WHAT WENT WRONG - The Birds

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

This week Lizzie illuminates how the truly terrifying cock on this set may have been Hitch, guiding Chris through the ways in which the celebrated director attempted to control, harass, and eventually assault newcomer Tippi Hedren during the film's production.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carrie Grant, noted Boner Giver, was visiting set that day and apparently told her. Carrie Grant, Giver of Boners. Dear listeners, imagine you're about to lose your job. Actually, it's worse than that. Your ability to ever work in your field again has dwindled. You're unsure of where to turn next or how you'll support your young daughter, who you adore. Then you get a call that changes your life. Someone offers you everything, fame, fortune, an entirely new career.

But what do you do when that person demands the unthinkable of you in return? This, my friends, is the true story of Alfred Hitchcock's The Boyds. Welcome to what went wrong. It's actually nothing to laugh about. This is a horrifying episode. Chris? Yeah. So I don't know if we were just describing indecent proposal or talking about what's

to happen on the birds. But I'm very excited to talk about the birds today, Lizzie, although I wasn't super excited to watch it again. It's fine. Right. It's a movie. It's a It's got bites. It's the title. There's a lot of buds. The Birds. I get it. Double on Tondra. It feels like the birds slash all the ladies thirsty for Rod Taylor. And that there's some interesting I guess edipole slash reverse edipal

stuff going on between him and his mother but we should set this up let's describe the plot to anyone who doesn't know what the plot of the birds is well I want to set it up for sure before we get there Chris

do you know one of the most famous quotes from Hitchcock it relates to what you were just saying it's about blondes I don't. The quote I think that I have heard most frequently is blondes make the best victims. Creep. But it gets creepier because this is the second half of that quote that I had never heard before.

Blonds make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints. Great. Well, on that note, this movie stars a very blonde, tippy headron. Very blonde. In the lead role. Yes, this is the birds that we are talking about. It's directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

It was released March 28, 1963, written by Evan Hunter, loosely, very loosely, based on a Daphne Demoree short story of the same name, which we'll talk about, starring Hottie McTots, Rod Taylor, extra glam, also very hot Suzanne Plachette. Jessica Tandy also looks great. She does. introducing Tippy Hedron. This was about a 3.3-ish million dollar budget. To be honest, with these old movies, it's really tough. I don't necessarily trust the numbers that are reported. It made around $11 million worldwide.

So did well. Did okay. Seems like it did well. Now, this is the synopsis, according to IMDB. A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people. That's it.

That is it. That's the movie. And I will say the birds attacking people is less strange than the way in which to be Hebron's character tries to pursue this very unusual man who walks into a bird store that she happens to be at, not working at, in the beginning of the movie. What I really felt more than anything watching this. I haven't seen this movie since I was probably in high school. It's a very complicated setup.

It takes forever. It takes up forever to get to the birds. I think it was like 45 minutes in you get a bird. Like it really, it takes forever. It's very slow. It's very complicated. I wrote down a couple of notes I'd like to share before we get into it. This setup is insane.

That was the first note. Makes zero sense. The second note, though, was Suzanne Plachette, Is that who you pronounce her last name? I said, she's great. She actually would have preferred her as the lead. I thought she was the best performance. She's not blonde.

She's not blonde. So there went that plan. I said, Rod Taylor is not that good looking because everyone wanted to sleep with him. He was very good looking, including his own mother. For San Francisco. I didn't understand. And that was his little sister, Kathy? Yes, Kathy.

How old are we saying Rod Taylor is? He looks 45. In this movie. Well, I will say in the 60s, I feel like anybody over the age of 15 looked 45 automatically. He was 16 years old. Yeah. He just got his driver's license. He's a 16 year old lawyer.

Yeah. And I also thought the sound design was very cool. Yes, we're going to talk about that. So those were my notes from the movie. I mean, it was fine. It just, you know, it was long. It was very long. It's two hours.

It is long. And it's weird. It's very strange. I still really like it. I remember it scared me a lot. when I was little. Watching it as an adult. This would be scary as a child.

Yeah. This is kind of the opposite experience I have with The Exorcist, where on that one I was, I thought it was so stupid when I watched it when I was little, watched it as an adult, you know, peeed my pants, cried, scared the shit out of me. This one, I was, I watched it and we were kind of like, oh, well, it's, birds. It's birds. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, there's some interesting things to do with the story and the script that we're going to get into a little bit here. Now, before we do dive into what we're going to talk about today, which you may have determined by my little intro at the top, is going to be relatively dark and significantly scarier than the film, the birds itself. Hitchcock, obviously, is an icon of cinema for a reason. He was an extremely innovative director, both technologically and creatively, elevated, elevated the medium of horror, you know, all of this is true. I would still like to ask that those of you who are listening are able to accept two truths, one that he was a genius and also that he was an absolute monster. It doesn't mean you can't like his movies. I still like his movies.

I still like this movie. But let's just go in understanding you're in for a bit of a wild ride. You're about to get doxed by some hardcore Hitchcock fans. I know, you know, but this is all public. I feel like most people probably know this, although I don't. did not know the depth that it goes to. Yeah. I'm not going to go particularly far back into his catalog or who he is.

I think most people know who Alfred Hitchcock is. Also, there's plenty to mind for future episodes there. So here's what you really need to know. Psycho was released in 1960. Remember the Birds is 1963? Psycho was a massive critical and massive commercial success. It absolutely changed the game in terms of what a horror movie can be. In addition to that, he had.

had become even more of a household name over the previous like seven to eight years, thanks to his very successful foray into TV. Alfred Hitchcock presents. If you've ever seen the drawing of Hitchcock's profile, that's the opening sequence of the TV show. Right. So all to say, there was an intense amount of pressure for Hitchcock to follow Psycho up with something really big. So he turns back to an author he had actually adapted before. That is Daphne D'Amory. Hitchcock's previous D'Morrier film were Jamaica Inn and the Academy Award-winning Rebecca. Okay, I've seen Rebecca. I've not seen Jamaica in. There's a reason for that.

Got it. It's like, Jamaica what? Yeah. Rebecca starred Lawrence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. These were in 1939 and 1940, respectively. So it's been quite a while since he's tackled this. He actually knew Daphne de Moray through her father, who was a famous theater actor. And Hitchcock was basically a family friend.

He was very, very close to them. Now, his first two Demorese collaborations are important, so I want to talk about them a little bit, because I think it gives you a bit of an idea of him. Jamaica Inn was a bit of a trash fire. Though he was the director, it was really the star slash villain of the movie Charles Lawton, who I'm sure we'll cover at another time on the show, was driving the ship. And he was making some not so great adjustments to the script, the John Travolta-esque decision of making the villain the most.

person with the most screen time. I feel like my journey is the most interesting in this movie. Yeah. Both Daphne DeMorier and Hitchcock really hated the movie, and it just tanked. It didn't go anywhere. Right. Rebecca, on the other hand, was a major critical and commercial success. It was also his first Hollywood film. But Hitchcock still doesn't get his way here.

This time he was up against David O'Sullsnick and the Hollywood Production Code. If you don't know what that is, the production code was in place for a long time in sort of early days of Hollywood. It basically dictated what you could wear, do, say on screen as it pertained to, like, things of sexual or violent drug use nature. And fun stuff. No fun stuff. Selznick wanted to lean into the romance in Rebecca, weird, if you've read the book, and away from the dark humor. And the production code wouldn't let a spoiler alert, intentional murder. go unpunished, so the ending was quite a bit tamer than Hitchcock would have liked,

and also quite different from the book. Of this film, Hitchcock said, there was a whole school of feminine literature at that period, and though I'm not against it, the fact is that the story is lacking humor. It was, he said, not a Hitchcock picture, even though it was his only film to win Best Picture. So this might be why Hitchcock decides to take

a third stab at DeMorrier's work, because at this point, he had the clout that he needed to be able to do this his way. Right. Daphne Demorese's short story, The Birds, first appears in the 1952 collection of short stories called The Apple Tree. Her novella, I read it, by the way. It's great. Highly recommend it.

Follows a farm worker named Nat Hawken. Okay. As he protects his family against some very angry avians on the Cornish Coast in England. The characters in setting are distinctly very blue collar, very remote, and very British. Chris, does that sound like the movie you watched? No, unless he was sleeping with his mother in which instance, maybe. But no, that sounds very different. Our film is decidedly American, upper class, somewhat 40-minute, two-hour drive from San Francisco,

not that remote in California. And certainly doesn't involve very many farmers. I think you see one he had his eyes picked out. Yeah. So, no, very different. But I had always heard that this was based on an actual event. Somewhere in California, like in like Capitola or something like that, where some birds had attacked some people and that Hitchcock was inspired by that.

But that obviously is wrong or an apocryphal story. Well, so it's not that it's wrong. There was a real-life event in 1961 that does seem to have partially inspired this film, which is that, I guess, in Monterey Bay. in California, which again, that is much closer to the location that this film takes place in than Daphne de Morye's book. But a bunch of birds just flew into windows and buildings and stuff. And it turns out it was something to do with like toxins and the like algae and sardines they were eating. I don't really know. But that may have inspired part of it. But timing wise, this movie comes

out in relatively early 1963. We know they're filming by 1962. To me, it seems highly likely that he was already adapting Daphne de Moryes the Birds by the time this real-life event happened. So it's not that it's not inspired by it. It's just that I don't think that was actually the genesis of this idea, especially since her story came out in 1952. In fact, if you watch the movie and you watch the old trailer, it says based on Daphne Demoree's thrilling short story. Got it.

It doesn't say based on some random shit that happened in Kaffi Tava. That would have made more sense, to be honest. Yeah. Similar to the film, there is no explicit explanation. for why the birds are freaking out. Nope. Although, D'Morri's short story very much does suggest that environmental disruption is at the core of the issue.

I was wondering if they were going to, if she had spoken about something like that. It is much clearer. Like, she leaves it open-ended enough, but you understand what's going on. They're talking a lot about the winds having changed out of the Arctic Circle. And it also highlights the idea that the government is not really there to protect regular citizens. They have to fend for themselves. And the people in the town who do trust the government are all swiftly and just horrifically

murdered by birds, which is pretty fun. This really feels wildly conservative in the sense that this woman who's a single, high society, somewhat scandalous past-bearing woman, drives into this town, clearly seeking a dalliance with the town's most eligible bachelor, bringing with her to her to love birds, these interlopers. And then she's then literally hen pecked by the birds of the town, i.e. the women, who then also blame her when they're trapped in the restaurant. Why are you? Who are you? This all started. You did this. And she just wanted to get some Rod Taylor. And I think that, you know, it feels very regressive. It's like trying to punish her

for this transgression. So I thought not environment, very much sociological, political. It felt very on the nose watching it. I agree. I will say when I went and read this short story, I kind of wish somebody had actually made Daphne DeMori's The Birds. Not that this movie isn't great, it is.

It's not great. There are really great things about it, which we will get to. There's very impressive things about it. I agree. So the story does have a similarly, ambiguous ending where there's really no end in sight and it's basically just the birdpocalypse. So like that, that is very much the same. It kind of ends and the family is trapped in their house and he kind of, the father figure,

Nat realizes that like literally everyone around them is dead and there's like the government's not doing shit. And so what is the end in sight here? Like we just keep eating the cheese left over in our pantry until we die. And then it's just like, the end. So though Dumorier had loved Hitchcock's adaptation of Rebecca, she hated the birds for understandable reasons. It retained the shell of her original story and really not much else. Daphne was pissed.

Hitchcock buys the rights to the birds and pretty much immediately brings on a young screenwriter named Evan Hunter to adapt it. Basically, Evan Hunter shows up and he's so excited. And he's like, I read the short story. I loved it, can't wait to dive in, and Hitchcock is like, great, good energy. Throw out everything, all we're keeping is the birds. And he was like, bring some ideas. And Evan Hunter's like, okay. Basically what happened with Kubrick and The Shining.

Yeah, well, that may have retained more to the book than this did, to be honest. So Hunter also said that as soon as they started talking about this film, the leads were Carrie Grant and Grace Kelly. Now, this makes sense when you watch it because the first third of the movie is a weird rom-com with almost zero birds. Yeah, no, it is. It's like a bird-driven meat cute and a young woman driving from the city to meet the hot coastal man for a little trist on the bay. And then birds show up. Daphne, on the other hand, brings the birds in about 10 seconds into the story. So 10 points to Daphne there.

They start pecking people's eyes out right away. By the way, that shot you mentioned of the farmer, one of the ones who gets his eyes pecked out, that is in the story very explicitly. That's the first person that the main character finds. There's just one little problem with this. Grace Kelly was now the princess of Monaco, and she didn't want jack shit to do with acting, also potentially with Hitchcock. And Hitchcock didn't want Carrie Grant to steal the show. According to Evan Hunter, and according to Hitchcock, there were two stars in this film, The Birds and Hitchcock. So that's the energy he's coming into this with, which explains why when they realize, obviously, Grace Kelly and Carrie Grant, that's not actually going to work for this.

He goes the complete opposite direction and decides he wants a complete unknown. Friday the 13th of October, 1961. Ooh. A model in her early 30s named Tippy Hedron. Oh, yeah. Gets a call asking if she is, quote, the girl in the commercial. Now, you may remember, we cover this briefly in our episode on Roar. Oh, yeah.

Which you should go listen to in the actual timeline, Roar takes place just a little after this. This call was referring to a, I think it's sago. It's some kind of weird 60s diet powder that was probably just anthrax. I don't know. This glass will clean you out. She'd been in this commercial on the Today Show. they asked her to come into Universal and meet with an executive, but they wouldn't tell her who was really asking for her.

So it's a weird situation from the get-go. Apparently, she finds out a director, she doesn't know who, had seen her and instructed everyone in his power to, quote, find the girl. I mean, it's weird to think that this was before the internet. It was before a T-Vo. Like Hitchcock saw this commercial, and he just went, fuck, fuck, who is he?

I don't know. I can't pause it. Can't do it. Shit! Find the girl! Find the girl! Like, he's just screaming at people to go find the girl, and they're like, we don't know what he's talking about.

Yeah, I mean, it must have taken some assistance a lot of legwork to find the girl. Yeah, assistants think they have an heart now. Yeah. Well, they found her. And after several more discussions where they would not give her any info, she finally finds out that Alfred Hitchcock was the man behind the curtain and that he wanted to sign her to a contract. $500 a week, which would be a little under $5,000 a week now. So like for somebody who at this point, Tippy is in her early 30s, she's been a pretty successful model, but she's in her early 30s in the 60s.

Like that, that cash cow is running out a little bit and she's not really sure what to do next. So this is a big deal for her. Understandably, she signs on the dotted line before she has ever even met or spoken to him. Now, this is at the very tail end of the studio system. If you don't know what the studio system is, listen to our episode on Wizard of Oz. That does lay it out very explicitly. But, Chris, do you want to just explain it quickly? You had an era where the studios were vertically integrated

and they controlled every aspect of making and releasing a movie from the development and the writing all the way to the eventual distribution and exhibition. They owned their theaters, and they owned all of the people vertically integrated along that. axes as well. So they had contracts with actors and those actors could only do, you know, Shirley Temple could only do, God, I'm going to get it wrong, Fox movies or whatever it was, et cetera, et cetera, with the different actors and different writers. And they were eventually

broken up by Congress through antitrust legislation. And now we're weirdly starting to vertically integrate again with streaming services. But that's a different conversation for another day. Point being, once you signed a contract with the studio, the studio owned you in this day. In a different way than they could ever even own you now. Now, the studio system at this point is waning, but it is not gone, especially for somebody like Tippy who is a complete newcomer and has absolutely no control in this industry. She's never even been in this industry. She's never even thought about acting.

This is literally not something that has crossed her mind. It generally meant you were under contract for either a specific number of films or a specific period of time. I believe Tippies was, unfortunately, the latter. And your rate was locked oftentimes, too. So you could become hugely successful and popular. Oh, yeah, it's not changing. And you would still be paid the $500 a week that you had signed, even as you're making bigger and bigger films. So as I said, she had no acting experience, like zero, not even any interest.

And Hunter was one of the people who asked Hitch if she could pull this off. He was like, ah, it's great. What are you doing? Like, who is this person? She's the girl in the commercial. So Hitchcock is like, all right, you idiots, I'm going to just show you all. It doesn't matter. I can make her a good actress.

So he pulls together a screen test for her. And he personally coaches her, along with his wife, Alma, I believe it's Reville. It might be Revee. I'm not sure how to pronounce it, I apologize, who was a huge part of his process all the way through his films. She was a frequent collaborator both credited and also frequently uncredited on Hitchcock's scripts. Hedron described her as one of his most valuable and underrated assets.

She's a very interesting character. I would personally like to do a lot more research on, especially because it seems apparent that she was not only involved in all of Hitchcock's pictures, but aware of his other goings on as well. For this screen test, Tippy was dressed to the nines by Edith Head. Now, if you don't know who Edith Head was, she was one of, if not the greatest costume designers of all time.

Look her up on IMDB. It is insane. Edna Mode from The Incredibles is sort of loosely and visually based on Edith Head. Basically, like, this is unreal for a screen test, that you would get a custom set of outfits from Edith. head for this. She stars alongside Martin Balsam from Psycho in the screen test. He's great. He's the detective in Psycho. It was, according to Tippy, one of if not the most expensive screen test of the time running about $25,000 or around $250,000 in today's money. Chris, does that sound like a standard

screen test for someone who has zero acting experience or interest in acting? Well, no. Today, that actually is much more normal. Really? Yeah, like they'll do things, not so much a screen test, but it would not be unusual to spend a day filming your actors in various outfits and testing them across one another. Sure. And that can be upwards of $100,000, $150,000, $200,000 just to do that. You know, I totally understand why it's unusual at the time.

Well, especially because she was not, like as far as she understood, she was not even in discussion for the birds. Well, that's the thing. If it was just to get her the part, that's unusual. If it's like... That's it. That's it. She didn't even know. Right. Then that's, yes, that's unusually it's once your cast is locked down. She didn't know what she was going in there for. Martin Balsam, he's not in discussion for this movie at all. He is there as a favor to Hitchcock. Everyone sees the screen test. You can actually watch parts of it on YouTube. It's pretty fun.

to watch. The thing that comes away from the screen test, though, is that there's no question that she is a star and can pull this off. Yeah, she's good in the movie. She is good. I think Suzanne is the best actress in the whole movie. She has a more fun part, though. She does, but she's just a more natural performer in my mind than anybody else. And it struck me watching the two of them together, where I really felt like, okay, this person's been doing this for a long time. And Tippy is amazing and has great charisma and screen presence. but it just doesn't feel like she's quite as natural. Yeah.

So after this, Alma and Hitch take Tippy out to dinner, and their way of telling her she got the part is that Hitchcock hands her a gift-wrapped box. Inside is a diamond pin of three seagulls flying. And here we go. This has such my husband and I saw you from across the bar vibes. I just can't even. All right.

So Tippy gets the part. She's in her first movie ever. which is the follow-up to Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock. All right. And the whole wife thing is very interesting because it's clear that like she was a prop to a certain degree for him.

Because when you're, I should mention I did use Tippy Hedron's memoir for a lot of this again as well in addition to some other sources. But, you know, something she mentions is like she was more inclined to obviously go out with him if Alma was with him.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's sort of lulling. you into a sense of safety. Sure. And the creeping starts almost immediately. A couple of days after the screen test, she was summoned to his office, but Hitchcock wasn't there. His lawyer was.

The lawyer proceeds to ask Tippy about supposed rumors they had heard that she was acting as some kind of call girl in New York City, or, quote, rather available to men. She stood her ground, said it wasn't true. There was literally no basis for this, like not even something they could have mistaken as this. And it was never brought up again. So certainly seems like some kind of a test was happening there. Or Hitchcock's trying to find a price. I'm not really. Yes. I mean, it's something really weird. It's very strange. Very strange and very strange that there's no follow-up. Nobody ever mentions it. And the lawyer just lets her go. Okay. Next, Hitchcock tells

Tippy he wants to do a second screen test. This one, this could be a little bit different. She'll drink one martini, and he'll ask her some provocative questions. She'll drink another, and he'll ask the same questions again. Then she'll drink another and another until she's shit-faced wasted, and she'll keep answering. He told her exactly what she'd be wearing and every move that she would make around the soundstage during this quote-unquote screen test. It doesn't happen because she was so weirded out. she just didn't respond. She just kind of stared at him, didn't say anything.

She said he seemed disappointed, but he never brought it up again. I don't know how to respond to that because that is the, like, it's such an aggressive. Well, he's testing. He's like, he's poking boundaries. He's like a velociraptor in Jurassic Park here. No, that's not poking. That's not poking a boundary. Oh, it's crossing.

That's exploding a wall and going, what do you think about this wall? It's like, yes. It's, that's, yeah. Okay. But he's seeing what he can get away with. And I think he's seeing how he's seeing how much of a pushover she is. And he is finding out rather quickly, I think, that she's not a pushover at all. Yeah.

Much to his chagrin. Okay. So again, this is all before they've started filming. At one point, apparently he thought she had lost a little bit of weight. She had not. And so he began personally dropping off baskets of bread and potatoes at her house. house with notes that said, eat me. Okay.

Creepy. But, to be fair, better than he thought she'd gained weight and he was stealing her food? I don't think, so I don't think, I don't think it is. There's, I think there's something weird going on here, especially because she's a model. Yeah. Well, she's a model. She's very thin. She looks beautiful.

But, like, clearly, Tippyhedron ain't eaten bread and potatoes. Like, she's not, you know, she has to be very careful, I would say. think about what she's this is me guessing. I don't think they're great for you. But, you know, it's like, that's like heavy card. Chris's face indicates that he may eat a lot of potatoes. Well, but it's, it's like a, it's a weird control thing because if that's something. Yeah, he's like, you're not, you're not a model. You're my tippy. Like, you're going to eat my bread and potatoes. Exactly. Also, like, I dare you to eat these bread and potatoes. It's almost like I dare you to put on a little bit of weight. But then it's like what's going to happen if I do that? It's really weird. It's

really weird. So, filming begins. They begin filming in Bidaga Bay. And a surprising amount of this movie is filmed on location with the remainder and pretty much all of the close-ups being shot at Universal Studios, which we'll get to because that presented some interesting challenges. And you just started writing in scenes of like, and now you eat the clam chowder bread bowl with the side of potatoes. So let's talk about her leading men a little bit. Yes. So Rod Taylor and also next, Sean Connery and Marnie,

were both explicitly instructed that they must not, quote, touch the girl. It puts the lotion in the basket? This is like the weirdest way of speaking ever. Okay. Don't touch the girl. Don't touch the girl. Only the birds touch the girl. He began staring at her and only her on set.

He would do this when he was talking to her. He would do this when he was standing across the room from her. He would do it when he was talking to other people. It did not go unnoticed. This was very apparent to the casting crew of this movie. Everybody knew something was really, really weird. Apparently, Suzanne Plachette was very nice. And she at one point, like, came up to Tippy, hugged her and was like, I'm really sorry.

This is your first movie experience. It's not normally like this. Like, this is weird. I want you to know that this is weird. I mean, it's unfortunate. Yeah, we've heard that a number of times, right? That happened on the Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton. It was very kind to Judy.

It's unfortunate that at that time, and even today, the only agency that these actors had was to comfort one another effectively because the director was so powerful. There's nothing that they can do or say. No. And I think you'll see over the course of this. story what does happen when you say no. Yeah. He also would corner her and recite dirty limericks.

I don't even know. I don't want to know what that is. So here is the point at which I will give a, I probably should have done this at the top, but I will give a trigger warning that there's going to be some discussion of assault moving forward. So finally one night on their way back to the hotel in Santa Rosa in the limo, just before they got out where all of the other cast and crew were waiting.

outside and could almost certainly see them. He threw himself on top of her and tried to kiss her. She pushed him off, apparently screamed, What? Which I like. And ran out. That's so embarrassing. Everybody saw. They could have seen that that happened.

Obviously, it's violating. And it's also so childish in the sense that it's so obvious what he's attempting to do. I'm going to all hold your hand as we turn the corner of the halls. so that they think we're a boyfriend, girlfriend. It's just, yeah, what an asshole. Mm-hmm. So the next time she sees him is at work. It is on set.

They're filming the telephone booth scene. Oh, God. They had it rigged up so that a bunch of mechanical birds were on wires set to fly super fast at the glass. And if you guys haven't seen the movie, or if you somehow have not seen footage of this iconic scene, Tipi Heather and is trapped in a telephone booth as seemingly every bird on the coast of California

is kamikazeing straight for the telephone booth as she's trapped inside screaming. Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing scene. Yeah. She was assured that it was shatterproof glass that was on the telephone booth. Understandably, she was a little concerned about this scene. Especially, again, as someone who has zero experience on movie sets,

and I think that was used to Hitchcock's advantage as well. She doesn't know, like, she doesn't know. She doesn't know what's normal. Yep. The first two birds run at the booth, and those are fine. The third, however, shatters right through it, sending shards of glass into her face that her makeup artist had to spend literally hours pulling out with tweezers. Now, she says she is not sure that he did this intentionally. Obviously, we'll never know for sure, but I thought this was interesting.

Screenwriter Evan Hunter, again, in an interview mentioned how amazing it was, the kinds of things that Hitch would just add to the screen. when they were shooting, and specifically calls out the telephone booth scene, saying it was nowhere in his script, and he doesn't know where it came from, just hitch's amazing brain. I don't know. I don't know.

Listen, yes, it could have been intentional that we wanted to hurt her. It also could have been, the thing that I could really easily see it being is he wanted to scare her. That's what I see. It's like, hey, boss, we should only have the bird go this fast, right? and then he's like harder, harder, hit it again, right?

Because he wants to freak her out. Yeah, I don't think he wanted glass to fly in her face. I mean, if anything, that's a problem for the movie. Exactly. That would affect, not that he cares about her, but that he cares about the final product, yes. We're going to see this pattern again in just a moment. He also made a comment to her at one point about how while directing a scene where Carrie Grant and Grace Kelly were kissing and to catch a thief, he'd gotten a big old boner.

So there's that. Just leave that there. It's so weird. It's so weird. It's like this is this person who's an amazing. Was he horny because of how attractive Gary Grant and Chris Kelly were? Or was he? I was so aroused by my own directing in this scene.

Very unclear. I didn't look into this a bunch, but I think there was some weirdness with Grace Kelly as well. I mean, I have to imagine. Every single woman he's ever interacted with, clearly. Yeah. So production moves back to L.A. and she notices him driving past her house and his limo. He had her followed.

He had her handwriting analyzed. He had her makeup artist create a life mask of her face. At the time she thought this was normal and something for, actually for Marnie, this is the movie she does after this. It was later revealed that, nope, it was just for Hitchcock, just for his personal uses. Oh, what?

That is some Buffalo Bill. Yes. Weirdness. Where is it? He's wearing it in his grave right now. God. There's also a pretty famous story that he gave a very young Melanie Griffith, who which, if you don't know, Melanie Griffith is Tippyhedron's daughter and also Dakota Johnson's mother.

He gave her a Tippyhedron doll in a casket. Now, Tippyhedron says this was false. However, she says he just gave, he did give her a Tippyhedron. doll. Dakota Johnson, though, recently reiterated that story saying the doll was in a coffin, so I don't know. Very strange. Now, let's talk about the bedroom scene at the end of the movie. Do you know which scene I'm referring to, Chris? She goes into the bedroom. It's like the loft bedroom, basically, and it's filled with birds, and she is just swarmed against the door until eventually Rod Taylor pulls her out. Yeah. One of the most famous scenes in the movie

probably the most visually recognizable, I would think, except for maybe the birds on the jungle gym. Screenwriter Evan Hunter said Hitchcock asked him about that moment and basically was like, this is crazy. He was like, is she nuts? Why is she doing this? And Evan Hunter was like, oh, good point. So they devise a whole plan about how basically while she's downstairs,

everyone's sleeping, she hears a noise. She tries to wake Mitch up, whatever, Mitch doesn't wake up. So she goes into one room, opens the door, No birds. And she continues going through opening doors, no birds. So she's like gaining some confidence that it's okay and they're not in the house. And then she goes to the final door, doesn't hear anything, opens the door. Birds.

You may notice that is not what's in the movie. Hunter says that Hitchcock seems to have forgotten about that when it came time to shoot because that's not in the final product. I don't think he forgot. He seems like a very meticulous... He remembered where Tippy Hedron lived after the... So I feel like he remembers things. So Tippyhedron asked him the same question.

Why would I go up there? He responded, because I tell you to. Oh, that's nice. So what was this? Like, was this a way of sort of exerting power? Was it a way to embarrass her? Like, it's really weird because you know this was flagged for him. Yeah, you're an idiot.

That's what he's doing. Yeah. But like even he recognized that didn't make any sense before. I can do anything. I can make your character look like an idiot. I can control this whole process.

Yeah, it's bizarre. Submit. Submit to me. Now, all throughout production, Tippy had been assured that the birds in this scene would be entirely mechanical. We're going to get to this in a minute.

There were a lot of live birds used in this movie. But she was told over and over again. No live birds. No live birds. Which makes sense. Like when you watch this scene, It does not seem like a scene that would be safe to have live birds in it. Hitchcock himself had laid out the way it would work for her in great detail,

so she felt comfortable and quote unquote understood how this was going to work. The morning of the scene, they're going to start shooting, the assistant director, who, by the way, was a friend of hers, comes into her dressing room and basically blurts out, uh, the birds aren't working. We're going to use live birds. Okay, bye. And then just like runs out of the dressing room.

Wow. She's understandably very confused. So she gets to the set that day And the first thing she notices Is that there's an entire cage Built about the door Built around the door to the room And the room itself

So it's like a shark cage And she's like climbing inside of it Basically But also this would to me indicate And to her There was never any intention Of using mechanical birds in this scene If you have built this and rigged this

To this point Which they had There's no way This was going to be live birds always and clearly other people were aware of that in addition to him. So there's also that. Huge cages of ravens, doves, and pigeons hung around the room, and handlers were at the ready.

When the camera starts rolling, the birds start a fly in, and the handlers are literally just throwing fistfuls of pigeons and crows at Tippyhedron's face. It is nuts. I just want to make a behind-the-scenes movie. of this called a fistful of pigeons. Yes. Carrie Grant noted boner giver was visiting set that day and apparently told her. Carrie Graham, Gary Grant, give her of boners.

Give her of boners. Was visiting set and apparently he told her she was the bravest woman he'd ever seen. And Alfred Hitchcock was rock hard the whole time. This goes on for hours and days at a time, five days to be exact. for Hitchcock to get around one minute of footage in the final cut. And it runs a little long. Yeah, well, they had five days to pull from, so. On the last day, elastic bands were tied around her body,

and then the bands were pulled through tears in her costume, and then Live Bird's feet were tied to those elastic bands so that they were bouncing back and forth off of her body, right by her face, pecking at her face and head, all while other live birds are still being actively baseballed at her face and head. And somehow this pales in comparison to the animal abuse she suffered on a different movie. Yeah. Listen to our episode on Roar.

I just keep thinking about like, she's like, but what if we did it again with lines? Tippy. No. Poor Tippy. For tip. After several more hours of this, one of the birds packed her very, very close to her eye, and she just said, I'm done. Yeah. Then everybody just left her. They just left her alone on the set.

She basically said she just like slid down on the floor, and everybody was like, well, that's a rap, Jim. Want to smoke? Yeah, sure. Let's go. And they all just leave. And she, like, opens her eyes. And she's just alone in this bird cage with, I would assume, probably some birds. Like, I don't know where they went.

just getting pooped on left and right. So she has essentially a full-blown breakdown at this point. A doctor insists that she needs the week off. She's literally falling asleep. Nobody can wake her up. She cannot stay awake. Hitchcock was like, nope, sorry, we need her for the movie. She can't have time off.

And the doctor was like, you're going to kill her. So she gets a week off. And he finally shut up and was like, fine. So she takes a week off. I love this so much. One week later, Tippy knows it's time to go back to work. So she decides to make a big entrance. This is the moment where it's like,

I think Hitchcock didn't realize who he was tussling with. She has them open the soundstage door to reveal her in her beautiful Edith Head green suit with her little raven friend buddy, one of the ravens she's made friends with, perched on her arm. And she saunteres in slowly and says, I'm back. Let's finish this movie. Wow. So we'll talk a little bit about the production otherwise. Shockingly, given how many animals are involved in this, the production seemed relatively smooth, which is like the first time ever, I think we've heard that. Ray Berwick, who was the head bird

wrangler, was pretty incredible. He apparently was a pioneer in the world of bird training, using positive reinforcement of petting and treats to train the birds, which is very nice to the birds. Ray started out in circuses and vaudeville and then broke into Hollywood as the bird trainer on the Birdman of Alcatraz. He trained over 300 birds for the birds and over 25,000 animals in his career. I think he said the only animal he ever lost was one bird on the set of the birds. It was crushed by a wagon. It's pretty good. Oh.

It's sad, but it's pretty good. So Tippy had her little raven friend Buddy, who we mentioned. Rod Taylor was not so lucky. There was a raven named Archie who fucking hated him personally and would like dive bomb him from the Raptors. Apparently it got to a point where Rod Taylor would come in and ask if Archie was quote unquote working that day before he entered because he didn't want to go in if Archie was on set. And they'd be like, no, no, no, Archie. And then all of a sudden it would be like, and Archie would come down from the Raptors and just, I got you from the father. He was coming down.

So he was like very afraid of this bird. I would be too. A hundred percent. They're huge. It's not like a little blackbird. They're gigantic. Even if it was a little one. I don't like birds.

So the famous scene I mentioned earlier where the birds are all covering the jungle gym. Did you notice anything about this scene, Chris, or how do you think they did this? I don't know. I didn't notice anything. I mean, it's a lot of birds. I definitely noticed that.

The vast majority of those birds are, fake. If you watch it again, they don't move. He used a few real birds here and there. And when Veronica Cartwright, who played Kathy, asked him basically like, isn't it going to look fake, he said no, because people's eyes will naturally focus on the couple of birds that are moving. He's 100% right. Watch it again. There's like four birds that are wired to that jungle gym. He also hired a drummer to play louder and faster incessant drum beats on set so that everyone's level of anxiety would match. The birds breaking through the door when they're in the house, those are just bird heads attached to hammers that the prop guys are just like smashing into the door.

When that happened, I was just like a bird weighs four ounces. It's like a bird could hit a door as hard. It could shoot like a bullet. It's just going to brain itself. It would do nothing. Yeah, exactly. So I mentioned this earlier, but Hitchcock wanted pretty much all of the closeups to be filmed inside. You may notice that a lot of this movie takes place outside. So that required the prop. guys to get pretty crafty with some flying seagull puppets, including that first one you mentioned. Thing where the seagull flies down at her head, that is a puppet on a wire. And then they had sort of like a tube of air underneath all her hair. Yeah, that like blows the hair up and that like something else shot a little bit of blood. But that's all inside. The scene where the kids are running from the

school also filmed inside. Basically any time you see you can tell. It looks like there's some weird It's pretty funny because anytime in this movie you see a shitload of birds flying around outside. They are not outside. They're inside. Even though it seems like something they would do in 1962, just release a bunch of birds. Obviously, you can't keep them contained so you would just lose your birds every time. So they are inside. But this scene, this is incredible.

They are just on a giant treadmill. All of them, just running on a giant treadmill. Apparently, whenever someone would fall, they wouldn't stop the treadmill. So they would just get flung off the back onto a mat behind them. So save a bird, fling a child off a treadmill. That's basically the model of this one. Because those are all kids. And they're just like, weing, just like right off the back.

That's pretty just kind of fun. Not if you're in the middle. If you're in the middle, you're like a bowling ball, just taking all the other kids out behind you. Kids are very sturdy. Yeah, bouncy. They're fine. The scene with the birds coming out of the chimney also,

they thought that they could do this practically, that they could release those little birds. They're called like strawberry finches or something. So the shot that you see in the movie where you see the birds coming out of the chimney, that's real. But unfortunately... Yeah, that shot looks amazing.

It's real. Unfortunately, they did that, and the birds came out, And then they just kind of went like, per, and they just sat down on all the furniture. And they were like, we're good. Yeah, exactly. So that didn't work. Like, they could not.

Like, this room's cool. Yeah. Thanks. They were like, great. They had to shoot the scene without the birds in it. And the actors are all reacting to nothing, which is pretty funny when you're watching it. Yes, it's a lot of, it's a lot of. And it's very quiet.

Like, that's what's also noticeable is that it's just like, huh, well, there is no folly. You can't even really hear them speaking. You're just hearing the sound. which we'll also talk about in a minute. So a man named Ub iWorks is the man behind the incredible visual effects in this movie. Like, honestly, they're pretty good. I know it looks kind of hokey,

but this is the 60s. It was a hokey time. Yeah. No, I think it overall looks good. And I think the ending of the movie looks great when they're leaving and all the birds are just standing around and they do the really cool sound design

where it's very echo-y. It's all reverbed. It was cool. So he was an early Disney animator. And apparently I saw in a couple places that he may have co-created the earliest animations of Mickey Mouse along with Walt Disney. He went on to pioneer a lot of the special effects that really set Disney movies apart in that time. Now, in this movie, he used something called sodium vapor technique. Have you ever heard of this?

I don't think so. Okay. This is what helped composite the footage of the birds from the soundstage with all of the shots outside. So, Chris, like when we think of old movies and they show somebody riding in a car and it just looks insane, right? That's blue screen, I believe. Could be. Or some variety of it. You can do rear projection where you put a screen behind someone and you project onto it from the other side.

That's how most of it's done, poor man's process. So sodium vapor technique is really weird. It involved filming the birds against a screen that was lit with sodium vapor lights. Okay. Then they shoot two separate reels. They basically shoot on something that splits into two separate reels of film simultaneously. One is totally normal. One is only sensitive to the sodium vapor wavelengths.

Yeah. So it creates a silhouette. The screen behind it is lit with the wavelengths of the sodium vapor light. Anything that passes in front of that screen in the footage that's being recorded exposed normally, it'll just look like a bird in front of a white, I'm guessing screen. On the film that's stripped that's running simultaneously, and they use a prism to split it, the film that's running simultaneously that only exposes to the wavelengths of the sodium vapor light, you see the silhouette of that bird crossing or whatever word cross that light source, basically, right?

So what it does is it gives you a real-time optical composite. It gives you a cutout of what that, you know, on a frame-by-frame basis, this is the portion, right, that you can optically cut out. So then you invert that film, the white turns black, you stack the film on top of each other, and then you have birds against a black background that you can impose onto. whatever footage you want. Thank God you were here to explain that because I spent so much time reading it and I was like, Adam, there's, well, there's birds. Yeah, it's like a way, it's like a way of doing like masking or, yeah, exactly. Or rotoscoping, you know, early on.

But it's effective. Like, the, it works really well. It does work. It captures movement in a way that they really weren't, I don't think, weren't really able to do in this capacity. Like you talked about rotoscoping. No, you'd have to manually like frame by frame cut. But there's so. many birds. Like that would not have been possible. You know, when you've seen that before,

we've talked about it, I think, in cats, maybe we talked about rotoscoping and the fact that Snow White, that was rotoscope. They were drawing on an actual person who was moving, basically. That would have taken a hundred million years to do that for this. Let's talk about the score, or lack of a score. Evan Hunter, again, vigorously disagreed with this at first, although he eventually came around, but it was a unilateral and very intentional decision by Hitchcock from very early on. In fact, Hitchcock's frequent collaborator, Bernard Herman, who obviously created the iconic score for Psycho, among many, many others. He's only credited as a sound consultant on this. So this is his only sound consultant credit on IMDB. Instead, the soundtrack is composed of

both real and electronic bird-like shrieks, created by German composers Remy Gassman and Oscar Sala, using something called a Mixter Troutonium, which I looked up on YouTube, and it is a bonkers machine, It looks like a giant evil typewriter. It's the only way I know how to describe it. Cool. If you watch it again, it doesn't really sound like birds that much. It was interesting because I watched this with David, and he picked this up right away. He was like, he was like, those aren't birds.

And I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, listen, like, it's not, that's electronic. They're doing something weird there. Known bird guy. David's big bird man. Big bird dog. Loves the birds. He's crossed that threshold in his life.

all of a sudden he's very into birds. No. Where'd these binoculars come from? Is that a yellow-pressed in warbler? What am I doing here? Oh, God. Please, David, don't. Don't.

No, obviously he is a composer, so he picked up on the fact that there's no score, and they're doing something very weird with the sound that is there. I like this. It's very unsettling. I actually like in some of those interior scenes you were mentioning that there is no folly.

There's just nothing. It's weird. It makes it very overwhelming. I like it, for example, when his mother discovers the pecked-out eye guy. Yeah. That scene, I thought, was effective because they do the triple punch in on the guy's eyes and you expect a, you know, like, sound effect. But there's nothing. I thought that was an irving. I like the living room with the little birds.

Those scenes, when the birds are flying around and it was very quiet, those scenes, there was a disconnect for me, visual. from what was that. Whereas though at the end, when Rod Taylor walks from the house to the barn to get the truck, I thought that was really cool. Yeah. The reverb that they added to everything. So it was a mixed bag for me, but I thought it was really unique. And I do think at the beginning, it adds to the sense of unease when you're watching what feels kind of like a rom-com and there's no music to tell you that it's a rom-com. Yeah, it's very weird. Yeah, it's really weird. So the Birds premieres March 28th, 1963. And it was a modest commercial success that we said at the top. It didn't bomb. It did not do what Psycho did. Do you know what Psycho did off the top of your head? I looked

this up. I saw two numbers for Psycho pretty consistently. One was $50 million, which that's, I mean, that's a ton for back then. The other was $32 million. And that's what Box Office Mojo reports. So I think we will go with box office mojo here. But, I mean, $32 million in 1960 is an enormous amount of money. Yeah, I mean, because it doesn't have any, it doesn't have the social commentary underpinning of the short story of environmentalism. It doesn't have a really intriguing interpersonal aspect like Psycho does, or it doesn't do anything narratively really interesting,

like kill your actress midway through like Psycho does. It feels like a B movie. That's just kind of how it feels. It's a monster of the week sort of thing. Yeah. It's odd. It is odd. There's elements of that that I really like, and I like that he tried it.

Up was nominated for an Oscar for special visual effects, which sadly, and I think unfairly, went to Cleopatra instead, which we've also done an episode on. That Cleopatra one was purchased. I mean, come on. Every Oscar that it was nominated for was purchased. I know, but also like special effects for Cleopatra. What did they do? Kept Richard Burton awake? that's not like come on yeah although that was hard probably at this point tippy was not done with hitchcock

because remember she is under contract she goes on to make mahony with him after this starring sean connery it's during production of marnie that hitchcock sexually assaults her trying to force himself on her and threatening to end her career and financially ruin her if she refuses him she refuses anyway. And she fights him off basically just says, I don't care. I don't care what you say you're going to do to me. It does not matter. At this point, he never speaks directly to her again in his life. He would speak to her through crew, through other actors. He would never use her name. He referred to her as the girl only. She was excommunicated from the rap party. And for the next two years, any roles that Tippy was offered, of course, had to come through Hitchcock because again,

she was under contract. Mm-hmm. So, for two years, he told every director who came calling that she was unavailable, turning down roles for her in Fahrenheit 451, bedtime story opposite David Niven and Marlon Brando, Mirage opposite Gregory Peck, and many more. He both gave her a career and completely ruined it. Hitchcock's secretary Peggy Robertson and wife Alma Reville both seemed aware of what he was doing to Tippy, to some extent.

I don't know that they were aware of the actual attempted assaults, but like this stuff was pretty hard to miss. It seems to me he was doing it publicly and, you know, was not ashamed of it. However, both remained loyal to hitch until the end, with Peggy even encouraging Tippy to go for drinks with him because he was feeling sad. He was sad. Why won't she go for drinks with him? The screenwriter on Marnie, Jay Press, and Allen, also a woman, also a very good writer.

she wrote the prime of Miss Jean Brody. Famously asked Tippy why she couldn't just, quote, love him a little, seemingly irritated that Tippy had set boundaries and kept them. Hmm. I hope she was not proud of that moment. Who knows? Tippy describes Hitchcock as, quote, a man I look on with admiration, gratitude, and utter disgust.

I want to end with another quote from Tippy, because I think it's really impressive that this is the way she was able to look at this. She said, I never forgot for one moment that it was all happening because of Alfred Hitchcock, and I never forgot for one moment that I'd earned it. It's a great quote. Yeah. She's a very impressive person, and she survived another nuts dude in a different, very different way.

I don't think Noel Marshall was as, he wasn't like this. He was weird. He was just kind of a dodo, yeah. Yeah, he was an airhead. But, again, listen to Roar, we won't reiterate that. But she did it with a child in tow. and not only carved out a career for herself, but then her daughter, Melanie Griffith,

had a wonderful, although I'm sure a difficult career she dealt with a lot of difficult directors as well, including Brian DePaulma, listened to our episode on Bonfire of the Vanities. But obviously there's a ton of talent running through that family because now Dakota Johnson is, I think she's the most talented of the three of them. I actually find her the most,

I don't know, I just rewatched Cisperia from 2018, and I was like, she's so good at Amia Goss. They're both great in that movie. And, you know, you say like Tippy managed to carve a career out for herself. Yes, but even she herself would say she never got another role like these two. Like she never did anything that was as big as these. He made sure of that. Yeah.

Lizzie, that was a very harrowing episode. I know. Thank you for taking us down that dark journey. I can safely say Alfred Hitchcock is a. giant piece of shit. And also an amazing director. Yeah. Maybe not on this as much.

Not on that. Yeah, maybe not on this. But also just a giant asshole. So, as always, though, we don't like to end on a negative note if possible. So why don't we go to our patented segment, What Went Right? So Lizzie, for you, what went right on the birds? I got to go with the style. I'm coming back to Edith Head on this one.

People look good. They look so good. Tippy's outfits, she looks great. Suzanne Plachette, like there's never been a more glamorous lady eaten by birds. I just, I think they look awesome. I love that era. I love those outfits. And there's something fun about sort of like West Coast glam in the 60s.

I'm shocked. Lana Del Rey hasn't done the birds themed video yet, but maybe it's coming. Even by the birds on a Saturday night. That's, yeah, that's a good one. I think I'm going to say the sound, even though I had mixed feelings about it. I think it's really cool for the time. So that went right for me. I also thought Tippy Hedron was great.

Suzanne Plachette, I mentioned. I loved her in it. And then also just, I have to mention it. I watched it. I watched the birds on Peacock by Hitchcock. And that was very fortuitous. So it is on, it's streaming on Peacock right now if you guys have a peacock, as we call it in our house, membership. There are peacocks that walk by our house.

So it's very funny. They got a lot of stuff streaming. This is not an ad for peacock, but it should be. Give us a call. We actually use your service. We do. It's great. But yeah, the sound I thought was great. Lizzie, is there anything else that you'd like to touch on before we end this episode? I have one last thing if you'll indulge me. I guess the last thing I'll say is read the short story. I think it's really cool and I dare somebody out there to read it and see if they think that they could do a different kind of adaptation of it. Also, now I'm kind of getting into Daphne de Morier, so maybe we need a little more Daphne on our screens. So before we go, a number of people have left us new ratings and reviews and we really appreciate it. And if you haven't yet

rated and or reviewed us, we would love it if you would take the time to do so. It helps us climb, claw our way up those Apple rankings, and send screenshots to our family saying, this is what it's for. Which they don't understand. No, exactly. They go, why are you texting me right now? But there were two, the first one is really just lovely, and they figured out the way to our hearts. Guys, this is how you write a review.

Favorite Podcast, not favorite movie podcast, not favorite movie podcast about things going wrong on movies. Wow, no qualifiers. Yeah. See, specificity actually is the opposite of love. I want generalizations about how much way. This is a very wonderful podcast and so fun to listen to. Very glad it returned after a pandemic hiatus. Thank you, DLDHCA.

I don't know how to pronounce that. And then this, I have to read this one because I felt bad because I don't know who said this comment on this episode, but I want to address it. It's probably me. I know which one you're going to talk about. It's a five-star review. It says, only sad, lonely people watch animation. That's the title.

I have really enjoyed the podcast and have listened to a number of them as well as followed it as well. Thank you, Italy 303. I look forward to new episodes. We appreciate you listening seriously and we look forward to sending you new episodes. Just listen to a review of The Last Airbender and was saddened that the guest who was leading the discussion. That's technically David. That is David. He was ridiculed for liking a kid's show.

So maybe that was you or me, Lizzie. I mean, it's obviously you or me. Yeah. The comment that if you watched the animated show and enjoyed it as an adult, you were sad and lonely. I think the comments were unfortunate. In our defense, I'm guessing that that was an attempt at humor, but we are no way trying to belittle anyone's tastes,

and we did not mean to put down anything that anybody enjoys. And we know for a fact that The Last Airbender is a show that is beloved by people of many ages. Yes. So Italy 303, thank you very much for listening to the show. We apologize for putting down a genre that you might like or that anybody else might like. We appreciate you all so much. And on that, I think we can wrap this up.

Thanks for checking out the birds. We'll talk to you in two weeks. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Yantano UO's.