This Had Oscar Buzz - 375 – My Own Private Idaho

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

We’re finally pulling one of our most passionate entries to our 100 Snubs series, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. Adapted loosely from multiple Shakespeare plays (particularly both Henry IVs), the film follows an epileptic young sex worker named Mike (River Phoenix) as he drifts the globe with his loyal cohort Scott (Keanu Reeves). Van Sant … Continue reading "375 – My Own Private Idaho"

I'm a house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! I'm from Canada water. Dick Poop. I am, by the way the road looks. Look, I just know that I've been here before. I just know that I've been stuck here.

Don't worry. Everything's gonna be all right. I never thought I could make it as a real model. You know, fashion-oriented modeling. Trying to make a little. living. Isn't that right, Mike? What do you care about money? You got plenty of money. Actually, Mike is right. I am going to inherit money. A lot of money.

Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's choosing to go to Skylar Jizando's yacht party first. 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 original narcoleptic... Damn it. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here as always with my original

narcoleptic drag queen of the Pacific Northwest. Chris File. Hello, Chris. When you think about it, Jinks Monsoon... Jinks, Phoenix, beat you to it. Jinks Monssoon looms large over my own private I know in this way, where I was like,

wow, the more you think about it, the similarities really are something. So, I would love to talk to Jinks Monsoon at length about my own private Idaho. I feel like Jinks would have some things to say. Hi. How are you? I'm a little under the weather.

I apologize for any crummy-sounding noises that come out of my mouth, and I don't just mean the normal bullshit that I say. It's just mean your normal thoughts and opinions. They got me, gal. They got the cred got me. Well, feel better. We are recording this on New Year's Eve afternoon. And we are closing out our year, our literal year, with a really good one, a really, really good movie that I think we both really love.

And we have talked about a lot. And you've seen this movie before? You have not seen this movie before. Oh, I had seen this movie before. this was a movie that I saw when I was just sort of venturing into queer cinema.

I saw this probably in like my early college years. And I remember like so many of the I can like, such a little fucking perv. I remember like the scenes that I like rewound and watched again and rewound and watch again. The scene of River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in bed together is like embedded in my mind.

And also like scenes that are just like, snapshots, but they're more still life than snapshots? Like, what would you even stylistically call what Gus Vansant does that it is... It's snapshots, but it's like, it's... Tells them to hold still. Yeah. But it's not like an actual freeze frame. It's very... But you can actually, you can see these sort of infinitesimal movements. I also had no memory of the fact that that was Udo Kier in that scene. Oh, rest and peace, Udo Kier. Rest in peace, Udo Kare. This is sort of an inadvertent. We made the decision to record this episode at this time because of Gus Van Sance new movie, Dead Man's Wire. But inadvertent Udo Kier in Memorium episode for this. Have you seen Dadman's Wire?

I have. I like it. It's good. I liked it. I wish I liked it more, but I do think given the log line for the movie, it's a lot more idiosyncratic than I expected. Yes. And I really like Bill Scarsgaard. I think more and more I find myself really taken with his performances.

And it's much more. There's a lot of different advantages that that story is told from than I probably expected. and, like, the media circus around it. And I imagine particularly, I imagine particularly for you, it must be nice to enjoy a Gus Van Sant movie again. It has not been, I love Gus Van Sant. I love the movie that we're here to talk about today, very much. But latter-day Gus Van Sant, it's been a rough one.

We'll talk about it for sure. We'll definitely get into it. Even swans? which he directed, I didn't love. Like, I thought it was respectable, but I really struggled with it at the same. What are we talking about? Capote and the Swans. Oh, right.

Because he directed that season. That entire season. Yes. Wow. If I'm correct, he directed every episode. No, I believe you. Let me go and, yeah, look at that. No, one episode was directed by Max Winkler and one by Jennifer Lynch, but six of the eight episodes were directed by Gus Fancy.

which is a pretty solid directorial, and the first four of them. So, like, he certainly is the directorial stamp on that. But when we talk about the disappointments, listener, we're talking about movies like the Sea of Trees. Sea of Trees. We did an episode on Promised Land, 2012's Promised Land. It's really everything in the wake of milk, right? Which one thing I think is interesting, I had sent you a... a link to an article from sight and sound where the term new queer cinema was like actually

coined in a B-Ruby-Ritch article in Sight and Sound in 1992. And one of the things that's mentioned in there was there was some kind of panel for queer filmmakers at maybe Sundance. I can't remember specifically now. But one of the things that was sort of hotly debated was whether they should protest the idea of Oliver Stone directing a Harvey Milk biopic, which was in the works at the time. And whether that – and I believe the aftermath of that was that like Stone was no longer attached and now Gus Van Sant was attached to making it. And this was in 1992. So, you know, you get a good sense of how long that movie had been in the works. It's interesting because of the way that the Oscars shook out, that movie, I think it gets credited more and more to Dustin Lance Black because he won the screenwriting Oscar for it.

And I think it's worthy to note that, like, Gus Van Sant had been developing some version of that project for decades. Right. And I think that that's unfair to Gus Van Sant, because I do think that is a really strongly directed movie that, I mean, not. Not to say that Dustin Lance Black's script is bad, but I do think, you know, you can take that script and give it to a less idiosyncratically minded director. Sure. And it's not as great of a movie, you know. But it also lends toward the perhaps too easy interpretation of Gus Van Sant, which is that his two biggest sort of mainstream slash Oscar triumphs, were him directing other people's scripts, other people's Oscar-winning scripts,

because obviously his other big one is Goodwill Hunting, which is absolutely credited. Like, that is a Ben Affleck or Matt Damon and Ben Affleck movie. And Gus Van Sant is very, even though he got the Oscar nomination for it, like he's very rarely sort of handed authorial, you know, credit for that movie. And I think Milk tends to fall in that same bucket. and I think people can sort of write their own narrative about like, you can tell a Gus Van Sant project is Jerry and elephants and Paranoid Park. And a, you know, Goodwill Hunting and Milk are him sort of in not necessarily, maybe, I mean, closer to director for hire mode. And I don't know if that's necessarily fair to him.

I don't think it's fair. And my rebuttal to this whenever people are like, well, Gus Van Sant, you know, it, whenever his most successful stuff is other people's work and it's much closer to the mainstream. That's when I trot out to die for, which is from Buck Henry's script. And I think, you know, that's a really great screenplay as well in its own right. But again, I think that's a script that under the hands of Gus Van Sant, you know, shepherding it to the screen, you get something more out of it because of what he's interested in and what his focuses are. And I think if you look at his, I think To Die For is a great example of the way that Gus Fancent's sensibility can be used for something.

I mean, for as idiosyncratic as To Die For is, it was very much a mainstream movie. It was definitely, it was like, you know, a wide release. But you look at stuff like Drugstore Cowboy, the Psycho remake, you know, across to something like. Psycho remake brackets, complementary. I've been dying to rewatch that, and I would love to make that happen in 2021. Psycho remake is like if a hipster theater troupe decided to just put on psycho, you know? It is like a kind of, I mean, Gus Van Sant's a boomer, but it is kind of this like Gen X hipster lens on the same material. in a way that I find very interesting.

You know, that movie gets dunked on just for the mere idea of it, that they're doing a finger-quote shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. But, you know, it is a little also film-schooly, too, that it's like, well, if you're doing that, then you end up focusing on the things that are different, right? You end up focusing on the costume choices. You end up focusing on the fact that there's actual nudity

in this one. Right. But that also kind of, I don't know. I think that movie's fascinating. I think when people dunk on it, they're really, I don't, I guess I can understand why people would dunk on it. But to the extent that one of the greatest, most popular, most zeitgeisty movies of all time can then become an art piece is interesting.

But also one of maybe Gus Van Sands least. mainstream things he's ever done. I don't want to be ungenerous and sort of accuse the critics of the time of being lazy necessarily, but like it does feel like the reputation

that that movie got was very much a it was, you didn't really have to scratch the surface too far to come up with the interpretation of Psycho as being a hubristic exercise in you know, modern

you know, whatever, in trying to sort of tug at Superman's cape, essentially. But I think it's so much more interesting than that. And I think also, if you're talking about narratives, media narratives versus, you know, whatever else, I think it does put a button on the end of that decade of Gus Van Sance filmmaking. Obviously, like Mala Noche is his first movie, But you talk about like drugstore cowboy through Psycho. It's drugstore cowboy, then my own private Idaho, which we will get into, trust me. Even cowgirls get the blues, which is like a slap down, right?

Right? And I want to talk about that a little bit, even though I don't remember anything about when I saw that movie. But to die 4 in 97, Goodwill Hunting, or to die 495, Goodwill Hunting 97, Psycho 98. It's this kind of in miniature career arc, which is hot indie guy, you know, maybe takes a step too far, but then like gets a little bit more mainstream, gets mainstream success, and then takes it too far again, right? And that's the first decade of Joseph Vincennes. And then Finding Forrester is this weird ante room that is neither fish nor foul. And then you get into Jerry, Ellis Fonzan. last day's Paranoid Park, which is another mini era. And then Milk sort of exists on its own as this like great triumph. And then I don't know how to, I don't know how to describe the run that goes from restless to promise land to sea of trees to don't worry, he won't get far on foot. And it does feel like there's a potential for Dead Man's Wire to be the Kickstarter for

a next sort of Gus Van Sant arc maybe? I don't know. Am I trying too hard? If people will show up and see it, you know, I certainly don't think anybody's But even creatively, even just creatively, I think it's a creative kind of resuscitation for him a little bit.

Yes, I think it's the most creative, creatively successful thing he's done since milk. Yeah. And it's very entertaining. Yes. And it's not in the way that to do. die for is like this, because to die for is its own beast. But like, it is kind of a vantage, uh, or it's a take on true crime that does feel kind of quintessentially Gus Van Sant.

Yeah. Uh, that, you know, maybe it's not anywhere near his best work, but it is still interesting. And I had fun with it. Yeah. It's going to be, this is going to be a very interesting conversation about my own private Idaho because, and I'm glad we're sort of like getting a little bit of like the Gus Fancant table setting out of the way now because there's going to be so much other stuff to talk about obviously the River Phoenix of it all. And we're going to have, this is, is this really our only shot to do a River Phoenix episode? Probably. I'm trying to think of like anything else that might qualify, because you can't really, for as much as I love sneakers, I'm not gonna with a straight face tell you that like sneakers had Oscar buzz, right?

It would not be unreasonable for us to do, but. Last Crusade, running on empty, Mosquito Coast, these are all things, obviously stand by me. Mosquito Coast got some Oscar nominations, right? I think there is a craft nomination or two for Mosquito Coast. Mosquito Coast. Mosquito Coast is also a bad movie. Actually, Mosquito Coast, no Oscar nominations. And that's Peter Weir. That actually could be one that we could do if we wanted to dip back into the 80s because, like,

It certainly did have, it was Peter Weir's follow-up to witness, right? I think so. Maybe there's something in between those two. No, that's 86 and Witness was 85, so it had, unless he had, you know, another 86 movie. So I feel like that's the other one then that we could do, if we wanted to do mosquito codes. But this is, this is going to be, you know, the big River Phoenix episode. So we want to kind of get this right. I think for somebody like me, not to like, not to box you out of, you know,

know, personal relative. But like, coming of age when I did, River Phoenix's death was a very early sort of signpost in, because I really, I only by that point had seen stand by me. And I sort of knew him from, you know, the culture. Actually, no, that's not true. I would have seen sneakers by then. But anyway, I think his death was something that I sort of experienced. through like MTV News mostly. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it was a big thing.

Constant inflictor of pop culture trauma. Yes. Yes. Honestly true. Tabitha Saurin was there holding my hand the entire time. But it was a big one, and it's one of those ones that, like, I think affected Gen X in a way sort of like going forward, too. and you think about, you know, his legacy as an actor, his, the place that he holds within that kind of generation of people who died from heroin abuse, you know what I mean?

Which, and I mean, heroin abuse and it's accoutrements, obviously, like, Kirk Cobain doesn't die of heroin overdose, but, like, that was something that had sort of plagued him, you know. in his life too. And it's, it was, and again, because I was so young during this time, it probably sort of enhanced that, but there really was the sense of like, oh, God, all of these famous people that you know are all on heroin and they're all like walking the tightrope of death's door the entire time. You know what I mean? Anybody with a certain degree of edge to them felt like, oh my God, like they're all like almost dying. all the time. Everybody's overdosing. There's always, you know, again, MTV News, you know, every week there would be some other, you know, grunge or alternative music person, every once in a while an actor, but it was usually musicians who were going into rehab or, you know, had an overdose. And it was, River Phoenix definitely feels like a prime casualty of that time.

And I think we really lost someone. one who would have been one of the majors, and I think you really do see this in this performance. I don't want to go too in depth with the performance until we get the plot description. Listeners will remember from our 100 Snubbs series. I very emphatically put River Phoenix on the list. This is one of my favorite performances.

And I think because of that, you get a lot of comparisons to James Dean with him. He looks. He's styled. He's styled so much like James Dean in this movie. It's very about. The hair and the, you know. And just kind of that compelling but distant screen persona, this, you know, remoteness, but this very, very tangible vulnerability.

That just makes for a very, very fascinating star on top of all of the talent that he had. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's, you know, the idea of this sort of era of new queer cinema that was happening at the time. Obviously, this movie is one of the, you know, one of the greats, I would say, of that early 90s new queer cinema era. And one of the few movies of that movement to attain some degree of prestige acknowledgement, right? This wins, you know, River Phoenix wins the Venice Award for acting, the Volpey Cup, and is recognized by a bunch of mainstream precursors in a way that, like, truly, outside of Sundance, outside of, like, you know, the Sundance Awards, like, nobody else from that movement ever really approached that level of even, like, you know, coming close to Oscars, Bafters. you know, Golden Globes, whatever. And I think that's notable.

And I want to sort of get into the wise and that. We'll also definitely want to talk about Keanu Reeves, who this rewatch of this movie, I was really, really impressed with what Keanu is doing. He's so great in this movie. He really is incredible. And then he goes from this to Bram Stoker's Dracula.

I know. has to spend decades of his career. Living it down. For people to take him seriously in a way that I have always found to be unfair. I actually don't think he's that bad in Bram Stoker's Dracula. I think he's kind of of a piece with all of the wild shit that movie's doing. I think that's right. I think the accent stuff really kind of shows him up.

But I think he and Winona are somewhat in the same boat in that movie, which is that they are sort of tasked with these very big, melodramatic kind of, you know, it's, Coppola is not going for gritty realism here, you know what I mean? And in a way, you could argue that that movie is hanging Keanu out to dry in a way, because it wants that character, it wants John Parker to be a boob. It wants him to be this, like, kind of impotent loser. Yeah, right. Which is very interesting choice to cast Keanu Reeves is that.

But I don't think he's bad in the movie. We'll get into this particular era of Keanu's career, this kind of pre-matrix. Pre-speed. Well, and speed is not that far down the road, which I think is funny. It's like the compactness of the eras that Keanu Reeves' career goes from Bill and Ted's excellent adventure through speed, which is only a matter of six years, but really, really goes some places. And I want to get into that as well. I have, I actually don't have any idea what your, the extent of your Shakespeare knowledge is or

experience is. I have it, I read, I read Hamlet and Macbeth in school and that was it. So like, I'm fully ignorant of the Henry, Henry the, Henry the, fourth and then Henry the fifth. To the point where like I still haven't even seen Timmy Chalamee as the king. And this movie kind of made me want to watch Timi Shalemey's the king. Well, we might eventually do the king and then we can talk about it. Because one of the other things I had

forgotten in not seeing this movie in such a long time was how the portions of this movie that are really given over to kind of overt Shakespearean allegory. how much of this. Like the second you see the, what's his name, Bob in this? Bob.

And you're like, oh, my God. Okay, so, like, they have a full-ball staff character. Those sequences with, like, Bob and the gang feel, like, extremely versed, but not. Like, it's, it's not written in this meter, but it's performed in this way where I think you must explicitly see the Shakespearean, you know, origins of what we're watching. We're recording this episode a bit on the fly and that like we both have early Januaries that are very hectic so we have to get ahead of it. If I had more time, I would want to maybe get into the script of this movie and just how much of it was taken from Shakespeare and to what degree it was interpreted. Because there are portions of this movie that feel like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, right? where it just feels like you have these characters in this modern context saying,

if not perfectly cribbed, like Shakespeare stuff, like stuff that is interpreted very, you know, on a tight, on a, you know, on a tight constraint. There is something to the structure of this story that feels very new queer cinema in the scattershot of like not a lot of transitions. We're just going boom, boom, boom, boom. from one place to another, that does also feel very Shakespearean, and that it's like, and now we are in a completely different setting. Yes, yeah.

But I also, like, my own private Idaho exists in kind of this, again, and I absolutely cop to the idea that, like, my own nostalgia is a untamed creature that really, you know, ought to be tamed at some point. But like, it exists in this kind of magical era for me, where new queer cinema and 90s indie, which are two things that are sort of like that overlap, but are kind of two different things. Like, combine with this MTV as cultural clearinghouse kind of thing, combine with the places that

people like Keanu Reeves and Gus Van Sant would end up going with their careers like it is kind of a perfect cultural object to a prism through which so many of my either obsessions of that time or what my obsessions would end up

becoming are kind of viewed through and it's really something. And it makes it a little bit challenging to take in the movie as, like, only as a movie. You know what I mean? Because- The movie and what the movie is doing from beat to beat. Because there's so much about watching this movie that I pull in other things, other cultural things, other personal things, other, like, where was I at the time? When did I discover this movie? What did this movie sort of, you know, do for me? What doors did it open? inside my, you know, mind. I definitely think you are

not alone there. I saw this movie a little late, so and I'm, you know, it's a crucial few years age difference there where it's like I don't lock into all of those things. But I do think that, you know, just by the sheer power of

River Phoenix's performance, that is true of a lot of people with this movie because it's such a distillation of his talent and at that time and you to get a real sense of what we lost when we lost this performer. When we get on the other side of the plot description, remind me to, I want to sort of interrogate you a little bit about where, no, no, fear not.

No, just about the way in which you sort of came to new queer cinema as somebody who found it sort of, not after the fact, but like, you know, after it's, you know, it burns. you know, brightest after it was a little less new. But I don't want to go too much longer without doing the plot description. So why don't you let our listeners know why they should subscribe to our Patreon and I will prepare the brief for this episode. Listener, we have a Patreon. We call it.

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Well said. All right. I am pulling out my stopwatch. We're going to talk about the plot of my own private Idaho, the 1991 film directed by Gus Van Sant, written by Gus Van Sant, based on the Shakespeare plays Henry the fourth part one, Henry the fourth part two, and Henry the fifth starring River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, James Rousseau, William Reischert, Ritechert, Udo Kier, Grace Zabriski, Kiyara Kasseli, Flea is in there.

Apparently, Jim Kivisel was on the cast list, but I did not catch him in his role as airline clerk. The film premiered September 4th, 1991 at the Venice International Film Festival, then went on to play Toronto and New York Film Festivals before releasing in American Theater's September 27th, 1991 from Fine Line features. It did not make much of a dent at the box office, but the opening week on box office when it did release, just to give you a snapshot. The number one film, this is September,

so it's not a lot of box office, but the number one film in the country at that moment was the second week of the Fisher King, the Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Oscar-nominated movie from Terry Gilliam. Number two that week was Necessary Roughness. I watched the Siskel and Ebert episode where they talked about my own private Idaho. The other movies were Necessary Roughness and this number three movie Deceived, which was a Goldie Hawn thriller, which I've never seen.

Which Roger and Gene both thought was derivative, but Goldie was the highlight. So good for them. Number four movie that week was Freddy's Dead, the Final Nightmare. Spoiler was not the final nightmare. and number five was dead again, the Kenneth Brana, Emma Thompson,

noir, sort of... Reincarnation movie. Reincarnation noir thriller. So Kenneth Branagh looms over this movie a little bit in a couple of ways, both in Henry V,

rather, and dead again. Looms on the margins, let's say. Freddie's dead, the final nightmare. The 3D. finale. Is that what it was? It was 3D? Yes, because when she goes into like...

I admit, I've never seen this one. Doesn't she go into a computer program at the end of Freddy's Dead? I'm not a nightmare on Elm Street completest. There are definitely movies in that series that I've not seen, including the big gay second one. Oh, Jeff, you need to see... One of these, spooky seasons I gotta do part two. Maybe I'll do it instead for June Pride instead of That's a great idea. The thing about Freddy's dead when she goes into the computer game at the finale or something like that or computer program, it's the exact same finale as disclosure. Oh my God. Having done disclosure for the Demi podcast recently, I was not prepared to revisit the VR.

How stupid that movie is. Literally, it's just there is a box with... people's like headshots atop these VR sims essentially walking through. It's so funny. It's the, that early 90s, we're going to try and render this whole new world of this whole new world of like digital cyber, whatever. And it's like, it's this. It's the lawnmower man.

It's obviously this nightmare at Elm Street movie, the net, all of this stuff. and nobody knew what was going on. And it makes me feel a little better about this current moment of AI that maybe in 15 years we'll look back and just be like, look at this the way we look at like the finale of disclosure. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, anyway.

No question that Freddy's dead is the worst of all of the Robert England nightmares. Now, and only a few years later, because West Craven's News, Nightmare is only 1994. And that I feel like was a come back to, you know, come back to creativity moment for that series. I love New Nightmare. New Nightmare's fun. New Nightmare's great. I love it. All right. Chris, I have my stopwatch out. A 60 second plot awaits. Are you ready to do 60 seconds, asterisk, on the plot of my own private Idaho? Yeah, let's do it. All right. And begin. It's about a guy named Mike. And he's a street hustler, street kid. and he goes on a journey to find his mother and love.

I play a guy named Scott, who's the mayor's son, who's basically in Portland there's actually a hill. It's called the hill where I guess the money lives. And Scott just walks down that hill one day. This isn't in the film, but that's what he does, and he goes to the street. And he's like this guy who's going to inherit all this money at 21, and he's Mike's best friend, you know, Mike's Scott's best friend.

And I go with him on this trip, and that's only one aspect of it. It's like, I guess, apply. The film follows Mike, a young sex worker, and Narcolectic drifting through the American Northwest while in search of his lost mother. Beginning in Seattle, we see Mike hustling with various acquaintances, including his best friend, Super Hottie Scott.

After Mike seizes before completing a trick, he wakes up in Scott's arms in Portland, where Scott's estranged dad is a political figure. In Portland, they are reunited with this kind of father figure who may also be a pimp or drug dealer. It's not very clear. his name is Bob, and there's a whole crew of, like, followers and devotees. Mike and Scott head to Idaho to find Mike's brother who tells them that their mother

killed Mike's father, but Mike insists that his brother is also his father, very Chinatown. Over a campfire at night, Mike stumbles into a confession of love for Scott that's deeply painful to watch, and Scott reasserts that he only bangs guys for money. The two get a tip that Mike's mother is in Italy, and by happenstance, Udo here pays them enough for sex that they can fly over to see her. Surprise, surprise, they barely miss. Mike's mom and Scott falls in love with a young woman, but when Scott's father's dies, he abandons hustling to assume his father's position with a new bride in tow.

Bob and gang descend upon Scott to publicly call bullshit on this, and he shuns them away, and Bob suddenly dies, and the gang of hustlers staged Bob's funerals adjacent to Scott's fathers and cause a rebellious ruckus. Meanwhile, back on the open highway, Mike is as lost as ever, wandering the landscape to discover his own likely to be positive fate, the end. Honestly, only 19 seconds over. I'm going to call that a raging success. Well done.

Thank you. So much to sort of get into there, including the fact that this is, this movie belongs to a filmography that I'm not entirely proud of, which is movies in which Joe yells at a female character for getting in the way of a queer relationship that I would rather see. Poor, what's her name? Carmella in this movie? Fucking Carmella, man. Like, I'm hissing. I'm hissing at this woman Like I'm in a sort of sibilant rage or whatever.

I'm just like bearing my claws Just like, get her out of here. I hate her. Chiara-Seli, I thought was from, like, the Dardan's filmography. But the only other thing I think I've seen her in is one of the early Mia Hanson loves called Father of My Children.

Interesting. Interesting. She's an Italian actress. She does have a familiar-looking face. Yes. And you're right. I look through her credits, and it's like, I don't think I've seen her in anything,

including, you know, stuff like Ripley's game in 2002 that I, like, might have seen, but, like, I never saw that movie. So it's interesting. But it's like, she's not really breaking it. No, I'm being completely unfa. I'm being completely unfair to her character, to be sure. To realizing that Scott is just on a lark, you know, that he has no intentions of staying. He's this, he's this poor little rich boy who wants to go slum it up a little bit.

Well, what I think is really interesting of this as a adaptation of Henry V and Henry V is he's the Prince Hale character. from what little I know about those plays. He's the Prince Hale character, who is, you know, the heir apparent son of the king sort of fucking around to his father's chagrin. And obviously, Bob is the Falstaff character anytime a character in a Shakespeare adaptation is canonically fat. You're just like, false death, got you.

But so that stuff, again, from what little I was able to research about this, tracks for those characters, which makes me then a little bit at, at, you know, loose ends in terms of, like, where the Mike character is supposed to fit into the Shakespeare stuff. And, again, apologies, I did not have enough time to really, like, dig into this. But, like, listeners, let us know.

The Henry plays that well. But you can just kind of, you ultimately come to this point with, Scott that it's like he's never in danger in the way that any of these other characters are. He has a safety net. He has this complete safety net. So he's just basically, for lack of a better word, fetishizing these people. These people are accessories to him in his fantasy land where he gets to go fuck off for a while. But it's such a betrayal at the end.

It's such a. Yes. Yes. It's such a betrayal at the end, not only when he leaves, he leaves Mike, and I say leaves Mike in quotations, because he does make it, he does make it plain to Mike that, like, he does not, he is not a romantic option for him. But he does still, you know, he goes to Italy with him and he, you know, accompanies him, and then does essentially leave him for Carmelah.

But the biggest betrayal is when he goes back to his father. Like, that's, you know. Well, his father's dead, but he assumes. Go back to his father's political role. Yes. Because his father's the mayor. Mayor, I believe. Yes.

Yes. And I mean, I'm maybe being harsh here. You know, there are definite signs of, you're right. You know, affection. But in terms of his choices and the actions that he makes and what his, you know, what his motivations are for being in the action as we see him, it's not, I think, entirely pure. He likes scandalizing his father. He likes scandalizing his father's, you know, underlings or whatever. The scene with him in River Phoenix, when they get caught in bed, is fully performative on Scott's part.

And you see Mike, you know, sort of my favorite part of that scene is when Scott keeps tugging at Mike's nipples. Mike's nipples. And Mike keeps sort of like swatting him away because Mike knows that this is a performance. Mike is under no illusion. And yet, like, it's that sort of push-pull of. like, this isn't real, but also like his body is like, you know, pressed up against mine regardless. And so, like, there's still, you know, you can, you can, you can read the conflicting emotions on his face always, which is, I think, is so impressive on River Phoenix's part because he's playing an incredibly, a character who is so passive that he falls asleep in the middle of most like key interactions and scenes in his life. And so to communicate so much with a character who doesn't speak very much and whose facial expressions are often, you know, canonically sleepy, he's able to-cruitable, you know.

Well, right, but he's able to communicate so much, and I feel like he's a very, very clearly rendered character in spite of all of that. And I think you give, I mean, Van Sant gets credit for that too, but I think you give so much of that credit to River Phoenix. I don't know. There's going to be a lot of us just sort of praising River's work. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of purple pros in this episode.

To which we should maybe get straight to the campfire scene. I know a lot of gay guys are going to want us to talk about it, especially River Phoenix's performance of the scene where he confesses his love to Scott.

And it's this kind of slow emotional car crash because, like, you can see so far out where he's going with this, but he never really gets there. And eventually he does, like, when he's already had an out to get out of this conversation, he does say, I love you at a... Well, he also says, he says, I really want to kiss you, man. And it's one of those, like, that's the line for me, where it's like he's really putting himself out there. Because you're right. Like, he does have several outs. And there's the one moment where, because beyond just the fact of Mike confessing his feelings for Scott in this moment, it's also a moment of Mike kind of stepping outside from under Scott's sort of worldview slash tutelage, because like Scott has these kind of grand theories. You get that very memorable scene of all the guys on the magazine covers. And Scott's preaching in that scene essentially about like, I only, you know, I only have sex for money. It's when you start having sex, not having sex with guys not for money that you grow your wings. You become a fairy.

And he's sort of drawn these lines in the sand for himself, not only for himself, but for everybody in his, you know, sort of coterie, that this is the rule. You, you know, you give away nothing of yourself that you don't sell. And it, it, you know, keeps your actual feelings sort of siloed off and whatever. And Mike being his best friend, like, has fully bought into this, in part in a way to protect himself when he's, you know, turning tricks and whatever. But I think, in part out of this devotion to Scott, who's a more. charismatic figure, who is, you know, kind of a ringleader in this way. And when Scott at that campfire scene sort of like reiterates this to him, when he says, they only have sex for money, and besides, two men can't really love each other. And Mike initially is like, you're right. And then he stops and he's like, well, actually, I think, I can't remember the words that he actually uses. But he essentially is saying, like, actually, I don't think that's true. I think in my case, I know how I feel, and I do feel like I love you. And it's not only that confession,

but it's literally him saying, I'm actually going to stake this claim contrary to what you have been, you know, preaching for the, you know, for the first time I'm going to actually like step out and stand on my own. And like literally, he is alone in that moment. He's in this, you know, he's in this at this campfire scene, but in that moment emotionally, he is... I don't think River Phoenix actually looks at Keanu Reeves. Right. Once in this very long confession scene. I think he's like looking straight at the ground the whole time.

And he knows, I think he knows, you know, that this isn't going to really get him anywhere. And I think I, the part that I always sort of go over in my head a lot is when Scott at the end of that scene sort of like scoches back and makes room for Mike. and is like, come on over here and invites him in to embrace him. And they sort of, they, you know, hold each other and you don't see them kissing. But then the scene cuts off before you see what happens after that. And my feeling is, is Scott being kind or is Scott being manipulative in that moment? And I don't think there really is an answer for that because I think the interpretation of that is kind of the point. probably depends on your personal experience what you think happens after that cuts away. Because I do think that this is a very formative scene for a lot of, you know, queer cinephiles. This is a scene that I've had many conversations about with many gay friends. I read, as I was sort of looking, you know, up stuff about this movie, there was a quote, I think it's mentioned in the Wikipedia article, where Todd Haynes was doing either a talkback or an interview thing.

or whatever with Gus Van Sant about my own private Idaho. And he said, Todd Haynes said that the campfire scene, he thought, was so crucial and was sort of the part of the movie that really kind of almost turned him around on the movie because he said up until that point, homosexuality is something that is kind of inflicted upon these characters, these hustlers. It's a commodity, you know, it's not a... And there's the scene in the diner where all the different guys are talking about these, like, horrible experiences that they've had where they were attacked or where they were raped or whatever. And Todd Haynes is like, you know, you could watch that movie up until the campfire scene and sort of see, you know, gayness as a malign influence on all of these people's lives. and you get to the campfire scene, and it's this, you know, kind of wallop of agency on Mike's part. And it is the moment in the movie where, like, the movie's queer character, like central queer character, claims that queerness, you know, it's not, it's certainly something that is causing him emotional distress at the moment, but he's claiming it honestly. he's claiming it as his own.

Because it's more than one confession, right? It's a confession of who he is and what he's feeling and also the connection that he has for his friend. But where was I going to go with that? Yeah, and I think the performance itself is so powerful in this scene. you know, you talk about the scenes where leading up to this,

you know, it's, you know, basically gayness is a hustle rather than a certain identity. And River Phoenix by all told was heterosexual, correct?

Yeah, he dated Martha Plimpton through... That's what I thought. And, and, because I looked, I'll get into this in a second, but right after I watched this movie, I watched Running on Empty, a movie that I had been meaning to watch forever. And I wanted to talk about it because I know you love that movie so much. So great.

And that's- Listener, Joe went straight from finishing that movie to getting on mic. And I was like, do you need a minute? I kind of did. I remember sobbing at the end of that movie. The last 20 minutes of that movie, the last 20 minutes of that movie is like emotional wallop after emotional wallop. But that was the second movie that River and Martha. Plimpton had done, they had done the mosquito coast together, which is where they met. They dated

until, I want to say, like, 1989. I think also 89, she is in parenthood with both Keanu and Joaquin Phoenix. So I think she was sort of around that, but apparently, according to Martha, they broke up because of his, his drug use was a big factor in them breaking up. And she stayed in his orbit, and she was, you know, obviously one of the people very close to him when he died in 1993. He died of a, we should say this probably, maybe not everybody listening realizes this. He died of a drug overdose outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles, which was this sort of rock club. I believe Johnny Depp was there. I think there was this whole sort of like social circle, right?

Where it was just like, I think Joaquin was also there that night. Joaquin is the one that called 911. That's right. People, I think, grossly still circulate that 911 call when it's just like that. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, that's awful. It's awful.

People should not be sharing that. Yeah. But yeah. But that was one of those, I mean, you know, people, I as well, sort of parallel that the Heath Ledger thing, you know, a lot. And the kind of who was in Heath's, you know, orbit at the time, the whole thing about like he died, he overdosed at Mary Kate Olson's apartment and, you know, this whole thing. But the accoutrement of all of the, all of the circumstances around Rivers' death were as kind of, I don't want to say iconic, because

that's the wrong way to put it, but like, whereas there's a deliolable. There's a little bit of a lore to it. And it's all very sad. And it's all incredibly sad. And you watch Running on Empty and you see River and Martha Plimpton together. And they're so good in those scenes together. I also think you put this performance in my own private Idaho next to the performance and running on Empty. And they're two very, very different performances.

And again, just speaks to what we lost by losing this performer. He's one of those performers who, because he has a very limited filmography, obviously. But like, I would say to anybody, watch stand by me, running on empty, my own private Idaho. And like, I know I'm being weird about this, but like sneakers, because he's so funny. Like, that's such an overtly comedic performance. He's so incredibly funny in that movie. and it's also him in the realm of Redford and Poitiers and whatever, and he's holding his own. I think you watch those, and maybe you watch Last Crusade instead of sneakers and whatever, and like that's a, you know, whatever.

But I think that you get such an incredible breadth of career just from those four movies. Just watch those four movies at one point. Give yourself like a mini River Phoenix film festival and like you'll really, you'll really, you'll really, really get it. He's nominated for supporting, even though I would argue that's a lead performance. By the Oscars, for running on MTV. Yes. And it's a pretty great

supporting actor lineup. Kevin Klein wins for a fish called Wanda. Alec Guinness for Little Dorrit, Doreet, whichever it is. I think it's Dorrit, but like I love that it's, I love that we can plausibly say... I watched all like six fucking hours of it, and I mean... Is it really

long? It's funny. Yes. Little Dorit is the origin story of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Doree Comesley. That's how we found out. Give us all little, like, it's the Carrie Diaries, right, of all of the Housewives. Yeah, well, and it's funny because the Carrie Diaries is the Little Sister's character is Dorrit in that show. Carrey Diaries fucking ruled. Anyway, continue with this lineup. It is a really good lineup. Martin Landau for Tucker, the man in his dream. I'm on the record as really liking that movie. And then Dean Stockwell for

married to the mob. That's a great lineup. What is the nature of Martin Landau's character and Tucker, the man in his dream? Is he the guy's dad? I don't think he's the dad, but he is like in the orbit of Jeff Bridges, Tucker. Because they're like, they're making

cars, right? Yeah. It's not his dad. I've never seen that movie. That's another one that goes on my list. Dean Stockwell and married to the mob is very funny because he's the mobster who is increasingly furious at well no because he's the one who's like peppy lapueing Michelle Pfeiffer around that movie right

and it's Mercedes Ruehl who is the rage monster Mercedes Ruehl is so funny in that movie and I think Dean Stockwell had been nominated I'm looking at this now I don't think he'd really shown up on the precursor circuit he'd had some like regional critics prizes oh that's interesting society oh and he won New York but he was like not Globe nominated for it I see the other thing I would say for running on empty is Christine Lottie is

better than almost everybody in this supporting actress lineup. She's incredible. Like, she's better like all respect to Gina Davis you know and her Oscar win. Well, she was just a lead though. She's nominated lead at Globes. And I think that's the inverse of the

weird River Phoenix as a child, so we have to nominate him in supporting. Because he's the lead of that movie and Christine Lottie really is supporting. for much of that movie. She comes, you know, she sort of comes into the forefront towards the end of that movie. I think you could probably sell her either way.

But I certainly think if they had tried to, you know, push her in supporting, she's better than... She got the lead prize from Los Angeles to... Did she? Yeah. Written by Naomi Foner, did we know that? Written by Naomi Foner, who was Jake Jellon-Hall and Maggie Jellon-Hall's mom, directed by...

for original screenplay. And directed by Sydney Lumette. Tremendous movie. Tremendous movie. Remember when, you know, books and movies used to be about the witness protection program? Do we still have a witness protection program? You know how there's that joke about how, like, when I was growing up, I really thought that Quicksand would be a more pertinent danger in my life because of watching, like, television and cartoons and stuff like that?

The Witness Protection Program is one of those things where if you had asked me, at age 13, what percentage of people in the country or in the witness protection program, I'd have been like, well, like 10, 20%, right? Like, I would have been like, there's so many people who are in the witness protection program. How do you even have witness protection now with like social media, you know? Right, right. With cameras everywhere spying on us. How do you have the witness production program?

That's a class. Yeah. That's a class that they have at Langley now at the CIA Academy is like witness protection in the age of social media. But they're, of course, not in witness protection. They're on the run. They're the weather underground, baby. They are, you know, but it's the same principle, right?

It's new identities. It's not like the lowest Duncan book that we had to read in middle school about witness protection. Whoa, what was that called? I forget what it's called, but there is a lowest Duncan book about witness protection. I mean, it did feel like it was a thing that cropped up a lot in stories. So River Phoenix heading into this movie is already an Oscar nominee. Gus Van Sant heading into this movie is really acclaimed from drugstore cowboy, which was a big indie movie in 1989. Eight Indie Spirit nominations.

It wins four awards. It is the winner at both New York and Los Angeles film critics for best screenplay. and Gus Vincet wins National Society of Film Critics Best Director Award that year. So, like, as indie filmmakers go, he's probably one of the hottest names around and gives my own private Idaho a lot of anticipation. I sent you a clip of that I will probably,

by the time you're listening to this, have already incorporated into the 60-second block description of Keanu Reel. describing the plot for this, but that is part of a, and again, I'm going back to MTV News, but like an MTV News, they would have like MTV News movie preview stuff or movie news stuff that Chris Connolly would host. And that was part of that. And that was like months ahead of my own private Idaho. Like it was a very like well anticipated movie. And Keanu in particular also is a known quantity by this point, obviously.

And I want to sort of touch on that. But have you ever seen drugstore cowboy? I want to give you a chance to sort of talk about that. Not in a long enough time that I could speak intelligently about it. I've never seen it. Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, it's another sort of, you know, Pacific Northwest people, young people living on the edges of, you know, respectable society, that kind of thing.

Keanu Reeves by this point He had I'm trying to think of like What was was Rivers Edge the thing that sort of like Broke him into Like known quantity territory I believe so Rivers Edge is a movie that is always on my

I need to catch up to this list Same Just pull the trigger Crispin Glover Keanu Reeves Ione Sky It's always super available because of like To Be but I just never have watched it It's one of those, like, young people kill somebody movie, like that kind of thing.

Yeah. So it's, like, it's grim, but, like, that definitely helps put him on the map. He's in a movie called The Prince of Pennsylvania with Fred Ward and Bonnie Bedelia and Amy Madigan. That was, excuse me, that was written and directed by Ron Nyswanner, who, among other things, wrote Philadelphia. and then 1989 he is in both parenthood,

which is the Ron Howard ensemble movie with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis and aforementioned Martha Plimpton and he plays

Martha Plimpton's Martha Plimpton is Diane Weist's daughter because the whole thing is this like great extended family, right?

Martha Plimpton is Diane Weist's daughter who is dating this bad boy played by Keanu Reeves. And so in that same year, he's in Parenthood. And then, of course, he is in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, which made less money than I thought it did,

but was very culturally impactful kind of right away. I don't think I would describe this movie as a cult movie because it was popular right away. It just wasn't like $100 million popular. Right. But that was a big one. Then 1990, he's in the Lawrence Kasden movie. I Love You to Death with Kevin Klein.

And then a John Amiel movie called Tune in Tomorrow with Who the Hell's in this movie, Barbara Hershey. Oh, right. This was also, I think, mentioned in that Siskel and Ebert movie because it was new to video. where Keanu Reeves plays a local radio station guy who ends up in a romantic relationship with his uncle's ex-wife, who's played by Barbara Hershey. But anyway, 1991 is a big, obviously, a big Keanu Reeves here. He's got Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, which is, you know, less well-regarded sequel. Yes, but hugely anticipated.

Like, that's the thing. And then he's in Catherine Bigelow's point break, which was a thing at the time and has only become more of a thing as the years have gone on. I think it's become one of those like dudes rock movies, even though it was kind of subtextually the heated rivalry of its time. But and then my own private Idaho sort of comes in at the end of that year as the art house movie of his. But, like, that year is you really get, I think, again, the full breadth of what Keanu Reeves could do as a action movie star in Point Break, as a comedic movie star in Bill and Ted. And then as a, you know, indie actor, like an actor's actor in May Own Private Idaho. And it's that last one that sort of falls away, right? Like at some point, people forget that he can do that, that he can actually, like, you know, hand in.

The closest adjacency that comes to it in, you know, the next decade is like romantic lead, right? In movies that are not well received. A walk in the clouds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, he sort of then goes from, he's mostly an action star, right? from, you know, speed following up point break kind of is like, okay, we figured it out. We've got the thing that Keanu is really good at. And so we're going to make Johnny DeMonic and we're going to make chain reaction and we're going to make, you know, whatever.

And then the Matrix happens and they're like, right, right, right, right. You know, stay on the path. Stay on the path. And I think Keanu is one of those actors who is great at the thing everybody says he's great at. And I think sometimes people forget that he also can be great at other things. I literally just saw good fortune a couple nights ago. Oh boy. The Aziz Ansari comedy, which is, it's not, I think it's not bad.

I don't think it's worth an oh boy. It's one of those comedies that's really shaggy. And I feel like with some tightening up, it could be even better. I think it's, Aziz Ansari has one comedic mode tone. and it's like just the same tone of voice every time. And I'm like, it's so weird that like he keeps on that same thing. But like I think Seth Rogen is good. Kiki Palmer is actually really good playing sort of the straight love interest role.

Like she's not in any way sort of kooky. But like it's one of those things where it's not a role that gives her a ton of great things to do, but it's also great to see that she can. succeed within those very limited parameters. I think it speaks really well of her as an actress and as a star. And Keanu plays the sort of wayward guardian angel in this thing, where his whole thing is in this particular sort of version of the afterlife or whatever, the angels, every angel is in charge of one particular type of thing,

and the thing he is in charge of is making sure people who are looking at their phones while driving, look back at the road in time to avert disaster. So his whole life is, like, sitting in back seats of cars and, like, putting a hand on somebody's shoulder when they're looking at their phone to, like, look back at the road. And his problem starts when he sort of oversteps that and tries to solve Aziz Ansari's problem. And one of the—the movie becomes about this idea of—Azis Ansari and Seth Rogen sort of swap positions. Seth Rogen's this very rich person. Aziz Ansari is not rich, and so they switch positions.

And Keanu Reeves, as the angel who does this, is like, well, this is going to solve everything. Because Aziz Ansarri is going to find out within a few days that being rich is not all it's cracked up to be. And he will go back to his original life with a newfound appreciation for what he had. And then after three days, Anzis Ansarri's like, no, I'm going to keep being rich because this is like way better. And so that's kind of the like, you know, the twist of that movie. But it means that Kianu then spends the rest of the movie sort of as a de-winged angel who is made mortal again to punish him for making this mistake. And he's just so funny as this person sort of like experiencing things like food for the first time. He says chicken nuggies like five times in the movie.

And it's the funniest thing every single time he says it. Again, really shaggy comedy. but I think Keanu's so likable. And it's one of those things where it's just like, oh, right. Like, Keanu's really good at comedy. We just keep finding action franchises to sort of funnel him into, like John Wick being the, you know, the most recent one. But I love-

Or it goes back to like indie roots type of stuff with things like to the bone or Thumb Sucker. It's in a much more limited role. I really like him in Thumb Sucker. Thumb Sucker got roped in with chum scrubber. at the time because they both sounded exactly the same. But I think Thumb Suckers the Mike Mills one, right? And I think it's like clearly the superior one of the two. Oh, absolutely.

No shade to anybody who likes Chomsker. Good Tilda performance. Good, I always, that Lou Taylor Pucci is always an actor who he'll show up every once in a while. And I'll be like, man, I like that guy. Like, good for him. What am I even saying? There's no bad Tilda performance, right? Tilda gives a performance in the movie so you know it's good.

Speaking of good Tilda performances and Kiana Reeves, Constantine underrated movie just in general. Really love that movie with a great Tilda performance and a great Kianu action performance. I just watched Michael Clayton again yesterday. I mean, every single rewatch of that movie, I'm like, we did the right thing. Michael Clayton, in many ways, the non-supernatural Constantine.

Well, I mean, Shiva the God of Death, you know. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, like, just like one of the best acting Oscars of, I think, our lifetimes. Though, like, that movie should have been closer to a Best Picture win than it ultimately was. I know, I know. Alas. But anyway, I think Keanu's tremendous in my own private Idaho for as much as River got the very deserved, you know, sort of mentions within. precursor season. He shows up. I think I wrote this down.

Obviously wins the Volpe Cup at Venice, but is... Unanimously at that. Yes. Unanimously. Is the runner-up at New York Film Critics for Best Actor? Wins National Society. Wins National Society. I want to look up, though, who won New York Film Critics that year? Hold on. Because also, my own private Idaho is there...

Oh, Anthony Hopkins. Silence of the Lambs. Sure, yeah, heard of it. My own private Idaho is also the runner-up and best director. Gus Van Sant finishes second place to Jonathan Demi. And then Silence of the Lambs also wins best picture. Hey, heard of it. So, right, wins National Society and wins the Indy Spirit Award that year.

My own private Idaho is nominated for six independent spirit awards. Lose's best feature and best director to Martha Coolidge's Rambling Rose, a movie that I think is interesting, but, like, looking back... I did not like that movie, though. I love Martha Coolidge. The hindsight of this is really, really quite egregious, that, like, you look back now and it's just like, my own private Idaho didn't win the Independent Spirit Award and lost it to Rambling Rose. Okay. Rambling Rose, which, by the way, classic indie spirit style of Wins' Best Featured. and best director, Laura Dern, who is an Oscar nominee for that movie, not nominated for Best Female Lead. Like, classic, classic. No, Diane Ladd wins supporting females.

So, like, Rambling Rose everywhere. Robert Duvall is nominated for Best Female Lead. We're just going to, like, go all in on Rambling Rose, except for the lead performance of, you know, of this fantastic actress. Classic. But anyway, River Phoenix wins Best Male Lead over Robert Duval and Rambling Rose. Barry Oldman in Rosencranton, Guildenstern are dead, which we've done recently. Dougie Doug for hanging with the homeboys. Do you remember the sort of short-lived Dougie-Dug era?

Absolutely. He's in cool runnings, baby. He was on a TV show, shit. I mean, he was on the... He was on Cosby. He was on Cosby, but there was another, I feel like there was another Doug-Dug thing. Maybe I'm thinking of something else. I don't know.

But he was on the second iteration of Cosby. Well, no, he was in like the spin-off show, Cosby. Yeah. Like the CBS show that also had Madeline Khan, if you recall. Yes. No, maybe I'm just thinking of movies because it was, I mean, cool running. Yeah, I guess Cool Runnings was when I must have first figured him out. I did not remember him from hanging with the Homeways, which is a Joseph Vasquez movie, that won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival that year.

But anyway. And then the fifth nominee was William Russ for a baseball movie called Pastime. Other nominations at the Globes, or the Globes, the Independent Spirit Awards, it wins best screenplay, and it loses best cinematography to Walt Lloyd for Steven Soderberg's Kafka. Interesting. Interesting. So anyway, this Venice lineup that the movie plays in. Yeah, I want to look at that. When we're talking about the ascent of Gus Van Sant, I do think it's significant that he has a competition slot in Venice for his third movie.

That's how big drugstore cowboy, I think, really loomed large. Nikita Mikulkov's close to Eden wins the Golden Lion. I have not seen that. Also interesting in this Venice lineup wins the best actress prize. Derek Jarman's Edward II, which, you know, you talk about, you know, the queer new cinema movement. And then Edward the second is based off of a Marlowe. This is based off of Shakespeare. I want to put a pin in this for half a second just so I can sort of go through this competition lineup for Venice, because I think it's a really interesting one, both in terms of filmmakers and also films.

American filmmakers that are in there. this lineup too. Yes, yes. And also kind of American crossover filmmakers, because like Mirayr's Mississippi Massala is this year. Most movie ever made. Zhang Yemuz raised the Red Lantern was this year, Terry Gilliams, the Fisher King. What are the other sort of like big ones? You have a Peter Greenaway, you have a Chantal Ackerman, you have a Jean-Luc Godar. You have a Jersey Skolomowski, you have a Esponzobo has a movie this year. Yeah, it's a really, Werner Herzog has a movie.

Glenn Close, I believe, is in that Isfanzabo movie called Eating Venus. Fantastic. But yeah, so Edward II is a movie that I've seen for the first time fairly recently. And Derek Jarman is one of those names who I had always sort of, I knew who he was. by reputation, obviously, one of these sort of like giant figures in new queer cinema.

And I had sent you, like I said, there was that sight and sound article that exists out there on the internet if anybody wants to find it, written by, sorry, one second, written by B Ruby Rich in 1992, Sight and Sound. And it's interesting to sort of revisit that movement. at around the origin of it, because it talks about how at the time, places like the Sundance Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival,

which was then still known as the Festival of Festivals, were truly like hubs for this burgeoning movement, right? That there were actually, these were places where these filmmakers would actually, sort of, you know, develop in, you know, this, these, these idiosyncratic films into something of a cohesive statement. And they would do that just sort of by, like,

interacting with each other and being on panels and, you know, selling their films in these, you know, marketplaces. Christine Bichon is a major figure during this. Greg Rocky. Todd Haynes. Todd Haynes' poison and Jenny Livingston's Paris is Burning. Both won prizes at the same Sundance Film Festival, which I believe was in, also in 1991. Would that have been? Which was the same year as my own private Idaho.

I forget. Have you ever seen Tom Caelin's swoon to Swin? I have seen. Yes, yes. Specifically at the beginning of this movement. Yep, yep, definitely. the one that I haven't seen that I want to is Christopher Monks

the hours and times which is the What If John Lennon and oh shit it's the one Beatles producer whose name I can't remember had a queer relationship

sort of a secret queer relationship that was in that same 1991 TIF lineup as my own private Idaho and Edward II and Jarman By the time of Edward I 2nd, Jarman had been making these

kind of movies for a while, right? Yeah, Jarman, I believe, started in the late 70s. And this is sort of early-ish Iraqi, I believe, 91 is the living end for him. And he sort of burned brightly for

a short period of time. And this is also around the same time as movies like gas food lodging and the watermelon woman and and, you know, all sorts of, you know, queer female movies that are, as that article sort of points out, like, end up taking a backseat to the queer male movies at the time, too. And so there are hierarchies within hierarchies and yet, yeah, yeah, yeah. As somebody who came of age after that particular moment and are sort of dealing with maybe second wave new queer cinema or whatever,

or like, maybe like post-Velvet Goldmine Todd Haynes, for example, and are sort of reaching backwards into a lot of these, as did I for a lot of these. Like, I was only all of like 11 and 12 years old when this stuff was happening. So it's not like I was on the cutting edge of new queer cinema. But where did you sort of enter into seeing these movies? Do you even remember? You know, I think my cinematic coming of age was post this in terms of,

We got a lot of white gay guy movies like Latter Days and movies like that that I definitely had an awareness of. The thing that brought some of these movies, and certainly not all of them, I was definitely a full post-college adult before I was watching anything by Derek Jarman. Honestly, it was Netflix discs. The first movie I ever had on a Netflix disc was Todd Haynes' safe. I bet you that is a fairly common story because even like, I felt the same way as these were movies that weren't always stocked in your blockbuster shelves. And even sometimes as like for me who like didn't come out until after college, I don't know if I would have been, you know, bold enough to rent anything queer from blockbuster video. Sure.

I guess, you know, there is a certain, I mean, like I was a teenager and I was watching like truly whatever. I kind of had free reign and, you know, I think because I was so. voracious and curious about all different types of movies that, you know, I wasn't afraid of raising any eyebrows by getting something along the lines of the movies that we're talking about. I'm envious of you for that. That is, that's a, it's a feather in your cap, I feel like. But I also had, like, prior to that, I had kind of free reign at the local public library, where it's like, I mean, the first, the first time I saw casino was on a library VHS, but, you know, the library is not carrying swoon, let alone would I have known what swoon was if I could have

had access to it. Working at the public library, now that you mention it, was definitely a thing that really helped me, where I was able to rent videos on my own. Like, I was able to check them out to myself. You know what I mean? So nobody else could give me a side eye for, like, why are you renting? And it was not even like these great sort of like queer stuff. renting stuff like angels and insects and stuff like that.

It's just like these costume dramas that like might have something, you know, might have a penis in it conceivably. But also, you know, you go back to conversations of availability where it's like these aren't stocked in your local blockbuster shelves. And that's why I think we went through a period after the like post-queer new cinema time when I'm growing up and I have things like Hedwig and the Angry Engine. movies like that that were very formative

and definitely owe a debt of gratitude to that movement of cinema but a lot of those movies fade away this is why a lot of us didn't discover the watermelon woman until very late we're like how did this ever go out of public consciousness this is an incredible movie this is why I've started

Go fish that are still hard to get your hands on and Go Fish is not a perfect movie but it's definitely like formative and like needs to be seen because of where it was in the movement of like independent cinema and gay independent cinema. This was the first year that I made a concerted effort in the month of June to try and watch 30 queer movies and 30 days, sort of how I try and watch 31 scary movies in the month of October. I like making these projects for myself because it really sort of forces is the wrong word, but it like it gives. gives me the kick in the ass to be like, there are these movies that have been sitting on your list forever. They're not going to go anywhere until you actually see them.

And, you know, so this year I watched for the first time, The Watermelon Woman, Go Fish, Swoon, like these movies. Prick up your ears. What's the Steve Bussami movie? That's so good. Parting glances. So great. So I watched so many of these movies, Edward II.

So many of these movies for the first time this year. And I feel so much better equipped to, you know, talk about this stuff, think about this stuff, while also feeling at the same time regret of, like, you lazy fucking, like, asshole. Like, what took you so long to get to these movies? Again, I don't, I mean, I think there's a lot of people in that position. And because, I mean, again, you talk hierarchies among hierarchies in that it was very easy for. these movies to go all but lost at a certain point because there's not the investment in queer cinema. Now I think we have a lot of resources where you can watch these movies on the Criterion Channel. You can watch these movies on Canopy, where they are much more available

to people than they were in 2005. No, I think that's right. I think that's right. And obviously, we have this conversation in part because my own private Idaho is one of the small handful of these new queer cinema movies to have attained some level of mainstream recognition. Even as small as it was, this was a movie that made ultimately like $6 million at the American box office or whatever. But like in terms of, again, if you were a young person watching HBO at the time or a young person who was reading, you know, movie magazines or whatever, I, this probably, this was not a cover story at Entertainment Weekly, but I bet you they talked about it. know what I mean? And so this was a movie that existed within the culture to some degree.

And it's able to keep that because of the growing career of Gus Van Sant and Kiannu Reeves and the legacy of River Phoenix. Yes. You know, it's able to, you know, maintain that level of availability. Yes. Yeah. And so hopefully people were able to, to one degree or another, some people were able to use that movie as an entry point into some of these other movies. And I think even just coining the term, new queer cinema, gives it a sense of, oh, this is a larger movement. And now because I liked this movie, I can seek out some of these other movies.

I think it's interesting that, I mean, obviously, like Derek Jarman, Gregoraki, they never have their like Oscar breakthrough, which makes a lot of sense. When you see their movies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Todd Haynes is a filmmaker who you would have probably said that about until, I mean, safe, I suppose. Safe is a really, like, idiosyncratic movie. But I wonder if safe.

And people, that, that people, it took a while for people to warm up to that movie. It had a really hostile Sundance reception when it world premiered. I wonder, though, if safe, you look at a movie like, if I had legs, I'd kick you this year, which is, um, do. doing really well in award season thus far, even if it is, if only just for Rose Burns' performance. But I look at a movie like Safe, and I wonder if, like, that movie would have done similarly well in today's environment that feels more open to, you know, indie cinema in that way. I think Safe is... Where people who get it can, you know, write eloquently about it and help set the narrative for what that movie is.

Yeah. And I mean, like, if I had legs, is a difficult movie to watch in a lot of ways because of how stressful it is, how sort of, you know, unpleasant it could be at the time, how it's filmed often, these very sort of like, you know, confrontational closeups and, and whatever. And I think safe has a lot of, if not the same kinds of elements, but is, similar in that way in which we are going to film this movie in the most sort of stressful way possible and to sort of bring you into the anxiety of this character. And I just wonder if, like, Julianne would have had a similar awards run as Rosemirn if Safe comes out in, you know, 2025. Right. Because even, even, uh, the most esoteric or difficult Todd Haynes movies still get that kind of attention, right? Todd Haynes' movies, I mean, he's probably my favorite living filmmaker.

It's always a reminder that Alphabet Mafia people, queer people, do really see the world differently through experience than the vast majority of straight people. Because I think for so many of us, his work is so clearly what it is and is so excellent at what it is. is and then you get these chillier, broader receptions to his work that it's just like, oh, we fund, because he, even when he's not dealing with, dealing with explicitly queer material, think of something like wonderstruck, think of something like, you could make, May December, in, you know, certain context. But it's like, because he is entering it, entering the material from a very queer perspective, when people call his work chilly or remote.

That is, to me, such an explicit, you know, reminder that, you know, some people are just not going to get it because that is not their lived experience, you know. Well, and I also feel like you look at the Todd Haynes movies that did have some success or another with the Oscars. He breaks through with Velvet Gold Mine in 98, but breaks through in a very sort of specific way. And he breaks through via the costume category, which is less like, if you give a mouse a cookie, if you give a gay director, a costume nomination, he will keep coming. But Velvet Gold Mine is obviously not a movie that shies away from its queer themes in any way. And then his next sort of level up was far from heaven in 2002, which gets, you know, the best actress nomination gets, you know,

craft nominations, but is not in picture director. But that is a movie, as you mentioned, that is not, that has queer elements, obviously with the Dennis Quaid character, but its lead character is not, is not a queer character. And then you go, his next big Oscar movie is Carol,

which is obviously has a, much more, you know, explicitly queer character, lead character and storyline and that kind of thing. And Carol's also, like, his most direct movie. Like, it's not pulling any punches. Right. It's a romance. It's definitely, I mean,

it's obviously a queer romance, but, you know, the world in which it's set is viewed through, listen, it's the holiday season, I am fresh off of my annual Carol rewatch. I can go for hours. It's so clearly from a point of view,

of what queer life is like at that time that I don't think straight audiences give much thought to or the wider audience is giving much thought to. But I think it's interesting, and again, this is not a Todd Haynes episode, but I'm going to take any chance. You can't talk about queer new cinema

and not talk about Todd Haynes. Well, you look at his career, the sort of the early movies, you know, superstar and poison and these kinds of things, which are, you know, aesthetically queer, even above everything. Obviously, poison is, you know,

canonically queer as well in mission, but like aesthetically queer in, in primarily. And then you move into stuff like far from heaven, which is aesthetically queer and puts, you know, narratively queer elements, maybe on the little bit of a back burner. I say on the backburner, it's not like Dennis Quaid's character's storyline is so siloed off. It's the impetus for Julianne Moore's

life falling apart in this very kind of, you know, Douglas Serkian sort of way. I don't know. I just think it's, I just think that that career and the way it does and does not dovetail with the Oscars is really fascinating. And then Gus Van Sant, you know, his career, still maintains a certain level of, I mean, he's made more movies than Todd Haynes has made, but he maintains a level of experimentation that I think puts... Very much so. A lot of people off with things like Jerry. I think Elephant is finally coming back around.

But that took a long time. Elephant at the time, I think a lot of people took as an affront to people who were still sort of dealing with a kind of cultural PTSD or like literal PTSD about Columbine and things like that. And I think there was a too soon element to it, even though it had been five years, I think, after the fact. And I think there are people who sort of accused him of reveling in, you know, or taking some, like not having the appropriate sort of gravity to that thing that was exploiting, is the word I may be looking for a school shooting. And I look at Elephant and I'm like, I don't think that at all. I think I genuinely feel like, and you know, it's one of those things where a director is going to say this about

his movie and sometimes I'm like, am I just sort of like falling for the promotional hook? But this idea that he places the audience uncomfortably in the shoes of, you know, one of the shooters. and it's, I think, incredibly effective. It's not a movie that is meant to not fuck you up. It is a movie that is trying to fuck you up. Well, and just the kind of microcosm of this community and the ill at ease feeling that kind of permeates the whole thing even outside of the shooting is hard not to react to when you watch that movie.

It's just a movie that I can't kind of imagine you putting anyone in front of it and then having some type of the ambivalent response. Right, right. And then Jerry is like, it's an overt comedy. Like, for as much as it's... I still have to see Jerry. I would love to see your reaction to that movie. I probably like it. I really like it.

Last Days, I think is the one that sort of tried my patience the most. And I think I will fully cop to the idea, to the notion that, like, I am somebody who probably... wanted more narrative out of a movie that was purportedly about Kurt Cobain or about a Kirk Cobain figure. And I think that's just not what Van Sant wanted to deliver in that movie. And I think that's very much a case of me not encountering that movie on its level, and I probably deserve to give that movie another shot, although maybe it was just not for me. You know what I mean? And stuff like you get into. stuff like Paranoid Park where I feel just like, okay, like, you're doing your thing and like,

I'm, you know, I'm on the periphery of this, this kind of a thing. But I always sort of respect the artistry of it. Yeah. You can kind of understand as different as a lot of his movies can be, and he runs the full spectrum from, you know, very, very esoteric micro-budget to these kind of sweeping feel-good crowd-pleasers like Finding Forrester. You can kind of always see his access point into these movies.

Whether it's, you know, outsider characters, etc. Like why Gus Van Sant would want to make each of these movies. Except for Finding Forrester. Finding Forrester is still kind of the head scratcher to me. If anything, if it, all I can't,

can really come up with is the most lazy, like, well, this is Goodwill Hunting 2 type of analysis of why he would do that movie. The ones that I really want to, you know, linger on, obviously maybe not here. We're, you know, more than an hour and a half into this episode. But I think it's interesting what he brings to Goodwill hunting and Milk is too. Goodwill Hunting and Milk his two sort of Oscar triumphs. In particular, I want to say milk,

because obviously I am really willing to seed a lot of... And Goodwill Hunting was sort of pushed down the road by Damon and Affleck, by Miramax, you know what I mean, by, you know, Gus Vansant in many ways was kind of brought in as the adult in the room, you know, for these kids.

But I can sort of, I can cede that movie over to Damon and Affleck a lot easier than I can't. Like, Milk definitely feels like, oh, this movie is not nearly as successful as it is without somebody with the kind of artistry and experience. of Gus Van Sant working on the movie. Yeah, like Gus Van Sant is there to make sure that the taste level is as high as it can possibly be when doing these type of historical, political biopics that, you know, we just see a lot of movies like milk, but I don't know if we see a lot of them that are as good or as emotionally affecting as that movie is. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and even down to like the Sean Penn performance, and I, you know,

Which I love that performance. I don't love Sean Penn, but I love that performance. And you obviously can't speak for what the balance was between what Penn is doing on his own and what Van Sant is kind of guiding him towards. I'm not entirely sure how much directing Sean Penn would have allowed for himself at that stage of his career in particular. He's an Oscar winner. He is very much sort of a tempestuous person. And I don't know. I don't know the specifics of what that,

but I do feel like Gus Van Sainte being queer and Sean Penn not being queer, I have to imagine that there was some kind of guiding, I just have to imagine that there was somebody who was sort of keeping Sean Penn from maybe going off the rails, a little bit too much or being inauthentic. Or obviously there's a ton of like, like, you know, footage of Harvey Milk for somebody like Penn to use as a guidepost.

But like, there are ways in which playing that character could have in an actorly way fallen off. And I don't know. I'm going to give, I'm going to give sight unseen Gus Van Sant some credit for that. So. To loop it back to my own private Idaho before we move on to the IMDB game and maybe get out of here. Yeah. I really just don't think that there's enough that could be said about River Phoenix's performance in this movie.

I think about the diner sequences where Gus Van Sant is effectively interviewing, though to my understanding those interviews are somewhat fictionalized. actual sex workers. Street hustlers, yeah. And I think that that type of creative leap works a lot less if you don't have a performance as naturally ingrained to the whole environment as what River Phoenix is doing.

Because you have to ask the audience to believe that you know, this character is, you know, real among actual real people. Yeah. on set, you know, this kind of blurring of fact and fiction. And I think that's something that, you know, River Phoenix, maybe it's because it's such an understated performance, helps pull off really well. Yeah.

For this movie. You know, we don't really have a conclusion to this character. If there's any frustrations with this movie, I would understand is that, you know, it doesn't shrug off, Mike, but, you know, that closing scene could happen at kind of. of any point in the movie. You know, it's a very non-conclusive character, but still, I think, you know, the time that we spend. He's a character who falls asleep at, you know, multiple intervals of this movie. It is, yes, I can see somebody watching this movie and feeling frustrated in that you don't get enough of that character.

And I really do feel like, without being obnoxious about it, I'm like, you have to really, like, dial into River Phoenix his choices that he's making for that character. The choices that Gus Van Sant is making in his script. Yes, there is a degree to which Mike is kind of being blown by the breeze a little bit in this movie where he ends up, you know, waking up in Portland after being, you know, last being on the road in elsewhere. I can't remember where that. I know that first scene where he's on the road.

is filmed not, it's supposed to be in Idaho, right? But it's filmed in Oregon because the mountain that you see in the distance is Mount Hood. And they're like, you couldn't see Mount Hood that clearly from Idaho. And which I thought was like... Also an independent production that has to go to Italy as well. This is the thing. I'm like, how the fuck did they shoot this movie? Right, right.

The locations I think in this movie are really, really good. The other thing that I had written down was the American West as a kind of queer signifier is something that I find more and more interesting as I get older. Because obviously you, there is a sense of like, well, the queer centers in this country are your sort of big urban cosmopolitan cities, your San Francisco's and your New Yorks and Los Angeles and that kind of a thing. And yet I find myself more and more being taken by these stories of, and Brookback Mountain was kind of the first one that I, you know, had this thought about. Obviously, my own private Idaho came first. This idea that the sort of openness and space and freedom of movement in the American West, as both iconography, but also like literally, is something that could be very desirous for somebody who is queer

to be, to find, you know, a place where one could be free and that kind of like American pioneer sense. You know what I mean? I'm going to trek west because if I go west, I can literally, like, build a homestead for myself. and you feel that in Brokeback Mountain and that like the only way they can, the only place they can find to be themselves

is the middle of fucking nowhere. It's the middle of fucking nowhere. And you look at someplace something like, did you ever end up seeing National Anthem? No. I really do recommend it. I really do feel like you won't like it as much as I did, I bet. But like I bet you you will find things in it you really like.

And that is a movie that also sort of communicates this sense of, you know, the American West, the sort of the great open spacesness of it as a place that could accommodate a queer community and microcosm. Do you know what I mean?

Which I feel, it also makes me want to revisit even car girls get the blues after this because like that's fancy But that's Van Sant doing two movies and following each other that sort of explore that kind of idea. But definitely I would not

say it's the worst Gus Van Sant movie just because there's so many points of interest in that movie is so strange and it's so doing what it sets out to do but it still isn't good. Do you think

that was a subtle rebuke against Quentin Tarantino and that like I'm going to make a new Wathurman movie where her thumb is big and we're not going to talk about her big toe at all. That's how I like to think of it. You know, I think everything you're saying about

the American West on screen in relation to queerness is true, but I also see the opposite is true sometimes that it can be this kind of a representation of a malaise

and a, you know, loneliness. The openness can feel like isolation at the same time, too. It can feel like you know, you know, you say they, as much as there's the capacity that like you can go and be your true self because of the isolation, the isolation is still there. I think about this a lot with like Kelly Rikart's films and while she's not part of the new queer movement, she's very closely linked to a lot of these names like Christine Vichon, like Todd Haynes.

I think also like the cinema of the Pacific Northwest is like very much a thing. and I feel like that is a, that is definitely a, you know, fraternity sorority that Kelly Rikert and Gus Van Sant can take place in together. My other thing that I wrote down was watching this and running on Empty back to back. I got two movies with River Phoenix where Madonna songs are utilized. You get cherish in this, and then there's the scene in Running on Empty where the music teacher plays Lucky Star for the class that I thought was really good. And my last note was the scene where Mike is emptying his pockets and he gets a little like crumpled up dollar bills and the tissue and the condom and whatever, I was like a condom as a very quick and easy signifier for queerness in movies is such a 90s thing that I feel like was left in the 90s for, you know, very, you know, logical reasons. But it definitely took me back. It was like, oh, right, all you had to do was flash a condom in someone's possession.

and you're just like, all right, they're queer, got it. Gay stuff. Yeah, gay stuff. I want to ask in this Oscar lineup this year of my own private Idaho, who would we swap in, who would we swap out for River Phoenix and Best Actor, but also who'd we swap out in Adapted Screenplay? Because I do think as a screenplay adaptation, it's worth talking about. We talked about this a little bit when we did 100 snubs because you, you selected River Phoenix, and so you would have gotten rid of, I believe you would

gotten rid of Warren Beatty and Bugsy, because you are, definitely. If there is what, if there are no haters of Bugsy, it means you are dead. I have died. Yes. So the lineup, Hopkins wins for the Silence of the Lambs, Warren Beatty for Bugsy, Robert De Niro for Cape Fear, Nick Nolte for the Prince of Tides, and then Robin Williams for the aforementioned, the Fisher King. I see no reason to, you know, part of me feels like every Warren Beatty Oscar nomination is as it should be, because like Warren Beatty feels like an actor who should always be in the Oscar million, I don't know.

I'm one of those people who continues to be sort of like dazzled by his star power, even when I don't like his movies. like, for example, finally, after three attempts, I watched Shampoo, and I'm like, yeah, it's all right, you know, it's fine. And yet I'm still just like Warren Baby. I don't love Shampoo either. What a movie star.

Adapted screenplay, so that's another one where the Silence of the Lambs wins. It's based on the Thomas Harris book. Other nominees are beloved fried green tomatoes by the screenplay adaptation of Fannie Flagg's novel was written by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski, who is related to Lili Sobieski? No.

Okay. JFK, Oliver Stone, adapting Jim Garrison's autobiography and also like several conspiracy theorists. The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy and Becky Johnston, adapting Pat Conroy's own novel. and Agniuska Holland doing the adaptation of Solomon Perel's memoirs for her movie Europa Europa. Another movie, speaking of my own private Idaho, that exists for me as a scene that showed butts at a moment where I was very, very much like, ah, yes. Because I caught this on like late night. But in a movie. Late night Canadian TV where you could show nudity after.

certain hour and I'm like, oh my God, there's a butt. So much of my life as an 11-year-old and 12-year-old was seeking out butts. What would I get rid of here? I mean... As much as I love fried green tomatoes, if I'm subbing in a gay movie, I'm going to sub out the movie that removes all the gay shit. Well, I think that's a... I love fried green tomatoes.

That's a defensible statement. That's the big, one of the big dings against fried green tomatoes is like, just say that they're lesbians. Sure. We know that they're lesbians. All the subtext here is they are lesb. She stuck her arm up a honey tree. We understand. We get it.

Yeah. You know, they're gay. Yeah, I think maybe that, I could stand by that. I'm certainly not getting rid of JFK. I would feel bad getting rid of Europa Europa because like Agneska Hollins, you know, doesn't get enough Oscar Shine and whatever. I do, I appreciate the Prince of Tides as a lot of things, but maybe not as like a screenplay movie. Do you know what I mean? That's, that's one that apparently they cut a lot out of the book. Yeah. I would throw in, I mean, to be honest, I would get rid of everything but silence

of the lambs and JFK in order to get my own private Idaho in here, like to be completely honest, provided that fried green tomatoes gets nominated in other categories. That's my only thing. It's weird that it's two nominations were, was it only two? Did it get nominated for its score? It should have gotten nominated. Right, but I mean, it's just those two, right? It's adapted screenplay and on supporting actress.

And the supporting actress nomination is like the one supporting actress nomination that feels kind of like dumb Oscar kind of thing where it's just like that dumb Oscar thing of like, oh, we're going to give Jessica Tandy a Halo nomination, the aftergoal nomination. Glow Halo nomination for this, even though there are like four other actresses in that movie who would have deserved that nomination ahead of her, like Mary Louise Parker, Mary Stuart

Masterson, fucking Cicely Tyson. Cicinin'L. Secrets in the sauce, baby. Yeah, so Jessica Tandy's not bad in that movie, but it's like, it's such a like first thought thing of like, oh, okay,

Jessica Tandy is the recent best actress winner, and she's like, the like, the like sassy old lady. Like, okay. All right, fine. Um, is Latanya Richardson Jackson her nurse in that movie who shows up and is like, Mrs. Threadgood checked out. Or am I just imagining a different Latanya Richardson Jackson? Give me a second. We can cut this out. Um, I have not seen this movie in a couple of years and that's a long time for me. I should really. Wait, Grace Zabritsky's in that movie as well. Grace Zabriski shows up in my own private Idaho as a

rich lady. Rich lady who takes on three hustlers at a time because she has a, she has, it takes a while for her. Don't let me say it. What? She has three holes. Don't make these. Cut that out. First of all, I couldn't

make you say that. No, the reason that they give in the movie is that it takes her a little while to warm up. So it's just like, I guess like you don't want to waste. Yes, it is Latanya Richardson Jackson. Oh, okay. Good meme memory.

Okay, anyway. Just got three holes. Good Lord. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to all of us. Good riddance, 2012. I blame the cold men. Okay.

That's kind of all I have. Do you have anything else in your notes you want to mention? just more purple pros about this performance what yeah it was a generational talent he died far too young and um yeah heroin was a motherfucker in the early 90s um not much more to say about that okay uh chris why don't you tell our wonderful listeners what the i mdb game is all about 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, we'll 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. That is the IMD-B game. It sure is. Chris, would you like to give first or guess first? I will guess first.

How about that? Okay, so I mentioned this briefly in this episode, but I want you right now to give me credit for the superhuman restraint that I had and only mentioning sneakers one time in this episode. You mentioned it twice, but I still consider that restraint. What a bitch. Listeners, listen to what a bitch he is to me about this. I'm not a bitch. I am just a realist. Again, I said that it was restraint. Thank you. It was restraint. Star-studded movie that it was. I zeroed in on one particular performer from that movie.

I can't remember whether it was on this podcast or another one that I had recorded where I mentioned that Mary MacDonald's IMDB photo looks like Willow in the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she casts the spell and her hair goes all white. Because you can't look at it now, obviously, but once we're done with this, I want you to look at her photo. She looks like an absolutely glamorous witch in that photo. But anyway, so it is Mary MacDonald, one of the stars of sneakers. There's one television show.

What was her TV show? Well, she had two major ones. Is it like picket fences? No, but that's not a bad guess. You not knowing it off the top of your head. It's like that, though. You not knowing it off the top of your head makes me realize, that you never watched this show.

And this is another show that I feel like you would have liked. Interesting. It's not like, you know, once you're reminded of it, you'll be like, oh, obviously I knew she was in this. Is it West Wing? It's not West Wing.

Okay. She would have been great. Getting my years, even. Okay, so your years are, your films are 1990, 2001, and 2011. And then your TV show, ran from 2004 to 2009. 1990 is dances with wolves.

Sure is. 2001 is Donnie Darko. Sure is. Real shame that Independence Day is not there. Ah, ballet. So good. No, exotic. Okay, 2011, that's interesting.

2011 is a movie I've seen semi-recently, and she has a very small, role in it where she essentially, she's not wife on phone, she's wife at home. You know what I mean? Sometimes instead of wife on phone, you get the scene where a character comes home and like the wife is there to be like, honey, you look so, you know, you look so troubled, you know, that kind of a thing. Uh-huh. You saw this semi-recently. I'm going to skip that. 2009 is when her show ended. Yes. It's not brothers and sisters.

No. That's Sally Field. And that was a show that was like got Emmy nominations. This show pointedly didn't get Emmy nominations. And it was one of those things where I don't know if it necessarily would have gotten Emmy nominations today because shows of this type still get kind of othered. but less so today. Oh, it's Battlestar Galacta. There you go. It's Battlestar Galactica.

I think it's probably too late for you to go back and watch Battlestar Galactica, but I think if you had watched it at the time, I think you would have gotten into it. I think my husband went back and watched it and did not like it. Oh, interesting. Fascinating. All right, 2011. She's wife at home to one of the main characters, that character being played by somebody who is Persona Nongrata. currently today.

Mel Gibson. No. Kevin Spacey. Yes. Kevin Spacey, 2011. Is this like Casino Jack? No, it's less of a Kevin Spacey movie. It's not, even though he's like one of the two or three main characters.

But like on the poster, he is one of, I want to say, like, six or seven people. all one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people. But he is first billed on the, like, his name comes up first on the poster. Sure. Is it 21? It's not 21. I will say, Mary MacDonald does not show up on the poster, but her name does show up in the lineup of, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

She's the last person before the with end. What the hell is Kevin Spacey, four. he doing at this point? Exactly. This is not a good time for him, even relatively speaking. She's the only, that's so funny,

she's the only person with her name above the title, but not pictured on the poster. And yet also, she's barely in the movie, so. And it's a big ensemble. It is. It was an Oscar nominee in one category. Screenplay. Yes. 2011.

Yes. We've recently done one of this director's movies. Not Lassa Hallstrom. No. Also, there's a reason I would have watched this movie recently. Because it's a Christmas movie. No. What have been my ventures this year?

You just did. You were just co-commish on the 2000 draft. This is not 2000. No. What was the way like big... Oh, was Demi in this movie? Oh, it's Margin Call. There you go, Margin Call.

She's the with in Margin Call. Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettney, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, all on the poster. Mary MacDonald, not on the poster, with Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. They're both on the poster. Margin Call.

Margin Call, a movie that... whose title, Cadence, makes me want to find a way to pair it with Marwin Call somehow and do some sort of margin call, Marwin Call mashup in a way that will impress two people, and you'll be one of them, so be ready. I realize that the person I chose for you, once we get to years, this might get very easy. but I went into the best actor nominees of that year and I chose for you, Robin Williams. Robin Williams.

There is one television show. But no voice. No voice. So no Aladdin. No Aladdin. One television show has got to be Mork and Mindy. Morg and Mindy, which is very wild. That's crazy.

That's still one of his known for us. That's very funny. All right, Mrs. Doubtfire, just from its cultural... Correct. Correct. Omnipresence alone. Okay. So we've got two, and we've got no strikes.

So I'm just going to explore the space for a second and air my thoughts out loud. Goodwill Hunting is his Oscar win. That looms pretty large. That definitely feels like a contender. Something like Good Morning Vietnam is an Oscar nomination. His face is right there on the poster. He's the sole lead. Then you get into stuff like your Patch Adams's, your bicentennial mans, your flvers.

Unless we forget, the real Patch Adams is still alive. Yes. I found out today that Chubby Checker is still alive. Somebody had posted something last night with Bridget Bardot dying that of all of the people who are named and we didn't start the fire, only three. are now still alive now that Bridget Mardot has died. And I literally, even though I should have been trying to fall asleep, stayed up for an extra 20 minutes, trying to figure out who the three are. And I figured it out. And it's the wildest group of three possible. It is, do you want me to

checker one of those people that when they were at their career peak, they were just way younger than we imagine they were? He's in his 80s now. So he was born in the 40s. So I guess, yeah, he was in his 20s when, like, the twist happened because the twist would have been like early 60s, Or he was a teenager. Or he might have even been a teenager. But anyway, yeah, Chubby Checker, Bob Dylan, and Bernie Gets. I'm pretty sure Bernie Gets is the third one still alive. The other two I definitely confirmed are still alive.

Interesting group of three people to have over for dinner. All right. Where was I? Mr. Robin Williams. Right. I'm just going to guess Goodwill Hunting. Incorrect. Motherfucker.

Are you kidding me? Okay, so back to the drawing board. I can't imagine something like, because there are like the handful of like dark Robin Williams, like your, um, oh, uh, one hour photo or insomnia. Insomnia probably even less likely because he's not the lead. I'm going to guess, Good Morning Vietnam. Good morning. Vietnam is correct. Okay. So I've got one left. early 90s. You've got the Fisher King. You've got awakenings. You've got,

oh, is it Dead Poets Society? Dead Poets Society is incorrect. Fuck. All right. What's my year? Your year is 1996. Oh, Jumanji. Jumangi is incorrect. No! What the fuck? Okay. What else is he in in 96? No, Jumongi's 95, I guess. Flubber is 97, I'm pretty sure. Patch Adams is 98, bicentennial man, I believe is 99. 96.

It's not like Father's Day. I believe that's 97. What would you have done right after Jumanji? Wow. Is it a big? Is it like Mage? It's a movie you have not mentioned. yet.

Yeah, well, yes. That's kind of shocking. And it's surprising that I wouldn't have mentioned. Oh, it's the bird cage, of course. It's the bird cage. Good for IMDB. You know, on my rewatch of the bird cage this year, I'm like, this really is one of the great Robin Williams performances.

I feel like because Nathan Lane gets more awards attention. It's the bigger performance. No, Robin Williams is incredible in that movie. Incredible. incredible. And again, another one of those performances, like River Phoenix in this movie, where I am not one of those people who's quick to criticize straight performers playing gay roles because sometimes people get it exactly right. There is. Robin Williams gets it exactly right.

There is something of a Robin Williams queer canon, right, where it's the bird cage. And To Wong Fu, thanks for everything, Julie Newmar. I was going to say, don't forget his cameo in Too Wong Fu. I think that's the Robin Williams' queer canon. If anybody remembers any other Robin Williams' queer performances, let me know. Well, Bicentennial, man. Canonically, yes. Sorry to M. Beth Davids, but yes, he is canonically.

Canonically, pansexual, certainly. Robots can't be any one thing. You don't know what the genie gets into on vacation. You don't know that genie's alphabet. Okay. And that's it, right? That's it. That's it.

That's it. Oh, Chris. What a good movie. good episode. I'm glad we did this. Happy New Year to you and me, but of course, if you're listening to this, you're already well into the swing of 2026. How's it going out there, listeners? Is it good? Is it good? Is 2026 okay? Are you already like January has been 14 years long? You're just like, this is the worst year ever. You're 12 days into January. No, I hope January is going well for all of us, let's say. Well, maybe not all of us. Well, us, if you're listening to

this, I hope January is going well. There are people out there who are not listening to this who I'm not hoping for as good of a January. Let's say, you know who you are. Oh, it's my episode. I'm running us. That's our episode, folks. If you want more of this at Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this hadoscurbuzz.com. You can also check us out on Instagram at this had Oscar Buzz.

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