This Had Oscar Buzz - 396 – The Stepford Wives (with Nicholas Colia!)

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

We’re back talking about Nicole Kidman’s post-Oscar years this week and Griffin in Summer filmmaker Nicholas Colia is here to join us! After winning her Oscar for The Hours, each of the many projects Kidman attached herself to carried some degree of pedigree and buzz. One of them just happened to be a famous disaster: 2004’s The … Continue reading "396 – The Stepford Wives (with Nicholas Colia!)"

No, the right house. We want to talk to Bill and heck and friends. I've got to talk to me. Dick poop. Count dressed like this. Of course. Whatever we do, we always want to look our very best. I mean, why imagine if our husband saw us in worn, dark, urban sweat clothes with stringy hair and almost no makeup.

Now, today you are in for a special treat because we are working on a series of exercises which I've personally invented based on simple household tasks. I call my program Clareobics because their name is Claire. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast leading a trail of breadcrumbs for Hillary Swank. Every week on This Head Oscar Buzz we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty Academy Award aspirations. but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died and we're here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my chatbot girlfriend, Joe Reed.

Pardon me while I spit out a stack of single dollar bills for you. If you watch the deleted scenes, Joe's arm becomes a vacuum. We'll get into my sort of logistical questions with how they explain how the, these robot women are made. But that definitely plays into it. I've got a laundry list. Not to like, whatever. Realism is not what this movie is going for.

But still, there's internal logic that needs to be obeyed. We'll talk about it. We'll unpack all of that. But at first, we have some business to attend to. We need to bring in our guests. We are so excited. So excited. Filmmaker Nicholas Colleen is here.

Welcome. Hi. Hi, guys. I can't believe it. I made it. Finally, I know. I've been very much anticipating getting you on this podcast for a while. So this is excellent. Well, listen, I am a huge fan.

I was introduced to your podcast by Chris and I's mutual friend, Ken Greller. Wonderful. Love Ken. Very emphatic that he needed to be mentioned and shouted out. He's desperate for attention, so we have to get to him. We love Ken. And it's made me, since Griffin came out, it's made me only happy when I've listened to your podcast and you guys have been so generous with mentioning the movie and bringing it up. And it always makes me so happy when I hear Griffin-Nathly reference in the middle of this.

Griffin's become like a character in our like Rokes Gallery sort of like. Much like Lydia Tar, he is a real person. Yeah, 100%. Yes. No, we are Griffin super fans here. If there are no Griffin-Nathlet fans in the world, we have done. died. We have been replaced by robots.

Yeah. We have been replaced by robot. We don't like films. We only watch CNN. What do we think the Stepford wives would watch? Oh. Yeah, nothing like... What's the most rad wife?

HGTV. HGTV would be a good one. Yeah. Yes. Something completely like apolitical, like no context to it whatsoever. Yeah. Okay.

So we love Griffin and Summer. I have to tell you. you, I forget if, like, in our email exchanges, we've talked about this, but we actually met at our friend Ken and Chris's wedding. Right. And, like,

because I remember being like, that guy was great. Where did he go? And I, in watching Griffin, and I talked to about our friends, and they were like, no, you've met Nicholas. And I was like, wait, what? And then, like, there's a random group

photo where it's like a photographer forgot like a bunch of like the gay guys that were squawking where we were squawking and he's like that's Nicholas. So I was like, oh, great. Love to say that we'd met and that I love your work as well. It's so funny because like I feel like recently in culture, the line on like going to weddings is that they're very factional. Like the joke is like, you know, two gay guys at a straight girl's wedding and like they

both are, like, you know, competitive with each other or, like, the people we hate at the wedding where the table that, like, snarks at everybody. And my, I think it's much more interesting, the sort of, like, short-term, but very intense bonds that happen at, like, the table of, like, collected friends of at the weddings. Like, I, I love that particular phenomenon of just, like, for this evening, we are a friend group and this is um so i love that i love that you two met at a wedding i was gonna say we absolutely did meet there i was on i was so sick at that wedding i had taken i had i i had some kind of thing i had lost my voice i had laryngitis i was on so many antibiotics and they were like the doctor

was obviously like well you have you know you you need to stop talking and stop drinking and i was like i can't go to ken girlers wedding and not talk or drink i was like that's an insane idea so i I just plowed through, and so it's kind of a giant blur to me that whole event. But, yeah, I'm sure that we did meet. I just was so out of it with medication. That's incredible. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's absolutely true.

Chris is just like a weird phantom, like, lollipop ghost, sort of, like, floating through your consciousness during that wedding. Yeah. And that was before I had shot the movie, too. So I had less to talk about. Fantastic. Well, we obviously love the movie, and we'll get into Stafford Wives in a minute, a movie that I'm interested to see how much we all like and appreciate this movie. I think it'll be a very interesting conversation, yes.

At least in public perception of this movie, and like the awardsiness of it is like, well, look at the cast. And on a certain degree, Nicole in this period. it's like you could kind of talk about any of these movies we could probably even do be witched just because it's her in this period right post the hours Nicole had buzzed for basically everything yeah

yes for sure yeah I mean watching this I was like well I can get into it but they're like it's such a blue show production, I mean, from like Nicole all the way to Anne Roth to everybody in front of them behind the camera, it's just, uh, it had to have had some, you know, awards hopes at some point, I feel like. And if you hear Frank Oz talk about it, like, that was part of the problem, too.

It was just like, they just kept adding more A-listers to this thing. And he just was not prepared for the attendant, like, every time they add a new A-lister, the financial expectations go up and the, like, the, like, the, like, the, like, the... in account for opening weekend goes up and everything like that. And it's just, it all sort of spiraled away from them. According to Frank Oz, I imagine if you asked six people the story of what went down for Stepford Wives 2004, you'd probably get six different stories. Yes, although this is one of those movies where everybody who worked on it has

separated themselves from it. Yes, nobody had a good time. Nobody's defending it. I could not find a single either in real time as the movie was coming out or in the years since every single person has, like, moved away from it. Yeah, yeah. I don't think I'd ever seen Nicole talk about it in an interview. No, I don't think so either.

Now that you mentioned it. No, no, no. Yeah. She's got plenty of other things to talk about. That's the thing about Nicole is she's got 8 billion other projects. And if she doesn't feel like talking about that, she can just sort of, like, turn on the charm and be like, hey, Jimmy Fallon, remember when we, like, went on a date 10 years ago or whatever. Yeah.

She doesn't have to talk about it. anything she doesn't want to. Well, you are also the first, first time guest that we've had in a long time. So this is good table setting for us, because we have to ask you about your Oscar origin story. Oh, yeah, Oscar origin

stories. I forgot that we did that. Yeah, I forgot you did it, too. As someone who listens to the podcast, I was like, oh, right. I have to remember what that is. I think for mine is the really basic millennial Titanic 98 Oscars. But for me, that wasn't the Titanic Oscars.

It was the as good as it gets and in and out Oscars, which I can, which will transition. Paul Rudnick, yeah. Yep. Yeah, though I, I, um, stepford of it all. But I was, um, I, that was 98. I was, you know, still in elementary school, but I was seeing a lot of these, those two movies were my two of my three favorite movies at the time. and that's why I wanted to watch.

And according to Google, those were on March 23rd. My birthday is March 26. So I used to have a lot of kind of Oscar-overlap birthdays. Sure. Yeah. And we, me and my parents, were staying at my grandparents' condo in Boko Riton, Florida, which side note is the location where they filmed the condo scenes in the movie Happiness, which is a whole other.

Wow, claim to fame. It's even more wild that I'm even letting on. But I, and we, so we're in that condo just to give you a visual. And we got to, like, stay up. I got to stay up late for the first time and, you know, probably filled out a ballot. And I think I voted for Joan Kusack, even though I know it wasn't going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic.

I love that. Wait, so I just recently... I meant to rewatch in and out for this episode and just ran out of time. It's a really interesting movie. It is, it's, it's very easy to sort of pick apart from a 2026 perspective and be like, this is what it gets wrong. And this is what, but like, it also has a very fascinating, as does Stepford Wives 2004, which I'll get into. But like, has a really kind of like interesting POV on like gay assimilation that I think is really interesting. but it's also just like any movie that ends with like a conga line to village people,

I am always going to, always going to appreciate. So, wait, so, Nicklaus, I wanted to, wait, so say what you were going to say. I was going to say, yeah, in and out, in retrospect, having rewatched it somewhat recently, I'm like, oh, this is actually the perfect movie for me to love when I was eight years old, because it's like a gay movie, but there's like nothing, you know, sexual or graphic. Yeah. Yeah, it's a complete, like, it's a, like, it's a, wonderful, hilarious, like, you know, introduction to being gay in a very light way for an eight-year-old.

Yeah. And Ernie Sabella, with the vocal stem of the century, she was too old for Yentel, which I think of constantly. The wrong is toupee in the air. But wait, so I wanted to ask you because, like, I rewatched as good as it gets last week for a different podcast that Chris and I were on. and I was kind of fascinated with how that movie has sort of like has held up and hasn't held up. And is that still a favorite of yours, or is that just sort of like, oh, like, from my youth? No, I love that movie. I love, yeah. I mean, the reason that I wanted to do the Steckford Wives and how this relates to as good as it gets in and out is that when I was a kid, I didn't, my favorite movies were not kid movies.

They were this kind of sub-genre of movies that existed in the 90s that don't really anymore, that were these big studio comedies that had, whether or not they had a gay character, like as good as it gets, has a leading gay character. Some of them don't. They all had this, in retrospect, queer sensibility to them. Yeah. So movies like Sister Act movies, Adam's Family movies, Brady Bunch movies, as good as it gets, in and out, the First Wives Club to me is the Apex.

of those and was my favorite movie when I was in elementary school, I found my fifth grade diary journal where I have that in and in and out and as good as a guest listed as my top three favorite movies. I love that. Oh my God, I love that. Which also connects to Griffin and Summer a little bit in terms of why does this child's, why is this taste so past his actual age? I mean, find another child with a better, like, top three favorite. movies, it won't happen.

I wanted to also, and I mean, not to get to like James Lipton, like, you know, you know, is asking, you know, Nicole Kidman like, is Virginia Wolf in the room with us right now? But like, um, I watching this and knowing that you are coming on, I was like,

I wonder what like the Griffin-Nafley POV on the Oscars is. Because like Griffin's obviously a very theater-attuned kid. I know, I imagine I have a sense of like what Griffin's, POV on the Tonys, or maybe Griffin's more of like a drama desk

kid. I'm thinking about this, and I'm just like, Griffin probably has some, like, you know, very high-end opinions on the Oscars. I'm sure he does. I mean, he has a framed photo of Annette Benning and Glenn Close in his bedroom. This is true. This is true. Clearly,

he has a, that's his villain origin story in terms of, I'm sure he was, you know, upset about her losing for the wife, or Annette Benning, losing for Being Julia. Being Julia. Being Julia is a very Griffin-Nathly movie, I would imagine. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. So I'm sure that the Oscars have been part of his radicalization, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Any other table setting we have to do, Chris, before we... I mean, just to the... Also, I love that you... You're maybe our first guest that was like,

here's why I chose this movie for this episode. I also love that, you know, these movies you're all mentioning are Paul Rudnick scripted movies. I love Paul Rudnick. And, like, that whole idea of his comedies having queerness in them even when it's not explicit, like something like Sister Act, obviously.

Well, you know, now you ask, is it Wendy McKenna that plays the one that she's like, I played it like she was a lesbian in love with whooply. Yes. So it's like, to her, it was explicit. That there is that sensibility that runs through those things. And it's like Adam's Family Values feels when you watch it now, like gay infiltration of Hollywood and like a full hijacking of that movie

and injecting it with a queer sensibility for what would have been a blockbuster movie. Really, we really had it so good in the 90s in this particular regard. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I mean, these were movies, you know, I mean, in and out, as good as it gets, you certainly can take a 20-26 lens to them, but these were still movies with gay guys

as the lead, gay guys played, you know, know, gay guys who lived on planet Earth, who weren't, you know, extraworldly. And these movies were released and, you know, thousands of screens. And, you know, the 90s were pre for anybody, you know, young who's listening to this podcast. The 90s were pre, you know, having access to everything everywhere. So you just had to, you know, pre-will and grace. And so, yeah, they seemed to, in retrospect, when I look at these lists of the movies that kind of made me as a kid, it is all written officially or unofficially by Paul Rudnick.

usually produced by Scott Rooden, not always, not always, but usually being lit by Sherry Lansing. Yes. Like, there is through lines. And so Stepford Wives, to me, is like the final one of those. It's like this was the final. End of the line. Yeah. End of the line of this series.

Well, I mean, Paul Redneck doesn't have many credits. I was going to say he's got nine screenwriting credits for movies on IMDB. This is our third that we've covered on this podcast after Sister Act. after Sister Act and Jeffrey. Right, because nine, but a much, a lot of those, he's uncredited on. Like, they're on IMDB, but it's Sister Act, which he's written as Joseph Howard, and then First Wise Club, which to me is like the most, he's, his name is nowhere on that movie. Right. But if you, again, as a child, I somehow managed to get like a early draft of the first Wise Club screenplay.

Don't ask me how. My childhood sounds way more interesting than it actually was as I'm laying this all out. But, and like, the original script to that, like, the book is not funny at all. So, like, everything that's funny in the first Wives Club is Paul Rudnick. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, which his name is nowhere on it, but it's so clearly in his voice. And, yeah, I... You get a lot of that with the Bet Midler character in Stepford Wives, too.

Yes. And we'll definitely talk about that. I have thoughts and opinions on that character. Yeah, he worked with her. She's, I think, in like, four of his nine movies or something. Yes. And they're definitely kindred spirits. But, yeah, so this movie, to me, when it came out, I was, like, obviously so psyched.

Because... Oh, sure. Did you see... Do you find on YouTube the original kind of specialty-made teaser that they made for this? The, like, what looks like a car commercial up until the fact that it, like, shows you Nicole Kidman. Yeah. And she's just, like, you know, for the man who has everything. like that kind of Maryland Monroe.

Yeah, she's, it's, yeah, and they just list all these, you know, people who were all, you know, at the top of their game and in this insane cast. And so just imagine, you know, me as a tween Griffin seeing that teaser and how high my expectation. I mean, it's like intoxicating. I mean, I've talked about this on this podcast before, and I'm still susceptible to this. But like, the thing of like, there are like eight actors named above the title. in this movie that I all know. It's like, how could a movie with this many movie stars ever go wrong? And that's gotten me time and time again, but I will still come running back.

Yeah, this is definitely one of those. It is exploding with talent. As much as this movie feels like kind of an end of an era, not just for Paul Redneck, but like I was straining to think of what was the next Bet Midler, like, led movie after this? You know, it also feels like the end. Like, the Fabulous Four. Parental guidance.

As much as it feels like something ending when you watch this movie, because certainly this type of comedy basically went away. It also feels incredibly predictive. Like, it's the beginning of something. Obviously, like, the idea of your robot wife is, you know, various people who have chat pot girlfriends and that seems prescient but like this movie seems like it predicted like Pete Buttigieg and oh there's so many different tendrils that kind of like stretch out from this movie yeah oh yeah yeah yeah the gender politics of it all is

prescient and definitely you know um because I was thinking about this I was like oh could they why hasn't anybody tried this again to do like another Seppford Wives remake in this era where, you know, these kind of titles are so valuable. And it's like, I think if you like take Barbie and get out and don't worry, darling, it's like...

You match those together. Match them together and divide by three. It's like been covered kind of. Well, I have a whole sort of like theory about that that I want to get into on the other side of the plot description too, because like between the original and like then the 04,

version and sort of the times that they existed in. I have, I, I, I, the brain got noodling on some things, which is always a dangerous prospect for me. Yeah, no, this is, the Stefford Watchers has a property is massively influential.

Yeah, yeah. Even if this film itself, sadly, was not. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, before we get into the plot description, Joe, would you like to talk about our Patreon? Always. All right. This had Oscar Buzz has a Patreon. We've had it For what did I say we're going on like year, we're into year.

Three years. Three years now, which is kind of amazing. For those three years, for just $5 a month, we've been churning out two full-length bonus episodes per month for you, for our wonderful Gary's. The first of these two bonus episodes per month comes on the first Friday of every month, and it's what we call an exceptions episode, which is just a regular, this had Oscar Buzz style examination of a movie, except it's of a movie. that we couldn't do on this had Oscar Buzz flagship, because despite having a great Oscar expectations and disappointing results, it also managed to backwards its way into an Oscar nomination

or two or sometimes three. And so we want to be able to cover those anyway. Earlier this month, we did the Disney adults, the attack on Disney adults that is saving Mr. Banks, starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks, a movie that I am charmed by and puzzled by in somewhat equal measure. We had a really good conversation about that. We have also, in recent weeks, talked about films like The Birdcage. The Birdcage, another movie that sits right in the pocket of sort of 90s, obviously 90s queer cinema for the young griffins out there. All of us would be included in that number.

on very different tips. We've talked about the Black Dahlia, the American president, Nicholas Winding Reffins Drive, Rob Reiner's when Harry Met Sally, Jody Foster in contact, etc., etc. Then on the third Friday of every month, we have been doing excursion episodes.

Excursion episodes are not about films specifically, but about little corners of the Oscar and movie universe that Chris and I are obsessed with. that we talk about old award shows. We talk about old EW fall movie previews. We talk about other various magazine issues, like the movie line where Jennifer Lopez talked shit about everybody.

By the way, can we say, my grand theory about Jennifer Lopez right now is that she is like devolving back to the beginning where she's sort of, you know, she went back through her Affleck phase, and she's doing rom-coms again, and now she's just like, inveterately just like talking shit about people

for no reason, like about Francis McDormand and Nomadland. I was just like, she really is just sort of like, she's going to end up rebooting in living color within like a year, I think. If she keeps going at this. I was going to say, whatever gets us enough to. What's that, Chris?

I said, whatever gets us enough to. Oh, my God. Would watch the shit out of enough to. Absolutely. Still enough. More enough. Later this month, Later this month, right? Yes, we're doing the 2012 Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable,

a curiously difficult to find Actress Roundtable that I think only exists on THR still. They have not put it on YouTube or they have kept it off of YouTube for whatever reason. That was probably like that particular year, the mandate among digital media must have been native hosting your video content. That's what will save us. That's what we'll do it. And so we ventured into the THR website itself to watch the 2012 Actress Roundtable. And we'll be bringing that to you. If you would like to partake in all of this frivolity, all of this wonderfulness,

Chris and me just really going off and following our muse. Again, two full episodes every month for just $5. You can sign up for this head Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance at patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. I'm a subscriber. See, Nicholas is a subscriber. Who are you to resist? Exactly.

And I go through the end of every month when I'm going through like my, you know, card statements, I go through the same arc of like, okay, how much is it for Patreon again? Right. No, no, I go through the arc of like, oh, $6 to Patreon. Okay, what, like, is that like a porn thing that I forgot to unsubscribe to?

And then being like, I know, it's, This had Oscar buzz. Like, I have to go through the whole arc of being like, oh, my God, what are you subscribing to at 2 o'clock in the morning? Right, right. That Phantom 1299 charge on your credit card statement, you're just like, oh, God, what was that? Exactly. What did they do?

Oh, no. And I'm like, oh, no, it's good. Now, have, do we know, have Shirley Maclean or Deborah Winger heard about this named for them bonus podcast? No. Not that I know of. If, Gary's, if you're out there and if any of you knows, like, Deborah Winger's, like, the publicist or Shirley MacLean's

personal assistant or something like that, and want to run this by them and just like see what their reaction is and report back to us, that would be great. I want, I brought Dup Her Winger to give that same sort of like perturbed scoff look that she gives when Shirley McLean does shout

her out from her Oscar speech. That is maybe, we all know the look. We've all seen the clip of Debra just being like, like that. It's great. It's so good. You know what? I bet you can get it. I bet you can get it. Uh-huh. I watched a Shirley MacLean movie the other day called What a Way to Go.

And it's a... What a title. Oh, my God. First of all, incredible. And it's like, it's this like six, like six sort of like discrete segments of she plays a like billionaire repeat widow who like can't get rid of her money. And she tells her psychiatrist the story of how she got her money. And it's like she kept marrying this. I can't get rid of all this money.

She kept marrying this succession of. of men who she all wanted to have like a simple life with. And they all ended up like hitting it rich in some way or another. And the husbands are like Dick Van Dyke. And then Paul Newman, Paul Newman playing like a like Parisian or whatever like an American expat artist in Paris. Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly. And each one of the marriages, they give that segment a little like genre parody.

So like the Dick Van Dyke segment gets a little like silent film interlude. the Paul Newman marriage gets a like French New Wave kind of a thing it's so silly and indulgent and so much fun like could not recommend it highly enough so yeah that sounds fantastic

I had a wonderful time with that I watched it because we were going through like costume design Oscars in a recent episode Chris is why I like Edith had does the costumes It's an Edith had costumes and there are some real like deusies in there it's really great

got to watch this. Yeah, you got to check it out. You got to check it out. Yeah. The Stepford Wives, directed by, I'm just going to say, comedy, godsend, Frank Oz. Say it. Did you guys see one of the quotes that was out? I was going back and reading like gossip, whatever gossip was still online about this movie. And someone from someone associated with the movie, scare quotes, who may or may not have been Ben Midler. Basically, was dissing Frank Oz for all of the, like, disagreements on set,

and was saying, he's so used to puppets. Oh! And it's just like, he directed, like, a half a dozen comedies between doing Hents and stuff and this, you know? Don't you bring the Muppets into this disagreement?

I have a whole thing defending belief. eager icon Frank Oz. Good. Oh, good. We'll talk about it. Yeah. Yeah.

From director to director, I feel for Frank Oz, unsurprisingly. My heart goes out to him, Jesus. I love it. Written by Paul Redneck based on Ira Levine's novel. Ira Levine, who also wrote Rosemary's Baby. Indeed. Where's the comedy version of Rosemary's baby? Yeah, the campy-a-a-a-a-t's comedy version of Rosemary's baby.

Little Nicky. That's what Little Nicky was about. Starring Deep Breath, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bet Midler, Glenn Close, Roger Bart, Christopher Walken, John Lovitz, David Marshall Grant, Broadway's original Joe Pitt, David Marshall Grant. Uh-huh, there you go. Mike White, Carrie Preston, and introducing centrifugal motion, Faith Hill. Don't worry, I have several notes on Faith Hill in this movie. did you have like

if you have several notes like it for every second of screen time did you have a note from her because she is barely in it's mostly uh extracurricular faith hill uh commentary but yes i'm pretty sure faith hill on in the

decades now that we've had of people involved in this movie uh disassociating this all from it I think she's the most recent because she was this experience was so bad she never acted again until 18 years later a couple years ago. She did like a Taylor Sheridan, something. Yeah, I guess dark. Did not know that for sure, but like that was the most educated

guess I've ever made in my life. Yeah. And in interview, she literally is like, yeah, I made one movie and it just was not a good time. Wow. Some decades later, it still lives on the pain. See what you all did to poor Faith Hill? The movie premiered June 11th, 2004. Happy Pride to the Gaze of 2004. Indeed. This weekend box office, its opening weekend, is a little wild. It's a lot of movies for children. Harry Potter is in its second week, Prisoner of Asgaband at number one, followed by The Chronicles of Riddick.

Finn Diesel, a non-that movie wasn't a bomb, but that was meant to do more. Oh, yeah. Actually, I can never. remember which are the Vin Diesel movies that like underperformed and which are the Vin Diesel movies that overperformed and like what the expectations were. That is one of those like I always stick my foot in my mouth when I try and talk about like Vin Diesel career wise. But like, yes, one of those movies definitely was the one where he's like, this is going to change science fiction cinema forever. And everybody was like, we're not going to watch it. So,

Chronicles of Riddick also hanging in a poster hanging in Christian grade. childhood pet unless we forget. Wow. Then the fourth weekend of Shrek 2. Sure. Classic cinema, Shrek 2, the Garfield movie.

Was Shrek 2 the number one movie of that year, box office was? It had to have been. That movie made so much money. And then separate Vives opened in fifth place. Wow. All these amazing options.

that are not all these options that for kids movies that I could have gone to see as a kid and this was the choice that I made. No right. Ditto. And you know what? I, no regrets. Also, having its first wide release weekend saved exclamation point. Wow. Ninth place.

Speaking of queer cinema and Napoleon Dynamite had its limited opening. I'm pretty sure if you add up all of those. movies, not the earlier Chronicles of Ridic one, but the other ones, and, you know, divide by 10, you do get Griffin in summer. So that is, even just saved SEPFord Wives and Napoleon Dynamite. I'm like, wow, I've heard all of those as comps in the past four years of my life. Incredible. Wow.

I'm learning a lot. Learning, we're growing. Yep, yep. That's what this podcast is. Yep. Nicholas, it is time. It is time for you to do a 60-second plot description for the Stepford Wives. Are you ready?

Yes. Let me just say first, I think asking anyone to do a plot description for this particular movie is very cruel. I'm pretty sure that the people who wrote and made this movie could not do a plot description for the plot of this movie. But I am going to do my absolute best to crack through the weeds. and make sense of this. We're sending our child off to war. Right. It's true. Off to battle.

Yes. Oh, my God. Any of the cast members who had to describe the plot of this movie, could not. The plot of which reshoot. Right. Exactly. What version of the movie do you want a plot description?

Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure that if you watch the interviews that Nicole Kimman did for this movie, that she just had watched it. Like, she just did the thing. Like, I kind of deciphered during the interviews. I'm like, I don't think she's seen this movie. Which I respect. But I think she genuinely was like, I'm just going to do press.

And then maybe she still hasn't seen it. Who knows? I mean, in fairness to her, she was very busy. She was very busy. Insanely busy. Yes. She was still in characters, Deanne Arbus at that point. It's true.

Which we have not covered. We have not covered. We could cover and we'll cover. We have to do that maybe eventually. Oh, God. All right, Nicholas. Your 60-second plot description for the Stefford Wives starts now. Okay, it's 2004. The economy is booming. The only problem, women just have too much a damn power.

Take Joanna Epahart, a network president with Nicole Kimman's skin and Lori Simmons's wardrobe. After an assassination attempt on her by a disgruntled reality TV contestant, played by real-life reality TV contestant Mike White, Joanna is fired and suffers a massive nervous breakdown. To recover, she and her husband, Walter, and their two practically disposable children ahead to the suburban paradise of Steppard, Connecticut. They're greeted by Perky Real Estate Queen Claire Wellington played by Climbled Unclose. tightly wine Joanna struggles to settle into their new Mega Mansion, but at a town fair, she finds her people. Bobby, a cynical friend Leibowitz-Type played by Bet Midler and Roger,

a gay man with Ryan Sechrist's hair. They immediately bond over food issues and behavioral meds. Their fun is interrupted when a dancing faith prince has a hoe-down-related seizure. Later, Bobby Joanna and Roger catch Faith Hill having a massive cinematic orgasm, remote control, and watch her breast and plate because she's a robot. Meanwhile, Walter hangs out in the Manosphere with a dorky husband, and shows off, finds a wife that doubles as an ATM. Soon Roger is brainwashed.

His gay memorabilia is thrown in the trash, and he reappears looking like J.D. Vance. Joanna panics, but before she can escape, Bobby's turned into a blonde cupcake baking bot too. Joanna confronts the town alpha male Mike played by Christopher Walkin, cut to the town ball. Joanna has been turned into a perfect robot herself, but Walter secretly sabotages the lab,

dissolving the wife's microchips, meaning that they're no longer robots. They're back to humans somehow. Joanna decapitates Mike with a camera, revealing he was a robot all along. Claire goes full Alex Forrest and confesses to that she killed her husband and killed his mistress and that she's actually the mastermind in the whole town. She gets electrocuted. Suddenly it's six months later and reality 90s film Cameo King icon Larry King does his best exposition to patch all this shit up.

And suddenly all the husbands who at worst murdered their wives are at best just mutilated and brainwashed them get their proper punishment, which is being forced to go grocery shop. and credits rule. Fantastic. Jesus. Exactly. Oh, my God. Okay, first of all, the Lori Simmons name drop. Incredible.

Listen, I was like, who are they, who is Paul Rudnick being like, who should we dress Nicole Kidman as them? That was the closest that I could get to an exact reference point. Second of all, you were fully unconscious when you did it, but the first time you mentioned Faith Hill, you did call her Faith Prince, so I wanted to shut that out. Could not be a more perfect. Honestly, she shoots and recast her with Faith Prince. Honestly, yes.

If you told me Faith Prince was in this movie, I wouldn't be able to believe it. You would have to believe it. You would have to believe it. You had a thousand percent. You mentioned Larry King, and it's true. Larry King would show up in every 90s movie. And I was trying to think, what did I recently watch where he shows up in like six different scenes? And it was America's Sweethearts, which I watched for a different podcast.

Absolutely. And, like, he's like a minor character in that movie where, like, Catherine Zeta Jones, keeps going back on that show and she, like, she has this, like, tempestuous just, like, can't stand Larry King because he asks her all these questions. That movie, by the way, have either have you seen that movie? Yes, but no sense. Of course. It's reprehensibly bad. It's so, so awful and unlikable. And it's crazy to make a movie with those actors and have it be like that much not fun to watch. It is such a miserable experience. Julia Roberts fat suit. Absolutely. Was not prepared. Was not prepared.

people. The Larry King of it all, just to go back to my childhood, because that's obviously why we're all, why we've gathered here today. It is wild now, especially because there's so much in the news about, like, you know, battling over CNN. And I'm like, you know what? I remember when CNN was literally Larry King doing like an hour with Anne Margaret at 9 p.m. And let's just go back to that.

Absolutely. Let's just like get a Larry King, an AI version of Larry King, a Stefford version of Larry King, to just show up. But yeah, Larry King in movies is, he never turned one down. He would always be in the movies and then also do like bizarre critic quotes for the movies, praising them. And he just shows up. I love him in primary colors where he's, you know, also as a huge part. And I love him in, I think it's the last kind of iconic Larry King cameo was in People versus OJ where it's him in a wig playing a young version of himself. Oh my God. And it's, uh, every at the time was like, Like, they just have Larry King playing young.

I'm like, who else on the earth looks like Larry King? I'm like, who else could you possibly get to play Larry King? Am I making up that he was in contact where he was interviewing the Matthew McConaughey character at one point being like, they call you America's priest or something like that. And he's just, what was I? Sag after a member, Larry King. Larry King always makes me think of that one Kathy Griffin bit, a joke she does about him where she's talking about how. you know, Larry King will have an actress on and he'll be like, don't you get worried

about all this plastic surgery? And she's like, meanwhile, his ears meet in the back of his head. And I'm just like, that's all I do. Joe, you need to put Larry King on the Cinematrix. Oh my God, I really should. Larry King, um, uh, what's his face from New York One? People will open that and be so mad.

Yes. No, yeah. Larry King, Greta Van Sustrin, and, um, uh, fucking, wait, who's the New York? one guy who I would win all of his live trivia events. Shit. Oh, Pat something? Pat Kiernan. How did I forget Pat Kiernan's name?

I'm getting so addled. How did I remember Pac-Kirnan's name? No, thank you. Thank God you did. That would be an incredible... That would be like a... Like, the Citizens will revolt Cinematrix where all of a sudden people will just be like,

God damn you. That'd be great. I mean, you guys probably should have had a Larry King's Sixthimer's quiz at this point. Honestly, we're going to go back. We're going to go back and find out that we've done like 12 Larry King... By the way, Gary's, we know we missed the Joaquin Phoenix six-timers when we did our Come-On, Come-On episode. We will make it up to Joaquin next time we cover one of his movies. So, don't worry. And we have won this very episode. We have won this very episode for Glenn Close. One who you would, yeah, who you would think it would be like, you know, 60th timers club at this point. But it's a miracle. We should do a one-timers quiz for Faith Hill in this episode. A one and done timers quiz.

Just like we know we're never going to do another Faith Hill movie. So like we're just going to do one timer right now. Oh my God. Okay. So much to get into with this movie specifically. I want to start with the original. I don't have, none of us have read the IRA Levin novel, have we? No.

No. No, that's fine. The original though, watching it again, as they mentioned before we started recording, Thank God, Nicholas mentioned that he was watching both of them to prepare for this episode, because I'd never seen the original. And I, as our friend and past and future guest, Bobby Finger, we were texting about it. And he was like, I always thought that that movie was supposed to be this, like, campy, sort of like 70s, like, unsurious thing.

And watching it, it's just a really solid, like, horror movie with like social commentary or whatever. Like it's not like super violent or anything like that, but like it is a thriller and and it takes its premise seriously. First of all, Catherine Ross plays the Nicole Kimman character, but like Paul Apprentice plays essentially the Bet Midler character, plays the like friend. Coolest chick in a movie in fucking forever. And it's just like has like these incredible sort of just like could give a shit. 70s ensembles or whatever, where it's just sort of like, you know, bikini top and bell bottom pants or whatever. She's just like, she's fantastic. And obviously, doing this story as a horror movie,

you have different mandates, right? So, like, obviously, they keep the truth of the matter under wraps for a lot longer, in the 04 version, there is never any doubt what's going on. Like, she's pulling, like, they're driving into the town. And it's just, like, robot wives being caddies for their husband and stuff like that. And, like, Glenn Close, the first second you see her, you're just like, well, something's fucked up here. Like, so they ease into it a little bit more. And I was, like, wondering why you couldn't do it as a horror movie in 2004 and why they

maybe decided to make it such a comedy. And obviously, you know, in hearing Frank Oz talk about it, the tone of it was not initially what we ended up seeing. But clearly, they set out to make a comedy. And my thought was, well, yeah, you could do it as a horror movie in the 70s because this notion of women as domesticated housewives, you're not really far removed from that. You're in the of like the ERA sort of, you know, debate or whatever. At that moment, things are, it's plausible that there is this like, you know, subset of a town that is holding onto this very traditional version of, you know, women as domesticated wives. And in 2004, it's the notion that you would have a city that, like, makes its women so subservient

is much, much more outlandish, particularly in this era of like, Senator Hillary Clinton, you know, and whatever. And, you know, women obviously hold many, many more positions of power. So that notion is ludicrous. And what I thought watching it this time was, oh, you could make this as a horror movie again. Like, you could make this movie as a horror movie now

with, like, the Tradwife thing and, you know, the men's rights folks and, you know, all this sort of stuff. we are now, we have boomeranged back into a moment where like the Stepford Wives is no longer this ludicrous notion. And I thought that was kind of interesting. On this watch, I mean, that whole opening sequence where she's basically, you know, it's an upfront where she's showing all of their reality shows. We love a sizzle reel. We love an upfront. I had to watch so many of those when I worked at ABC. I had to watch the ones that we did at Lincoln Center. And it is an aesthetic. that is like Pavlovian to me.

I love it. It feels so out of place or like it's a bit in the movie, but it does, that felt like the closest thing into a window of why this movie would exist as it existed in 2004, right? Because there's the whole riff on Survivor, which Mike White showing up in is awesome.

And it's like, it's Temptation Island, maybe more so even than Survivor. It is quite a very temptation. It's like, it's, it's sort of like the Milf Island thing from 30 Rock, too, this thing of like, how depraved can this, because that era of reality TV was despised by creative Hollywood. Was like that, that, you know, early Otts era where everybody was like, oh, my God, this is going to be the death of the industry. Everything is terrible. And the reality shows themselves were like, what if we did a reality show? where like America decided who was going to get married and whatever and you know

well like also that era of reality television especially when you go back and watch it now and you watch uh things like early survivor because like that is like the survivor aesthetic they're eating rats it's going to be the death of culture they're eating rats i remember that whole thing but like the misogyny that would be yeah if not in the act like built into the show would be on display in the show. Like, you think of all of the number of early survivor women that were despised for essentially just being women who are playing the game. Jerry Manthy looked at Colby Donaldson and was like that man's a snack. And America was like, burn her. Like, burn her at the steak. Yeah. So it's just like, that felt to me like, and I, my, my memory of that like era of reality TV was that that

wasn't really called out for except for maybe like the swan that it's like this is some deep You had to be really extreme to be called out for misogyny on that yeah it's yeah it felt like maybe that is kind of the window into why

you know this movie was made at that time that there was just like things in pop culture that were so deeply misogynistic that were not called out for it it's wild because So this movie came out in 2004

and I immediately thought in this opening with these upfrents to the comeback season one, which is 2005. Yes. Where they have a fake upfronts and have a similar kind of real fake reality shows at the time. And it's definitely a snapshot

into the 2000s for sure. That season... Yeah, totally. That season definitely had that same viewpoint on reality TV, which is like is this what we are reduced to having to do to keep our careers? I remember when David Hyde Pierce won his last Emmy for Frazier, and I think it was for Frazier's maybe final season or whatever,

because I remember him on the stage at the Emmys, accepting an award, and being like, I'm going to, like, go away for a while and wait for this whole reality TV thing to, like, go over and until it's all done. And we never saw him again. And we never saw him again. And this was always my theory with the Emmys awarding Best Reality Competition every year.

And of course, famously, like, The Amazing Race won it, like, 10 out of the first 11 years of that category. And I always thought that that was, like, Hollywood's way of sort of, like, protesting and being, like, we're not going to put one more thought into this. Like, Amazing Race, alphabetically, A, okay, great. Like, you know, have your Emmy and go away and we're not going to think about it anymore. And it's just, it's, it's funny to think about that. But it's also interesting that they decided to, in this movie about, you know, making women into housewife robots, that they make the main character. Because Catherine Ross in the original is just like a regular, d'angular lady. She likes taking photographs.

That's her like, you know. Yeah, that's the thing that triggers her husband in the original is that she has a photography hobby. That's enough for him to kill her. Right. And in this one, she has to be like a like psycho CEO, like absolutely. She's genuinely unhinged in the first. To the point where you're like, lady, you could probably do with like six months out of the city.

You know what I mean? Like you have maybe gone over the edge. And then she, like the people she meets and stuff for, sort of like the protagonists. It's, you know, you mentioned the Fran Leibowitz's nature of Bobby Markowitz. I wrote down, I was like, this lady has an Air America show in 2004. Like, she hosts an Air America show with Mark Meron or something like that. And then Roger Bart is, Roger Bart's the architect, I guess his husband's the architect, right? One of them is like a famous architect. He's got to be it, because that's the whole point is that they're like taking people with

actual talent and dulling their shine. But he's, he's got frosted tips and he's flamboyant. And like, flamboyant for like 2004 Connecticut, which I think is, like, the most poignant and interesting commentary in this movie is about the gay characters and about gay assimilation. That is my, like, that is my, that is my, that is my Norman Rockwell meme of, like, the man standing up at the meeting or whatever. And it's just like, Stepford Wives 2004 has its most trenchant observations about gay, uh, gay. gay commentary. One of the most 2004 things about this movie is that girlfriend is used effectively as a slur. Oh, God.

Like, nobody is homophobic by calling you girlfriend anymore. Oh, well, yeah. They don't really say girlfriend. They just say girl. They say diva. They see a bitch. Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

It's the he go, Roger goes to the men's society, right before they kill him, maybe not kill him. The men's society and all the Bill Gates. looking nerdy husbands try to call him girlfriend and be hip. But yeah, I even had to, you know, even me, it took me a minute watching this film to be like, okay, 2004, because they don't call each other husbands because this is pre-gay marriage, but it's very much in the soup of like, you know, gay marriage being in the air, but not legal yet and family values. And, you know, it's very, very much in this, in that environment.

It's the we are accepted. among this community so long as we don't like remind these people to vociferously how like that we are different right and right um and it's and i think it's a commentary the fact that like they explicitly say that um uh uh david marshall grant is calls says he's a gay republican and and they sort of like they brush it off with a bobby markowitz joke where she's just like um Oh, I can't remember what the joke she actually made, but it's just sort of like, you know, oh, why even bother being gay? Like, you know, you take the fun out of it or whatever.

And it's just like, yeah, like, that's part of it. Like, the other part of it is like the belonging to a political party that is actively trying to limit the rights of your community. But that was you could be, that was, I think maybe an era where you still could be. like, oh, he's a Republican, and that's just, like, a personal choice I don't agree with. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, the most chilling is also. So Roger is the same person.

Yeah, he starts off as, you know, too flamboyant, and then he becomes the Republican robot. And then the CODA is him saying, you know, on Larry King, at the end, he says that he's now an independent. And I was like, oh, God. Right, right. God forbid. Like, he just got demonstrably worse. I know. I'm like, this is the happy ending. I'm a libertarian, Larry, and this is the happy medium that we have landed on.

No, but like, I just, I do find it, you know, quietly compelling on that level in a way that, like, and again, we are three cisgender gay men here talking about, you know, a movie that is so sort of steeped in feminist lore. but I do feel like the gender commentary is unavoidably muddled in this movie, or flattened or something, right? Yes, I think that's very generous for you. But have you seen the... So another thing that prompted me wanting to do this film was that in the past three months, the director's cut of Stepford Wives, which we'll get into, obviously, got leaked. Did you guys look at it and see the...

Okay, so... Be like a spa. sequence where... Well, that, there's a lot of insane shit. I mean, this movie has been... This movie is,

they shot it for, according to the internet, they went from a three-month shoot to a seventh-month shoot, and this movie cost $100 million. This movie, if you cut out the opening titles and the closing titles, is an hour and 24 minutes long.

It is so hacked to bits. I mean, that's shorter than Griffin's summer. Wow. I'm like, this is so little material survive this process. But just for a little aside, the most chilling thing in the director's cut is that, and related to Roger, is that, so he comes back as a Republican robot and he's suddenly at like a town hall announcing that he's running for Congress or something. And what's

cut that's in the original cut is that then him and his husband announced that they just adopted two 18-year-olds and two 18-year-old twins come out as their adopt as like, Like they're like Winkle Voss, like hot adopted kids. And it's like, it's so. And the director's commentary, Frank Oz talks about this. And he's like, yeah, it just didn't quite work. And I'm like, yeah, it didn't quite work because you're watching this. And you're like, why did they adopt these two like?

They predicted Matt Gates like decades before. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's so chilling. It's just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, God. That's so bad.

Yeah. Yeah. It exists. Chris, you've seen it, right? Yep. Not making it up. It feels like I'm making it up, but I absolutely am not. Oh, my God.

I mean, talking about how long that the movie was shot, I would actually be more interested in the stuff that just, like, fully will never see the light of day that was not, you know, ever assembled into some type of cut of the movie. I mean, like you're saying, the movie's hack to bits. You can watch and tell that it's a troubled, The chemistry is weird between most of the actors. You can tell they don't like each other. Yeah, it's wild because on the DVD,

there's like 10 minutes of deleted or extended scenes, and then on the leaked original director's cut, there's like another, I think, about 15 minutes. But I had, until I had seen the leaked directors cut a couple months ago, I had always assumed that what happened to this movie was what happens to a lot of movies, which is like they made this really dark Biden comment.

commentary and then going through the process of, you know, test screening or whatever, it just got kind of more and more homogenized and, you know, attacked on happy. It's like a very common story about, you know, what can happen to movies. But if you even watch the original. Yeah, and it's like pacifying the exact, like, audience and type of people that it's trying to satirize, too. Right. You could totally see that. But the bizarre thing is if you watch the first cut, it's, it isn't even that.

It isn't even like a dark comedy. It still has a happy ending. And kind of, and I think just what all of the insanely talented people who got together to make this movie just came up against that they were not able to overcome is that the Steffford wives, the premise of a Stefford wives is a man murdering his wife and replacing her with a robot. And so they just kept hitting the wall of like, how were we making this summer comedy that we want to end, you know, on somewhat of an up note that's about husbands murdering their. wives. And so they try to, you know, split it and have it both ways, you know, in this, you know, Joe alluded to the bizarre, unexistent, you know, logic of this movie, which we can get into. But I just think even in the earlier cut, I just don't know how, if you're trying to make a comedy that ends relatively happy, you get over that kind of baked in issue.

Yeah. And like, yeah. Because like, like we're saying, about the gay stuff that in this movie, it feels like a more precise target. I think the core problem of this movie is it doesn't know where the target is. It doesn't know exactly what it wants to say. It's just kind of doing a catch-all type of commentary. And I think you see that even in the logic of the movie

in some of that earlier cut too, especially the ending too, because the ending suggests they may still be robots. it really just like makes you not understand what's happening in a way that's an active problem. Well, and it's one of those things where a movie makes the decision to really explain to you how we did this, right? So with like fully like animatics and like diagrams and stuff like that where like when Matthew Broderick is in the, you know, in the lab or whatever. but they're like, we take these nanochips and we put them into your wife's brain and they kind of like fully handwave where Christopher Walken's like, and then like we like put her in a chamber and it does its thing. And it's just like sugar and spice and everything nice. And, you know, we enhance, you know, your woman's physical, you know, features and whatever.

But like specifically they show you the like nano chips in the brain or whatever. And that's. their explanation for how they got these women. So they're not, they're not robots. They are your women, your wives physically, but have been, you know, altered. And that's how they get the ending where everybody gets their chips turned off and they get turned back into normal women. But A, you see a full Nicole Kidman robot at one point. So it's like, what's that for? B, you see things like a wife who is turned into an ATM machine. And it's like, okay, so have we then put not only microchips in their brain, but like stacks of dollar bills that we keep refilling? Like, not to be like overly pedantic about it, but like, it's a cute gag.

But like, all I can think of... All I can think of is like, does Bank of America have to come and like... service this wife every like several weeks to like put more cash in her? Can you overdraw from your ATM wife? Like who's providing? What are the fees? What are the fees? Thank you. Exactly. There's a lot of logistics to be done. But just in general, the line between like your wife is a robot versus a, uh, uh, uh, your wife isn't a robot. Your wife is her. We can change her back. It's just a matter of these microchips. And it's like, I don't know where in the process. that this sort of like bifurcated reality happened and like not to be like I hope somebody

got fired for that blunder as I poke you know push my glasses up on my nose but like you are kind of you know you're explaining too much for the explanations to fall apart that quickly is my feeling yeah and because they that is they did try in the sense that like in some of the reshoots and the um you know another deleted scene in this movie is uh when she meets bett midler as the stepford while as the beth middler's stepford wife for the first time there's like this massive inspector gadget sequence were bad I can't even remember what's in the movie

and what is it but like where she turns into a vacuum she turns into a lawnmower she turns into a beer cooler it's completely bonkers so I think they did try to kind of pull back on that but it's so baked in from the beginning that these women what the Stuffer Wives is are robots

and that and the original ending or the original ending you know of the first cut of the movie is them you know, this big ball where Joanna, you know, decapitates another robot, Christopher Walken, and then basically she's leaving Stepford, but she never was a robot, but somehow found like a blonde wig or something. It's just as like if you, and the other people are still a robot, it's just if you like think about it for more than eight seconds, the whole thing just completely falls apart is the issue.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, it's very easy to just be like, it's the Stepford-Wise remake. Why are you thinking so hard about it? And it's just like, yeah, but like I have decided to spend some of my life watching sitting down and watching this movie. So I would. And not to like constantly be bringing things back to Paul Rudnick, but you think of something

like the Adams family where you have like kids doing absolute like torture violence to each other. And you never think about the internal logic because they're not going so hard on explaining to you how Wednesday could electrocute Pugsley and then still there. They're the Adams family. Like, we know how this works. Right, exactly. Yeah. You're not saying, like, the Adams' genetic line has been, you know, whatever, like, preened throughout all these years that they are predisposed to the macab or whatever. It's just like they're the Adams family. Deal with it. And I think a lot of this also just really gets frustrating. Like, you kind of have to throw your hands up at it with the twist ending that Christopher Walken is not the orchestrator of all. of this. It's Glenn Close, who is.

Right. Which, like, now is maybe more interesting because of, like, the whole idea of the trad wife now. Whereas in 2004, it just kind of felt like edge lordy in a way of wouldn't it be so

unexpected if it's actually a woman to be misogynist. Right. She wants to turn back, she's sort of like, I mean, not to bring this up, but like proto-maga vibes, right? Where she's just like, she wants to she literally wants to, you know, make America, quote unquote, great again, right? Like, make, make the, you know, the traditional American home what it used to be and all its perfection or whatever. And, you know, she is sort of exposed as somebody who was, I like that you brought up Alex Forrest,

because, like, it is kind of like reverse Alex Forrest. She was like, she was the one who was, you know, cheated on and it, you know, flipped her switch. And she ended up blaming herself for being too driven and too career-oriented or whatever. And it's so ridiculous. Yeah. I was going to say the person who's like off, who isn't mentioned in the movie, bizarrely, there's no jokes about her.

But she seems to be very much kind of hovering over this whole movie is Martha Stewart. Like in the 2000, yeah. If you think about like 2004, it was Martha Stewart, like, at the peak of her powers. And it feels like this whole, that's in the pitching of this movie or the, you know, The Martha Stewart, I'm sure, was mentioned at least 11 times.

When they were doing their little, like, book club thing, and she was walking up to this, like, you know, I decided to pick a book that would be relevant to all of us and whatever. She's so much ramping up and you're like, what's the punchline? What's the punchline? It ends up being this, like, book of, like, Christmas. This book that I don't know about all of you, but, like, my mom absolutely had, like, a coffee table book that was just there. And nobody ever opened it. And it was just sort of, like, absolutely just, like, dressing for the coffee table. But it was one of those, like, you know, Christmas, you know, whatever, Christmas gift ideas.

And, like, it was that to a T. But I thought they were going to ramp up to her being, like, Martha Stewart's, like, 100 greatest, you know, meal ideas or whatever. Because, like, that is absolutely the vibe. Before, this is Martha before she became a cool ex-con who hangs out with Steve Talk all the time. And post-thirds straps on Instagram. Right, exactly. Exactly, exactly.

The market 2.0. Yeah, exactly. The scene where they pull up, I do want to say, I think, you know, we're talking a lot and going to be talking a lot about, you know, what doesn't work in this movie. I think, first of all, Glenn Close is fucking great in this movie. I do.

I think that when she gets her honorary Oscar, I want to see this clip of her, you know, doing her big final monologue and getting electrocuted. And I think, you know, the book club scene and some of the early stuff in this movie, I think works out, works well until we get into the darkness and the logic of it. Yeah. Until we're like, ostensibly murdering people.

Like, I think the book club scene is hilarious. I think that like... I wrote down the quote where she says, let's celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ with yarn. Right. I wrote that down. Good line that she delivers perfectly. Yeah. I also think...

This movie has jokes. I also think if we're speaking about Glenn Close's real, a clip reel for, for her honorary Oscar, the chug-a-chug-chug-chug-washing machine aerobics scene is so funny. And she, like, you talk about, like, somebody who, it doesn't work if you don't completely commit to the bit. And she completely commits to the bit there.

This movie as a whole doesn't commit to a bit. And I think a lot of the actors, I mean, I think about, in some of the reading about the production issues, it's not even clear whether or not Christopher Walken knew he was playing a robot for most of shooting. Right. It was news to him when he eventually saw the movie, if he ever did. Right. And so so many of these actors literally didn't know,

am I playing a robot or a human being? But Glenn Close knew what she was doing. And so I think that she more than, I think she really is the person this movie who understands the assignment. 100%. Understands her character and is really comes out the least scathed because it's, she's as basic as the sounds. She's like, oh, I'm playing.

I know who I'm. on play. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, while we're on the subject of Glenn Close, um, perfect time to do our Glenn Close six timers quiz. This is our, um,

somewhat unbelievably, only our sixth Glenn Close film that we have discussed in the near 400 episodes of this had Oscar buzz. So really like on a percentage base, uh, we're kind of disrespecting Glenn. Um, although,

completely. Glenn ends up being in a lot of Oscar movies, even if she's not necessarily nominated too. So, like, that's, you know, we can defend ourselves there. But we go back to the early days of this podcast with Glenn. Our first ever Glenn Close movie that we did was Evening, which isn't so much a Glenn Close movie, but it is a movie where, wait, no, she's not the one who shows up at the end. It's Merrill who shows up at the very end of that.

Right. She is the mother of the bride. Yes. She's the repressive. Well, it's not good. Well, it's evening. There's a lot of problems in that movie. Are we in Stepford in evening also? Is that like Connecticut? That's an interesting question. I want to say that movie is like North Carolina. Oh, is it? It's somewhere where there is water. So all of these answers are possibly true. Now I'm going to look this up because I cannot have this being an unanswered question. It being Michael Cunningham, Cape Cod makes a ton of sense actually because he talks about like Wellfleet so much in the hour. I do think Glenn Close is also great in Stefford Wives because she herself was born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a cult.

So it's like, this is kind of the most perfect movie you could ever imagine. And also did it up with people, yes, which I guess is related to the cult. Newport, Rhode Island. So we were corrected in New England. So yes. Okay. Then we did La Divorce, the Merchant Ivory film La Diveres. That was part of our 2003.

miniseries, correct me if I'm wrong, Chris? Correct. We covered the House of the Spirits where all of our favorite white movie stars played South American. From the legendary House of Spirits. Glenn was my 100% talk about Glenn Close being the best part of a movie that did not

totally work. She was in our this was another miniseries film that we did, right? When we... No. Oh, this wasn't. This was a Julia Roberts movie that we didn't cover as part of our Entertainment Weekly series, but we did it around that time.

This is, of course, Mary Riley, followed by the omnibus film, not omnibus, but anthology film, things you can tell just by looking at her. And then now, finally, the Steffford Wives. So famously, Gary's, you'll know this. and for perhaps looky-lose who came here to follow their favorite independent film director to a new podcast. We've been sort of tinkering with the system of the six-timers quiz for a little bit. It got kind of stale for me and also maybe labor-intensive in compiling the six-timers quiz. We're trying to figure it out.

We're a work-in-progress 400 episodes into this podcast. So I thought for this. this particular version of the Six-Timer's Quiz. And because we have the both of you, we can make it a little bit competitive, which I do also like. So I am going, we're going to call this the Six-Timers movie poster quiz.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to describe a movie poster in like four or five facts. And we'll go, we'll take turns. And you can guess after these four or five facts, what movie poster of those movies, I am describing. Now, I'm also throwing in a few dummy options so that by the time we get to the sixth one, it's not process of elimination or anything like that. But the six times, the six movies that we're definitely going to be including are evening, the divorce, the House of the Spirits, Mary Riley, things you can tell just by looking at her and the Stepford wives. And then a couple mystery posters. A lot of floating head posters. It's going to be, yeah, don't look at it. Just, don't look at it. No, I'm not looking at it.

them. I just can recall by memory. All right. Are the dummy ones also Glenclose cinema? They're all, yes, they're all going to be at least Glenn Close movies. Okay. This is going to be very informal. I will allow the skirting of the rules and hint giving and whatnot. This is just a good, good fun time had by friends.

All right. Nicholas, you being our guest, I'm going to start off with you. Okay, so, and I'm doing this kind of on the fly. Looking at this poster I see a blonde Australian I see a summer release date I see Glenn Close with the and credit

I see a very expensive home Do I interrupt or No I'm going to give I'm going to give five prompts, and then I will ask you to guess. And I see a pink text. I think that would be the Stefford Wives. That is, in fact, the Stefford Wives.

I said Blonde Australian, thought I might throw you off there, but no, very good. All right, so, Nicholas. I only know that because I, in prep for this, wanting to watch all the bonus features, got probably my first. DVD in like eight years, which is the stuff it was. Fantastic. I love that Glenn gets the and here. All right, Chris. A competitive and.

A competitive and, yes, very true. Yeah. Chris, for you, how am I going to describe this? There is one floating head floating above a sort of silhouetted figure. There is a sort of scratchy quality to the filter on this,

where there's sort of the edges of the poster seem almost frayed. The title is in kind of a scrawl script. There are two names at the top of the poster, and there is a... is a woman with brown eyes. Mary Riley. Yes, this is Mary Rowley. Okay.

Okay. Nicholas, for you. There are ten names above the title. There is another large house. The release date just says this summer. The title font is just, sort of very beveled letters, a serif font kind of beveled letters. Maybe not beveled exactly, but a serif font. There is shallow water, I'm going to say, and two people are kissing.

I'm going to guess evening. Is evening, yes. All right. Well done. Ten names above the title, Jesus. Ten names above the title. All right, Chris. For you, there are five names above the title, but six cast members I'm counting on this poster. Let's see. What am I going to give you?

Glenn is on the poster. There is, no, I'm not going to tell you that. they're sort of in the background of this there's like an illustration as the main image and the background is like a sort of like red rising sun kind of like Japanese flag kind style rising sun somebody else

who is pictured on the poster is smoking a pipe and it's from Warner Brothers Oh, that throws me I'll still guess that it's House of the Spirits It is not House of the Spirits Okay Nicholas, do you want to steal?

It's a Can you repeat some of the clues? Sure, yes. Five names above the title One of the people But there are, I'm counting Oh, I'm actually counting seven different cast members Would that have made a difference, Chris? Probably not, right? I think I know what this is, but I want to...

Go for it, Chris. Is this Hook? It's not Hook, but that's a really good guess. I don't think Glenn is on the poster for Hook. Glenn is definitely pictured on the poster for this movie. There's kind of like a like... The main image, like I said, is sort of like an illustration of some of the characters with like a red sort of like rising sun behind them.

It's a Warner Brothers movie. Glenn has kind of like... Well, here's a good... hint. Glenn has Hillary hair a little bit. Is this the natural? It's not the natural. Glenn has Hillary hair.

Danny DeVito's on this poster wearing like a Panama hat. Danny DeVito and Glenn Close. Yeah. There's a woman with an exaggerated beehive hairdo. Oh, oh, it's Mars attacks. It is Mars attacks. This is Mars attacks. Mars Attacks for Glenn Close plays ostensibly Nancy Reagan in what could be considered like a warm-up for the Stepford-wise.

Uh-huh. Yep. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. That one I gave to Chris first.

So this is going to be for Nicholas first. Oh, sorry. There's a color theme on this poster that is blue, white, and red. There is a landmark, a very famous landmark on this post. poster, there is a blonde Australian on this poster. Two names at the top of the poster, but also like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 names lower on the poster, still ahead of the title. The release date says August of the year that it was released in, and yeah, that's it. I think this is La D'A D'Avorce.

It is La D'Evorce, yes, very. good. This was my other blonde Australian. I should have put La D'Irose first when I said blonde Australian, because she's the kind of, she's the tricky one. Naomi and Kate, of course, both. Very blonde on this poster.

Who does Glenn Close play in La D'Irace? She's the, like, cool, like, literary author, right? Yes, she's, yes, she's... Maybe it's, like, long... No, she has dark hair in the movie. Yeah, I think she has dark hair. But she's, like,

you know, sort of cosmopolitan and very literary type. All right. I believe it. Goes to Chris first. Five names above the title. A Big House. Sera font. Kind of a very heavily moody sort of filter on all of these faces.

These faces are kind of in shadow. Miramax is the studio on the poster. What do you think? This House of the Spirit. This is House of the Spirits. Yes. Okay. All right.

This one is for Nicholas. A Big House on the poster. What is it about Glenn Close in movies with Big Houses in the poster? It's something Pavlovian or something. Okay. Big House on the poster. Not a Japanese-style rising sun on the poster, but in fact the moon. is sort of the background of the image on the poster here.

Glenn Close is at the top of the poster just her. And this is definitely a beveled font. This is a sort of, she is the star on this poster. I can't see a release date. There is snow on this. the ground. And Glenn

has some real intense eye makeup in this. I'm going to say. I'm going to guess this is 101 dumb nations. This is in fact 101 dumbations. Yes, absolutely.

This is the type of quiz where I'll be happy and sad if I wouldn't. I'll be like, wow, this is this is the way my brain works. I can't remember my bank code. I can remember the 101 Dalmatians font. And that there's a house on the poster. Yeah.

Yeah, incredible. Incredible. Right. Okay, Chris, for you, five names above the title. And then interestingly enough, two names below the title, but still on the poster. A lot of white space, I will say. This is one of those posters. that, like, is very minimalist, a lot of white space.

Five faces, but only nine eyes are visible. And everybody has pretty much the same shade of, like, frosted, dusty pink lipstick. The title is rendered in all downcapped. Like, there are no capital letters in the title. would you like to guess? This is things you can tell just by looking at her. I love that she said there's a lot of white space on this poster.

There is. No kidding. White women on it. Also that. I would encourage you both to look at this poster, though, because the, the uniformity of the lipstick shade really took me out once I realized it. And it's, yes, you can only see Callista Flockhart's one eye in this for whatever reason. the the framing

the cropping takes that out but everybody else Was that movie ever released or did just like show up on Showtime? Didn't it? Wasn't that the whole thing that we talked about Chris on that episode

that it was a direct-to-showtime release? It's an Emmy nominee. Yes, but it was a festival movie that initially had awards buzzed. Kathy Baker and Valeria Galino not pictured on the poster but are below the title but named

which I think is interesting. Good for them. All right, congratulations to Chris and Nicholas, doing so well. I was so worried that this was going to devolve into just like either too easy or too hard, but I think we made it work. I'm proud of you guys. Wait, do we tie? Yes.

Everybody ties. Everybody wins. Okay, God. I can live with that. Yeah. Incredible. I'm now remembering. I think things you can tell just looking at her is.

somehow kind of, I went to NYU at film school and they have all the alumni posters and that poster is 1,000% has like prime placement in the building. That's incredible, first of all. Yeah, which is why it's like burned into my brain that I'm like, oh wow, I was like

staring at it for three years. But I would never I would never admit and certainly not on this podcast that I, let's just say hypothetically that I haven't seen any of these movies you listed besides Stepford-Wa. which one would you say I should prioritize watching?

Hmm, that's a good question. Mary Riley. Yeah, Mary Riley is a hoot, and Glenn is off the chain. She's incredible in that movie. That's another movie where she knows exactly the fucking movie that she's in, and no one else does. She's a mad at a Victorian brothel, and she is playing it to 12 out of 10. She has a gold tooth, and she sure does. She sure does.

Wow. All right. If I ever had... It's also just a fascinating failure. of a movie. If I ever had a giant mansion with one of those long corridors, I would put the things you can tell

just by looking at her poster on the wall and then cut out eye holes behind it so you could go in the crawl space behind and you and four of your friends could just sort of peer out. Or just cut out. Just the Calista one eye and go like that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even better.

I like that. Okay, fantastic. That's the other thing I was wondering about watching the Steffford Lives, which is they go to the men's society and there are oil paintings of all the Stefford-Wy families and I'm like, those paintings exist somewhere. Like they, I mean, they probably,

maybe they burned them, you know, in anger. But I'm like, I'm like, could I trust track down the like Faith Hill oil painting to hang in my house? Okay. Thank you for mentioning Faith Hill. This interlude will not take too terribly long, but I did want to talk about the phenomenon

of Faith Hill in this movie because, first of all, she gets a solo title card in the trailer, which I think is incredible. Wild for someone who has 45 seconds of screen time. Right. But Faith Hill was also somebody who, and I like, whatever, I'm not going to say the words industry plant. That is a term that Gen Z came up with to discredit women. But the effort to make Faith Hill happen in, you know, a sort of like holistic way was,

apparent in the late 90s and Oates, where it was just sort of like, she is Shania Twain, but blonder, and in this, like, very sort of, like, high-profile marriage, she was married to Tim McGrath, and she had, undeniably a handful of, like, very poppy hits. This kiss, Chris, you mentioned centrifugal motion, the hottest track to ever mention centrifugal motion. I remember the video for Breathe where it's just sort of like... Her in a bed in the desert. The space where her sort of like wind-blown blonde blonde hair ended and the sort of golden drapery that was also being blown around began.

Like you could not tell where one ended and the other began. I feel like if she was not the original like waiting all day for Sunday Night Lady, Like, she definitely, like, had a, I'm going to sing the opening theme to some sort of, like, American sports program thing going. She was just sort of pitched right to the mainstream, and obviously this movie was meant to, I imagine, sort of, like, launch her into the space of, like, we're going to try and make her into a movie star. And odd that, like, it's, you sometimes see this. We're just like, we're going to, like, we're going to, like, we're going to, like start with some training wheels. And like, she's only going to have to play a robot. So if she's not good, we can just be like, that's the job. You know, yes, she's robotic. Yes, she does, you know, she sort of, you know, is very stiff or whatever. Like, she's playing a robot. Like,

what's the problem? Um, but two things that I will always think of when I think about Faith Hill. one of which is one of the better sort of like reaction shots at an award show, historically, just in general. She was always reliable for like, she would give you exactly what you wanted as an award show producer with a reaction shot where she's just like Celine Dion's on stage. And she's like, yes, great. You know how like Taylor Swift does this too? where like every time they cut to Taylor Switch and award shows, she's just like big upping, whoever is on stage. The one Grammys where Luciano Pavarotti was supposed to perform Nassum Dorma

and was too sick to do it. And so they got Aretha Franklin to fill in at the last minute. And then Aretha, like, unbeknownst to anybody, like, could just like nail this like classical, you know, opera song or whatever. and I believe that's the one where Faith Hill is like jumps to her feet and whatever and is like wiping tears away from her eyes and it's a whole thing. And then there was also a moment, I think, I think this was her, where she lost some award and like did one of the fake like I'm so mad things where she's like what the fuck or whatever. And people thought she was being serious and she got like, she got shit on for that. The other thing I will mention hyperlocally is I mentioned I mentioned she was married to.

to Tim McGraw. While they were married, there was an incident at a country music concert in Buffalo where Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney got into a scuffle with the cops because Kenny Chesney got aboard a police horse and rode it off. And the police, in the ensuing scuffle, Tim McGrath, I believe, punched a cop and started to, like, choke him out. So they were, They had to, like, come back to Buffalo to, like, answer the charges and whatever and just like, and so I remember it was like, because Buffalo can be a very local and parochial town, it was all over the news that, like, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are in town for their court proceeding. And it was just like the paparazzi was everywhere. And it was the two of them. And that's all I remember for, like, a couple of weeks was just Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, you know, showing up for a court date or whatever.

I don't remember how that all turned out. And Kenny Chesney just got off Scott Free after stealing that horse? Well, he was too busy in that, like, faky, fake marriage to Renee Zellweger that got annulled for... I was going to say, this is one of the least eccentric Kenny Chesney stories. Wasn't the reason for the... Because it got annulled. They did not get divorced. It got annulled for, like, what's the divorce term where it's the euphemism for gay,

where it's, like, a failure to, like... Oh, fraud. Yes, thank you. Yes. It was, it was annulled for fraud. And everybody was like, fraud, eh, Kenny? Because that was the rumor forever that Kenny Chesney was gay. And that was during, like, Renee's beard era where they also thought that she was bearding for...

Was it Bradley Cooper? Yes. Okay. Yes. One of our best, one of our greatest beards, we salute her on this. We know that beers, honestly. And get Kenny Chesney on the traders. Yes.

These thoughts and opinions are the thoughts and opinions of Chris Fyle and me and and me alone. We are not implicating our guest in any of this. But anyway, that's my... I'll never be able to go back to the CMAs again. It's over for me. I'll never be able to show my face. Taylor Sheridan has canceled your guest appearance on

1745 or whatever the new series he's doing, just like ever further back in time. But anyway, that's my material on Faith Hill in this movie. More material than the movie gave her. Yeah. She's playing the version of the woman in the original who, like, has the breakdown in the parking lot or whatever in the car.

Yes. And Roger Bart is playing, crucially, the Tina Louise stand-in. The new one, which I also love. Well, Faith Hill's character in the original is named Carol Sunderson. And the whole, like, inciting incident in the original, in the remake, it's that she has, like, again, like, the ho-down seizure. But in the original, she just kind of, like, gets into a fender-bender in a grocery store. And everybody, like, loses their shit.

Yes. But the wildest, in the remake, they changed your name to Sarah Sunderson, which is insanely similar to Sarah Sanderson, the Hocus Pocus, Sarah Jessica Parker's sister. Oh, I didn't even think about that. That and there's a wind beneath my wings joke. There totally is. There absolutely is. Because you know about the last minute casting change with this movie, right?

Because it was supposed to be John and Joan Cusack playing the Broderick and Bet Midler roles. Yeah, and then their dad got sick. And so then at the last minute, I'm like, oh, that's why there's some of these bet midlerisms that are still kind of in the script because nobody she showed up at the last minute. Well, and it's interesting because, like, it does turn into, and this is probably a result of, like, reshoots and rewrites and whatever. It's very much a, like, Bet Midler 90s character. Like, she's more or less playing her first Wives Club character in terms of, like, like, one-liners and whatnot. Well, also... You kind of know what the punchlines are going to be before they're completely out of her mouth.

Yes. I think the whole thing where, like, the house is a disaster feels like plausibly a carryover from the like Joan Cusack version of the character. Because I can imagine Joan Cusack being sort of more unhinged in that way. Whereas like, it doesn't really fit in with the whole like, take my husband please version of the Bobby Markowitz character. Like, it doesn't really, they sort of explain it off where she's just like, this is my writing process. I'm told that I have a chaotic, you know, mind. or whatever. Also, we know it's 2000s because there's an anthrax stroke. Yes. Yes. Yep. Are you making anthrax?

What else did I jot down as like very 2004 coded? Oh, a Hummer as a vice signal for a vehicular vice signal where we find out that Christopher Walken's character says, oh, well, when Faith Hill breaks down,

and says, I'll take her to my Hummer. And everybody who was bad in 2004 had a Hummer. Oh. We have to talk about that insane scene where they are worried their gay friend is dead because they find a trash bag full of like gay memorabilia. Oh my God. Okay.

That's the like, God love Paul Rudnick, but there is a really sort of like old fashioned, like what are the gay signifiers? And it's like, he uses her product. And he has a t-shirt with Vigo Mortensen's face. face on it, which I do think is very funny. The insane thing about that seed is that, yeah, they go through his trash and it's they find

like Versace clothes, a playbilt a hairspray newly opened on Broadway. And probably the only reason Mark Schaman is not doing the scores. Yes, he was working on airspraying. Yeah, he absolutely got this offer. And then a framed photo of Orlando Bloom and a T-shirt with

Vigo Mortensen's face on it. That on its face is enough to be disturbed. But the more disturbing thing is that that was a additional reshoot. Like, they literally decided. The movie came out in June. They shot that scene in April. They were like, let's all get back together. Because we need to, like, you know, pump up the comedy and, you know, pull out of Vigo Mortensen t-shirt.

But, yeah, that seat is chilling. It's absolutely chilling. The other thing I wrote down about Bet Midler's character, besides that she's an air America host somewhere in this movie, is... Deep Purple T-shirt. Yes. Um, she's introduced at this sort of like, um, you know, sort of like county fair-esque, whatever they call it, you know, um, the carnival. And- Who's having a ho-down in Connecticut? Oh, the ho-down thing is interesting because like, country music as an aught signifier of norm, normie culture is an interesting word. But so we see her and she's like working her way through the crowd. You hear her before you see her. And she's just like, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Excuse me. like that kind of thing.

And all it made me think of was my favorite scene from difficult people with Andrea Martin and Jackie Hoffman in the older Jewish lady excuse me off where you're just like

excuse me excuse me, excuse me? I love it so much. So, Ben Middler... No, say what you're going to say, Nicholas. I was going to say, it is wild

that we have a full ho-down scene and Faith Prince has nothing to do. She has a seizure, but she doesn't get to sing that you don't get to sing. Faith Hill and not Faith Prince

once again, but yes. I'm so glad I say Faith Prince again? Wow. I really... I think those will ho-down with Faith Prince. We're just going to turn this into my Zoom intervention that I'm really disturbing.

Wow. This is how we know that you've been... My microchip in my brain. This is how we'll know if you've been replaced by a step for it is if you start saying Faith Hill instead of Faith Prince, then we'll know. It's true. It's true.

Although you never met me before. I may have maybe was saying... I may have been singing Faith Hill songs all, you know, a week before I got here, for my brain transplant slash, robot murder. Right. Yeah. But so the Bet Midler of it all, not to be like to stereotype somebody by their social media

presence or whatever, or like the way that she's presented in interviews throughout her career. I imagine Bet Midler is the source of quite a bit of the onset strife from this movie, given her history of not getting along with co-stars, like Shelley Long, like James Khan. Not that like Shelly Long and James Con are like historically, you know, the easiest people to get along with either. But this is sort of many movies where Bet Midler is reported to have not been the easiest person to get along with. And we've talked about the Frank Oz of it all. And like Frank Oz, I have dubbed him like the unluckiest man in Hollywood where like he does keep ending up in these situations that like there is the saying that like if you run

into an asshole once a day, once in a day, it's the assholes problem. If you keep running into assholes all day, maybe you're the asshole. I don't think actually that that necessarily applies to Frank Oz. Because like, if you end up in a movie where you have to direct Marlon Brando, I'm going to say that you are probably not the problem. If you are in a movie where it's a troubled production and your stars are Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfus, as was the case with What About Bob? I'm going to believe that you are probably not the problem. And if you are, If you are in a production where Bet Midler gets foisted upon you at the last minute and you have to deal with, like, rewrites to accommodate her, I'm going to assume that maybe you are not the problem. I wrote down a few of his quotes.

The one about Bet, I thought, was just very funny as, like, a collection of words, which he said, bet has been under a lot of stress lately. He's sort of, like, saying this, no, this was during, I guess shortly during production. Bet has been under a lot of stress lately. She not only has been filming a very large production, but she's had to finish her record, Bet Midler sings Rosemary Clooney. She's also been rehearsing for her tour.

She made the mistake of bringing her stress on the set. I do believe it. I also like the fact that, like, recording an album of Rosemary Clooney covers is what sent her stress-wise over the edge. I mean, I feel stressed, just hearing that. Yes. But, like, Frank Oz has, like, talked about,

like repeatedly and being like, he's said, I fucked up. He's like, you know, he's kind of taken responsibility for a lot of the problems. A lot of it was also just him being like, yeah, there were clashes on the set. He's like, that's how, you know, people work creatively. And he's trying to, he at times tries to frame it as just like, yeah, Christopher Walken and I had a fight. But like, that's what happens on a set. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff in the rumor mill about Christopher, walk-in also notoriously easy to work with.

And has never been on hand for a suspicious death or anything like that. I couldn't find much detail on the tensions with Kidman so much, but I think it's fairly easy to chalk it up to her career at that moment where she just really does not stop working. So things like reshoots and, you know, a delayed production. would cause issues with other movies. Like, they had to push back the interpreter because of this movie. So you could see how that, it could just come down to that. Well, and it also sounded like it was like the studio, now that this is a Nicole Kidman movie,

the studio had certain expectations about what this movie was going to be. And so her presence in that cast, you know, just sort of like caused a lot of tumult, you know, in terms of how they were going to have to change the movie, is my assumption and, you know, interpretation of things. But, Nicholas, you said you have a whole Frank Oz defense prepared, and I cannot wait to hear it. Well, that, too. I do want to say, though, as someone who's done, like, a deep dive

into the making of this movie, I do think it's just, and as a millennial filmmaker, I find this, you know, fascinating, because these are scenarios that I don't think I'll ever be faced with in terms of, you say that now. To us in five, ten years. I don't know if it exists as much in terms of a three-month shoot turning into a seven-month shoot. Yeah. And also having $100 million to mess around with. To fix it.

Because, yeah, I mean, I kept thinking, reading about the... Have either of you read Barry Sonnenfeld's two books? No, but I've heard there's a lot of cheesy dish. Yeah. Well, it's just a lot of what this movie is, which is like, again, an enormous $100 million, endless stars, you know, thing. And we start shooting without a finished script, which is just so... scary to me even that idea. Yeah. And I mean, Nicole Kimman

talks about basically the reason she did this movie was because, you know, she had been doing all these serious movies and Scott Ruddin was like, oh, this would be like summer camp. And the quote that her and Paul Rudnick have in this interview they do is that then it turned into fall camp because it just went on so long.

And it's just this insane thing to me that I can't even wrap my mind around of spending so much money and they're just not being a finished script. And just the void that that creates. And, you know, film sets like, you know, Washington and other places, you know, when there's no leadership or no clarity of a script, even let's just say, chaos is just going to show up. Like, there's just no way for chaos to not show up.

And also, every time I see in these Frank Oz quotes talking about, like, the studio wanted this and the studio wanted that, it is important to note that, like, the studio in many ways is also, like, Scott Rudin. The studio is also, like, the producer. and like that, like, know that he is talking. He is talking about Scott Rudin in many of these ways. So like multiply the stress and, you know, tenor of all of these things by a billion. Because I imagine, you know, those emails and those, you know, telephone calls and whatnot were not, not phrased so delicately. Yeah.

Yeah. I wanted to say, though, about Frank Oz. First of all, it's, I have to give us a disclaimer. it is impossible for me to hear about any on-set troubles of any kind and not identify with the director. Like, I, like, when the feud, Betty and Joan show was out and all the gay guys were like, are you a Betty or a Joan? I was like, I'm a Robert Allridge.

I'm an director. I'm just trying to get my shots and get through the day. And it's like, it's, you know, and I think Frank Oz more than anyone else in this movie has kind of had to wear its disastrous. You know, he never, he's made documentaries and done, you know, directed theater since then and made death at a funeral. But I just think Frank Oz is someone who is so underappreciated.

Like, and some of it, I think is his own modesty in interviews. Like, he's, I agree with you. I don't think that he's the problem person. I think that he is someone who, firstly, I don't know anyone alive who has contributed to, you're more to pop culture than Frank Oz. Like, the more that you read about, like, where did the Muppets come from? Where did Sesame Street come from? You know, it's clear that he co-created or created all, you know, Miss Piggy, Grover,

Bert and Ernie, Fawzzie, and Yoda. And, you know, I go to my niece and nephews and they still have, you know, characters, figurines that have Frank Oz's voice or someone impersonating his voice. And he also has directed, like, 10 very good, funny. movies. And I don't know. I was going to say, if somebody doesn't mention a house sitter, you know I'm going to. So yes, I love that movie. House sitter, Dirty Ron Scoundrels. Like, Little Shop, come on. Yeah, Little Shop, which was also a hugely, the first movie I ever technically made was when I was nine and we had to do like, who even knows what the school

assignment was. But I interpreted it as I have to remake scenes from Little Shop of Horrors, playing all the characters in my kitchen and living room. And the footage exists. And it's like, I don't know. I just think that he like, you know, there was also, you mentioned, you know, the, what about Bob? There's also the famous, he came on to Mermaids and then left Mermaids. Right. We talked about this a little bit when we did our Mermaids episode, right? Yeah. Footnote to that, the director of Mermaids ended up being Richard Benjamin, who is still alive and is still married to Paul Apprentice. Yes. And they are both 88 years young.

And that's my little loop around back to the original. separate wives, because I did immediately look up Paula Prentice because I'm like, she's so fucking good in this movie. And, yeah, still married to Richard Benjamin. But the fact that, like, for all that I even just casually listed about Frank Goss, that he's never gotten any kind of a lifetime anything. I know. Like, it's just like...

Where's his honorary Oscar? I ask you. Yeah. I mean, he's just... And again, I think it's some of these controversies that we're talking about, you know, souring how some people remember some of the films. And I think it's a little bit, if I can, you know, maybe I'm telling on myself here. I do think it's also a little bit of comedy bias that like, you know, so many of his best movies are capital C comedies.

But I don't know. I think Frank Oz is, you know, a wildly talented person, as is everyone involved in this movie. Yeah. And every time I read about the production of this movie, I can only feel sorry for him because I cannot wrap my mind around. I mean, there's even a, I don't know this is true or not, but there's a thing that they talk about one of the reasons they had to shut that production went on. so long as they had to shut down for a while because he was just so, you know, sick with the whole thing. And it's just like he does a director's commentary for the movie that he's clearly recorded, like, right when it's being released. So he's still kind of, you know, he's not as candid as he's become years later.

But, yeah, it's, it's tough, man. I mean, I can't even, I think that, you know, to make this movie, it just turned into this massive, you know, a lot of kind of directing a film at its worst. in my mind, which is if it, when things go wrong, you just end up, as the director, you can just end up becoming kind of a traffic director for just a lot of massive personalities. Yeah. Which is, I think this movie is just an example of that, which is tough. I may end up cutting this out, but I'm just going to say it for the joke here. He directed two murderers in this movie because Matthew Broderick and Christopher Walken are both in this movie.

So really, like, degree of difficulty points are through the roof. God damn it, Joe. You know, what I suggested this movie. movie I did also have in my mind. I was like, you know, Nick, you can't just like go on and blow your entire life up in terms of future movies or future products. I'll cut that. So, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, do what you want. But because I was like, because this is a movie where I'm like, because everybody in this movie is like very talented or whatever. But, um, uh, we will not screw up your future

Bet Midler comeback vehicle comedy where you direct her to her long overdue Oscar. Yeah. Yeah. Like, everybody is incredibly. incredibly talented, but like I also don't feel like the blame necessarily rests on Frank Oz. It feels like it rests on the producer level of this movie because obviously there's a cascade of events that ultimately kind of work against this movie, you know, losing both of the Cusacks, not having a completed script before filming. But it just kind of also feels like a movie where you're just a seven. a bunch of famous people, and the only one who is right for their role really is Glenn Close. Like, Bet Midler is doing a Bet Midler thing, so it makes it kind of right. But, like, the whole arc of this character being, like, a hippie who then has to be a believable

Stepford wife, like... Yeah. Like, Bet Midler's Stepford wife, and even Nicole Kidman's Stepford wife, who's not even a real stepford wife. Those are not made in the same factory. And also, the Nicole Kidman's character, the Nicole Kidman character, sorry, I'm sounding like grandmother at this point, the Nicole Kidman's, what a great actress Nicole Kidman's is. Anyway, has such a convoluted arc to get to where she's at in the third act, where like she starts off as this, you know, reality TV obsessed CEO, totally soulless, you know,

she gets shot by the guy and she's like, and we'll film the reunion special or whatever, and it'll be a rating hit. So she's just like this sort of like TV-pilled, you know, executive psychopath, who then, like, has to go into the suburbs to calm down and then like takes it upon herself to try. try to do the like Susie Homemaker thing and is really bad at it. There's like 10 minutes of this movie where she's like attempting to, by her own volition, do, you know, sort of like be like the other Stepford women, then decides that she doesn't want to do that,

then sees that she's horrified by, you know, the Bet Midler character. And like not to continually compare this to the 75 version, but like it's just so much cleaner there. It's just so much of a cleaner arc where it's just like, yeah, it's a normal lady, and a normal lady is going to be really twigged out by what's going on here. And in the 04 version, they sort of run her character through so many odd little, like, gender loops where it's just like we have to make so many comments on, you know, the state of women or, you know, or whatever. It's a little bit like, I mean, somebody mentioned Barbie here. I think it was Unichrist, right?

Yeah. I'm like, it's a little bit like the America Ferreira thing in Barbie, where it's just like, and it, like, that worked for a lot of people. But I think for a lot of other people, they're like, we don't, it's, it's a hat on a hat a little bit. You know what I mean? It's, it's a little, we got it. We understand it. We don't necessarily need to have it, like, you know, repeated. And there was even more stuff originally.

Yeah. My God. Adding to that, because there was a whole giant subplot about Matthew Broderick having an affair. and that was part of her breakdown too that got the chop. Well, and there seems to be like an effort made in this movie to like, now we have to make sure that Matthew Broderick's character gets to be the good guy. And so we have that line towards the end where Nicole Kidman's like, that's a man or whatever. It's just like, you know, this is, you know, this is, we don't hate men. This is not an anti-men movie.

This is an anti, you know, Glenn Close is the bad guy. Like, don't worry about it, you know? Right. Which feels a little, even for 2004, it feels a little, like, overly backtracking a little bit. Like, the original just allowed this, like, group of suburban men to be the bad guys, to be the coven for talking about Ira 11, you know. I think it gets tripped up on, because you were saying, Joe, about, like, you know, why couldn't they, why did they make the choice for comedy? Why didn't they just make the thriller? I think in looking back at the reviews of the original also,

so much of it is the, of the impact of the original was the surprise that they're all robots. Like, it's, and in this movie, it's... The notion of a Stepford wife has become shorthand by this point, so you can't really do the surprise. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't have the impact that it does. But, I mean, it is incredible that we've gone this long talking about this movie and only kind of casually mention Matthew Broderick or his character because he's... He's the second-filled star of the movie, but his stuff is just so boring in this movie. They give him nothing interesting to do.

And the idea of him and Nicole Kidman being a couple is crazy. Well, I mean, his... Yes, Nicole Kidman is like two levels of fame sort of like ahead of that. It's not even that for me. It's just the... Like, it just doesn't make... They just don't make sense. Temperamentally, no, you're not wrong.

But it also just like he does not have an... independent character. Like, I guess the whole thing is, like, he's existed in her shadow or whatever, where they're like, what does he do for a living? It's like, oh, he, like, also worked at the network or whatever. And it's just like, oh, okay. Like, but that doesn't, you know, that doesn't really help me understand, you know, who he is or, you know, why he's, why he's so chafing under her thumb.

It all goes back to the why of like, well, who is he a murderer? Right. all goes back to like this essential problem that I'm sure was a problem for him on set, which is like, so I'm playing a guy who decides over the course of a movie to murder his wife. Do I hate my wife or do I not hate my wife? Right. And it's like, you're kind of murder her kind of number. Right.

It's just, it's impossible to play. And then he gets to be like, he gets to do the hero shit. Well, Nicole is like honey trapping Christopher Walken out back or whatever. like Broderick's character is the one who like does the saving of the day and it's like all right that's not satisfying no you have you have to so Chris you watched as I mentioned the original or the first cut of the movie whatever they called it did get leaked Joe you haven't watched the scene no you have to describe Chris because for anyone who's listening because it's you have to describe the spa scene and what happens in this scene okay so in the spa scene

This is the, like, not the gym. Like I was saying earlier, some of the, some of the, like, change it, the original stuff,

it just makes it all more confusing. Nicole Kidman goes to the spa. This, I guess, would have been replaced in reshoots by, you know, she goes to the, like,

Stepford Man Lodge and, like, has the whole thing, has the joke about how AOL is slow. Not a bad joke. Not a bad joke. Yeah, not a bad joke,

but, very dated. Explain that to a Gen Zbers. No, right, right. What it originally is, if she goes to a spa where it's like Glenn Close doing, like, explaining treatments, and you think it's going to be like, getting Botox.

Get Botox, basically. And, like, she sees on the news that she has been replaced by her secretary at her old job and the secretary is who her husband was having an affair with and this basically like is the impetus for her to submit to yes I will do whatever Stepford Spa treatment thing I know

you're going to turn me into a robot and she goes in like a tank where she's like laying down and I guess has a TV or something in front of her that's basically hypnotizing her and

it's like Rosie O'Donnell gets black or white videoed into looking, I guess, with long hair and hot, and then they do it to Hillary Clinton. Condoleezza. I love black or white videoed as a verb. That's so perfect. I know exactly what you're talking about just with that word choice. Very good.

Yes. It's also Rosie during her brief asymmetrical haircut period. Oh, no. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, poor Rosie. And then, like, Christopher Walken comes on in his. like having her repeat phrases.

So it's like, it kind of makes sense that it's like, it's like, again, sleeper. She gets Manchurian candidated into being a Stepford robot, but they're also still putting like chips in their brains and can also become Inspector Gadget. So it still just makes no sense, but it also kind of explains the process more. And it's, yeah. It's them trying to explain how they like scanned her body to make. make the robot, I guess.

But it's literally her being hypnotized by videos of Rosie, Hillary, and Condoleezza morphing into like morphem versions of themselves. It is, and there's a merry hard cameo also, obviously. Well, and also, again, the, like, the straining to cover all bases in that even, where it's just like, it's not just Hillary, it's also Condoleezza. Like, these are two, you know, fierce women, and we need to make sure that everybody's covered and it's like, all right. Well, because Faith Hill's character,

she was a, like, was she a judge or was she a like senator or something? No, she was a, um, I want to say she, like, owned an airline, or is that I'm thinking of Jennifer Lopez and her most recent media. Something. Yes. There is an airline executive also.

Yes. Nicole Kippman pulls up her, like, pulls her up on AOL. Um, and like, they gave faith Hill Hillary Hair to her previous life. Wow. Yeah, they show that

shot in the actual movie. There's the shot of her. When Nicole sort of discovers who this woman was, they show her with Hillary hair. Yeah, that is definitely true. Yeah, I don't think that on this podcast, we three gay guys are going to be able to fix this movie that was, you know, kind of ruined by three gay

guys also. I don't know that we're going to be able to sort out the convoluted gender politics. Gender politics of it? Just hair styles. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the movie is just a hair journey that's it.

It's just different wigs that people wear. Probably not. Indicate whether or not their robots. I do love a wig as an indicator, though. Like, that is historically throughout movies. I do, I do appreciate that.

We also made it this far into this recording and not brought up the producers. Oh, yeah, which is probably... That is the reason Matthew Broderick and Roger Bart are in this movie. Yes. Right. I know Cole Kinnon was supposed to play Oola in the movie of the producers, but she dropped out.

That makes a lot of sense. That makes both that she would be cast in it and then she would drop out of it. It reminds me of that era of Broadway, which like, I suppose it still happens to a degree, but not in the same way. where like if you really popped in a very successful Broadway production, you would get like one token. And that one token would get you like one crossover role. And if that worked, you know, you got to stick around. That is the thing about this movie is that it's kind of everybody's coming. Like this is, was this, I think did birth come out before this?

Or it was the same year? Before birth. But like by a matter of months, right? like, So this is her like Best Actress Oscar follow-up and it's Matthew Broderick's

post-producers follow-up and so it's like it's all these people and it's why you understand you know someone, you know, being like and it's,

I think it's this thing that happens where like, you know, once one person like that comes onto a project, it just becomes a thing of like they ask you like do you want to do the Stefford Wives.

It's, you know, Nicole Kidman, it's this director, it's all these, you know, uh, five-star people and, you know, you just say yes, you don't think, like, oh, wait, there's no script. Right, right.

So you understand how it becomes this cascading thing of all these stars saying yes, because who wouldn't say yes to all these people in this moment? I mean, I guess where I would leave this movie at is it doesn't necessarily feel like any of the actress's fault either, because I think that they are all largely miscast. Bet Midler gets away with it because, like, she has such a clear, defined like schick like writing jokes for bet midler like there is a meter

there is a patter to it like she can do that anywhere but then when you think about that actual character that makes no sense that she would play that character yeah as like hippie lady yeah I mean the film as a whole I guess I'll just like

I think you know this for all the things we talked about that don't work in this film and that everyone involved would concede doesn't work. I mean, I've watched this film dozens of times. So there's clearly, I think it does go in that category. There is something compelling about it. And, you know, just the fact that it opens with Mike White trying to shoot Nicole Kidman. I mean, because Carrie Preston left him for a proto Jason

Mamoa. Like, before we even knew what Jason Mamoa was, they invented him. On Temptation Island. Yeah. I mean, that has value. That does. a place is considered an iconic queer movie just for that scene. Yeah. So I do think, you know, that for all the things that went wrong, they're just as a celebration and getting to have a movie on the scale with that sensibility that someone behind the scenes would even think I want to have a scene just like that first one,

or, you know, a crazy hoe-down seizure or whatever. Like, there is a lot in this movie that still brings me back to it. And that I, that clearly seems to be undeniable. if I'm still showing up to watch it. I will say, I really hated the CGI robot dog. Every time we had to look at it, I was like, I don't like this. I don't like, just give us like a rudimentary robot dog or nothing. It does not add.

You know who the robot has more screen time than in this movie? They're kids. They're kids. 100%. I could not tell you their kid's names. I could not sketch their faces. They dispose of... Do they have a conversation with the children at any point?

Like, do... No. Is their dialogue exchange? That's kind of consistent with the original, too. The kids are in the original a little bit more, but, like, not much. And you know who the kid is in the movie The Daughter? No. It's Mary Stewart Masterson, who's the daughter of the guy,

and the guy who plays Walter, the father is her husband, her father in real life, and that's his daughter. Yeah? Wow. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Things you learn getting up... use Stepford Wives, Stevie-Dade. One thing I also

liked was, or not necessarily liked, but like, I sort of, I got the idea, which was the introduction of the notion of a remote control, right? This, you know, this remote control that you can, you know,

as you would do with your, like, you know, smart TV or whatever. You, you know, you can alter your wife's actions and personality, whatever. They did make it, shaped like a sex toy of some vintage or whatever, which I was like, to what end are we like, it's such an unfocused sort of just like, I don't know, just like make it look like some sort of like high tech like, you know, a jade egg, but was like, you know, evolved into a remote control

or whatever. So I did note that. I love when the group of Stepford wives introduced themselves to Matthew Broderick, and they're also complimentary of him. And the one just goes, I love you in khakis. I did enjoy that line. I also liked the line. I mean, Rudnick has some good ones in here. Rudnick has some bingers. Great ones. Where when Broderick is like, just like change some things about yourself to fit in. He says, no more wearing black. Only high-powered neurotic, castrating Manhattan career bitches wear black. Is that what you want to be? And she just goes, ever since I was a little girl. And I'm just like, come on. That's a line. That joke is a 10. That's a bar. Less so was when they find Roger Bart's

boxes of gay paraphernalia, meaning nice shirts. Nicole goes, maybe he's donating. and Betmanler goes, to what, the gay homeless? Now listen, I'm not going to be humorless about this kind of thing, but like there are gay homeless. Like, that joke seems to be predicated on the idea that like, there wouldn't be such a thing as gay homeless. Like, can we maybe like just have a second thought about these things? I do feel like an all gay remake of this would work.

Like, set it in like, You know what I mean? Just like the whole notion is like, you know, a sim-I don't want to say assimilationist because I hate that language, but like whatever. Just like more sort of like normie-leaning partners trying to stepford eyes their swishier partners or something. I think there's like, I don't know. I think there's me turning them into circuit party gaze or. Also, like that's the other thing. It's like it wouldn't necessarily because-

The Cepardity Gays are the ones that are the believable murderer. So I feel like it's their circuit party gays that are murdering their normie spouses. You would, yes, you wouldn't do it like, right, you wouldn't do it the same way. You couldn't, like, you wouldn't want to turn them into the whole, like, you know, hippie or housewife dichotomy. It's, are they, you know, do they, have they read a book?

Or are they doing K at the, you know, whatever, Pines Party or whatever. Not to say that you can't do both, but like, you know what I mean. I'm going to get in trouble. Read a book and take A at the same time. You can do both. Yeah, you can do both.

The world has changed. You can have it all. You can have it all. Roger Bart does say on one of the DVD behind the scenes that they're in an early, and I don't think he's kidding. He says that in an earlier draft on the script, there was a scene where you saw his characters

like robotic, enormous dick that the husband gave him. So there's some, yeah, it's very chilling. some of that exists. Yeah. The applications. Just the complications of that. Oh, God. All right, I'll start writing the Stefford Gays.

All right, thank you. Thank you, Nicholas. That's all I ask. You convince me. I'm ready to delve into IMDB game if you guys are. Joe, would you like to explain the IMDB game to our listeners? I would love to. All right.

So every week we under episodes with the IMD game where we challenge each other and our guests, with an actor or actress and try and guess the top four titles that the IMD says they are most known for. If any of those titles are, television shows, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits. We will mention that up front. After the guesser guesses wrong twice, they will get the remaining titles release years as a clue. And if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. That's the IMD.

Terrific, yes. Nicholas, you are our guests, so you get to say how this is going to go. do you want to give first or guess first, and what direction do you want to go in? Who do you want to quiz and who do you want to quiz you? Oh, I'll give first and I'll quiz Joe, and then I'll have Chris quiz me. Yes. Is that how works? Okay.

Yes. I do need to take an aside, and I hope that you will take this in good humor. But I also, this doing this soon with you has been incredible because I, can now see the two of you and discern which is which, which I know is something. Oh, it's always important. And because we are very resistant to doing video anything for this podcast, yes. It is important because I will listen to a podcast for years. And I'd be like, I can tell who, like, I can tell that they are different voices,

but I don't always know whose voice belongs to who. So, yes. Listen, I, I'm so, you two, it is funny when you're defending being two separate people, because I'm like, I'm just happy these guys found. each other because you two are conjoined twins. Sometimes you two will have takes and I'm like, these are

the only two people in America who have this take. And I'm so glad they found each other about certain things. And I'm like, but I know one of you one of you is Ohio, one is Buffalo and I know one of you sometimes tries to bring up football. Which one is that? That's me.

Right. That's me. Those are the two things. But I do feel now after doing this that I have a clear sense of who is who. All right. Now, if we could just give everybody that experience, everybody would be able to tell us apart. This does break my theory that people who

have told us that are all heterosexual. That is your theory for everything, though, that displeases you, which is just like heterosexuality strikes again. But I love it. It's just a cascade of voices melting together.

It makes me happy. All right. Excellent. I love it. All right. So you are Quizzing me, I think you said, right? Yes. Okay. So I looked at that spreadsheet, which is incredible. It's got to be what, close to 800, 700 names at this point that you've done?

Yes. In total, yes. Yeah, crazy. Yes. And yet, you know, this movie, Stefford-wise, which we talked about, was a reunion for the director, Frank Oz, the producer, Scott Rood, and the writer Paul Rudnick. after their last movie, my childhood favorite In-N-Out, which starred Kevin Klein,

who is somehow not anywhere amongst those 700 names. That's crazy. Okay. Yeah. Wow. All right. Kevin Klein.

I'm going to guess that in-and-out is one of them. Nope. Nicholas, you're doing the thing. You're doing the thing. Okay. All right. I'm going to guess a Fish called Wanda

his Oscar-winning film. Fish called Wanda is there. Okay. All right. We're back on track. a little bit. Okay. Kevin Klein lead roles versus Kevin Klein

movies that lots of people have seen. The big chill. No. No! Okay. All right. So now you get your year. This is going to be the game's going to end forever. All right. So the years of the other of the three remaining movies are 1993,

1995, and 1999. I'm, I don't know why I don't always think about this movie right away. 1993 is Dave. Yes, it is. 1995, you said? Yep. And it's not, no, in and out it's 97.

1995, Kevin Klein is French Kiss? Yes, very good. And then what was the third year? 99. 99, which is too early for Emperor's Club, and life is a house.

Um What is Kevin Klein getting up to in that famous movie year of 1999? Well? Okay. Is this something that like our listeners are going to be yelling at me? Like yelling at their,

at their phones being like, how is he not getting this? I think it's something that you're going to be yelling. At myself? Yeah. That it's on his known for it. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. He's not happy that it's on his known for I'm sure It's number one on his known for Really? It's the first movie on his known for So is he like Down the Depth Charter

Or is this like a movie that he starred in That just did not work out for him You could say it did not work out for anyone involved Okay He's built above the title with He's built second to Someone else Who is very very famous

Who's very, very famous. He also isn't... Oh, I know what this is. Well, I'll hold back. I know what this is. This is the Wild Wild West. Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And which I have another movie filmed without a script. This movie also, I've never seen this movie, but he's credited as Artemis, Gordon, and President Grant? Yes. He cameos later in the movie as when Ulysses S. Grant shows up in... I definitely have... seen Wild Wild West, and I remember virtually nothing about it, beside the fact that Kenneth Branagh boards a spider, steampunky spider contraption. And my belief that the title song, Wild Wild Wild West, is the best of that era of Will Smith sort of quasi-novelty song hits he had between men

in black and getting jiggy with it. I mean, I haven't, I've never seen this movie, but I, again, read it's covered in Barry Sonnetfeld's book as another kind of nightmare fuel for filmmakers to read about. Yeah, yeah. Just to really torture yourself. Yeah, well, that was the John Peters of it all, right? Because that's the story that Kenneth always tells, which is that he tried to make Superman for John Peters.

And John Peters's big idea was he, or I think it was Superman, right? He wanted to have a giant spider monster. And finally, when Kevin Smith saw Wild Wild West, he's like, Peters finally got his giant spider monster. Shout out to Flaming Saddles for keeping the song Wild Wild West alive in our bar-top dancing hearts. I'm just going to be controversial here and say, get jiggy with it. Great song. I just can't.

I ultimately can't. I can't get jiggy with it. Ultimately, I can't do it. It's a lifelong shame of mine. What's that, Nicholas? Was that on a soundtrack, enjoy with it? No, but it's just like, it's such of a type of men in black and Wild Wild West. They all just sort of sound like the same song.

Yeah. I know they all have different samples, whatever. I'm sure it'll be controversial, and I'll hear about it from our Gary's. Our Gary's will make sure that, anyway, excellent choice, demented on IMDB's path. of what they chose to include and what they chose to not. Chris, I'm going to be a little bit tough on you.

Because I wanted to bring this up. Not to like, I don't want to do like award season trauma for you, Nicholas, but Griffin and Summer was nominated for the Independence Beer, someone to watch award. And you did not win, but it is an honor just to be nominated. You did lose to a movie called Familiar Touch starring Cassidy. Kathleen Shelfont. And we've never done Kathleen Shelfont.

And I know that you love her, Chris. So. But in movies? That's so hard. All right. I'll do someone else then. I mean, I can try. No, it's fine. I can't think of another movie other than familiar touch that she's in.

Well, you'd have had one of them right off of the bat. All right, fine. I will just tell you for everybody, because if you're not going to do it, nobody's going to do it. duplicity, which she rocks in, old, in which she's an old. She's an old. And apparently, she's a receptionist in junior, 1994's junior. So at the very least, three of those, I knew she was in. So there's that.

All right. Regardless, I soldier on. Okay, so instead, I had a backup plan anyway. And I, of course, as I mentioned a few times here, I fell deeply in love with cool girl Paula Prentice in the original Stepford Wives. Paula Prenchis was the female lead in the parallax view co-starring one Warren Beatty, who we have not done for like five years on this. So, Warren Beatty for you. And they're all acting. They're all credited as acting.

Okay. But I'm willing to bet that they are somewhat weighted towards, you know, his own projects he directed or produced. Who's to say? Bonnie and Clyde. Yes. Reds. Yes. I would be real mad if Reds was not there.

Reds is awesome. Heaven can wait? Yes. three for three. The way that I think the algorithm works makes me want to say bugsy, but it can't be bugsy. I love it so much, so I just have to say

Dick Tracy. It's not Dick Tracy, so no perfect score. What about Bullworth? Bullworth is correct. There we go. 1998's Bullworth. All right.

Something had to be more recent on there. Yes. I went with Bullworth. Well done. Hooray. Incredible. Hooray! Hooray for you.

I'm nervous. I have chosen none other than the house sitter herself, Goldie. Hell yeah. Wow, if I can't get this, it really is over for me. Okay. For Goldie, I would have to say up front that it has to be Private Benjamin. Correct. Yeah.

And it has to be First Wives Club. Correct. I would guess I always get confused. I always confused. She won the Oscar for Cactus Flower, but there was another movie she made right around then that was also kind of for breakout. I'm going to say Cactus Flower.

Correct. Oh, my God. You could get a perfect score. I'm going to guess what I've noticed from listening to this show so much and suddenly noticing the IMDB known for is it seems like they do like to spread it out, you know,

sometimes in terms of what decade? We're especially someone like Goldie who's had a multi-decade career. So that's 60s, 80s, 90s. If we're going to do it 2000s, I bet it's the Bangor Sisters. The Bangor Sisters is incorrect. It's incorrect, but flawless

processing. I really, I really respect that. Well, argued. Oh, God. What about, oh, oh, oh, I was just talking about this movie. The, um, overboard.

Overboard is correct. Oh, there we go. You know what? I feel good about that. And while I'm describing posters, Goldie Hawn on the poster for Overboard is very much that drag race challenge where they had the queens sort of leap into the box of styrofoam cubes and they had to like get a photo of them in a perfect pose.

Because, um, and she's, really, like, she would have won that challenge. Now, Overboard is another blank spot for me. Should I prioritize that over Mary Riley, do you think? Overboard is also just wild what you're asked to... Yes. Yes. There's amnesia, right? Oh, I didn't realize Gary Marshall directed that, though. That's interesting.

Yes, Gary Marshall Joint. Yeah. Oh, God. The supporting cast on this, too, may I just mention? Catherine Helmand is incredible. Catherine Helmand, who I love, Roddy McDowell, Edward Herman. There's some folks in there. If you have a baby, you won't be the baby any. I've only seen overboard like once, so I don't remember all this stuff about it.

My mom loved overboard. Goldie mom's my mom's favorite movie star. I love that. Or at least that's what she's talking. Love her. Chris, Miss Cinematrix today. Goldie and Kate are one of the pairs of couples. Oh, hell yeah.

So head on over to that. It did. Yeah. I mean, I'm so thrilled we got to do this movie because it is the close cousin of, you know, of also for Swive's Club, which you guys have done for Swabs Club, right? We could do it as an exception on the past. As an exception as an exception. Right, right, right. Yeah.

We've talked about it so many times that it does feel like we've done it, though. We've also done so much 90s stuff that we need to cool it on the 90s. Yeah, we're going to give it a little bit of a break on the 90s for a little. bit. But yeah, that is definitely like Chris and Joe coded movies. Right. Griffin Nathley movies. I, uh, listen, whatever you do, I'll be listening. I listened to, like I said, I listened this podcast so much. And I just love, I'm so happy that I got to be on it. And, um, that you guys have been so great about Griffin. It all makes me happy.

Getting to introduce people and get them to, tell them to watch Griffin and summer and then hearing back from them has been one of the more rewarding things of the last couple of years for me. So thank you for giving us that movie because what a joy, what a delight. It's definitely for the Gary's. If the Gary's aren't on board

with that movie, I really messed up because it, uh... I almost did Estelle Parsons for my IMD game because, of course, uh, her play, her Broadway play, the Velocity of Autumn was the first thing.

I thought of when Griffin says that his play is called Regrets of Autumn. And that's been my joke forever about like my very favorite ridiculous stereotypical play name ever is the velocity of Autumn. As soon as I got to like, that happens early in Griffin and Summer. And as soon as I got to that, I think I texted Chris and I was just like, this movie gets it.

Like I am in. No, I think I requested you text me through that movie. I think you did. I got to see it before you did. I was like, you're going to lose your mind. Yeah, no, it was great. It was great.

So, Nicholas, thank you so much. We had such a fun time. We're definitely going to have you back on for future episodes. Thank you. And thank Faith Prince also. Thank you, Faith Prince. Yes. The patron saint of...

Of my brain, apparently. Of Freudian slips. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Nicholas, thank you again so much for coming on. Do you have anything you want to plug? Do you have any socials you want to plug at any? Tell the listeners where they can find more of your work.

I don't have any socials, but Griffin and Summers on Hulu or anywhere else you rent movies. So, recommend it to your gay nephew or just yourself. Be your own gay nephew and watch it. Be your own gay nephew. Exactly. There's no way you made it to the end. Sorry, I was going to say, there's no way anyone made it to the end of this episode and and hasn't watched it?

Or would not understand. what Griffin and Summer's about. So if you're that kind of crazy that you've listened to this entire episode, then you're the right kind of crazy for Griffin's all. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Great movie. All right. That's our episode. If you want more of this head Oscar buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz. You should also follow us on Instagram at this head Oscar buzz and on Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you?

Letterboxed and Blue Sky. Both of those are at Joe Reed. Read spelled R-E-I-D. I am also at Vulture all the time talking. Emmys, and we're bringing back the movies Fantasy League later this summer, so we're gearing up for that, and before I know it, I'll be back in Toronto, and Oscar season will be in full swing. So lots to do. Tremendous, and you can find me on Letterbox and Blue Sky at Crispy File.

That's F. E.I.L. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave and Sullivan, Gavin Medius, for technical guidance when we need it, and Taylor Cole for our theme music. please remember to rate like and review us on Spotify Apple Podcasts wherever else you get those podcasts five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility so grab the remote make our boobs larger and throw us that little five-star that's all for this week and we hope you'll be back next week for more bucks