This Had Oscar Buzz - 237 – The Last Seduction (with Karina Longworth!)

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

We are joined by none other than You Must Remember This’ Karina Longworth this week to talk about one of our most unique and most requested Oscar cases. In 1994, The Last Seduction gave a modern riff on classic noir with a sexually frank femme fatale played by Linda Fiorentino who pulls a game of … Continue reading "237 – The Last Seduction (with Karina Longworth!)"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada, Water. The seduction was fast. Have your own place? Yes.

Do you have indoor plumbing? Yes, I have indoor plumbing. I have electricity, and I have a name. No names. It was easy. Different than the others, Mike. I feel like, no, maybe I could. Love you.

But the last seduction. What type of list are we trying to make? Cheating husband list. Was murder. This guy in New York. Ten million payoff to the widow if he dies of an unnatural death. She's willing to give us a third. You're talking about murder.

You, me, three million bucks. The only loser in the whole deal is a wife-beating old bastard. You're crazy. I'm out of here, Mike. Give a way of making a woman feel like a one-way train ticket. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. The only podcast that will cut our bangs, we swear to God we will. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty Academy Award aspirations,

but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar Hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my Deep Dark Secret from Western New York, Chris File. Chris. It's kind of a switch. That's kind of a switcheroo between the two of us.

I am, of course, the deep dark secret from Western New York. Oh, you're someone's deep dark secret. Who knows? We have a little bit

of a different format for this episode because we have something fun this episode. We have Karina Longworth on as a guest. However, Karina, very busy woman

getting, you must remember this erotic 90s out there to everyone. So we only had her for an hour. So we kind of truncated some of the things. Right. But we'll get into our conversation with Karina soon enough. Other podcasts do this.

Other podcasts drop in their interviews with their guests in the middle of an episode. So we're just, we are trying out that format for a week. We will be back to our regular format next week. But we were so excited to be able to talk to Karina about this movie in particular. This movie, you know, certainly fits. within her erotic 90s umbrella. We're so excited for that podcast. So, yeah, we figured we would switch it up a little bit.

So we're going to intro the movie ourselves, and then we'll get into Karina, and then we'll be back here for a little bit of wrap-up at the end. We've wanted to do the last deduction for quite a while, Chris. This was on our listeners' choice when we did our Focus Features miniseries, because this movie, of course, predates focus features, but it was in October film's release and an October film's plaintiff at one point. Academy plaintiff.

Yeah, that's the big sort of Oscar story around The Last Seduction is it ended up being ruled ineligible by the Academy because it had aired in July of 1994 on HBO because the prospects for theatrical distribution were so bleak. And then later in the year, it did get a theatrical release. It became something of a critical cause-seleb. And part of that was the lead performance by Linda Furantino, who a lot of critics got behind as a Best Actress Contender. A lot of it was the fact that John Dole had two movies out in 1992, that critics were really loving this in Red Rock West. And so, understandably, October films wanted to make an Oscar run with this, and there was, the Academy was like,

no, no, you broke our letter of the loss. You were on late-night HBO. I don't think so. Yeah, yeah. You know, if only taxi cab confessions had broken the seal on that and tried to get a theatrical release, we could have prepared for the last deduction to get, it's due for what I think is a pretty tremendous performance. Yes.

Because all of this conversation, of course, at the time, was centered around the performance by Linda Fiorentino, which is the movie itself is a call back to a lot of noir tropes, but in, you know, modern, more overt sexual circumstances. Though, okay, this is something we don't get into the conversation that I'd be curious on your perspective of. For this movie to have been like late night HBO, it's kind of leaning. into the sexuality of this movie, which, like, this is a, you know, there's strong sexual content, rid of it for strong sexual content. Right. But I, it feels like a stretch to me to try to put it in a porny box. Oh, yes.

You know, like. Yeah, even within its genre of 1990s erotic thrillers, it's way less graphic than a lot of other of its contemporaries. It has, of course. We do get into the chain link fence. scene, which I think my first introduction to the Last Seduction was them describing that scene in an episode of Sex in the City. Oh, really?

I don't remember. Well, you've just recently watched All of Sex in the City. Yes. But I do remember them describing that, and I'm like, what's this movie? That's funny. I imagine Samantha was very much in favor of the lead character in the last seduction. If I remember specifically, I think it's Miranda that's talking about the scene. So, yeah, it's also like they're kind of rescuing this legitimate movie from being, you know, labeled late night to late night Skinimax.

Right. And, you know, as far as like the tropes of, you know, noir and what it's doing and like putting it in a more sexually. frank context, even though it's the exact behaviors that people would have in those type of movies. There's something about, we'll call her Wendy Croy, that is such a subversive, prototypical, amazing Amy. Yes. That I think, because of some of her bad behavior, it's hard to call her even an anti-hero the way she weaponizes racism. transphobia. Yes.

But we do have fun, I think, in the way that she manipulates these men, especially the Peterberg character. Yes. Through his toxic masculinity. Yes. I think that's right. I think there is, even you look at some of these sort of movies that were made decades ago, and you think, oh, now from my modern perspective, we, you know, we stand this

character or whatever. And, but even like, I imagine making this movie, like, the intent of this movie is that she is doing all of these awful things, but you also do get, are supposed to be getting a thrill out of watching her get away with all of this. And, um, Fiorantino's performance is so captivating and aggressive and confident and, you know, it's, uh, you mentioned taxi cab confessions. I was, I was thinking, who, would have been the more interesting character to tell the story of this movie from the back of a cab either the fiorantino character which would be you know very uh confident and and and and um or the peter bird character dumbfounded as all fuck being like you would not believe what has happened to me over the course of the last several weeks and the cab driver being like wow how's your night going well yeah exactly exactly it's a very good movie it's a very good movie

It's a very interesting movie. You can see why critics would have gotten behind it, especially, like, critics do love a lost cause, too. So I imagine once it became known that the Academy had this technicality where they weren't going to allow it to be eligible, I imagine even more so critics being like, that's bullshit. This movie was great. This performance was great. she did end up in other awards conversation, which we got into a little bit with Karina, but I want to talk about maybe a little bit more. She was nominated for the BAFTA, the weird, weird BAFTA lineup that year that included two Oscar nominees

who were nominated in two different categories. Umma Thurman, who was a supporting actress nominee at the Oscars, was nominated as a lead at the BAFTAs. Also, Susan Sarandon was an Oscar nominee. She ends up winning the BAFTA for the client, which is fun. I'm just going to say that that outcome is... Very fun.

And then, wait, who was the fourth? I don't have it right here. I'm pulling up my spreadsheet. Oh, yes, it's Irene Jacob for three colors red. Right. Yes. Yes. So only four nominees that year. So a very eclectic quartet, not a Jessica Lang and Blue Sky to be seen, not a Jody Foster now. And we celebrate them for that because we all know how I feel about that Jessica Lank performance.

Yes, very much so. And Fiorentino then goes on to win the Independent Spirit Award, which feels very, very much like what the Independent Spirit Awards were doing back in the 1990s, especially. She beats out Jennifer Jason Lee and Mrs. Parker in The Vicious Circle, Chenlin Wu, who was in Eat Drink Man Woman, Luna Lauren Velez, who was in, I like it like that. She's best known for people if you watch Dexter or perhaps Oz Lauren Valaz in both of those. And then Karen Silas in a movie called What Happened Was that I've never heard of before. The Tom Noonan film, I believe.

There we go. Okay. So Fiorentino comes out on top of there. She also wins the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. So she was definitely Definitely, in a famously wacky year for Best Actress, which we've talked about a lot, sort of in a year dominated by Pulp Fiction, and at least in the cultural conversation, but then there's also Forrest Gump. That's the big Oscar winner. Right. And so the Best Actress nominees were all very much like they were finding them in odd corners. Jessica Lang, they found on a shelf in Orion's warehouse. And Miranda Richardson and Tom and Viv, Miranda Richardson, was kind of hot at the moment. She was sort of the hot British import at that moment. Winona Ryder for Little Women, which I think is a very good performance. I was watching, to prepare for this, I watched the Siskel and Ebert episode on The Last Seduction, but I also watched all of their, like, memo to the Academy in 1994, right, where they would

have an episode where they would, you know, put out their, their urgings for, you know, these aren't maybe who the Academy is going to consider. And it's a really interesting window into what was popularly sort of seen as the Oscar conversation then, because at the moment, best actress, they both were like, well, the given is Jody Foster and Nell, and now we're going to make our, you know, please to the academy. And Ebert was like Jessica Lang. He backed Jessica Lang and Blue Sky because he apparently did not think she was a sure thing at that point whenever they made that episode. And Siskel got behind Winona Ryder in Little Women and maybe also got behind Miranda Richardson and Tom and Viv.

And then neither one of them got behind Susan Sarandon in the client because I remember later in that season when they did the If We Picked the Winners episode, they were both very down on Sarandon getting that nomination for the client, which I was like, hey, that's a movie I like, and it's a performance I like. But it's interesting how, like, Jody Foster was the only sort of sure thing seen from, like, a distance into that season. And she, as we've talked about before, we suspect, wasn't a frontrunner only because she was so recently a two-time Oscar winner going into that season. But into this sort of like wild little hurricane mix of awards for actresses that year, Fiorantino picked up quite a few of the precursor stuff and she ended up being obviously not eligible.

They ended up, I read into, I wish there was more literature out there on the lawsuit. Apparently, they, like, filed suit in December, and by January they had dropped the suit. Apparently, it was just like a lost cause, which, I mean, the Academy has its bylaws. They're on the books. I imagine there's probably not a whole lot to do with getting around them. There certainly had to have been conversation about some type of petition to the Academy happening if she's already winning critics prizes, because she would. wins New York, which I'm sure as that. I think that's what sort of started on. That was like,

oh, we're like, we're winning an early Christmas. We could really get something out of this. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it ends up getting the movie attention anyway. So like this is a movie that is remembered now in part because of that controversy. So, you know, in the under, you know, no press is bad press kind of a thing. But it would have been nice because like especially given and we'll talk about this with Karina, certainly, the direction that Fiorentino's career goes from here and the fact that it ends up being pretty truncated, that it would have been nice to have seen this career high point of hers get recognized with an Oscar nomination. Yeah, yeah.

Do we want to get into the plot description, though, Chris? Yeah, let's do it. And then we'll get, and then we'll see how easily I can handle this convoluted movie. Exactly, exactly. we were going to have Karina do this, and then we thought we only have an hour with Karina. We don't want to waste it, forcing her to go through this torturous exercise that we make each other go through. We want to give the listeners what they want to hear from the conversation with Karina, and hopefully we did that.

Let me pull out my stopwatch, and all right, so Chris, before we get into the plot description, I'm going to say that we are talking about the last deduction today, directed by John Dole, written by Steve Baranick, starring Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman, Bill Nunn, J.T. Walsh, Dean Norris. This is our fifth Dean Norris movie. One more Dean Norris, and we're doing a quiz about him. It's very funny. It's also our second Dean Norris in a row, which we did totally accidentally, so that's funny. Breaking Bad's Dean Norris. Premiered on television on HBO, July 17, 1994, infamously. It then opened in theaters on October 26th. 1994. Chris, if you're ready, I can get the stopwatch for your 60-second plot description

of The Last Seduction. Uh, yeah, let's do it. All right, and begin. All right, so Bridget, uh, played by Linda Fiorentino as a telemarketer. She lives in New York City with her dumb-ass husband. She dupes him into doing a drug deal that gets him $700,000. She runs off with the money intending to go to Chicago, but it's somehow stuck in upstate New York. Uh, I don't know what map she is following. She has sex with this hot idiot named Mike, thinking that she's going to be out of town by the next day. It turns out she

isn't, and then she has to take on new telemarketing work. Turns out Mike works there, so she keeps fucking him. Meanwhile, her dipshit husband tries to get a investigator to find her and bring her back, including the money. She ends up killing him in a car wreck and gets away

with it by being like, hey, cops, this was a black man. It's really ugly. in back. And then she then dupes Mike that she's going to try to get him to kill her husband in this whole scheme lying to him.

Eventually when he meets up with her husband they figure out what's going on. She shows up and then kills him by macing, dumping a whole can of mace down his throat. And then she ends up having sex with Mike staging it

as her rape over the phone with the police and then he gets arrested and she gets away with everything. 18 seconds over, but I did have to laugh when you had her be like, hey, cops, because that's basically what she does. And that she's just like, everything in this movie comes surprisingly easy to her because she's so balzy. Well, and she's sort of like she's balzy enough to just sort of like go for it, right?

She's so brazen about how she goes about this plan of hers. There's, I mean, like, like I said up top, there's stuff about it that is not, like, in a way that the movie doesn't feel like is, you know, commenting on, but she, she uses whatever is at her disposal with, to manipulate these people, pull one over on them. Yeah. And get ahead and seemingly without breaking a sweat and constantly being too. steps ahead of everybody intellectually, which itself is fun, but some of the ickier moments of it are less fun. I think, yeah, I think because we're supposed to, at least in part, be impressed by her and be, you know, along for the ride with how she's pulling this over on Peterberg, the fact

that in the last reel of this movie, she uncovers, she unfurls this sort of transphobic twist to the thing where she went to Buffalo and investigated his background and found out that he had married a woman and found out that this woman was trans and freaked out. And this is his sort of thing that's haunting his past, right? In this, you know, yada yada, 1990s transphobia, where this is sort of seen as a given as something that he would want to, you know, be willing to, you know, do anything to run away from and cover up and yada yada and it's of its time but also you don't want to sort of sweep that you know sweep it under the rug with that kind of thing it would be it would be nice if you could go back and watch a good fun movie like that and not have to have that sort of

whack-a-mole kind of pop up from the ground. It is a really entertaining movie and with an especially entertaining performance but it's a complicated movie as well to enjoy. Yes it is. But I don't think we should waste too much more time. Was there anything else we wanted to get into before we hand off to the portion where we're talking to Karina? No, let's get into it. Let's take our listeners there. All right. So enjoy our discussion with you must remember this host, Karina Longworth.

All right. So we are here with our special guest for this episode on The Last Seduction. Very notable guest and certainly far more knowledgeable on this subject than either. Chris, you are, so we're very excited to welcome her, and we kind of don't want to waste any time. You know her as the host of The You Must Remember This podcast, which is coming up with a mini-series on Erotic 90s. We're super, super excited. Already, I've gotten as of airing. Thank you for keeping me on the ball of that.

Chris, thank you. Already airing, you do not have to waste any more time. You can jump right into the Erotic 90s, and I think we all want to do exactly that. But welcome our guest, Karina Longworth. Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. We're super, super excited. Chris, when we have been bandying around the last seduction, obviously the... For some time. For some time. Yes, this is a movie that was on our listeners' choice at one point, right?

It was a listener's choice option back when we did the Focus Features miniseries because this is in October films, which October films gave birth to USA films, which gave birth to Focus Features. That's right. October films, which fought the good fight and tried to sue the Academy to get this movie Oscar eligible, which we'll definitely talk about. And listeners were fighting hard to get this movie. I believe this movie was a valiant second place, if I'm remembering correctly, but I think it was everybody who knew kind of the Oscar story, or has seen this movie, because this movie has very ardent fans, wanted to have us talk about it, and I can't think of

a better time to have anyone talk about it. it, then have Karina here to join us to talk about it. Thank you, Karina. We're going to get into the lawsuit soon enough because I definitely want to talk about it. But we are a podcast about the Oscars and about movies that fell short of the Oscars. But we wanted to sort of bring you in and ask you about your Oscars origin story. When do you first remember sort of being aware of the Oscars?

Are the Oscars like a thing you're particularly interested in or is it sort of a passing sort of something you put up with to with your love of the movies? So, I mean, these days, I guess I'm less interested in it than I used to be. But I definitely grew up super interested in it. My parents would always have an Oscar party of varying sizes. Sometimes it would just be like kind of us, but sometimes there'd be a lot of people. And my mom loved to throw parties where she would make like theme foods. And so she was definitely making, you know, Last Emperor, you know, chicken or whatever and things like that. But the first time I remember it being something where, it wasn't just like a thing my parents were into. Yeah. But like something where I understood that everybody was into it to some degree was the year where dirty dancing was nominated for Best Song. Oh, yeah.

And like I had gone to dance class that day. And everybody in dance class was like, I can't wait because they're going to like perform the song on the Oscars. And then it was like, oh, actually this thing that my parents are into is cool. That's always surprising to know that something that your parents are into is like something that other people you know are into. That's a little sometimes destabilizing. Now I want to look up and see what beat that song.

Or did it win? No, it won. It did win. Oh, okay. And I have a really vivid memory of like sitting on the carpet. I was, I think seven years old, sitting on the carpet like below the TV looking up as they performed like the song. And it was I can't remember the name of the guy. Who's the guy who's singing?

Oh, Bill Medley from the righteous brothers. Yes. So, yeah, like he definitely had a beard and a vibe. And he was singing while other people were dancing. Nice. That's an interesting lineup. I'm looking at that now. I've had the time of my life. It's nothing's going to stop us now from mannequin. Should have won. I love that song. It's so corny, but I love it. Shakedown the Bob Seeger song from Beverly Hills Cup 2. The song from The End of the Princess Bride, Storybook Love, and Cry Freedom from the movie Cry Freedom, a song that I can say I've never heard. But it's an eclectic lineup. 80s best. song lineups were the best. That was when 80s music was hitting the charts all over the place,

so that was a fun decade for that. And pre-Disney takeover of the category essentially. Yeah. Yeah. Because two years later, Little Mermaid, would happen. Yeah. The 87 Oscars also crossover pretty well with your erotic 80s series, because obviously

that was the season that's Fatal attraction got Best Picture and Best Actress nominations and did so well that year. Obviously, we want to jump into erotic 90s, which is now started to air. We, Chris and I were both, I think we've mentioned it like several times on the podcast as we were sort of going along, like different erotic 80s stuff that we were, would cross over with certain subjects that we were talking about. So was that something that sort of early on in erotic 80s, you were

like, oh, I got to keep this going at some point. Like this conversation keeps going into a whole other decade and this is something I'm going to want to continue. I always knew I was going to do it. It wasn't like I had conceived it as being about the 20 years leading up to Eyes Wide Shut. Oh, that's fantastic. That's a good signpost. Another movie that we have been talking about doing forever, never, never, Chris. That's definitely one with Oscar Buzz that was not fulfilled. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I remember thinking very specifically, and I was like still a teenager then, but I remember in my early sort of like Oscar Dork phase being like Nicole Kidman is this is going to be her big Oscar breakthrough. I was like as certain of that as I was of anything and ultimately didn't happen.

The movie when it was premiering had the way it was publicized and such there was such kind of a mystery box whisper campaign around that movie. Obviously it's an adaptation, but I mean an adaptation from Kubrick could mean anything. So, I mean, some of it kind of almost dies as soon as people see that movie and there were harsh reactions with it, et cetera. Yeah, and I also, I mean, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but like my memory of it was that, first of all, the reviews were pretty negative almost across the board. I think Janet Maslin was like the big outlier. But then also like the, by the fall, you know, everybody started talking about Tom Cruise and Magnolia. And then it's like, that's going to be the thing that gets the nomination. and he's not going to get a nomination for Eyes Wide Shud,

and he's not going to be, like, pushing Eyes Wide Shut. And that was also the sort of the Cruz nomination for Magnolia, which was also seen as this sort of stepping outside of his star persona, that was him doing something different. The interesting thing about something like Eyes Wide Shut is that's a movie that played with his star persona and sort of, like, played within those boundaries in some really interesting ways. I think some of the most interesting Tom Cruise stuff,

throughout his career is stuff that almost comments on his, you know, star status in a way that, like, I feel like he's, I don't know, a particularly, the degrees to which he is and isn't self-aware is always very interesting to me in Tom Cruise movies, right? Yeah, totally. So just sort of going through the list of, like, all the movies and the movie stars that you talk about throughout erotic 90s, it's a fantastic mix of, and I'm saying this, like, as a complete, like 90s kid who started the decade. I was probably too young for a lot of these movies. I'm of the age range where like we live, I grew up in Buffalo and so we lived close enough to Canada to get like the Canadian television stations. And so we would be like out on a like Friday night or whatever and people would, I remember would be like, oh, did you know that like basic instinct is on the Canadian station tonight? And like on Canadian TV they didn't have to censor anything. So you

would like be, you know, everybody would rush home and go and watch basic instinct on uncensored on Canadian TV. So those movies, especially those early 90s movies, were very much like, you know, taboo, but in a really interesting way. Yeah. I mean, I snuck in to see Sliver twice in the theater. I definitely also saw Indecent Proposal at the theater, at City Walk. Yeah. You know, when I was 12 years old for both of those movies. I remember seeing the hand that rocks the cradle very early. I was probably a little bit too young. And I remember being scandalized by the stuff at the very beginning, the very, the sort of the very, you know, the sinister doctor. And she has this like very graphic miscarriage scene in that movie. And, but it's all these movie stars

that now I look back and like I have such, you know, fondness for the, you know, the Sharon Stones, the Rebecca DeMornez, Demi Moore, all of these actresses who were like the biggest thing going. And now looking back, you're like, oh, wow, they were all treated. So, if not outright shittily, just like really complicated relationship that American culture had with these actresses. Yeah, I mean, it was, it felt like just, you know, because I collect magazines and I use them as research for the show. And I mean, you just read these magazine profiles and it just feels like it's all about sort of like capturing these women and like putting them in awkward situations like where you can like be hostile towards them and they just have to

take it. And then God forbid one of those movies bombs. And then it felt like there was almost like a justification then in the culture of, you know, the punching down at movies like body of evidence or strip teas or showgirls. Yes. Yeah. Great example. I mean, It's not exactly news that American culture and America itself has these very complicated and not great relationship with women and sex, but this is a great prism through which to talk about all of that. And obviously, Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction plays into that greatly. I think this is a movie that was very celebrated by critics, but it was considered a very hard sell. And I think part of the reason why it ends up in the position that it's in with being a technicality excluded by the Oscars is the prospects for theatrical distribution for this movie were really small and were really, you know, they ultimately put it on HBO because they assumed they weren't going to be getting a theatrical release. Yeah, I mean, like I think that one thing that's like notable is that it, when they were making these decisions, it was sort of before Pulp Fiction.

It was kind of before a lot of these movies that opened up the art house box office. It's kind of like open up the gate between the art house and the mainstream box office. And so this was perceived as like the kind of movie that like plays in some college towns, but like doesn't really make any money in February of 1994 when it's at the Berlin Film Festival and the rights get sold to HBO. Right. And John Dahl sort of had the same thing happen that same year with Red Rock West where I was watching. I pulled up before we started today, I pulled up the

Siskel and Ebert episode that they talked about the last seduction. And they mentioned that, like, John Dahl's Red Rock West was a movie that had been released on video. And then they were like, and then people started talking about it. And then they put it in theaters after the fact. And, like, that was, it was a very sort of, like, late bloomer in that respect, too. 90s, the realities of 90s cinema.

Well, kind of looping back to what we were talking about of like sneaking into these movies during childhood and such. This episode is going to be airing the episode that you're talking about Julia Roberts and Pretty Woman. And Pretty Woman is a movie that as long as I've had any type of cinema literacy has been a part of my life. I was the four-year-old watching Pretty Woman like it was perfectly normal. And I think I remember in that episode you talk about, it was the first R-rated movie you saw in a theater too and yeah that movie specifically is one especially i think for whole like multiple generations of people um they're watching where you know they're watching this thing that they

maybe otherwise wouldn't normally be able to watch but it's kind of this normalized um depiction of or a normalized okay movie for everyone to watch that depicts sex that they might not be able to watch them a different way. Yeah, I mean, the R rating should have made it so that not everybody could watch it, but somehow people didn't treat that movie that way. And it's so interesting. I mean, at 10 years old, I was not the only person that I knew who was my age would seen that movie.

It was like, you were supposed to have seen it to be, like, participate in the fourth grade discourse. Well, and movies sort of had more of a, there were hitting more areas of where, like, there was a music video, right? Like the rock set music video existed, and that had scenes from the movie sort of interspersed. And even if everything wasn't made for all ages, we all were participating in the culture in a lot more of a, you know, together kind of a way. Yeah, I talk about this a little bit in this episode that I do in Erotic 90s on Madonna, where as like a 12-year-old super fan of hers, I was excluded from the sex book. I was excluded from the Justify My Love video.

I was able to, like, see the Justify My Love video on Nightline. And, you know, you're able to, like, they're, like, TV, like, TV news would, like, play clips of the erotica video as a way of explaining that MTV was not going to show the erotica video. Right, right. And then, like, you would, I personally, like, because I couldn't watch those videos in full, like, I would become obsessed with, like, the videos for, like, the lesser songs on erotica, like, bad girl. I remember in third grade, our third grade teacher, sort of like gossiping, almost like, you know, like between classes or whatever, like chit chatting about the like a prayer video and the controversy around the like a prayer video. And we went to a Catholic school. So like that movie was obviously such a hot button thing. But yeah, that was sort of you, you know, you experienced culture through the little like whatever keyhole you could find in the culture, which was very fun. I ended up catching a lot of that on the back end through the behind the music episode, through Hollywood story. Totally. Yeah.

The lore of it all. You brought up your magazine collection, and we are kind of research nerds in that way. Do you, are you constantly gathering things, or have you kept a lot of, like, were you a magazine person when you were young and have kept them since? I wish. I mean, I was a magazine person when I was young. I, starting in like 91 or 92, I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly and Spin and all these other magazines. And I lived, I lived near the intersection. I don't know if you guys know Los Angeles, but I lived near the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Ventura in Studio City where there was a huge newsstand, which actually still exists.

There's almost no newsstands left in Los Angeles, but that one's still there. And so I, like, could just walk there, like, either from elementary school or from my house and, like, you know, browse all the film magazines, all the music, magazines, all the fashion magazines. So I was always a magazine person, but I couldn't take them all with me to college and my dad threw them away. So, yeah, I had no magazine collection until a few years ago when I realized, I wanted to write about confidential magazine, and I realized that I couldn't find a single library anywhere that I had access to and through a Google search anywhere, at least in the U.S., that had a complete collection of confidential magazine. And so I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll try to form one.

And so I just, like, created a spreadsheet that told me, like, all the issues and, like, just started these eBay searches to try to find them. And I have all of them except for, I think, six now. Fantastic. And so eventually I'll have that complete collection. But once I started buying those, you know, eBay starts to suggest other things that you might want to buy. Right. And then I realize that, like, when I go, let's say I go to the Academy,

library and I pull a clippings file for a star or a filmmaker, they never seem to include movie line magazine. And movie line was a big magazine that I read in the 90s that had great profiles. And so I just started buying up a lot of movie line magazines. And then I can't remember what project it was for. It might have been the Polly Platt season, but like I wanted to know a little bit more about like what sort of mainstream feminist discourse was in like a specific year. And so I started by, I bought like a lot of like 20 issues of Ms. Magazine. And now that's like kind of on my eBay targets. And then when it came to doing Erotic 80s, the libraries were kind of still closed for COVID when I started doing that research.

So I just started buying magazines based on these different topics, like buying, you know, every Playgirl magazine that had a male movie star on the cover and buying all these Richard Gear magazines and Jack Nicholson magazines. And actually, and I bought like all these playboys from night. I bought every Playboy from 1980. And I was actually in Serbia because my husband was shooting a movie in Serbia. And so I was doing a lot of this eBay buying from Serbia. And my credit card got canceled because... Somebody thought it was tough. It was like a fraud warning because I was buying so many Playboys from Serbia and having them sent to Los Angeles.

To be fair, like credit, like get on your credit card company for looking out for you. I know. You have to explain to them. Listen, you don't understand. This is my job. Legit I was going to say Joe and I will eventually

one day have the full assortment of E.W. Fall movie previews. Yeah, that's the goal. We've talked a lot about you know, formative either magazine covers such as that that are just kind of burned in my memory. Did you have any type of like treasured Bible when you

were one of, when you were like a young cinephile and such that like just really sticks out in your memory that you love? You know, honestly, like, I think I was kind of more – when I was a teenager, I was more interested in music. And so Spin Magazine was really, really important to me. And I really feel like I learned how to write from reading Spin Magazine. And so my – one of my most cherished issues of that was this issue from 1993. And it was like they did this glossary of alternative culture from A to Z. And the cover had a shirtless Evandando making out with Adrian Shelley. And so I re-purchase that magazine recently, and I talk about it a little bit in one of the episodes in Erotic 90s. But what I never realized when I was 13 years old reading Spin Magazine was that the editor of Spin Magazine at that time was an AIDS denier. Oh, no.

And in this issue, like they, she wrote a letter from the editor, like a reported piece that she went to Africa to report. And then, like, one of the items in the A to Z glossary, all of which are, like, question everything. The media is telling you about AIDS because we don't know what causes it. Wow. Wow. That's an eye opener. Man, never have heroes, kids. Wow, that's crazy.

Not like anything like that would be happening today about any. About scientifically. She was just asking questions. Yeah, right? She was just doing her own. research. She went all the way now to do her own research. Oh, boy. All right, I want to sort of wade our way into The Last Seduction. And obviously, the Last Seduction is a movie that you talk about in Erotic 90s. Was that a movie that jumped out to you as you were planning

that series as like, oh, this is definitely something that was a major signpost for 90s, erotic thrillers? Yeah, actually, before I even started doing Erotic 80s, I think it was maybe December of 2020. I was watching that for some reason. I think it was like a neo-noir series on the Criterion Channel. And Las Adduction was on that and I had never seen it before. So I watched it on that. And then I think I was in a hotel room like a couple months later and I turned on the TV and disclosure was on.

And I realized that these two movies came out in the same year and they have like both have like a brunette woman who's like styled almost identical. who is like a ballbuster who, like, they're basically making this connection between like a woman who's like businesslike and like men losing power. Yeah. And so I knew that absolutely that that was going to be an episode. One of the things that jumps out to you about this movie from the very beginning is that I think it's the first scene like the credits are still rolling. And she's got this job as a telephone sales operator. And she's so aggressive just on that level of just, like, barking out orders throughout this entire room. Yeah, I mean, it's like a female parody of the masculinity of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Yes, that was what came to my mind, too. Yeah, totally. And so, I mean, then, like, talk about, like, a threat of a woman who can embody that kind of masculinity. And that's why I think it's, it, Pullman's an interesting character or actor to cast opposite her, too, because. it almost feels, when you first see him, you're just like, this is an odd Bill Pullman character, because I think so much of his persona in the movies, to me at least, is like locked into movies like Sleepless in Seattle or even like his Independence Day character, whatever. I was going to say, he's a few years removed from playing an American president. Oh, wait, is it Independence Day the same year as this, isn't it, 1994?

No, it's 96, I'm sure. Yeah. But yeah, like right around that time and Sleepless in Seattle was just the year before. So I think those are the two movies that, you know, I sort of think of. But he's playing this, you know, sort of co-conspirator of hers and obviously her husband who is overtly physically abusive to her. And yet also, you never quite imagine that he's a match for her. Like she's, nobody in this movie is. Like that is not a dramatic thrust of. The Last Seduction is, can she get over on all these guys? Like, it's like obviously, yes, she can't. She is so much more well-equipped to navigate. And I think that's part of the thrill of the movie, is watching her have just the run of all of these situations. She's always in charge.

Yeah, I mean, the title of The Last Seduction, it's not the last time she's being seduced, you know? Right, right, exactly. I think it's interesting that you draw the parallel between, this movie in Disclosure. I'd also thought of basic instinct as well. And rereading Ebert's review, he frames her as a villain of this movie. And I don't get that at all from watching this. I feel like we're supposed to have fun watching her get one over on all these guys. Yeah, I mean, I think it's intended to be kind of a revenge movie where you root for her. I think it's complicated

because the gender politics are, you know, somewhat dated. Certainly, like, there's this, you know, kind of sea-level plot involving trans stuff, which is kind of icky. I was going to say, the last five minutes of the movie. The way that she weaponizes transphobia is pretty bad. So that complicates whether or not you can sort of fully root for her. But I think in the moment this movie was released, like, everybody, you know, the point of view of this movie and of the presumed viewer, was that, you know, everybody's just going to think that this thing that the Peter Berg character, his like previous marriage, it, like, makes him less of a man. Like, that was the presumption.

Well, like, I thought my thought at the end of the movie was just like, man, like, you're never safe watching a 90s movie that Trans Panic will just jump out of nowhere. And it really does kind of just like, oh, you know, you're not suspecting it. And there it is. But she is, she's a character who weapons, she weaponizes trans Panic. she weaponizes the racism of the local cops in a certain... In that situation. So she's an opportunist in a way where, like, which to me, it's like, that's, you know, this is a, this is a noir movie. We don't need to, you know, find her to be a saint.

But there is that sort of very 90s way of sort of casually dabbling in things like trans panic or racism in a way that, like, well, you know, it's a little, it's cavalier, right? That's sort of... Yeah. Which is accurate to the way a lot of people felt at the time. And it was accurate to sort of the default point of view of culture. But it's hard to say whether or not this movie is critiquing her behavior at all. And it's also like, I think one of the things that's interesting about it, but I'm not sure it's like it also just really complicates whether or not you can see her as a sort of hero or a villain or even a protagonist is that you never get inside her head at all. No. She's a completely opaque character. But you know that you, in some ways, like, she, you know the movie wants you to think she's superior to all, everybody else. It's almost like the most POV character in the thing is J.T. Walsh, who just sort of observes her and is just kind of like, you know, kind of marvels at what she's willing to do and, you know, laughs it off a little bit, but is both impressed and a little afraid of her at the same time, which I liked. a lot of good 90s character actor stuff J.T. Wall shows up, Bill Nunn shows up.

Somehow we have managed to do like two Dean Norris movies in the last week. So he's this like odd little where we've now done a bunch of Dean Norris movies. You never know when he's going to show up. This era of Peter Berg too, like obviously Fiorantino is the more interesting conversation and we're not done with her yet. But like I remember having a weird crush on

Peter Berg from this moment. I mean, he's hot in this movie. He definitely is. He's like a hot dummy. Yeah, he's a hot dumb guy. Yes. He's at him, though. I'm like, yes. Yeah, 100%. I remember he was in a movie around-ish this time called Aspen Extreme, where he played this, like, him and his buddy were on this, like, ski weekend or whatever. And the only thing I remember about it is Finola Hughes, who I knew primarily from soap. because she's a general hospital.

She currently, I believe, is on general hospital. But she played the, like, older woman who, like, in this context, I'm pretty sure was, like, 40s, like, older woman, but, like, having an affair with this 20-something sort of ski dummy. Again, like, I think the dummy part of it really was part of the character. He was also on Chicago Hope around this time, too. And I just remember having, like, an odd crush on Peterberg, which is very funny to think about now in the context of him only making, like, Mark Wahlberg, you know,

Sniper movies, yeah. Right, exactly. Exactly. He's good in this movie, though, I think, to what, you know, they need him to be, which is, you know. Knowing his career would go to that type of machismo, though, really works in the movie's favor. Yeah. Sure. You know, what she's trying to subvert throughout it.

He really does fall for every single one of, like, every step along the way where it doesn't seem, obviously, we were, we're the ones who know we're watching a noir movie, right? So we have a little bit of an advantage there. But, like, it still feels like she's not particularly sweet to him ever, even in the good times, right? Even in, like, the seduction of him, she's never sweet or kind or, like, she's, you know, from the very beginning, she's confrontational, right? It's, you know, drop your pants and let's see it, you know, essentially. and and yet he sort of is willing to do anything any scenario she presents to him. She's willing to do it.

I mean, it's this interesting, complicated thing because on one hand, it's like, you know, there's no, there's no girl like that in that little cow town or whatever. And then also there's his desperation to leave this town and she thinks he thinks she's hurt his ticket out. But then we come to find out like what happened when he did leave before. And so, you know, there is something that's really, you know, he's like the desperate character here. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. It's so funny, being from Buffalo as I am, really funny to watch this movie and watch. As soon as they did the trace of the call and they're like 716 area code, I'm like, oh, they're there.

And like, there are farms if you drive, you know, 25 minutes out of the city or whatever. You will probably get far enough to find, you know. farm-like towns or whatever, but they really do. She especially talks about this movie as if it is the middle of absolutely nowhere. And as a result- It's not exactly the most direct route to Chicago, I think.

She driving through Canada? It's so funny that he has this dark past in Buffalo, and it's referenced, you know, the time is just like, oh, man, I'll never go back to Buffalo. And it's just like, you know, and in some way, that's a little bit of a noir thing too, right? Just like the person with the, you know, the past, from this town, you know, sort of mid-sized town in the middle of America.

But I just thought that was so funny every single time. Was not filmed in Buffalo, I'll say. And I could tell that one scene where she goes there, I'm like, this is probably Queens. This is, this is not Buffalo. It was fine. It was good. Joe Reed, the great purveyor of upstate New York filming locations. It's me and Christine Beransky, man.

Like, we're the ones holding it up for the old hometown. To kind of take it back just to the, nature of the character. I think part of the reason why it's easy to root for this character, it's purely the level of Linda Fiorentino's performance. She, just on a performance level, she's so fun to watch. It feels like she is absolutely getting the tone of what this is, both like a 90s modern noir and you know riff on the femme

Vitale or riff on now dated but certainly of the time of what the gender role was expected to be what the general gender roles sometimes were within the genre even I think she's she's so much fun yeah she's absolutely

like the most like you can see why critics really fell in love with that performance and we're willing to champion it you know as we got into year-end awards, one of the things that struck me talking about this as, you know, in the context of erotic thrillers and, and, you know, the genre of it all is the sex scenes are very much not super explicit in a way that sets it apart from a bunch of the other movies, Karina and I imagine you're talking about body of evidence and disclosures, you mentioned.

Well, nothing is as explicit as body of evidence. I watched that movie within the last 10 years, and that was one that I didn't watch at the time, because, again, like, it was such a young teenager, and it was so notorious. So I had built it up so much in my mind about, like, what kind of depravity did they get up to in that movie? And it's, and, you know, they do, you know, they do kind of hang a lot on that one scene of Madonna pouring the hot wax onto Willem Defoe. But what do you make of the fact that this movie was, this wasn't like a notorious erotic thriller at the time in terms of like there wasn't controversy over this movie because of it's sex, obviously. No, I mean, she's topless in it. I think maybe you see a little bit of his butt. But like I think the most memorable sex scenes are like she's clothed, you know?

Like there's a scene in the car and then the scene on like the chain link fence outside of the bar. and you know everything that was written about the movie they talk about the fence scene yes Peterberg was interviewed by vulture about that sex scene and he's like yeah Linda Fiorentino just kind of came in and basically directed the scene and how it was going to go which I think is phenomenal yeah there there's a I don't I don't remember if it was that interview or one from like 1994 but there was one interview with him that I read where he was like, I was nervous about doing the scene. I didn't want it to be pornographic. And she was like, just trust me. I'll make you look like your cock is two feet big.

The other person, you know, talking about Linda Frirentino, obviously, you have to get into the sort of greater career arc for her. And that's something that comes to an end not too, not too long after this movie. She's obviously, you know, hugely acclaimed for this, and the critics were all behind her in this. But she reminds, this career arc reminds me a little bit of one of your erotic 80s subject, which is Sean Young, which is Linda Fiorentino had sort of amassed this reputation as being somebody who was very hard to work with. And a bunch of people would sort of tell tales out of school and were like kind of not shy about sharing their, their, bad work experiences. I remember listening to the director's commentary on dogma and Kevin Smith multiple times talks about how he wishes he'd never cast her. He spent decades talking shit

about her. I would listen very recently to the blank check episode on Men in Black, and they talked about how both Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith made it a condition on their coming back to make a second movie that she not be involved in it. What did you make of that as you sort of dug into her her history in Hollywood. I mean, it's funny. There's this quote that I put in the episode about it where, you know, John Dahl, when he was going to cast her in Last Adduction, like she was on nobody's list to be cast in anything at that point. She had such a reputation for being difficult. And he, like, confronted her when he was auditioning her, like, why do you have this reputation? And she said something like, everybody hires me to play these sexy bitches and then they

don't think it's going to rub off on me. And so there was this sense of like, there was a certain amount of method acting that maybe she was doing, but maybe it was expected of her. I think that she did kind of, you know, in The Last Induction, maybe it's fine for her to say, I'm going to direct this sex scene. But generally on most movie sets, like a woman saying, like, I want to take charge here is not the thing that is sort of protocol. And maybe a male actor could get away with it in a way that a female actor could not, especially in 1995, 1996.

You know, also, just in terms of her career after Last Seduction, you know, she is so in demand after this movie. She's really the toast of the town. And then her next film is Jade, which is a massive disaster in which she is not given very much to do. Or at least, it's not nearly as interesting a role as the Last Seduction. And then she does Men in Black, which is like, you know, certainly like not, you're not seeing that promise that you saw in the last seduction in that movie. And then it's dogma. And then it's kind of just like back to us straight to video. So.

Yeah. It's a bummer. We had just done semi recently we had done our episode on After Hours. And I think Chris, the both of us were really, really high on her performance. Her performance is the weird sculptor roommate. Yeah. She's spectacular. The energy she brings to that movie is really fun.

And it's a little bit of a similar energy, right, where she's, you know, she's not impressed by him. She's not sort of, you know, willing to give him any kind of benefit of the doubt or anything like that. But she brings a lot to that movie and that performance. Yeah. Yeah, Jade's, I had forgotten about that movie. That was another one, which that felt sort of notorious. back in the, back in the day. Completely.

I mean. That was Joe Esther House? Yeah. I mean, Joe Esther Haas wrote that and Showgirls and Jade came out three weeks after Showgirls. Oh, wow. I didn't realize it was that close. Wow. Yeah.

No wonder, he was somebody who definitely sort of broke out into a sort of broader cultural conversation about, I think a lot of the conversation around like sex thrillers in the mid-90s surrounded him specifically. And sort of this, you know, is he kind of taking over Hollywood with, you know, these trash movies or whatever? Well, you know, he dug a grave for himself by giving all these quotes about how showgirls was like a religious story about like a woman's redemption. And, you know, he, he, and then he like went on the press tour and told children that they should get, like, sneak into the theater with fake IDs. And so when the movie failed, he was really kind of setting himself up as a target. And then when Jade came out three weeks later, it was like all the reviews of Jade were about Esther Haas and showgirls.

I don't think Jade's a good movie. I think Jade's kind of a mess. And it's kind of like a waste of a great premise and an interesting cast. But it was not like treated fairly for sure. That was one of the David Caruso leaves NYPD Blue for the movies. movies? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another story that I remember being like very, very prominent. I think I was a little too young to experience the

Shelley Long leaves television for a movie career part of the culture, but like I was definitely around for everybody wagging their finger at David Caruso. He was crucified. For several years. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny to think about that too because like Clooney is only a few years later after And obviously Clooney sticks around with ER a lot longer. I think he's with that show for like six seasons.

But he was, you know, just till dawn, I think, was only in like the second or third season of ER that he's making that movie. So like he was already straying by that point. Yeah. I mean, I think that Clooney became kind of the biggest star that, you know, ever rose from television, at least of his era. But he had like some false starts and, you know, not all those movies he made on hiatus from ER were hits and like what was the romantic comedy with Michelle Pfeiffer. One fine, a day. Yeah, there's a few things like that before you get to Ocean's 11. Sure, sure.

Yeah, exactly. But it is funny how like even just having a little bit of the whiff of success really kind of insulates you from that kind of conversation. Chris, do you want to wait us into the story about the awards campaign and October films ultimately suing the Academy previously? Yeah, so this was somewhat of a critically led thing. Linda Fiorentino's performance was very lauded by critics. She ends up winning with New York film critics. And so because the film premiered on HBO before it had a theatrical life, the Academy deemed it in eligible. And late in the year, in December, October films ends up suing the Academy.

So it becomes this kind of cause a little bit, so you can see how she would become a critical rallying point around this, you know, in decades before, what is cinema, what is television, the Academy deeming that this was a television movie. And you even see it National Board of Review decides, okay, so this is a TV movie. We're going to give it an award for being a TV movie. John Dahl is nominated by the DGA under a TV category, not as a film, or a theatrical film. And that's a lot of the awards trajectory for this movie does center around Linda Fiorentino's performance. She ends up being BAFTA nominated as well.

is a runner-up for National Society of Film Critics. Well, and part of it is that, like, that's sort of a notoriously weird year for best actress at the Oscars, right? Jessica Lang wins... This is the Jessica Lang second Oscar year, yeah. Right. Wins a second Oscar for Blue Sky, a movie that had set on the shelf for Orion for years. And Jody Foster's in Nell, but everybody assumes that it's too soon for her to win her third Oscar, so that doesn't really materialize.

Susan Sarandon's nominated for the client, which I think is a rad nomination, but I think had a lot of people scratching their heads because of the type of movie that that was. That was very much a sort of commercial. Yes, exactly. I love her performance. She won Baxter, though. Susan Sarandon and the client won Basta. God, God bless.

Sometimes Bafta used to be cool, man. Like, Bafta used to go for some really weird choices. What do you make of the, obviously, the Academy's decision to show, shut it out. Obviously, it feels like it's very sort of like rigidly standing by the rules. And do you feel like if they were able to get a dispensation or whatever, researching it as you did and sort of getting into the mood of things at the time, does it feel like something that was celebrated enough to become an Oscar winner? Had she been able to be nominated or at least an Oscar nominee? No. Maybe she would have been nominated, but I don't think she would have won.

The character is sort of too threatening, I think. Yeah. And also, like, if you look at these other movies that were extremely successful movies about women who were sort of sexually empowered that had come out over the past 10 years previous, let's say, nobody won an Oscar for any of them. Yeah. Well, you even think of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Not even nominated. Not nominated, but also that Globe's ceremony where she is nominated, you have as many people clapping. as laughing at it, which is

you watch that performance now and it's absurd. But yeah, I mean, I do question if she'd ultimately been able to snag a nomination for this movie just because of the way this type of genre is treated

especially in the 90s. Even though basic instinct is nominated for other things. Yeah, but just craft, just like craft categories, you know, no acting, No writing, no directing. Yeah.

And the other thing is that, like, if the academy had bent their rules for this movie, I'm sure they would be doing it because some people in the academy were really for it. But, like, a lot of people in the academy historically have been real sticklers for the rules. And I've been real sticklers for this idea of, like, everybody else followed the rules. Everybody else put in their dues. Like, why is this thing special? So I think, like, based on that, like, she might have not even gotten. a nomination if they had declared her eligible. Yeah. One of the things I thought was interesting watching the Siskel and Ibride

episode on this, the one movie that they compared it a lot to was double indemnity and Barbara Stanwyx's performance and double indemnity, which was one that was nominated, but she did not win. Well, that was so long before. But, you know, there's many references in the last deduction to double indemnity. You know, there's the insurance part of the plot. There's when she calls the cops to report Bill Nunn outside the house. She says this is Mrs. Neff, which is the name of the character from Double Indemnity. And, you know, her haircut is like basically Barbara Sandwick's haircut from that movie. It kind of looks, because she's brunette, it looks a little bit more like Jean Tierney and Leave Her to Heaven. I love that. I love that, that, you know,

sort of communicating across the decades kind of a thing. Yeah. It's right there on the poster with the wave of hair covering half of her face. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Anything else we want to get into, we do an IMDB game every week with our guests, but is there anything else you feel like we haven't gotten to for this movie that you feel like is, what's in researching this movie specifically, what was the most interesting thing you found out about this that you hadn't maybe known before? I mean, I think just like the stuff we already talked about in terms of her kind of taking a lead role in the sex scenes and then just the ways in which like not. Like, maybe she was, to some extent, like, playing herself or doing some kind of method acting, but certainly the media treated her like she was. And, like, she was really this sexually aggressive in real life. And, like, you know, I don't know if they were taking her quotes out of context or if she was, like, really feeding them this material. But, like, every profile written about her was about how, like, you know, she liked to have sex like a man.

How did John Dole talk about her in the press surrounding the movie? Really complimentary. You know, basically being like, I'd cast her again. Well, they do reunite in an entirely forgettable thriller, I believe, with Ray Leota. Oh, yeah. Unforgetable, right. A movie that I only remember as part of a trailer reel on VHS. That movie and unlawful entry are sort of twinned in my mind for some reason.

Sure. But, yeah, I think that was also Leota. I was definitely flipping through an issue of MovieLine magazine today, or maybe it was details. It was like some snarky magazine from the 90s where they're like, how dare they take a movie as forgettable as unforgettable and call it unforgettable? Wait, unforgettable was written by Bill Getty, who was the guy who co-created The View with Barbara Walters. That is the thing I never knew before. Holy crap. See, this is why I do this podcast. Get the women of the view talking about the motion picture unforgettable. 100%. I love that. Chris, do you want to talk about the

IMDB game and we can have Karina play a little bit of round with us. Yeah. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice only

performances, or non-acting credits will mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. If that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. We wanted to choose somebody to challenge you with Karina, from your erotic 90s series.

And we settled on a pair of, we wanted to maybe give you the choice between guessing the IMD be known for for Sharon Stone or the known for Madonna. Oh, gosh. I guess I'll do Sharon Stone. All right. So that's four movies, all of them, and no television, obviously, and no animated, which I think she's a voice in ants. Am I mistaken, maybe?

That is highly conceivable. That is not one of her known for. So can you guess the four movies on Sharon Stone's known for? Okay. Basic Instinct. Correct. Yes. Casino.

Correct. Yes. The Muse? Incorrect. Next wrong answer, you get the years. Okay. The Quick and the Dead? Yes.

Correct. Okay. Three out of four. I might like throw the next one just get a year, but let me think. We do that too. I was going to say, that is a proud strategy of this game, yes.

Gloria. Incorrect. So your year is 1993. Oh, it's sliver. It's sliver. A pretty representative known for. Sometimes the IMDB algorithm goes completely

cuckoo crazy. We just did one with Christina Ricci that does not have either Adam's family movie on it, which we both found to be puzzling and frustrating as we were playing the game. I guess I should have guessed total recall, but I guess I would have been wrong. That's how I usually feel at the end of this. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

The muse is one, we've done an episode on The Muse. The Muse is a fascinating movie in the context of Sharon Stone, obviously, with the Golden Globes controversy of it all. Yeah, the watches. Yeah, any movie with a paola controversy, we are all about. What else of, what else Sharon Stone did we done, Chris? The Mighty. The Mighty we did.

The well-remembered The Mighty. We could do Gloria, though. I feel like she got a Golden Globe nomination for that one as well. Highly conceivable. What a garbage remake of the worst Cassavetti's movie. I agree. Karina, thank you so much for joining us. Please tell our listeners, if they are not.

already listening to You Must Remember This, which, of course, they should be. Tell our listeners more about it and where they can find you. So you must remember this is a podcast most mostly about 20th century Hollywood that I've been doing since 2014. So there are literally hundreds of episodes. You can find it at You Must Remember Thispodcast.com or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasts. And you can follow news for the podcast on Twitter at Remember This Pod or Instagram. or Facebook, anywhere you go to find social things. Go get out there on the socials, people.

Get out there on your podcast apps. It's, you will, if you're not a listener of this podcast, you will not regret it. It's so much fun. I feel like I'm such a smarter movie nerd for listening to that podcast. That's one of when I used to do movie trivia at my beloved videology in Brooklyn. I feel like I would call upon sometimes like a fact from an old. You must remember this episode, and it would help me with a question. So highest praise from me if a podcast can help me win trivia.

But yeah, thank you once again, Karina. We had such a great time. And good luck with the rest of Erotic 90s. Thank you so much. All right. We want to thank once again Karina Longworth for talking with us. That was a fascinating discussion on the last seduction. Can I also say completely unsurprising that Karina Longworth would boss the IMDB?

game. That is true. That is true. I can't imagine you or I will do as well with it, but we can, we can, we can do our best, Chris, as we always do. Maybe I won't be as nice to you as we were to our illustrious guess. All right, Chris, who do you have for me? I'll have you give to me and then I'll give to you. You know, there was one movie that we didn't talk about. I think there's a, there might be like two of the late stage movies of Linda Fiorentinos that we didn't mention by name. One of which, her very last credited movies, is called Where the Money is, a crime comedy starring none other than Mr. Paul Newman. Have we never done Paul Newman? I don't, I didn't think so. I figured we hadn't, so I didn't even look that up. We have done Paul Newman recently. You know, it was the, we did Paul Newman.

on it looks like the away we go episode oh okay um i did pull up a second one but it is meaner um shout out to where the money is i guess shout out to where the money is i do want to say when you mentioned korena carina's on the brain when you mentioned linda fjornino's filmography it made me think once again of the fact that uh the views bill getty wrote unforgettable that is fucking with me it's really fucking with me i had no idea oh the great enemy of Rosie O'Donnell wrote Unforgetable. I don't know. Listen, all upper-level producers all have some shitty thriller script sitting around. Honestly, probably true.

I wonder if there's a split-screen shot in Unforgetable like there was of Rosie and Elizabeth Hassel by having your argument. I wonder if that's in there. The most diabolical split screen of all time. Truly, yes. You know what isn't unforgettable, what is forgettable, the motion picture unforgettable? You know what's unforgettable to you now that the views bill gave? Yes, exactly. I will quite literally never forget it, yes.

Maybe we need to watch Unforgettable just to like, keep saying that to ourselves the entire time of that not interesting movie. So for you, pivoting from Linda Fiorentino, this motion picture stars Peter Berg, who, aside from directing a lot of very red-stady movies. Also, is known for starring on the television program Chicago Hope. Indeed, he was. Which I'm sure, Joe, did you watch Chicago Hope?

No, it was, you were either a Chicago Hope person or an ER person, even though I don't think they were ever really in the same time slot very much, if at all. I was neither. You had to sort of make your choice. Also, I was just, we were not a CBS household, you know what I mean? So, like, CBS shows, there were very few of them, even the ones that I now think are really good, like Murphy Brown and Designing Women. I didn't really watch at the time. So, yeah, I was an ER person, for sure.

Sweet. But from the cast of Chicago, Hope for IMDB game for you, I chose Mr. Hector Elizondo. Oh, boy, how many Gary Marshall movies will be on his IMD be known for. Okay. Great question. Hector Elizondo. Well, pretty woman I'm going to put up there. Correct.

I feel like he got some of like. He also pulled it in for the Pretty Woman tie because a lot of the second episode of Iraq 90s is around Pretty Woman. Yeah. I feel like he got some precursor attention for that movie. He might have won a golden... He was Globe nominated at least. Let me look this up. Would not have been a bad Oscar nomination.

I imagine Pesci won everything that year for Goodfellas. But yeah, I definitely think he was nominated for some stuff. Yeah, pre-sagg. So there's just a Golden Globe nomination. for that performance. All right, Hector Elizondo. Now I'm just going to go into the Gary Marshall. Obviously, Gary Marshall also directed Pretty Woman.

Valentine's Day. Incorrect. Damn it. Well, now I feel less optimistic about guessing the other days. Hector Elizondo. No, I'm going to guess New Year's Eve, too. I have to. Also incorrect.

Oh, my God. All right, so what are my years? 1994 1999 and 2004 1999 and 2004 1999 and 2004 1999 and 2004

1994 1999 and 2004 1999 and 2004 2009 and 2004 1999 you should be able to get there really okay Hector Elizondo in a 1999 movie

you correctly guessed pretty woman Oh, runaway bride. Runaway bride. Sure. Yes, of course. Again, Gary Marshall, Julia Roberts, Richard Gear, how could you have that band back together and not bring along? Hector Elizondo.

All right, 94 and 04. There's Laura Sanji Como. Truly, where is Laura Sanji Como? Okay, 94 and 04. Although in 99, I bet you she was doing Just Shoot Me. I bet you that was on the air at that point. I will also say both of these are sequels. Okay.

94, are they both comedies? Yes. Okay. What's a comedy sequel in 1994? Wayne's World 2? No. No. What's being made?

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey? Um, comedy sequel, Father of the Bride Part 2. No. Damn. Looking up to see, the 1994,

movie, it does not look like he was in the predecessors of this sequel. However, the 2004 movie, he was in the original. Okay. Huh. That may not help you. You also weren't wrong to go on the Gary Marshall track. I will say one of these is a Gary Marshall joint. Gary Marshall's sequel to a Gary Marshall movie.

Yes. Fuck. Is that, is the original, Gary? I'm sure it is. Hold, please. Is it the O-4 movie? That's the sequel? Yes.

Fuck. The Gary Marshall sequel. Okay. So it's the one he made probably before. Yeah, he directed the original. Before George Rule. This is a movie notable for, I brought this movie up to you

recently in regard in comparison and maybe even on mike in comparison to selene dion being in love again why is there a pop star in this i wouldn't call this person a pop star but there is a singer in this who perhaps half sang on screen oh was meaningful slash sad oh no um oh four Gary Marshall's sequel, singer, female singer. Yes. Who half sings. Older? The movie has two female headliners, both of whom headlined the original.

Oh, boy. I am coming up blank. Was the original in the 90s? The original is 2001. Oh. It's not necessarily. a sequel anyone asked for but the original was a really

it still has you know fans and such okay did you like it starring one of our faves bang our sisters part two now that's not it this is early era of one of our faves before

they you know they had to break out of this mold early Disney movie. Oh, oh, it's the Princess Diaries, too. Jesus Christ. Yes. Yes.

Okay. I was like, how can I make this? No, you, like, you, no, that was, I was just missing all of the hints. Weirdly, I've never seen the second one. That was the one where he was yes in the first one? Yes, he's in both. Okay. Those are not my movies.

I know them. They're not my movies either. I love Anne. Love Julie Andrews. I love Ann Hathaway. But they are not my movies. They're not my movies. That's fine.

I think I was just too old. for Princess Diaries when it came out. Yeah, I think that's probably true. Like how I'm just too old for Pokemon. Yes, same. By like weeks. Yeah. Okay, so the 1994 movie, it's not a Gary Marshall joint.

It is a John Landis joint. Oh, is it an SNL movie? No. Okay. It's star, though. Is an SNL person? Yes. Mike Myers.

No. Dana Carvey. No. Phil Hartman. Bigger. This person got bigger after S&L. Molly Shannon. No.

Bigger after S&L. Were they like one of those like one season S&L people who then like had a big career? I don't know if he was one season. But. But not like. Nobody talks about him as an S&L person because he's a huge star. Well, hmm. That really.

out Eddie Murphy. Does it? Oh, is it Eddie Murphy? Eddie Murphy was a pretty big star on SNL. I feel like that was like a shitty big deal. Yeah, but nobody today talked about him being on SNL. Okay. Eddie Murphy, 1994.

This is too early for Nuddy Professor 2. Comedy sequel. Okay. Nuddy Professor was later. What's the franchise that made Eddie Murphy huge, aside from the stand-up? Was it a Beverly Hills Cop? Beverly Hills Cop 3? Beverly Hills Cop 3.

Wow, that came later than I thought it did. Wow, okay. That's a weird one to be on Hector Elizondo's known for. Yeah, three Gary Marshalls and Beverly Hills Cop 3. And Beverly Hills Cop 3. Wow. Yeah, that's a weird one. Okay, that's a tough.

That's a tough one. Yours is much easier. Don't you hate how they're still trying, they're trying to get somebody to do, to redo the Beverly Hills Cop franchise? And it's like, are we really attached to? that franchise or do we just love Eddie Murphy? We just love Eddie Murphy. This is the thing. No one cares about those movies anymore.

Right. I know you hate the term legacy sequel, but yes. It's certainly, yeah, like there's no attachment to Beverly Hills Cup, but they're so tied to anything with something in the title that will trigger a memory.

Right. All right. For you, I went into the John Dole filmography and John Dole directed among several other movies directing the movie Rounders, one of the stars of which is John Malkovich. We have never done John Malkovich. So, I know, which is kind of surprising.

I mean, the Jewel Thief movie. Yes. Okay, John Malkovich, in the line of fire. Correct, Oscar nominated. I don't think Places in the Heart is there being John Malkovich. Correct. Um, in which he's credited on here at least as John Horatio Malcovich, which I think is very funny. Spectacular.

Yeah. Um, Dangerous liaisons. Dangerous liaisons, three for three. Are you going to go four for four? I, I have to imagine something more recent is in that fourth slot, and it might be burn after reading. It's not going to be secretariat, even though he got, you know, good notices for that or some weird shit. I'm

going to say burn after reading. Incorrect. Sorry. No perfect score. No brain after reading. I'll give you that it's also not Secretariat, even though that would be very funny. What? What are you saying? Okay.

Do I still want to go down this road of thinking that it's something recent? I don't know. What if it's something really wild, like Empire of the Sun? Good movie. Okay. I'm just going to say Places in the Heart and get the year. It's not Places in the Heart.

So your year is 2010. Okay, so it is something recent. It would be... Recent as in 13 years ago, but yes. Well, more recent than the rest, that's what I know. So it's after Burn After Reading. I assume that's after Secretariat. What is time?

Secretariat has always been with us. Yes, we've always had Secretariat. Just running around that track forever. Diane Lane looking wistfully into the middle distance. Okay, 2010. Is this one of those like a bunch of old guys getting together and having a good time movies? Maybe. Is it like, what's that one going in style?

It's not going in style. Is he in that? Is it? He's not in Last Vegas. I don't believe he is. What is this? Okay. Judging by your silence, I'm guessing this is a bunch of old guys in a movie movie. It's, yes, yes.

It's not exactly the genre, but like it's very close to that. genre. They're not like going for like one of their, you know, one of them is dying and they're going to their like last, you know, Bachelor Party or whatever. Maybe I'll watch Last Vegas today. Um, okay. So it's a comedy. Yes, it's a comedy. Okay. Is it, did this movie make money? Yeah. Okay. Um, this movie shares a title with an album from the last. last 10 years. Renaissance. No. It's not called Renaissance. I imagine it's either a Grammy-winning album of the year or it was nominated, I think.

Oh. I don't know the Grammys. I could be wrong, but I'm going to guess that. Rumors. No. Okay. It's the same as a possibly album of the year winning

this artist has definitely won album of the year. I'm not sure if it was for this album or not. Is it like a Springsteen title? Nope. It is not John Malkovich in Born in the USA.

It's not Bohemian Rhapsody. Give me the artist. What artists are we talking about? give you the artist you're going to get it right away okay never mind very popular does the artist is the artist central to the plot of the movie oh no like it's just coincidental that the movie and the and the album have the same title so it might be something it's not like it's not like connected it's not like john malcovitch in the visual album of such and such and such which would be john malcovitch in the visual album for

the eagles yeah exactly although this artist has appeared in a few movies, one of which was directed by Gary Marshall. Taylor Swift. Yes. Fearless. No. Speak now. No. Red. Yes. Oh, my God. Jesus.

I thought you were going to go four-for-four on that one. That was a lot more fun of an IMDB game than I anticipated that was going to be. Jesus. I forgot that he was in red, mostly because I tried to forget those movie it's what it's him it's bruce willis it's morgan freeman and helen miran right those are your four yes old friends getting together for one last yes mary louise parker who was younger than all that yes um yeah red did that win an album of the year did it did it did run with album of the year win my wrong it did not it did not it was nominated her album of the year wins are fearless folklore and i think i was going to say

1989, I feel like one album of the year. Okay. What's on Red? I'm not a Swifty, but I like Taylor Swift. No. The last seduction. Yes.

Joe, great episode. Incredible guests. Yes. And we thank her once again, even though she's by this point off doing her own podcast thing. This is days later we are recording this finale.

If our listeners don't listen to you must remember this, I don't understand why you don't. Yeah, erotic 90s is going to be a banger of a, no pun intended, bangor of a season for that show. The 80s version was already so fantastic and so good, but there's so many fun stories. If you are in any way, a 90s person, I imagine it's going to be hugely interesting for you.

So, yeah, go listen, come back and listen to us also. We also have banger episodes coming up, and we've got our main miniseries coming up soon. A month away. We are a little behind the eight ball on it, I would say, but we've been busy, we've been busy people. We're going to be good. Yeah. Yeah.

We got it. We got it. But it's going to be exciting. Maybe a small diversion from the form. Perhaps. Who knows? All right. Yeah, that's our episode, everybody.

If you would like more, this head Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you? You can find me on Twitter and letterbox at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter and letterbox at Joe Reed, Reed-spelled, R-E-I-D. 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,

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