to be one of those people that their Oscar nomination is not there. I'm talking about her actual Oscar nomination for starting over. not the Oscar nomination that she should have had and then should have won for Let Them All Talk So, Candice Bergen

What if, that would be a great joke to put in something Is to have a very pretentious person Look at her name and say, oh, Candicea Bergen, yes, Condice Bergen Can Dijergan? Can Dice Bergen? Can I just read you the first line of her IMDB bio? Please, for the love of God, do it.

One cool, eternally classy lady. Candice Bergen was elegantly poised for trendy ice princess stardom when she first arrived on the 60 screen, but she gradually reshaped that debutante image in the 70s, both on and off camera. Tell me more. What bitchy queen wrote that? It starts out saying She's a cool, eternally classy lady But you know what

You know what's really bitchy towards Candice Bergen Is The you must remember this mini-series On the Manson murders You listen to that one I imagine, right? There's so many little things about Like, Candice, like quotes from

Candace Bergen that like really make her sound like A real dumb dumb. Like it's really kind of like a jerk, yeah. Yeah, well, I hate true crime stuff. I hate all of it. it, every single bit of it. You must remember this Charles Manson like mini-series is

the pinnacle. It's so good. Of the medium. It's so good. I do like true crime, so like I'm not opposed to it as you are, but like, yeah, is real good.

True crime media is the bane of our current modern culture. I remember I was living in Park Slope when that came out, and I would, I got on this really good kick of like going out and walking every morning because I was working from home so I was able to like, go walk along Prospect Park West every morning and that was like the soundtrack

to like every time I think about that mini-series and like every type kind of that I think about the Manson murders now I just think about these like wonderful gorgeous idyllic walks around Park Slope it's really fun okay okay back to Candice back to Candice

we're never going to let that one go now book club no but should have boo to this I disagree I disagree I should get the point

for this and you should knock something else off what's the song that Mary Steenberg and Craig T. Nelson dance to at the end of book club

uh meatloaf it's meatloaf right yeah it's bad out of hell or is it I would do anything for love I think it's I would do anything for love

yeah that's so good yes it is and it's so good that sequence is so good um anyway Okay, carnal knowledge. No, and I would have guessed to that as well. So, okay, so those are two strikes on you. You've gotten two, you are missing movies from 2002 and 2009.

Oh, okay, so the year we are talking about. Yes. Hmm. It would have been a comedy. She really pretty much is only in comedies now, where she's playing a variation. on her miscongeniality character. O2.

Is it a rom-com? It is. Okay. Rom-com's from O-2. I assume it's a popular rom-com because it's in her known for. It was a hit, for sure. It was a hit. Oh, it's Sweet Home, Alabama.

It's Sweet Home Alabama. She plays the mayor and also is she's someone's mom in that right or is she not she's uh she's the love interest mom she's she's Patrick Dempsey's mother right she's like and she's like too good for uh she thinks her son is too good for uh Alabama girl trashy Alabama uh Reese Witherspoon yeah yeah whatever Reese Witherspoon's never been trashy a day in her life um okay what was my other year oh nine oh nine

so by the way I wasn't silently disagreeing with you about Reese Witherspoon never being trashy I was just trying to think of a line from her elevator video

with Cara de Levine and Zoe de Chanel and I couldn't think of anything that was good enough so I just stayed silent obviously I don't think Reese Witherspoon is trashy I love her

oh she's in the Sex and the City movie movie it's the Sex and the City movie Well, the Sex and the City movie was 2008. So, no. Okay. I assume it's another rom-com. It is. Also a hit because it's on her known for.

I don't know if I would call it a hit. No, I want to see how much movie this made. Does that mean it didn't make money or that it's bad? Hold, please. It's definitely at least one of those two. I want to look up and see if it's the other one. That means it's bad. Oh, no, it made, you know, enough money.

Okay. It made $58 million domestic off of a $30 million budget. It had a worldwide of $115. So, yeah. That's not bad. Yeah. People saw it, unfortunately. Oh, so it's really bad.

Yeah, and it has, it's really bad with a lot of talent that I love. So it, like, brings me no joy to say that it's really bad. It's from a director we have covered on this head Oscar buzz before. Okay. Director that did rom-coms that we've talked about before with Candice Bergen, with a lot of other people you love, that is bad and was only, like, a modest hit. Right. It was much more known for being bad than it was for being a hit.

Okay. I'm wondering if I maybe haven't seen this one because nothing's really ringing a bell. If you haven't seen it, you've at least heard of it, but you maybe haven't seen it. Oh, I'm sure I have, because if it's people you love, then it's probably people I love. Yeah. Okay, so I'm trying to narrow it down by it being bad. Are, like, you were on the right track when you said that, It was going to be rom-coms where she plays variations on her miscongeniality character.

That's much more applicable to Sweet Home Alabama. But, like, she still plays kind of, like, she's not the villain in this movie, like, she is in those other two. But, like, it's still the kind of, like, authority figure who throws a wrench into the plot. Is this, the people you love in this movie, is it an actress? It is at least one actress. Multiple actresses? Yes. Are they like awards or awards-adjacent actresses?

Yes. Is it definitely maybe? No. Interesting. Definitely maybe is a better movie than this, for sure. Okay. Definitely maybe is what? Vice, Ila Fisher, and...

Elizabeth Banks. I suppose... I was only thinking awards for Rachel Weiss. Rachel Weiss, yeah, yeah. That's one that came to mind, and I haven't seen it. And I'm guaranteeing you that this is a movie I haven't seen, because I can't think of one at this time. So it's one Oscar-winning actress paired with one Oscar-nominated actress. And they had both been nominated or won at that point?

Well, one of them, the one who won hadn't won yet, but she had been nominated, like, had just been nominated. Like, this is... People joked that this was her Norbit. Oh See I was almost going to say Monster-in-law but egregiously erroneously, offensively Jennifer Lopez is not a nominee yet

So this is a 2009 movie Wait, wait, it's a Norbit You said Norbit So like it came out during an Oscar season Yeah It's Bride Wars It's Bride Wars, yes I haven't seen Pride Wars

Wors. You shouldn't But, like, Kate Hudson and Hathaway, love them both. Candy Bergen is the woman who books the, who double books the venues, and then tells them that they have to decide between themselves. But it's also co-written by June, Diane Raffiel, and Casey Wilson, who I also love. And it really bums me out that it's as bad as it is, because the talent involved, by God, the talent. It's directed by Gary Winick, who directed Tadpole, who, uh, we talked about.

I will always, always, always go back to that terrible clip from the trailer where one of the pranks that Anne Hathaway pulls on Kate Hudson is that she schemes to have her hair dyed blue at her salon appointment. And Kate Hudson just screams, it's blue in the trailer, which I will always at least remember. I won't say fondly. yeah yeah bride wars is on kandis bergen's known for somehow bummer everybody please go search for let them all talk on iMdb right now and if you haven't seen it go watch let them all talk candis bergen deserves an oscar for that movie um anyway that's our episode guys we are two episodes into our five episode

miniseries on focus features we'll be back next week with unle's lust caution fucking love that movie can't wait to talk about it so much lust so much caution this this song goes out to all the lust in the audience and also and also all the caution um if you want more this had oscar buzz you can check out the tumbler at this had oscarbuzz dot tumbler.com you should also follow us on twitter at had underscore oscar underscore buzz joe tell our listeners where they can find more of you yeah so uh you can find me on Twitter at Joe Reed, Reed spelled R-E-I-D. You can also find me on letterboxed, where I will hopefully

very soon start watching things that were not nominated for an Oscar for 2020. So that'll be a fun new change for my letterboxed. We'll see how it goes. And I am also on Twitter and letterboxed at Chris V. File. That's F-E-I-L. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic

artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mevious for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever else you get your podcast, including Spotify. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple podcast visibility. So please write us a note about how much you love us

and we'll get Gwyneth Paltrow to recite it. That's all for this week. And we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. And also the lesson and also the culture. And I would be the one to hold him down. Guess you're so hard. I'll take your breath away. And after I, wipe away the tears.

Just close your eyes, dear.