This Had Oscar Buzz - 166- To Die For

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Nicole Kidman finally joins the THOB Six Timers Club this week with what many consider her first major critical success. In the same year that Kidman had a major blockbuster in Batman Forever, the actress joined forces with Gus Van Sant for satirical Joyce Maynard adaptation To Die For. The film starred Kidman as the … Continue reading "166- To Die For"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada water. Suzanne would do anything to be famous. She's going to be the next Barbara Walters.

I believe that Mr. Gorbachev. You know the man who ran Russia for so long? I believe that he would still be empowered today if you had that big purple thing taken off his forehead. To be on television. You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. Was a chance she would die for... You're on.

Good evening from the WWE and Weather Center. Welcome to Center. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that lets our Cheetahs run wild and free. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we're here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my weather girl, and have we got news for you? Chris File, hello, Chris.

Temperatures rising. It is. Barometer's getting low. Temperatures rising on the career of Miss Nicole Kidman. Did you see this movie when it was initially in theaters? When I was nine years old, no. I didn't either, but I remember seeing it like right when it was new on video. I guess it would have been eight years old, actually.

I mean, like, I definitely knew what it was, knew what the poster was. I was surprised when I saw how relatively little money it made at the box office. is it only made $21 million because it was very heavily advertised, at least heavily advertised on the shows that I was watching. I definitely knew the trailer. I feel like that, yeah, that trailer

got played a lot. I mean, I was the type of little homosexual boy that when I saw that trailer of her saying, life, liberty, and all that stuff. And all the rest of it, yeah. Yeah, all the rest of it. I knew that that was funny to me. Yes. I think watching this movie again, there were a few lines that jumped out there. I was like, oh, that was in the trailer,

I saw that trailer 8 billion times, the part where she goes, you're not anybody unless you're on television. And even that shot of her dancing in the headlights of the car in the rain, I was like, okay, that's a lot, so much of that trailer. And even the shot of like Dan Hadea bashing the TV with the baseball bat, I was like, yeah, that trailer was burned pretty heavily into my mind. Which means that in 1995, Nicole Kidman was everywhere, because she's also in Batman Forever that year. and Batman Forever is the other movie. Maybe not the other movie, but like the movie that year that I remember was just marketed wall to wall.

That one I definitely saw in theaters, but that trailer was... Dr. Chase Meridian, honey. Absolutely. She was giving you everything. She was giving you everything. Her name sounds like a credit card. Obviously, she had done her American accent in movies before this, but I feel like 1995 is the year that, like, Nicole Kidman's American accent

is here to stay, honey. that it really presented itself. It's a very campy version of an American accent that she does in both of those movies. And I feel like elements of that have stayed in her repertoire the entire time. Well, I also watched this weekend, because I wanted something to get hard to,

I watched Practical Magic, and it's in Practical Magic, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, in many ways, it has not left her version of an American accent. There is always a hint of camp to it that I actually really love. And for as much as... I think it's this idea of an American female movie star, too.

That's like, must be in her concept of the dialect, because it is kind of this very, like, bixen-y... Breathy, yeah. Yeah, and it's like this year, 95, that you also mentioned Batman Forever, which is, like, very true. and it's like of like this is kind of is it the beginning of her doing American dialects because it feels like let me let me let me portray well I'm gonna keep talking while you look at yes yes absolutely obviously Dr. Chase Meridian is very Veronica Lake it feels like her American dialect is of that era of type of screen persona and like

you know movie star actress right so if we look at like dead calm as where she's sort of like her last Australian movie really I know flirting comes out later but that had been filmed I believe earlier and she comes to America for Days of Thunder and I'm pretty sure she's American there and then she gets that Golden Globe nomination for Billy Bathgate that's sort of semi-dubious Golden Globe nomination for Billy Bathgate and I believe she's also American there and then And far and away happens where she is quite Irish. Just quite.

Is she quite Irish? We've done an episode on that movie. I think quite Irish as distinct from actual Irish. I think Irish in quotation marks. Malice, the great Aaron Sorkinscripted film Malice. I feel bad for whoever directed that movie. Harold Becker. Sorry, Harold Becker, that I will never credit you for anything on that movie,

because that is Aaron Sorkin's figure. Still got to see this malice movie. And then the 1993 movie My Life, where she and Michael Keaton are married and one of them dies. So a slew of movies where she has an American dialect. But it's still like, you know, in the microwave. Exactly.

Exactly. It's in the microwave on like DeFrost. It is, it's taken a bit. And then, yeah, it really, really emerges in 1995. Great year for it. her. That was, this is the year where she went from, I believe, being primarily Tom Cruise's girlfriend, Tom Cruise's wife, to Nicole Kidman, like first and foremost, right? Well, if we talk about her evolution a lot, this is our sixth Nicole Kidman movie, which we will get to it. We

will induct her into the Sixth Timers Club. Um, but we talk about her evolution a lot and obviously what a big year 2001 was, with, you know, the divorce from Tom and sort of emerging into her own. But like 1995, commercially and critically, with both Batman Forever and to Die for, is a big, big year for her in terms of her as a star entity. 1,000%. I mean, like, her name is being above posters. Like, she's delivering these kind of iconic performances, though. I don't think we appreciated the Batman Forever performance at the time, but like...

No, that was definitely seen as just commercial. That was purely commercial, and... Right. Well, and now it's like very formative for, like, homosexuals like myself. Exactly. Yes, exactly. But to die for, on the other side of that, was for, you know, my surprise that it wasn't a bigger commercial hit,

it was a crucial, crucial point. in her evolution, at least in the eyes of critics, and especially American critics, where up until this point, more than more performances of hers than not had been poorly reviewed in far and away, even in, like I said, Billy Bathgate, I think that Golden Globe nomination was viewed with a lot of skepticism. Days of Thunder, obviously, even like stuff like malice and my life were not critical darlings by any by any stretch and so to die for the good the great reviews she got for to die for were a huge turning point for the way that people saw her and the fact that she ended up going on to win the golden globe as dubious as the golden

globes are um it was a major moment for her i mean she wasn't in Like, I mean, I guess she probably was in the most, like, critically adored movie in that Globes lineup. But it's like, it's not like she has bad competition or something, you know. No. There's other performances that the Globes totally would have given it to. That's a great Globes category for as much as I've never seen a month by the lake, so I can't speak to Vanessa Redgrave's performance in it. I think we should pretend that we've seen a month by the lake. It could, that movie could be about anything.

And we should just, uh, we should make up her. own version of a month by the lake that we have seen. We should. And what it is is that for every day in this month by the lake, Vanessa Redgrave has to pen a letter to an old love. And she reminizes about those old loves. Well, and because her daughter is also a floating head with her on the poster. We do see flashbacks to this old love. Or no, wait, it's not her daughter. It's actually Uma Thurman. Why did

I think that it was Natasha? Maybe Natasha is in this. Oh, maybe. What if the plot that we come up with to a month by the lake is the actual plot of a month by the lake? Okay, so Uma Thurman is younger her who was like

writing letters to her older self at the same time. So Vanessa Redgrave, not only only is writing her letters to her old love. She's reading the letters from her younger self to her older self. My mind is going some places. I think you've really, really untapped a lot of potential here. Christopher Nolan's a month by the lake.

Oh my God. You know, people always talk about how Christopher Nolan doesn't write complex female characters. And really, a month by the lake. Yeah, people forget. Let's get the credit that it deserves. People definitely forget. Or perhaps that the lake in question is... I was going to say the lake in question is actually the one that's writing the letters for a month.

So it's a month by... By... Written by the lake. What if the lake in question is Lake Erie and Vanessa Redgrave is spending a month at Cedar Point? riding rollercoasters. The lake in question is Lake Bell, and it's a month written by Lake Bell. What if the lake in question is Lake Winapasaki, and it's a sequel to What About Bob, where Vanessa Redgrave goes and meets the family and what about Bob? What if that?

Lake Winipasaki has truly gooped me. All right, let's get in. What if the lake in question? No. is Veronica Lake, who Nicole Kidman is playing as Dr. Chase Meridian in Batman Forever. And stealing the lunch of Kim Basinger playing Veronica Lake a few years later in L.A. Confidential and winning a basketball court. Fully. She is a better. Don't get me started on that performance. I don't know. This is your TED Talk. Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever.

Nicole Kidman is a better Veronica Lake as Chase Meridian than fucking Kim Basinger is in L.A. confidential. This is your TED Talk. This is a. that this is what's going to give you fame and fortune. All right, let's put... God, give me a mockneck, turtleneck and a clip-on microphone, and I will do that TED Talk. All right, we're going to put a pin in that Golden Globe lineup for a second, though,

because I feel like we shouldn't get to that until we get to the other side of this plot description. But just to sort of set the table, to die for was, again, I would say pretty major, and felt it at the time. It's not one of these movies that, like, oh, we have to look back and, like, you know who was great was Nicole Kidman and to die for?

Like, this one definitely had a lot of attention on it. And it's going to be exciting, I think, to talk about it. And it's a good movie. Yeah, I think this is a really interesting best actress year that ultimately does kind of make sense to me, why Nicole Kidman doesn't get in. It's confusing to me that, like, the movie wasn't considered beyond Nicole Kidman, but we can get into that. I think part of that may have been in the fact that it did.

didn't really succeed super well at the box office, so it wasn't... 20 million dollars for a movie like this in 1995, though. But it's not an indie. It's a Columbia Pictures movie. Do you know what I mean? It is a studio movie. Yeah. And Gus Van Sant makes it feel like it's not a studio movie.

But it's Columbia Pictures. And I feel like the expectation curve on that was probably higher. So... Yeah. But yeah, it's a really, really... How long has it been... It had been a while since I'd seen this movie, so it was very... fun to revisit it and sort of see some stuff in it, that, uh, it re-appreciate some stuff

that I hadn't maybe appreciated it as much before. It's been a while since I've seen it, too. I feel like this is always a movie that's in the ethos that, like, people are constantly rediscovering and talking about online. So it's like, it feels like, uh, you know, like, I feel like this has always been a movie that it's like, well, we can always do that. We can always do it, and we've just decided to do it now. Yeah.

All right. So before I kick it to you for the plot description, I'll just lay down the particulars. We are talking about 1995s to die for. Directed, as we mentioned, by Gus Van Sant, written by sort of legendary Hollywood screenwriter Buck Henry, at that point, certainly his reputation preceded him, starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Wachean Phoenix, Ileana Douglas, Dan Hedea, Casey Affleck, Allison Folland, Kurt Wood Smith, Holland Taylor, Maria Tucci, and, of course, Newman himself, Wayne Knight. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, May 20th, 1995, and it opened wide October 6th, 1995.

So, Chris, I'm going to pull up a little stopwatch if you are ready to deliver a 60-second plot description. I feel like this is going to be weird, because the movie is so backwards and forwards in time, and like, what actually happens is not a lot. Indeed, indeed. I believe in you. Okay. All right. Your time begins now. All right. We meet Suzanne Stone. She wants to be an on-air personality. She wants to be a celebrity, but she is, like, bound to, like, news media. So she, like, wheezes her way into a local station, starting as an assistant, but working her way up to a weather girl. She has bigger ideas for herself, so she's also trying to shoot this, like, documentary about teens called Teen Speak Out. What the fuck is this movie about? out, she doesn't even, it's whatever, she's just following these teens. Anyway, because her husband wants her to just basically be a stay-at-home housewife,

she devises to get him out of the equation, starts an affair with Jimmy, one of the teens she's interviewing, has the teens kill him, and then, like, it goes through this whole thing, the police basically do an entrapment against her, she gets away with it, the teens get blamed for it because, like, she devises the story where they're a drug dealer, and then her husband's family ends up killing her, and Ilyon. Douglas ice skates over her dead body. And with three seconds to spare. Very good.

I had forgotten that Ileana Douglas ice skates over the lake where her body is over the end credits. Final shot of the movie. It's so, it's so vicious. It's absolutely mercilessly vicious. And I love it for that. It is also a movie. I love it for Ileana Douglas, to be honest. We're going to have to talk about it.

Ileana Douglas is rad in this movie. She's really, really good in this movie and does a lot with not a lot of what you would consider sort of prime material. She's a lot, she's really on the periphery of this. She makes the most out of the screen time in this movie. She's so vivid. This movie also teaches you a valuable lesson, which is, don't follow David Cronenberg to weird places. David Cronenberg.

Cameoing as the assassin. As the assassin for Nicole Kidman. First of all, re-reduing. unite those two, though, I think next year when Kronenberg's movie come out, we need to cherish every second of it because it will probably be his last movie.

Because we didn't think this one was going to happen. But the like, the like sigh of affection that left my body when he came on screen, because I fully forgot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know how much I love him. Croniabre cameos really do

come out of nowhere, because they're they end up being very hard to predict. Because obviously the ones that come in the movies that he doesn't direct. Or he'll just, like, show up in a movie. He'll just, like, you know, be, or, like, be on an episode of alias for no reason whatsoever. It's great. He's also a distinct-looking guy, but he's not, like, a weird-looking guy. So it's not, like, you know, I don't know.

Who's a distinctly... If Scorsese shows up in a movie, you're like, holy fucking Scorsese. Immediately. It might take you, because he, doesn't he enter this movie with, like, sunglasses? It might take you 10 seconds to realize that it's David Cronomberg. It did. I was just like, this is an odd character. Oh, it's David Cronenberg, right? Oh, right. It's David Cronenberg. The structure of this movie, you mentioned before you sort of jumped into it, is a really interesting structure. And I think credit to Gus Van Sant for sort of bringing this forward, where it is both, it's many things. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. a lot of people sort of giving portrayals in different forms of media. There are people giving sort of talking head interviews to one imagines a documentary being made about this scandalous affair.

There are parts of the story being told by people on talk shows where her parents and Matt Dillon's parents are on some kind of daytime talk show telling the story of this. There is, at some point, footage of Nicole Kidman's character sort of giving her own testimonials to a camera for for something that could be either within story

a news report or documentary that she was making herself or could just be like omniscient you know this is how she envisions herself in the world constantly speaking to a rapt audience right and then you get parts of the movie that are just straight up told you know third person, you know, just a regular movie. It's just straight movie. And it's an interesting way. And some of these flashbacks, you also have to wonder, even if it's, you know, presenting things as they are, if they're also embellished by someone's point of view, specifically with, like, the teenagers, sometimes the way, like, Suzanne is outright villainized when she was probably more, like, subtly manipulative in some way. Like, you always have to question how much is, you know, Yeah, that, like, what you're watching is probably mostly empirically true, but, like, what are the details that are embellished from the source?

Right, right. And she is, of course, incredibly sort of, she makes up her own sort of reality when she's talking to the camera in that way. We should not go too far before we talk about how this was based on a novel by Joyce Maynard that in itself was very clear. closely inspired by the Pamela Smart story. Pamela Smart was a young woman who, I don't think she was a teacher, but she worked at a school and was married to a guy and started having an affair with one of the students at this high school and convinced slash manipulated this kid to kill her husband. Like that was, and it was a media sensation at the time. There was tabloid coverage everywhere.

It was, I believe, some of the court proceedings were put on camera in very, sort of very early, one of the very, very earliest examples of TV cameras being allowed in a courtroom. And this was sort of before Mary Kayla Turner, this was sort of like proto Mary Kayle Turner, where this idea of... I was going to bring up Mary Kayla Turner. Which definitely, like, might have even happened contemporaneously with To Die For. But that story and the Pamela Smart story sort of get like swirled together to the point where I bet you if you asked a, you know, person, you know, on the street who was not paying super close attention, they might tell you that like, yeah, oh, right, Mary Kay LaTerno had her teenage lover kill her husband. because all of these things sort of get swirled into the same kind of tabloid muck

and it's interesting to watch to die for now in its very sort of 1999 perspective and to see just how preoccupied and unsettled a lot of the artistic community was back then at this idea of how far people would go to be on camera, beyond television, to sort of, that it reminded me there was that line, obviously the line where Kidman, as Suzanne Stone, says, you're not anybody unless you're on TV. And it very much reminded me of that moment in the Madonna documentary, truth or dare, where Warren Beatty is like, she doesn't want to live off camera. What is there worth doing if you're not on camera? And that was seen as a very sort of telling moment about Madonna and about the culture at the time.

And I think it's interesting to watch this from a 21 perspective where like we're on the other side of that. Everybody has already made that reality television. Right. Like this is the way we all, you know, we're living in the soup of this right now. And it is no longer a controversial notion. Yeah. Yeah. But there's an element to it too.

where it's like, I think you're kind of describing it in a way that it's like, it sounds a little weird because it feels like we're post the discussion that this movie is like having or like the type of satire it's delivering because it's evolved into this whole other beast with like seven different heads that you could talk about. Each individual head, you know, for weeks on end. But what I do think this, well, I think this movie, I wouldn't call it an artifact, but like one of the things that I think helps this movie age so incredibly well and keep like people are still fascinated by this movie is that it really distills what this type of fame seeking what this type of like you know salacious media and the consumption of it was specifically in the late 80s and to the mid 90s right like the emergence of like daytime talk shows like

Jenny Jones and Geraldo and all that stuff. Yeah. And like it's this isn't quite Springer, right? But like, no, but it's very like you're right, Jenny Jones, Ricky Lake, um, like Phil Donahue.

Even like, you know, it's the emerging culture of things like that that I even think of like Tanya Harding and O.J. Simpson, you know, that type of tabloid media that it wasn't given a seriousness but like something about the culture everybody started to care about it

like when I'm a child I shouldn't know about the whole like Tanya Harding and OJ of it all but like I knew and as a seven year old I had an opinion and that is I think well it really gets at specifically what it was like for that era in

way that I think similar, like, media satires now don't really encapsulate what it is today or what it was for the past decade, you know? Well, and you even look at the last maybe like six or seven years have seen cultural revisitations of almost all of those things, the Tanya Harding situation, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Lewinsky scandal, the Clinton impeachment, Lewinsky scandal. All of those things. very mid-90s TV or cultural scandals which all had a very large television component they all played out on television they all played out in in media in

some ways or another and they've all been revisited lately as this as I think a very like natural sort of like cyclical thing and the in the difference in the way those things are portrait have been portrayed recently and the way something like this, something like the Pamela Smart story was portrayed in to die for, is back in the mid-90s, as this stuff was still unfolding, there was a higher degree of, like, people were still capable of sort of shame and shock about it. Like, we hadn't lost our national, we hadn't attained this national shamelessness to the ways in which everything courts media as as a rule, as a standard operating procedure, right?

This was still in the mid-90s, this kind of behavior was still seen as extreme or in some way aberrant, in some way extravagantly shameless. And we've lost that. You know what I mean? We've lost that sense as a culture now for good or bad. And so that makes to die for, I think, really fascinating because it's not just the style of it or the story of it. It's the tone, the sort of omniscient tone of it, which is like, can you believe this shit? You know what I mean?

Can you believe that someone would behave this way? And now in 2021, or 2021, I'm looking at it. And I'm like- seems, you know, garden variety. You see, like, half of my Twitter follows are behaving like Suzanne Stone kind of, without the murder, but, you know, whatever. Yeah, now we have everyone on Twitter is like, fuck yeah, Amy Dunn. Right, exactly, exactly, all the, all the amazing Amy memes.

Yes, exactly. I, that is, right, Suzanne Stone has gone from being, like, cautionary tale of what could happen if the culture goes a certain way to like yes queen what is that tweet about like woman does um woman does completely psychotic and sociopathic thing and like her gaze are like yes bitch work like that's that's that's that's to die for right there um but in it of itself in fairness susan sounds pretty fucking fierce oh I I'm not even pretending to deny it, yeah. To the point where here's like the level of reality that the movie presents.

And I think Gus Van Sant is somewhat intentional for it. That it's like, she's kind of so fabulous that like she can't really be like this, right? Like the movie is always presenting her at a certain degree more polished and, you know, fabulous. than she is in real life, right? Like, we never see the world's real Suzanne Stone. Well... She can't always be that manicured, right, to be at this, like, shitty level.

But I think when you... I think it's there when you see her through the perspective of, like, the Wayne Knight character, who is sort of talking about her early days working at the station and how sort of ditsy and, like,

sort of talking this big game, but not really having any idea of what she's talking about, or that scene with her and George Siegel, where he is playing this, like, horrible, you know, media creep. And even within that context, she's, like, super slow on the uptake to, like, realize, like, the point of this, like, filthy story he's telling her. And the parts where we see her through the eyes of Matt Dillon's family, where she comes across as anywhere on the spectrum from, like, callous. too idiotic, I don't know, I think the movie pulls back the curtain on her periodically in a way that feels valuable and intentional. And yet it always, like, it does that, but I do still feel like there's a certain lens towards this character where she's always the heightened version as the public would see her, you know, as she is basically a celebrity figure.

And maybe it's me just kind of relying too much on or not believing the, like, physical aspect of it, right? The way she's costumed, the way that her hair is styled the whole movie. I'm like, she just can't possibly be, you know, that, you know, perfected at all times. So it's like, I think this movie, the movie, and especially the performance, does this balance of seeing this fantasy. this fantasy version of her, which is the public's view, and everyone else's. But then Nicole Kidman has such a clear voice in the performance that it's like, you see the real her, you see everyone else's, and then you see what the public perception was all at the same time.

It's a really layered, as well. Yeah, no, it's a really layered performance in that way. I think that's exactly right. It was, you know, as we mentioned, justly, sort of like, hugely praise. at the time. I should mention now, we'll do this now. This is our sixth Nicole Kidman movie that we have covered on this at Oscar Buzz. When we do the sixth movie of a particular actor or actress, we commemorate it.

She's now in our Sixth Timers Club. And I give Chris a little quiz about the six movies that we have talked about in her career. So we're going to do that now. The six movies, I should remind people. are all pretty actually they're pretty spread out we had our little like Susan Sarandon thing recently

we're like we sort of backloaded our Susan Sarandon movies and sometimes we cover movies sort of in bunches but our Kidman movies have been pretty spread out over the course of our podcast we have done the paper boy the human stain

which was part of our 2003 miniseries the others far and away boy erased and now to die for So Chris... Can't believe it's taken her this long, to be honest.

It's a slow and steady progression to the Six-Timers Club for Nicole Kidman, but she's there. She's finally made it. She's finally attained the level that Dermit Mulroney has had for several months. So good for her. Good for her for finally making it to that mountain top. All right. So Chris, are you ready for the Nicole Kidman's Six-Timers quiz? This is what my life has been leading to.

All right. We'll start with some of the basics. So of those six movies, which film is the longest? Far and away. Far and away is far and away the longest. 140 minutes, yes, exactly. 140 weeks long. 140 miles of land that they had to ride across.

Okay. Which film is the shortest? Is it the other? The others, not by much, but 104 minutes. It's a few minutes shorter. I was going to say like 100, yeah. Yeah, 104. Which of those six films was the lowest rated on Rotten Tomatoes?

Paperboy. You would think, but no. Human stain. Human stain, 42%. Yeah, and you should have said that place. Paper Boy is not much higher, but yeah. Which was the highest rated on Rotten Tomatoes? The others.

No, but it's not much. To die for? To die for. 88%. With these 90s movies, the lower sample size kind of skews the numbers a little bit. But it was quite a good, quite a well-reviewed movie at the time. All right. Which film made the most money worldwide? The others. By a good margin.

By a very, very healthy margin. $209 million worldwide. Which made the least money worldwide? The human stain. No. The paper boy. Paperboy. $3.78 little million.

Yes. which film has a score by John Williams? No, no, not to die four. No. To die four has Danny Elfman. We'll get into it. To die four has a very Danny Elfman score. It's so good, too.

Far and away. Yes, far and away. Which film has a score by the director of the film? Oh, that's weird. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. Oh, no, it's the others.

It's the others. Alejandro Amanabar. Amenabar score is so good in that movie. It's very, very good. Yes. Which film came out during Leo season? The others. It's an August movie. August 2nd, yes.

Which film was released in the United States on Halloween? The Human Stain. Human Stain, Halloween, 2003. Spooky,uki, yuki, yep. I can't tell what your costume is. I'm a human stain. Okay, here's a mini-stickers. Which...

What are you, little gay boy? I'm a human stain. I'm Nicole Kidman in the human stain. I'm de-glammed for this role. What's her character name in the movie? Is it Fiona something? Shit. Yeah, Fiona Hamm or something.

Oh, you're thinking of Agnes Ham, I think. Fana. Faunia Farley. Fawnia Farley. Oh, yeah. Hello, little homosexual boy. What's your costume? Fanya Farley, you Philistone. I'm Fanya Farley from the human stain. I'm not as glamorous as I normally am. That's my costume.

Um, all right. Where are we? Which two of those six movies feature stars of the film Amistad? Um, two separate movies? Yes. Okay. Well, The Human Stain has Anthony Hopkins. Correct.

And, well, the Paperboy has Matthew McConaughey. Exactly. Very good. All right. Which two of these movies feature stars of the movie signs? Well, to die for has Joaquin Phoenix. Correct. And, um...

This next one is fine. Why am I only thinking of Abigail Bres? Abigail Breslin, Mel Gibson, Cherry Jones, which one has? Oh, Boyer Ice has Cherry Jones. I was going to say, you've got it. You just don't move past it. Yep, Cherry Jones. All right.

Which were the only two films of these six to not play TIF, to not play Toronto? The others, obviously. Yes. And far and away. And far and away. Very good. Which two of these films played the Venice Film Festival? the others and the human stain yes correct very good sure that went well for that movie

yeah the others plays venice after it's opened in the united states and uh the human stain premieres at venice which i'm sure was yeah all right of which film this last question of which film did peter travers right this hot mess got booed by the snobs it can but there's no denying its profane energy. Oh, the paper boy. The paper boy, exactly. Quite. Very disappointed you didn't ask me. Which

three movies does Nicole Kidman say, if anyone's going to pee on him, it's going to be me. Obviously, the answers are the paper boy, the human's staying in far and away. Yeah. My God, shut the fuck up. I hate you.

All right. Speaking, though, of the Cannes Film Festival, I sort of ended on that so that we could segue. To Die 4 did premiere out of competition at the 1995 Can Film Festival. And it's an interesting- That call, put it in competition. It's, well, we'll talk about the competition films in a second, and we'll talk about which films did well. But it's a very interesting Cannes Film Festival. The films that filmed out of competition there, to die for, the usual suspects, which ended up, you know, becoming an Oscar success, the Quick and the Dead, Sam Ramies the Quick in the Dead with Sharon Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio. Desperado, the Robert Rodriguez movie that kind of essentially introduces Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek to Salma Hayek.

That was the most buffalo accent I've ever done on this podcast in my entire life. Salma Hayek. And then Kiss of Death, the Barbet Schroeder Kiss of Death with Nicholas Cage, that essentially the movie that David Caruso quit NYPD Blue to go make that was a critically lamb-baseded bomb of a movie. That's an interesting, whatever, five movies. If we can pivot to Can Out of Competition premieres for a second, if I can just ask an existential question. I know that our listeners are asking this question as well. What? Because of this last year's Can Film Festival, the Out of competition movie I want to talk about. Where the fuck is the Eileen

Doe movie? Where did it go? It, it, Chris. Is it real? Is it not real? Chris, I don't know what you're talking about. I think I've never heard of this movie. The Eileen do? I think you made it up. I mean, it would be a fever dream of dream of mind. I think I think it only exists in your mind. No, I know, I know. I've been waiting for it too. The fake Celine Dion movie. Um, why wasn't it a TIF? I think the Canadian. are probably very against this movie. They're ashamed of it.

They probably should be. There's a shame of it. No, I wanted... I just wanted to bring that back up. Maybe some investigative reporting... Back when we were still thinking that TIF was going to be everybody back there in person as normal, we all had visions of us howling at the Aileen D premiere together. As a Midnight Madness selection.

Exactly. Exactly. 1995 Cannes Film Festival, I'm looking at the sort of... the prizes. Palm Door was a movie called Underground by Serbian filmmaker. That filmmaker's second palm, I believe. Really? Amir Kustarika?

Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, that is a movie I have not seen, nor you don't really hear of people talk about. Yeah. But you look at the films... This is also the can where Terence Davies' Neon

Bible premiered and like cratered, and, hey, it deserves more credit than that. We are a Davies Babies podcast, so I have to bring that up. Kind of a fascinating can film festival competition lineup, though, in general. This includes Ed Wood by Tim Burton's Ed Wood, City of Lost Children, Jim Jarmish's Dead Man, John Borman's Beyond Rangoon, which I always bring up in terms of when I try and do a Patricia Arquette movie. that people haven't heard

or a Francis McDormand movie if we're doing like that filmography's game with trying to come up with every single movie I always have Beyond Rangoon in my pocket for Francis McDormand.

But kids, Larry Clark's kids was at Cannes this year which obviously was a hugely controversial and and you know headline making kind of movie James Ivory's Jefferson and Paris you mentioned the Neon Bible

the Madness of King George which would end up being an Oscar nominee, although this would have been the next year, the year after it had Oscar nominations. Same with Ed Wood, actually. Manus of King George, which, like, Madness of King George is very strange in the calendar of its release pattern and its can premiere, because I think

between BAFTA and Oscar, it straddles to different seasons. Because, like, Nicole Kidman is nominated for Best Actress at BAFTA with Helen Niren, who would be nominated in supporting at the Oscars. But I think not until a year later, or maybe it was the year before. Interesting. I forget. It's odd that Ed Wood is playing the Cannes after the Oscars also. Like, that seems to me even stranger, because that was... Can you used to do that.

Yeah. Like, even in, like, especially the further back you go, things would have... been more released in, at least I think they can only be released in the country of its production because you still have, like, El Mottavar movies will open in Spain, play nowhere else for months, and then be in the can competition like Pian and Glory had. Also, a couple of movies that are in the, in certain regard, lineup that sort of jumped out to me, which was Michael Moore's Canadian Bacon, which was his narrative. film, his non-documentary with John Candy, that imagines a border war between Canada and

the United States, and also Diane Keaton's Unstrung Heroes, which is not a movie that I've seen, but I remember hearing about quite a bit at the time. And I remember I was young enough that, like, the idea that Diane Keaton, who I only knew as an actress, was also directing a movie, was, like, fascinating to me. But I never saw it. So, yes. Movies that only exist as a title. to do in Denver when you're dead.

Yeah, exactly. To Die For, though, is sort of a highlight of that Cannes Film Festival, I would imagine. If I had been at that festival, I think To Die For is one of those movies I would probably brag the most about, about seeing it early. And Van Sant is obviously fits into that kind of milieu at this point because the films that he had made up until this point in his career were very, very... Artie and respected, obviously, drugstore cowboy and my own private Idaho. And then he makes even Cowgirls get the Blues, which is a huge bomb.

Absolutely disaster. Like critics hate it. Nobody sees it. It world premiered at TIF, I believe, and like had a fall release planned and everything. And it got pulled and entirely, like, reedited and such. And it's still a disaster. which I'm glad you brought this up because I kind of to die for confuses me why like Buck Henry's screenplay

didn't show up anywhere why Gus Van Sant didn't get mentions as a director and I kind of wonder if the stain of even Cowgirls get the blues was still alive it's also interesting that that failure which is such a huge failure. The next thing he makes is a studio movie because you think... Yes.

Like, you watch that movie and it really does feel like a career ender. Yeah. I've never seen it. It's that bad. You really shouldn't because it's not even a fun disaster. It's Uma Thurman. Lay out the plot of that movie, just very briefly. I mean, how do you do that?

Luma Thurman has a giant thumb. That's all I know about that movie. Yes. And, like, there's a lot of famous people in that movie giving, like, cameo performances. It's a very famous novel among, like, I think, the Kerouac era, and it's very bizarre, and it's like, it was one of the unadaptable novels, right? Oh, I see. The movie definitely proves it to be true, because it's all these just kind of bizarre episodes for this character. I couldn't even, like, describe the plot to you.

But, yes, Uma Thurman has a giant thumb. That's basically all you need to know. Umah Thurman, Giant Thumb. Yeah, so after that movie, his next several film credits, even the, even given the success of the critical success of To Die For and then the commercial and critical success of Goodwill Hunting two years later, he doesn't go back to making movies that he has also written until the Jerry Elephant Last Day's Paranoid Park sort of era of the mid-aughts. It takes, it goes through to die for, Goodwill Hunting, his remake of Psycho, which, I mean, the fact that he's not a writer on that is sort of a little bit misleading because that was definitely like, that was an auteur project of his for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so it's not like, there's a lot of opinions about that movie, but like, and it's also not his last career ender movie and he's still trucking because like sea of trees is still coming. Right, right.

That's the thing. His career is really fascinating. This is why whenever Blank Check puts him on a bracket, I vote hard for him because, like, it's a really, really fascinating career to sort of traverse. A lot of different eras and different types of movies. But I think one of the things that I find most fascinating is through this era where he's directing movies that he hasn't written. The only one that really feels like, well, we talked about Finding Forrester, and yet my memory of the production, history of that movie is a little bit fuzzy. But like Good Bull Hunting is really the only one that feels like a work for hire in that like that project was ready to go.

I mean, he basically was. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck kind of recruited him for that movie. Right. And he helped give them whatever clout that they needed to stick to their guns with the Harvey Weinstein sort of Miramax machine bearing down on them. But like to die for... Probably to me at least the reason why that movie is so good. because I think you have that movie in another director's hands and it's possibly insufferable. It's interesting. The fact that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon ended up being involved in Project Greenlight in a lot of its different iterations and a lot of Project Greenlight is this idea of like, especially the later seasons, of like, how does a movie script fare in, you know, one director's hand? versus another. And I think it's always a little ironic because Goodwill Hunting is always

that movie to me where I think of like, what does Goodwill Hunting look like if it's a different director than Gus Van Sant? And I think there are versions of it that are not necessarily even like better or worse, but just like there's a lot of different ways that that movie can get made. But I was watching a video of Charlie Rose interview. It's amazing how many, how often Charlie Rose comes up when I'm researching for these, this. had Oscar Buzz movies, that Van Sant did. And the way he speaks of the movie, and he talks about how it got made, he was involved in the production of this movie from the very early stage.

And just because it's not his screenplay, it still feels like he has great sort of. Authorship is, you know, this is definitely a Buck Henry screenplay, and they worked together on this very much. They're a really inspired pair. I wish they'd made more movies together. It's a really well-written movie. And Buck Henry, at this point, hadn't had a official screenplay credit on a movie for like 11 years. His last credited screenplay was this Goldie Hawn movie in 1984 called Protocol.

Did you look that up at all when I put that in the dock? I'm sure I know. Goldie Hawn's my mom's favorite actress. Oh, no kidding. I've seen this movie, and it's probably bad. It's a... Buck Henry co-wrote it with Nancy Myers and Charles Shire. Okay.

And it's directed by Herbert Ross. And it's Goldie Hawn. The Logline on IMDB just says a woman, Goldie Hawn, saves the life of Emir of O-Tar in Washington. And so... But the poster is Goldie Hawn in this sort of like... summer camp athletic outfit of just like white tank top

white short shorts and she's got like a boom box and a baseball bat and a mitt and a basketball and so I'm not sure what and like this like pink visor so like I'm imagining the wardrobe story here for this woman and I'm having a little bit of trouble

being like what is the vibe here but she is in front of like this kind of almost watermark of the capital building and then like a lineup of men in suits. And I genuinely have no idea what's going on. And the tagline on the poster says there's something funny going on in Washington. Goldie's about to become a diplomat. I'm in. I'm totally in. I'm all in. Also, Buck Henry's next movie after To Die for would be town and country. Yes. Talk about

disasters. I mean, we eventually have to do town and country. But like town and country, I feel like we could do fucking four hours on that. But anyway, I'm putting the call out to our listeners. If you've seen protocol,

if you know about 1984's protocol, rated PG, that's adorable. I mean, like 1980s and 1970s, PG.

There could be like full front. I was going to say, you could probably have boobs in it and you're totally still getting PG. But, yeah,

tweet at us at Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz if you've seen protocol and you want to talk to us about protocol. I'm sure. Sure. I guarantee you some of our listeners have seen.

I have faith. I have faith in them. Yeah. But yeah, it's an interesting point in Gus Van Sant's career. And it also is, and obviously the fact that like Goodwill Hunting comes two years later and sort of like jumps him up into sort of a different strata. But this movie also puts him together with Joaquin Phoenix, which is sort of meta-textually interesting and point. it obviously because River Phoenix was the star of my own private Idaho, which was Van Sant's sort of previous to this movie, sort of his best known movie, sort of along with Drugstore Cowboy. But River Phoenix had died two years before this movie is released. This is Joaquin's first film since Parenthood. So Parenthood was the last movie where he was credited as Leaf Phoenix. He plays Diane Weist's son in that movie, this sort of like big ensemble.

The interesting note of that is when they made Parenthood as a TV series. His role was played by Leonardo DiCaprio. So he sort of takes a break from acting after that, sort of like goes, travels to, like, Mexico and Latin America with his dad. This very sort of like famously hippie family, which you can tell by like the names, the parents had been in a cult before he was born. And so he steps away from acting, goes to travel with his dad, comes back to L.A., is at the Viper Room and calls 9-1-1 the night that his brother overdoses and dies in Los Angeles. It's a very heartbreaking. Terribly heartbreaking story. And the fact that he would want to sort of.

sort of continue on in this career that his brother has such significant shoes to fill in that. River Phoenix was seen as like one of the great actors of his generation and this huge sense of hope and promise for what his career could have been. And so this is Joaquin's first film credit as Joaquin Phoenix. And it's his first film in six years. And he is, and this is an actor who I have, you know, talked a lot about how I am very rarely on the same page with him these days. But I think he's phenomenally good and to die for. The younger Joaquin stuff is all kind of of a very similar vibe. Like, this is, you know, you can see the natural progression in less than a decade to the gladiator performance of this.

Yeah. Which I also love him. Yeah. Career. Yeah. I thought a lot about. In this rewatch, I thought a lot about that connection because I was also really struck by, like, Gus Van Sant is an incredible director of young actors. And when I say young actors, I mean actors who were like 20 years old, right? Yes. I mean, like, a huge part of River Phoenix's legacy is my own private Idaho. And that's River Phoenix's best performance that we still have to go back to.

And it's, running on empty was his Oscar nomination. Yes. Should have been nominated for my own private Idaho. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I need to see running on empty. But I was also struck by, like, when we talk about this movie, we talk a lot about the Suzanne Stone stuff, right? And partly that's because of Nicole Kimman's performance.

But you spend a lot of time with the teens in this movie. Yeah. More than I remember, and I think more than we discussed. And a lot of that stuff is so good because it's also Casey Affleck and Allison Folland. She's wonderful. I was trying to think of what, if anything else, I would remember her from because she's not somebody who like went on to this great career, obviously, as the same as the other two did, Joaquin and Casey. and she's really, really good in this movie and really empathetic. You really feel for her because she's sort of more so than the other two boys.

She's like a real lost soul in this. And the fact that Suzanne sees in her and ultimately weaponizes against her this sort of like nascent queer crush that she has on Suzanne is so vicious when she, that moment where she sort of talks about like people of your persuasion or whatever.

It's harsh. It's really harsh. Because you feel for this girl who like ultimately really thought she had this like friend in, and it's, you feel for her in a different way than you feel for Joaquin's character who like is a

dumb fucking teen who thinks he's in love with this woman and the easiest one to manipulate up this trio yes yes for sure and like casey afflick plays the sort of like the harder one the more dangerous one the one who like probably would have killed matt dillon anyway without even you know the loosest canon right exactly exactly classic loose canon behavior um but lydia is the one you sort of feel sad for and she's ultimately the one who she wears the wire and in a more just world would have been the one to take Suzanne down, but Suzanne gets let out on a technicality. Also, that scene where they walk her out past the media

after she gets, the case gets thrown out or whatever, where she's imagining the media as, like, an applauding audience. And that smile that she sort of, like, breaks out into, which is terrifying as a, as a sort of like, if you're watching that footage on the news and you see this woman who has been incredibly accused of murdering her husband, smiling to the cameras that way, I imagine that would have been quite in the sort of like in the post-C. Anthony world of media, like Nancy Grace at the time would have had a fucking field day with Suzanne Stone.

But obviously that's the kind of stuff that this movie sort of. of predicts is Nancy Grace culture, right? Headline News in the Amanda Knox culture. And, God, let's get Amanda Knox watching to die for and have her write 12 different op-eds about it. I don't know. Yeah, talk to me a little bit more about the supporting cast. We've got to get into Ilyana Douglas. She fucking rules.

I mean, the supporting cast is nothing but a bunch of freaking heavy hitters. Holland Taylor. You mentioned Wayne Knight. Dan Hadea. Dan Hadea, I got to say. Love that actor. We need to just like score through his filmography just so we can get him in the six timers club, an actor who never got his due in the way that he deserves. The thing about, the thing about Dan Hadea is just as an accident of like when I was born, you it's funny to think about sort of the actors who sort of loom large in your childhood

quite accidentally I feel like Wallace Sean is sort of that way for a whole generation of people who have this like odd attachment to this short little character actor purely because they grew up on the Princess Bride and like a certain generation of comedies right right right exactly and so for me growing up and like the Adams family and cluel were in my sort of very early tween slash teen years, I ended up being like, oh yeah, Dan Hadea is like one of the most easily recognizable actors to me now for the rest of my life. And it's because he plays the Shifty Lawyer in the Adams family

and shares father, share the character, obviously, in Clueless. Bet Midler's husband in First Wives Club. And Bat Middler's husband in First Wally Club. Right, exactly. Also, I want to point out, we all have, of like, it started with Adam's Family Values because of Joan Cusack in that movie, I think. And, like, that's a very, like, queer inflected movie. Yes.

So, like, gay people have been on Adam's Family Values for a while. But I feel like it's starting to bleed into the original Adam's Family movie as well. And, like, we haven't talked about him in that movie. He's a villain of the movie. Yeah. Or one of the villains. One of the villains. He is really funny in that movie.

Everybody's really funny about. But, yes, he particularly is incredibly fun. The Adam's Family Movies are great. Yeah, we probably couldn't talk about many of his movies because, like, you know, it's just like, it's a lot of goofy comedies and stuff like that. And stuff that, like, did get Oscar nominations, like Nixon, like, uh, like the usual suspects we were just talking about. He plays Chess Palmetry's sort of co-worker who, like, just pops into the room and says, like, one or two lines about, like, you know, commenting on the case as it goes. I will also say he is not at all the thing

that we talk about when we talk about this movie but I think he's the greatest screen Nixon we have ever had. I mean that is a debate worth having. The fact that he's in that movie and actual Nixon is really funny. Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point. The thing about

Adam's family, which is so off the path of our conversation, but I just want to mention because obviously Adam's family values has become one of those like the sequel is more remembered than the original. And it's sort of in that same conversation as sister. They're both great. Sister Act 2. Well, but this is the thing. So I feel like everybody who says that Sister Act 2 is the best Sister Act is on drugs. But,

and more, and the more actual reason for that is they're younger than me and how dare they. Both Sister Acts are great. Cister Act one is the superior sister act. But Adam's family values is sort of rightly seen as the superior Adam's family because I do think it is the more ambitious. of the two of them, and Joan Cusack does take it to the next level. But, like, that does not mean that you should sleep on the first Adam's family,

which is a really, really good and creative and wonderful movie. And if it's on television, you should give it your attention, is what I will say. All I'm saying is which Adam's family movie has an MC Hammer song, The Original. Watch The Original, too. Which Adams Family movie has a character who is a grifter woman who is portrait. a sort of Polish child psychologist out to steal the money of this gothic millionaire family. It's a great, just a great. Dr. Pindersloss. I love her so much, Caroline Wilson.

Caroline Wilson? What movie did we have with her that we talked about that I was like, yes, Dr. Oh, hold on. I've got to look it up because, yes, it was. We've definitely talked about this. This might be. Way back in our episode history. What was it? Give me half a second. Hide Park on Hudson. She's in Hyde Park on Hudson. That's right. The only living legacy of our Hyde Park on Hudson episode. It's true. All right. So, but back to Dan Hadea in To Die For, where he is playing a permanent glower of a human. Just the scenes of him... He's so good at it. The scenes of the talk show, the sort of like after the fact, sort of

talk show when Kurt Wood Smith is playing Nicole Kidman's father, and he's talking about how when Suzanne and Jimmy, or not Jimmy, Larry first got together and how he sort of tried to warn her away from him because he didn't, he wasn't educated and he's sort of a mook and like, what do you, like his family might be in the mob. And then he looks over at Dan and Dan and he's like, no offense. And Dea is just like, no, no, no, I get it. And by the end of the movie, that sort of takes on another different color, because, like, they're all on this talk show after the fact when you know that Dan Hadea has had her killed via his mafia contacts. But there is even that moment in when Kurtwood Smith makes that statement earlier in the

movie where Dan Hadea sort of looks at him as like, no, no, no, like, and sort of like glowers at him. But then they flash to that, the lake, the frozen lake, which is very sort of like effectively ominous kind of flash forward. But, like, the movie is very, very aware. of the fact that it is telling you this story in retrospect. So the movie is always very aware of how much more about the story it knows than you, and I think is very effective in that way.

But talk about I'll talk about I'ma Douglas. We have to because she's so good. I mean, she doesn't have that much screen time. No. I feel like we kind of latch on to her as like the person who is cutting through the most of the bullshit of the story, even though she doesn't spare in giving her own perspective and opinion. But there's something about Ileana Douglas as just a very comfortable natural performer.

Yes. That her effect on this movie is like she feels like the guiding light of truth, right? Yes. And there's something about that in like her performance that builds the momentum of that final shot that feels so satisfying, partly because it's her and, um, right, you know, the performance that she's given. She, what was she the runner up for, for this, for supporting actress? And it's such an inspired choice. Was it National Society of Film Critics? Yes. Yes. Very inspired choice. Incredibly inspired choice. She's her, her, her, the bulk of her stuff in this, in the film,

her talking head stuff is filmed at an ice rink. She is, uh, she's an ice skater by, uh, if not by career, then by hobby. And she's sort of giving her recollections of this, sort of in the middle of her ice skating practice or whatever. And the very first thing you see her say is, how would I describe Suzanne? She goes four letters and it begins with a C. And then they cut back to her like half a minute later and she goes,

cold. I meant cold, C-L-L-D. But it's like, that's all you need to know about this woman, like right off the bat is just and the fact that she's sort of like she's the one who feels like she's the most savvy to the media

circus of this whole thing like she's not... There's something about how she's interviewed at a nice skating rink and doesn't she even skate up to the camera the first time you see her? I think she does. Where it's like they probably had to badger her to get her on camera and then they just like find her at a nice skating rink.

She's not sitting down to talk to that. She's a little bit hostile to the whole process of it, which is, feels very good and right and correct. Her career at this point is really interesting. She had come up in very, very small roles in Scorsese movies. She's in The Last Temptation of Christ as like an extra. She's in New York stories and Goodfellas in these small roles. and then in Cape Fear, she gets her sort of biggest role today an incredibly memorable and horrifying scene

where she gets assaulted by Robert De Niro and he like bites her cheek off and it is terrifying. And then she moves into this sort of era in the 1990s where she's kind of a little bit of an indie queen, though she doesn't really, Grace of my heart is really the only movie where she's a lead. But I remember talking about my little moment binging all those old Independent Spirit Award ceremonies and how at the time, at that time in the 90s,

the indie film community felt very much like its own sort of discrete community to itself. If you told me she'd hosted an indie spirit awards, I would believe. I think she did. And now I want to, like, double-check that and make sure. But, um... I mean, if she didn't, missed opportunity there. No, I...

But she feels like a missed opportunity actress in the beginning. Like, we never really got to capitalize on the Ileana Douglas, like, vibe in a way. Or, like, we never appreciated her enough, like... Yes. Here, talk about... Oh, you know what's interesting is that also, like, Buck had... re-hosted, like, six independent spirit awards in a row, like the very, very early ones.

I don't think she ever hosted, but she was, like, she was a presence. She was there every year sort of presenting some award or another. And I think it was just like she had that gravitas to her. And maybe it was coming up. She's fucking cool. That's the thing. She's super cool. She came up through the Scorsese movies.

And I wonder if she was sort of one. one of those, like, you know, quote unquote, like difficult women or whatever back at that time. She sort of has that vibe to her, right? Where she wouldn't really hold back her opinions on stuff like that. So I would also say two things about her that, you know, because we don't know, because like we don't know enough about her. If she has bad political opinions, don't tell me. Right. Exactly.

And two, if she is a secret Scientologist, don't tell me. Right. I guess she was romantically involved with Scorsese. That was the deal. Oh, yeah. They dated for like a decade. I did not realize that part. I just figured she was in a bunch of those movies.

I had no idea. Oh, I didn't know you didn't know that. Yeah. Look at me learning things on the job. Love learning. Yeah. She is the tonal contrast to this movie that it like really, really necessarily needs. and she's really good.

Yeah. But, like, yeah, everybody in this movie has, like, a great couple of scenes, right? Wayne Knight is, like, actually really, really great in his couple of scenes. George Siegel is such a fucking creep in his stuff. We haven't really talked about Matt Dillon at all. He kind of fades in this movie. It's interesting because it's... He apparently auditioned to play one of the teens, which...

Oh, Matt. Oh, hon. Sorry, buddy. Yeah. Those days are about... behind you. It's interesting because that is also a reunion for Gus Van Sant because of of Drugs for Cowboy,

but like it's kind of a nothing role. I feel like he maybe has as much screen time. And I, through no fault of his own. As Hyliana Douglas does. Yeah, through no fault of his own. Like, Larry is very much an object in this movie as, as designed. Fully.

Intentionally. He should be. And he plays that role well. He's sort of, he, you get the type of guy he is. where he's sort of decidedly unimpressive. You get where he's handsome, but then you also get where he is very sort of dull and very typical and very much just like dime a dozen kind of a guy.

No ambition. Very much just wants to, you know, Suzanne to have a baby and they like settle down to this very sort of like typical family life. So you can see where. everything about him, once they're actually married, kind of horrifies her in her sort of worldview of where she wants to be in her life and her career. And he does that well. He plays into that well. But I think by design, that is not the part of this movie you're meant to remember. Right. Absolutely. But he had some more interesting things, obviously,

ahead of him he you know his late 90s is actually really interesting but there's something about mary and wild things are uh you know so there are more interesting roles ahead for him and we won't talk about his lone oscar nomination because we don't need to do that it's bad oscar nomination even within that movie it's a bad Oscar nomination even within that movie there are way better options right in that category even yeah fucking crash anyway moving right moving right along. Can we talk about this best actress race? Oh, yeah. One of my favorite topics to talk about is that best actress race. Well, okay, so what I think is interesting because it is really surprising, you would think it's surprising, right, that she wouldn't be nominated because

I think just the reputation of the performance since and like this best actress lineup in particular, I think the thing, even though this is a studio movie, I think in tone and, you know, the type of quality that her performance is giving, you're competing for the, like, critical consensus, you know, kind of we didn't expect this from you type of nomination, right? And I think there is a lot of competition for that this year, which is why it makes it fully unsurprising that the winner is the one who's had the, building Oscar Momentum, you know, momentum, right? In an actual independent movie, too. Right.

So it's like you have other independent competition because the other big snub for best actress is Jennifer Jason Lee for Georgia, who we've talked about. She wins New York critics. The New York critics lineup, which like had, it says Nicole Kidman was in fourth place with Elizabeth Shoe and Julianne Moore

for Safe, who would be my winner this year. I was going to say you could, this is one of these years where you could create an incredibly respectable and good five women lineup of just people who weren't nominated. You could do Jennifer Jason Lee, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, Annette Benning, Annette Benning for the American President, and Tony Colette for Muriel's Wedding. And that is like- I will also throw out Sandra Bullock for a while you were sleeping in my opinion, her best performance. Right. It's a bulletproof lineup of women. And that is taking nothing away from the five. women who were nominated who are also really great. So it's the actual Oscar lineup. Susan Sarandon

finally wins her Oscar for Dead Man Walking. Elizabeth Chu gets career best notices. Like, where did she, like, comeback story stuff for leaving Las Vegas? She was, I would say probably second place, although you could debate who finished second, but this would be one of those years where I would love to see the vote totals. Merrill for Bridges of Madison, which when we talked about when we did the River Wild episode, breaking her career-long streak of five years without being an Oscar nominee. We'll see what happens this year. Her time in the desert was finally ended.

Emma Thompson. With what I have called Merrill's Best Performance. In Bridges of Madison County. Yeah, she's quite, quite good. Emma Thompson is nominated for Sense and Sensibility, a movie that she got a lot of the credit for, and rightly so, because she also wrote that screenplay adaptation. She wins the Oscar for screenplay,

but she's also nominated an actress. And then the fifth nominee was the surprise Golden Globe winner in drama, Sharon Stone, in Casino. So here is my sort of provocative question for you, is if Sharon Stone doesn't win the globe for Casino, if Sarandon wins it or Elizabeth Shoe or Merrill Street or somebody, Does Kidman's Golden Globe momentum Maybe count for more

And does she have a better shot of making the lineup then Or was it just not going to happen? The thing about casino is it is only nominated for Sharon Stone Which still shocks me But like it's taking casino a long time to shake off the like Goodfellas light That's like the what The Goodfellas light vibe?

Or Goodfellas long? And it's like very, well, it's not that much longer than Goodfellas. They're very, very different movies, but it's just like it's De Niro and Peschi doing mob stuff. But like, Casino is almost borderline of comedy. But Sharon Stone is also the actress this year. And I'm sure she pulled votes for basic instinct for a potential. Oscar nomination. I mean, when she got that Golden Globe, people literally laughed when

they announced her name during the ceremony. Sharon Stone is the one who's probably getting the, we didn't know you had this in you credit, away from Nicole Kidman. So I don't know

if that's the case. If, like, to die for had like a screenplay nomination. But this is sort of what I'm saying, though, is the Sharon Stone we didn't know you had it in you thing maybe doesn't get as much momentum if you don't have that moment of her winning at the Globes and giving that speech

that sort of, well, it's a miracle speech. And being so endearing, maybe she's not as much in the front of people's minds because Casino was a movie they had sort of pushed to the side and maybe Kidman is, stands out more as, oh wow, Nicole Kidman won a Golden Globe. Maybe we should consider her. I don't know.

I think it's possible. I mean like Nicole Kidman, and wins the first ever critic's choice for best actress this year, but like how much sway did that have at the time? And the critics choice back then was a very different animal than what it was now. That one, it, it functioned much, much more like a typical critics prize back then, a typical, like, L.A. film critics, New York film critics type of thing back then. Yeah, like at this point, like, obviously it's the first year for critics' choice, but, like, New York and L.A. critics would have had more pull. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But yeah, 95 Best Actress is a bounty of riches, and that is a, like I said, that's a list that goes about 12 deep in terms of great, great lead actress performances. And all actual leads, it's not like any of them, you could be like, oh, they could have bumped that person into supporting, and it would have been fine. Like, even Sharon Stone and Casino is probably the closest one to that, where you could go, like, is she, like, could she have been pushed to supporting? Today, they would have absolutely pushed Sharon Stone to supporting. I think that's right. I think that's right. But everybody else is like the, like, Stone cold, either lead or co-lead of their movie. And the thing about Sharon Stone, if they pushed her to supporting, I would actually see that as a winning performance, because that's not the strongest supporting actress lineup. Right. That's Mirosorvino winning for Mighty Aphrodite. Kathleen Quinlan is a nominee that year.

Which she kind of steamrolled, but like... She did. But I think it was because... Well, Kate Winslet once. something, right? Didn't Kate Winslet win SAG? Hold on, I have BAFTA. She did win BAFTA. Okay. I mean, Kate Winslet, because Emma also won BAFTA, right? I can imagine sense and sensibility was

hugely. I just closed it out. Sorry. No problem. I don't think she did. Let me go back. Kate did win SAG for sense and sensibility. That was the only really major thing in the States that

that Mira did not win. Sorry, my computer is being good. Yeah, Emma Thompson won BAFTA. That was, again, you mentioned because, like, Helen Mirren is nominated from the year before. There's no Sarandon, no street, but it's Emma Thompson beating out Nicole Kidman, Helen Mirren, and then Elizabeth Schu. So, good for her.

But, yeah, that supporting actress lineup, it's Kathleen Quinlan for Apollo 13. It's Mayor Winningham for Georgia, Kate Winslet, for sense and sensibility and who's the one I'm forgetting in 95? Ooh. I like to play this game for myself. This is the thing, you know, do you ever have like a go-to thing

to, like, occupy your mind when you're, like, in a situation where you're just like, I have nothing to do. You're, like, in a hospital waiting room or, like, a... Or rather, at the doctor's office or something like that. And you're just like, I want something

to like pass the time in my head and mine is like can I remember supporting actress lineups going back because I am what? I'm going to adopt this now now that I like have this type of thing my mind is usually running too much on like my emotional state you know

I occupy a lot of time dealing with that yeah anyway I'll think of it in a second but yeah what else do we want to what are other odds and ends about to die for a movie I quite quite quite enjoy I mean, like, this is one of the better movies we've done in a while, and I don't think we've done some bad movies lately.

Oh, it's definitely one of the better ones we've done in a while. And it's probably, I mean, it's top tier, top tier movie, so. Talk to your episode, when we have to do another recap for our ballot when we hit that 200, baby. I got to do better about keeping notes for that as we go. Because, Joe, I, if our listeners are not screaming, I have the list pulled up. You should be ashamed of yourself, probably this. Well, no, she probably wasn't second place. Kate Winslow was probably second place.

Yeah. You have forgotten Joan Allen for Nixon. I just pulled it up myself. I'm so mad at myself. My queen, my queen, Joan Allen for Nixon. She's so good in that movie. She has the best scene in that movie. You want them to love you and they never will.

All right, so let's see, I'm going through my little notes here. Oh, I need to shout out for Real Housewives fans that you do get a shot of Eileen Davidson in this movie because there is a moment where Days of Our Lives is on television and it is a scene from the mid-90s with John Black and Kristen Damara and Eileen is right there, which is weirdly an interesting kind of cross,

unintentional cross-commentary. where it's like, oh, a future real housewife, a descendant of the media complex that has descended upon this country shows up into Die For. So that makes it sort of extra interesting. Meg Ryan was initially offered the role of Suzanne Stone in this movie. And for as... She indeed was. She would have ruled in this movie.

Like, I would not trade Nicole Kidman's performance for anything, but, like, this would have been a real good... Meg Ryan would have been nominated. Meg Ryan, this would have been Meg Ryan's first nomination. I think I agree. with you, especially coming off of when a man loves a woman. At the time,

the timing of it, absolutely. Because, like, Nicole Kidman wasn't taken seriously enough and you could argue that McReyn wasn't either. But I think you're very right to say the when a man loves a woman of it all. Yeah, the when a man loves a woman of it all would have really made a difference. Wow, that's an interesting sort of cross-universe.

What happens in that universe where Meg Ryan takes the role in today for? Because you can concede. the Meg Ryan version of this performance, right? And she would have been amazing. She would have ruled. She would have really, and would have been able to play into her sort of America's sweetheart personality

in really kind of insidious ways, I feel like. I think that would have been something. Nicole, I watched a little bit of the variety actors on actors from 2016 where Nicole and Casey Affleck were on. And so they talked about to die for a good bit. And because it was Casey's first role and they talked about making it together. and she said that she basically she had to really

advocate for herself to Gus Van Sant and then once she convinced him that he really went to bet for her with the studio because the studio really did not want to hire her which is one of those things that like I feel like everybody sort of like has that version of that story for like their biggest roles which is like they didn't want to hire me

and I always wonder how much of that is real and how much of that is, I haven't heard back from the studio in a few weeks. They must not want to hire me. Like that kind of a thing, you know what I mean? That, you know, that self-doubt sort of creeping into your head. You could certainly believe it for this, though, because of the, like, reviews of it. Like, the type of thing that, like, she could, she probably got Dr. Chase Meridian way easier than she did for this role. Absolutely.

She said, which is, like, a bigger movie, smaller part, but, like, reviews for her career probably don't matter. What mattered is how she can sell the character on a poster. Right, exactly. And the poster is all her, too. It's very sort of like sexified and whatever in a way that kind of makes it look almost like a sex thriller instead of a sort of sharp media satire. But she talked with Casey about how making the movie felt very much like going back to her days making movies in Australia after this. time of making these big budget movies. I have a feeling she must have shot this after Batman Forever considering how long Batman Forever must have needed post-production for her. And because she

talked about how making this movie had been kind of a reprieve after making these sort of very Hollywood-y kind of movies. And you get the sense she mentioned Days of Thunder specifically, but you get the sense she was also talking about Batman Forever and maybe even stuff like you know, malice in my life and stuff like that. But, I mean, far in a way. She really sort of raved about,

about working with Gus Van Sant, which is interesting because she doesn't work with, she doesn't work again with Gus Van Sant or with Joaquin Phoenix. And I think that's interesting. And she talks very highly about both of them. So I think it's just a matter of, you know, there's no,

doesn't seem to be really any intentionality in the fact that she never worked with either one of them again. But it makes me. Yeah, I mean, Considered Gus Van Sant's movies after this, like what could she have possibly been in Sea of Trees? She plays a tree in Sea of Trees. She's one of the trees. Nicole Kidman is Paranoid Park. Paranoid Park is the name of her character in that film. But no, but I just mean like it would be interesting to see her routine with either one of those people. I think it would be... What if the Lake was Nicole Kidman playing the Lake directed by Gus Van Sands?

Nicole Kidman could have been Jerry. Right? Nicole Kidman is Jerry. A third Jerry. Is it Jerry or is it Gary? No, it's Jerry. I feel like I thought someone called it Gary at one point, and I was like, I don't know. Have you seen it?

Reality. Hell no. Okay, I've seen it. It's definitely Jerry. I know that it's great, so there's probably... They're both named Jerry. Try selling the movie Jerry in 2021 to your... list of Twitter followers. Hey, come watch this movie that is only Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in the

desert talking to each other. And also, it's great. Like, oh my God. Yeah. Times have changed. Anyway, do we want to jump into the IMDB game. Yeah, let's do it. Hey, guys, every episode we end with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top for titles that IMDB says that they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits will mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we'll get the remaining titles release years as a clue. And if that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints.

Woo-hoo! Love a free-for-all of hints! What if the lake was a free-for-all of hints? And the movie is about Vanessa Redgrave. Oh, my God. jumping into the lake for a swim and going, oh, my God, look at all these hints. Look at this, look at this polluted lake. It's going to take me a month to get all of these hints out of this lake.

What if it was a month by the Locke and it was Loch Ness? And it was Vanessa Redgrave trying to solve the mystery of the Loch Ness monster. And it takes her a month to do it. And it takes her a whole month to do it, but she does it. By the end, she figures it out. And she becomes its best friend. That's a month by the lake. That's the water horse. please tweet at us if you've seen a month by the lake is the water horse

what did you say what if what if the water horse is a month by the lake oh no what if a month by the lake is a secret war horse sequel prequel sequel sequel sequel tweet at us if you've seen a month by the lake also we want to know about it but don't like fake answers only nothing real yes okay would you like to give or guess first in our i mdb game that is not about the month not about a month at the lake

as far as I know. I will go ahead and I will give first. All right. Hit me. This is a performer who, shockingly, we have not done on the IMDB game, though we've done episodes on this person. One of the last actress that you mentioned, actually, who's originally offered the role of Suzanne Stone, I think also interestingly replaced Nicole Kidman in the movie in the cut.

I am talking about the great Meg Ryan. It is interesting the way their careers intertwine in that way. In these two movies. We've never done Meg Ryan, huh? Nope. All right. Well, when Harry met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, both of them definitely. Correct and correct.

So where do we go from here? Is it also you got mail? Yes, correct. You got mail. That's Dan Hodea. That's the Dan Hadea remake. You got mail. You got mail.

I can't do a good Dan Hadea, but he'd be like, I don't know. The computer told me I got mail. What's this mail? I don't have a letter. Work on it. Work on your Dan Hadea. All right, so one more. It's not a good Dan Hadea, but you get it.

I do. I do get it. All right. You get a movie that is about Dan Hadea figuring out email for the first time. I'd like spam emails with Dan Hadea. Oh, a lot of laser hair removal. No, he would never. He clearly never did.

He, no, he had a moment where he curiously, like, Googled it for a second and then decided against it, but now he gets all spam about it. He's mad because he supported, like, one change.org position. He's getting a ton of petition. Nancy Pelosi is emailing him constantly, and he cannot unsubscribe fast enough. The computer told me I got an email. from Nancy Pelosi. It's a terrible Danadale. It's a really terrible Janadaya,

but I appreciate your effort. All right, one more Meg Ryan movie. Are you going to get a perfect score? I mean, that is the question. Can you do it? Can I do it? I feel like it's going to be one that's sort of a little off consensus

of the whole Meg Ryan thing. Actually, is it Joe versus the volcano? know it's not okay so maybe it is off consensus is it when a man loves a woman it is not all right give me the year uh we talked about this semi recently i think semi recently and that like we backlogged so many episodes that it feels like a month right recorded one uh your year is 1998. 98.

Is that? Same years. You've got mail. So proof of life is 2000. Courage under fire is 96. Is it French Kiss? It is not French Kiss. French Kiss, I think, is like 96. 96. Okay. 98.

Is this something obvious that I'm just, like, blindspotting? I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say it's obvious. Like, I don't think the kids today know about this movie, but, like, we've definitely talked about it. We've definitely talked about the soundtrack. She is above the title with an actor who is a movie that we have mentioned several times on this episode because of the Oscar race.

Oh. an actor actor this is a remake this is a remake Tim Rob Sean Penn

Perhaps the biggest hint I gave you is the soundtrack The soundtrack 98 remake Okay I'm going to go through actors of the movies we've talked about So Casino, De Niro, leaving Las Vegas, Nicholas Cage. This actor won an Oscar this year we've been talking about.

Nicholas Cage? Yes. Meg Ryan. Oh, God. I always forget. Not only do I forget this movie a lot besides the soundtrack, but I forget that she's the one in it sometimes. It's City of Angels. City of Angels.

Having just watched the now surprisingly controversial Jagged Little Pill documentary. at Toronto. Obviously, Alanis is very much in my mind, and her song on City of Angels is wonderful. Yes. Wow, City of Angels. I'm ashamed. I am ashamed. I should have come up with that sooner. Should be. Yep. All right. Well, three out of three to start isn't so bad.

All right. For you, Chris, I have, I went obviously the Gus Van Sant route, and I dipped into his drugstore, cowboy and one of the stars of that film you mentioned matt dillon is one uh kelly lynch is another but the one that i have chosen for you is heather graham oh yeah okay the question is is drugstore cowboy on them the thing about heather graham not a ton of movies not a ton of movies that would maybe show up in an iMdb game so I'm going to say the obvious ones, Boogie Nights.

Yes. Her MTV Movie Award for Boogie Nights. Yes. Breakthrough Performer? She went female performance. I think it was Breakthrough Performer. Okay. Spy who shagged me.

Spy who shagged me, yes. I'm going to confirm that Boogie Nights Award right now. Do I say Scream 2? I'm going to say Scream 2. It's a very small role on Scream 2, which is why it's not on there. But those are, oh, it's not there. Okay, I shouldn't have said that. It was Best Breakthrough Performance, MTV Movie Awards.

I hate this, but I know it's there. I hate that I remember she's in this movie. I want to forget everything about it. The Hangover. Is she in The Hangover? It's not The Hangover. Yes. It's not.

But I... Okay. That's a good guess. That's a good remembrance, because I did not remember her being in that movie. Whose girlfriend is she in The Hangover? She becomes someone's girlfriend. I think it's Ed Helms. Oh, she's the one who, like, they like...

She's a sex worker, right? And they get together during the course of the film. What a shitty movie. Heather Graham beat at the MTV Movie Awards that year. Joey Lauren Adams for Chasing Amy. Sarah Michelle Gillar for I Know What You did last summer. Very interesting that Sarah Michelle Geller beats out Jennifer Love Hewitt for the nomination there.

Rupert Everett in my best friend's wedding. And Jennifer Lopez in Selena, that is a very interesting lineup. Yeah. Breakthrough performer, got to say, vote for Jennifer Lopez. Well, yeah, and especially with hindsight, like, that's kind of wild. But I mean, like, that's a big breakthrough performance. It is. also Rupert

Everett had been working for like a decade Yeah but not to the minds of any of the MTV audience Yeah not to the teens Whatever yeah Um okay What are my years?

You've only got one strike right No you got two strikes These is a stream two All right Your years are 1998 and 1999 Well shit I mean this was the Heather Graham era

Your years were never gonna really break out of Of this small little window Oh wait is one of them Bowfinger Bofinger yes that's your 99 What the hell

Other movies were there Um This film Sort of famously a failure Oh The Robert Downey Jr. Two Girls and a Guy movie No

But that's a very good guess Damn it I don't know if I'm going to be able to remember this So I'm going to need hints famously a failure is probably best known for being a historical footnote to a much, much, much bigger movie. A much, much, much bigger movie from the year before. 97.

Yes. Much, much, much bigger movie in 97, Titanic. Uh-huh. minor foot a 98 is she in lost in space because lost in space is the movie that finally broke Titanic's number one street it's exactly what I'm talking about

she is I hate that I got it through that way but like that's she's the that seems right daughter of the family the Robinson family in lost in space who the hell is in that movie isn't like um isn't like Matt LeBlanc

is first built in that movie or something Matt LaBlanc is in that movie. William Hurt, Mimi Rogers, Gary Oldman is Dr. Smith. Jared Harris is in that film. Okay. And, of course, yeah, Heather Graham. Yes, very good. Well done.

Good job. IMDB game. That's our episode. That's our episode on To Die For. We had a really good time with it. We hope you guys did, too. If you want more, This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had Oscar Buzz. at Tumblr.com. You should also follow

our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore buzz. What are the two things we had asked for? Tell us about a month by the lake and tell us about protocol. What was that Goldie Hawn movie? Protocol. Goldie Hawn's protocol. We beg you. Chris, where can the listener... If anybody

tells me the right plot, the correct actual plot of a month by the lake, absolutely not. Automatic block. Yeah, yeah, Chris is going to block you. Fake answers only. Chris, where can the listeners find you in your stuff? We want real answers for protocol, though. I want to clarify this. I really want to know your actual stories about protocol, but not about a month by the lake. That's too far. Yeah, a month by the lake, not a real

movie, so don't tell us what the real movie is. Right, exactly. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter and Letterbox at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L. You can find me on Twitter at Joe Reed, read-spelled R-E-I-D, and on letterboxed as Joe Reed spelled the same way. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievious for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility. So don't go follow David Cronenberg to an undisclosed location. Write us a nice review instead. It's all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more

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