WHAT WENT WRONG - The Curious Case of Grey Gardens (with Watch What Crappens)

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

When the Maysles brothers showed up at Grey Gardens, they thought they were filming a quick piece on Jackie O’s quirky relatives. Instead, they uncovered Big and Little Edie Beale—an isolated mother-daughter duo living in shocking squalor, feeding raccoons in their attic, and completely frozen in time.In the second episode of Out of Frame, Lizzie and Chris are joined by Watch What Crappens hosts Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam to unpack the wild behind-the-scenes story of the 1975 documentary ‘Grey Gardens’. Discover how the film survived production chaos, what became of the Beales afterward, and how two women behind the camera ultimately saved the entire project.Each episode of Out of Frame investigates the darker, more obscure corners of Hollywood history and shines a light on the offscreen lives of some of our favorite onscreen stars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to our second episode of Out of Frame. This is a series where we will be exploring some of the more obscure corners of Hollywood and filmmaking and discussing a little more of the off-camera lives of our favorite on-screen subjects. And today, we're talking about big and little Eadie Beal and the making of one of my favorite documentaries of all time, Gray Gardens. And we are joined by probably the two most perfect guests for this episode because they are reality TV and pop culture experts. And as we'll discuss, I think the Real Housewives owes an awful lot to the Beals.

So welcome Ben Mandelker and Ronnie Karam from Watch What Crappins. Thank you so much for being here. Hey, thanks so much for having us. What an honor. Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? I am so I am obsessed. I'm obsessed with your show.

There are entire franchises of the Real Housewives that I watch exclusively because you recap them. So Bravo owes you a lot of money. Oh, I love that. Thank you. And my husband and I also would like. you to know that the only reason we watched House of the Dragon was for Winter's Crappening. Wow. Oh, my God. Thank you. I love House of the Dragon, though. I'm one of the only ones I think who genuinely loves that show. Are you going to watch the new one? What is it called? The New Game of

Thrones thing coming out. It's like supposed to be a wacky thing about a night of the seven kingdoms. Thank you. I would have been here 20 minutes going, you know, the one, there's a guy with a sword. Yes, I will watch it, but only as long as you are covering it on Winters. I think it's like a Game of Thrones sitcom or something. It's short form and wacky. A Game of Thrones sitcom. A multi-cam. Yeah.

Like, it's Game of Thrones, but it's fun. Wow, coming next on what went wrong. We just had to do a Game of Thrones sitcom. Mindy Cohen is the star. The most popular format right now is those little 60-second microdramas. Have you guys heard about these? No. Called shorties?

No. Like the Folgers was like the Taser Choice couple in the 90s? I guess. Yeah. Now they're called like micro dramas. There's 60-second or they're basically for reels form, you know what I mean, or TikTok or whatever, but they're like made by studios, these like terrible melodramatic studios for that format. And the Writers Guild has sent emails about if you're working on these,

you still have protections, blah, blah, blah, because they're so popular, especially for folks, you know, out of work. Oh. I, how the algorithm has completely failed me. I want to be served stupid. 60-second melodrama. Why are you showing me? It adds for like can-opiners.

I'm like, please, algorithm, this has Ben speaking. Give me the melodrama. You're obsessed with can-openeres anyway. You'll get melodramas about can-openers now. I would love that. Well, maybe I'll become a writer after all because I can take 60 seconds.

Got to fit a lot into that 60-dun. A lot of turns. We can do it. All right. Well, as I said at the top, we are talking about Gray Gardens today, the 1975 documentary, directed by the Maisel's brothers and a couple other people who were going to talk about as well. And as always, the IMDB logline is, meet a mother and daughter, high society dropouts, reclusive cousins of Jackie O,

managing to thrive together amid the decay and disorder of their East Hampton, New York mansion, making for an eerily ramshackle echo of the American camelot. Tell me, Ben and Ronnie, had you seen this before, what was your experience upon rewatching it? Just what's your relationship with Grey Gardens in general? Well, I found this in gay college, you know, where I was like young and some older gays were like, oh, here's gay things you need to watch in order to be a proper gay. And this was one of them. And it was right after Mommy Dearest, which I found super dark, obviously, because I watched it in a room with a bunch of gay guys who were cracking up while this little girl is being abused. And I was like, I don't know if I'm fit out fit for gay kids.

college, you know. That was me and my husband watching Mommy Dearest and I'm just laughing and David's like, this is not a comedy. I think I was like 18 or 19. I thought, I don't know that I'm cut out for gay college. But then this one was next on the roster and this I was down with. You know, and I, you know, resonated. It resonated with me so young. I felt like little edie. And now, of course, I'm becoming like a mixture of both. But I'm definitely at the time where I'm like, my house is cleaner, but am I really that far? from that lady. Not really. It's like still walking around with shirts on my head, blaming my mother for everything. So I'm on my way. I love, I just love it. I've seen it so many times

and watching it again for this was, it was beautiful. And I was laughing all over again. There's so many things you even forget. I had never seen it all the way through, actually. Since we recap the Real Housewives of New York and Sonia Morgan, like the comparison to Great Gardens comes up a lot. So I knew sort of the broad strokes. And I was, was like in my mind, I was like, okay, is this like, like, what's your name, Mrs. Havasham from great expectations or something? And I was on, the most that scene of it was, I was on a plane a few years ago. And I was watching documentary now where Fred Armisen and, um, what's his face? Bill Hater. Bill Hader did like a parody of Great Gardens and it was so funny. And then the

plane also had Great Gardens. I was like, oh, let me watch some Great Gardens. And so I started watching it and then I think we landed. So I never finished it. But this is my first time sitting and watching the whole thing. And I was like, wow. And then afterwards, I went up to my bedroom and like I hadn't made the bed that day. And there was like laundry out. And I was like, everything that looked dirty in my apartment, I was like, oh my God, I have to clean this up. Otherwise, I'm becoming both edies right now. I had the opposite reaction. I was like, I don't need to clean anything. They're happy. Yeah, they were pretty happy. I mean, you can smell their house just sitting on the couch. And they seem just happy as clams. That's true. Yeah, there's something.

Totally unbothered. Chris, what about you? I didn't go to gay college, but I actually was exposed to a lot of the same movies you were talking about. And then especially in undergrad, like Pink Flamingos was another one, for example, that I feel like was a big one. Like kind of transgressive, like alternative cinema. And then I saw Gray Gardens. And it didn't make a huge impression on me at the time. I thought it was like a curiosity.

But then every time I've watched it, it feels like such an important American documentary in so many ways. And then now, I watch it and I'm a parent and I have aging parents, although they're knock on wood doing great. And it causes a little anxiety in me when I watch it, even though on the one hand, I'm envious of how close and obviously supportive in some ways of one another, little edie and big edie are. But I do always worry, you know, I think all parents do. Am I holding my child back in some way? Am I helping them achieve their potential? Am I pushing them too far? And there are a lot of, you know, interesting tensions that this movie explores on that front.

But one thing I really notice every time I watch this is how much does Kristen Wigg owe to Little Edy? I feel like every character she has done over the last 20 years is just Little Edy in her American flag outfit. Like prancing around. You want me to sing? Yeah. this all the time. But I just, yeah, I think it's a, it's an really interesting, you know, capture of opulence and decay.

And there's something so fascinating and tragic about that. And it's a weird foil to the Kennedy family as well. And then, of course, and the really thing I noticed was seeing the old photos of Little Edie. My sister says she looks like Erica Christensen from the 90s in early 2000s, like swim fan. I think she looks like Adele Xarcopolis, the French actress from Blue is the Warmest Color. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with her.

But she was so, the other reason this is so tragic is like both these women were like very talented and very beautiful and they had access to wealth obviously and yet here they are feeding raccoons in the attic. Those are their friends.

And raccoons are cute. Happily. I know. I just love that. It's like, well, got to feed the raccoons. Yeah, they didn't seem rabid. Got to dump your wonder bread in the attic for the raccoons to come out. Who's stealing my books? It's like, probably the raccoons. The raccoons ate your books.

I love the way that Little Edie would talk because a lot of times you see these older movies or you see a musical and you're like, no one really talks like that except a musicals, but she would talk that way. She's like, you know, Eugene, he was a very decent man. He was a decent, decent man. And like, it's like, oh, I went with him. Oh, you know, food's going up. Like, all these sort of expressions that, like, you kind of just think are.

are kind of heightened musical theater dialogue. Actually, maybe it was the way people talked. There's nothing worse than a staunch woman. A staunch woman. A staunch character. Yeah, you don't know what you're going to get. I was so good. I mean, I just kept watching her thinking,

this is brilliant acting. I mean, both of them, you see all the emotions go over their face. Over every, you see so many emotions cross their faces over every little thing. I thought this is great acting and that it wasn't. acting is yeah you know beautiful when they're listening to that like radio bible sermon and big 80s starts you know crying because it's so on the nose yeah but like talk about a harbinger for reality tv because i know that an american family i just looked it up came out i think in 1973 and that's often considered the first like the first building block of reality tv but just seeing the way

that like you have these two women who are, we're obviously documenting two women, but the way they're also kind of like playing to the camera the entire time. Yes, that's the thing to me. And the way they're kind of like pleading their case to the audience and to the people behind the camera and like hamming it up.

Like Little Edie, this has got to have been the most exciting thing that had happened to her in 20 years. I mean, the way she's prancing around and dancing with that American flag and doing all her singing and being flirtatious with Jerry. And like, you kind of feel like she's like, this is my moment. this is when everyone's going to see who I am.

And you see, it's like the housewives, we always say with housewives, the first season is their shy season, the second season, the bitch flower blooms, you know, which is where they just start being cracked. They start getting cracked by all, because there's so many setups and stuff like that,

and everybody knows, you know, they don't really go to lunch with the camera crew every day and stuff like that. So you know it's kind of set up, but the reality comes in when it really starts to crack their psyches and they start going crazy. And you really see that happen to Little Edie in this, where she's holding herself up to this, you know, as this entertaining showgirl type thing. And by the end, she's like, I'm out of here.

I'm out of here in five minutes. I can't take anymore. I can't spend another winter in the country. Yeah. Another winter. I've got to get away from the icebox. This is it for me in Great God. That's a very astute observation because this sort of is the second season, which we're going to learn about when we talk about this.

a little bit. This was not the first time that the cameras visited the Beals. It's a really, really interesting story. I'm so excited to get into this. I have seen Grey Gardens so many times, and as with much of my sort of cinematic upbringing, I was introduced to this by my mother. So I got the experience of watching Grey Gardens multiple times with my own mother and sitting on the couch wondering, oh, no, is this where I'm headed as well? She also showed me Mommy Dearest. And I will say this is the first time I've watched this since having my own daughter eight months ago. And, you know, I always thought that this was so crazy and weird and, like, how did they get here? And, you know, how is this possible?

And they're so strange and so funny. And this time I was watching and I was like, ah, if I wind up on a twin bed next to my daughter with a little can of sterno making cat food, is that really so bad? She's cute. I'm like, I get it. I definitely had that same feeling of watching it at this point in my life. I think the only difference is I didn't feel like how did they get here. To me, it's like very clear how they got there. And it seems like a very simple path.

It seems like I'm doomed. I really did think, wow, this could very easily be me very soon. And am I okay with that? And I kind of was. I mean, hand me a baton. I think you're going to be okay based on sort of the downward trajectory of the Beals, so let's get into it. We're going to talk about how this movie was basically a total accident, how the Beals, as we've already discussed, set the stage for the reality TV franchises that we love

so much, and why its success is not just due to the two women in front of the camera, but also two women behind it, which I did not know about at all until we started researching this. By the way, Ben, I think you're spot on that the big difference to me about this documentary is how much they are interacting with the cameramen, and we're going to talk about that. quite a bit. But that that reads as confessional to me. That reads as like the awareness that we see now of reality TV stars that they are on a reality TV show, which I think has become kind of like a cornerstone of the genre. All right. So let's talk about the actual house itself. In 1895, there was a newspaper heiress named Margaret Bagg Phillips, what a name, who commissioned a famous

architect to build her dream home in East Hampton for herself and her husband. But her husband just pretty much immediately died. And he left his entire estate to his wife, which made his brother really angry. His brother contested the will, claimed that Margaret had pressured her husband into making her the sole beneficiary, and actually said that she'd cremated him before they could do an autopsy so that his brain couldn't be searched for, quote, evidences of insanity, which were surely there. Hmm, yes. Well, God, those were the times, right they? Yes. Jeez. Yes. Good time to be a lady. But Margaret won, actually. And she got to build her dream house,

which was a 6,652 square foot 28-room mansion. So I don't know if you really get a sense of how big Grey Gardens is from watching this. It's enormous. 28 rooms. Yeah, because you really only see like... Like three rooms. You see a foyer. You're a case in an attic, the bedroom.

There's that one room towards the end. And then there's a one moment kind of in the kitchen area. But you do not get a sense that there's like, I don't know, So like 15 more rooms. Which is also very real housewives. You know, you always see these huge houses and then you see the living room, the kitchen, and occasionally the bedroom when they have to pack or something and everything else is left off limits. So this woman sold it to a couple who lived there for about a decade.

They spent a ton of money on landscaping. They import concrete garden walls from Spain, beautiful pale flowers, and they're the ones who give it the name gray gardens. And it's because of the color of the gardens themselves. Not that you can tell from the state of them by the time, get the documentary. Big Edie, or Edith Ewing-Buvier, was born in New York the same year that the design for Grey Gardens was commissioned, 1895.

Her father was a super wealthy lawyer. She had two older brothers, and she was the baby of the family until she was 11 when her mother gave birth to twin girls, and that ruined everything for Edy. She was not happy about the babies. So she ends up kind of working overtime for her parents' attention, and she particularly thrives musically. She loved playing the piano, desperately wanted to be an opera singer, and also she was absolutely stunning, which we see, you know, a little bit of in the documentary. And in 1914, when she was 18 or 19, her family bought a different summer house in East Hampton.

Also, couldn't stop thinking about summer house when watching Grey Gardens this time. So very close. Put them in that house. They're always looking for a new house. That's where we need. They should have a Grey Gardens party on Summer House. They're always doing themes like aliens and, like, Cowboys, let's do Grey Gardens Party. It's appropriate. Absolutely. They need that house. Put Lindsay and her kid in one of the rooms, you know, just let her go. Just let her go for 20 years. That's where she's going, for sure. So this is where Big Edy really became the bell of the ball. She was known around the Hamptons as a great beauty and a musical talent, but this freedom was pretty

short-lived because a year and a half later, she's already engaged to Phelan Beal. And he's about 14 years older than she was. He was a lawyer, again, who would go on to work for her father. They got married when Edie was 21, reportedly in front of thousands of guests, and the wedding was perfect. Except for one thing, she had arranged for a huge choir and a soprano solo, and she was pissed that she didn't get to sing at herself. Not the star of her own wedding. How would she not be able to sing at her own wedding? I don't blame her. If I set up a whole wedding to sing and you hire some other singer, you're out of there.

I'm divorcing you right there. I'm leaving you right there. I'm old. Yeah. Well, I think her family probably was like, shh, no, no. know. Yeah. So she starts popping out kids right away, beginning with little Edy in 1917.

And then she has two boys in 1920 and 1922, but who cares about them? So Little Eity, a lot like her mom. First of all, she is absolutely stunning, maybe even more so than Big Edy. When they showed those photos of her walking in a fashion show, I mean, she's really, like, gorgeous. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's difficult to express. how just beautiful little Edy was and Big Edy, but more notable with Little Edy

because it does make the fact that she never found a life partner outside of her mom, you know, kind of all the more intriguing. Yeah, well, she rejected them, right? She did reject them, wasn't she saying to them? Yes, I know she rejected at least one person, yeah. Yeah, so we'll definitely talk about that a little bit. Paul Getty, according to her mom. Jay Paul Getty, yeah, there's a couple of major suitors.

Also, according to one pretty creepy family story, she lost her bathing suit while diving at the pool and from then on became known as the body, or body beautiful beel. Wow. As one does after accidentally getting naked in front of your entire family, I guess. The body. If it wasn't her family, it would be a totally fine nickname. Yeah, that it's her family. It's kind of weird. It's weird all around.

So, like her mother, she's very theatrical. She loved to dance. and her mother was very supportive of this, but her dad, according to New York Magazine, quote, violently opposed his daughter's being on public display in any way. So when she was 11 years old, she suffered from bronchitis and asthma, and her mom decided to keep her home for a year or two. And this is interesting because it's like, yes, she was sick, but also then her mom would be like, time to go to Paris and just take her off to Paris.

So I don't think she was that sick. I think they really loved spending time together even from this early in age. And little lady kept a diary during this time. So to give you a sense of how close she and her mother were, even this early on, here's a little excerpt. And I will do my best little lady. I apologize for my mid-Atlantic accent. Most children think that mother love is a thing taken for granted. It isn't.

It's love all right, but a different kind of love. I have two great loves in my life. First, the love for my mother, which will always go on, never forgotten or forsaken. Second, my burning love for a boy, which is no crush but as true, steady love as much as my ML, parentheses, mother love. Wow, that's really good. You did a great job of getting that accent. Because we have, can we talk about her accent for a second? Yes.

Which is, like, when you first hear her, it almost sounds like she's doing a weird quasi-British accent. But if there's, like, it's like, it's like, it's like, this weird kind of like flourishes and, like, it goes in strange directions that you don't expect. Well, so 50s, it's like you were saying earlier, how it sounds like a movie from the 50s, a melodrama from the 50s. It's that kind of voice, you know? I think she sounds so much like JFK. Yes. When I listen to his speeches, think not of what your country can do for you, but the way they draw those vowels out. It just really reminded me of the Kennedy accent that I have in my mind.

Well, if you listen to Jackie O. and her sister Lee Razzwell, who will appear quite a few times in this episode. I'm sure a last name that you two recognize. They sound just like this too. The things they're saying are less crazy, so it doesn't sound as strange. But this is like, I don't know, my grandma kind of sounded like this. My New England grandma a little bit. There's like the vestiges of that sort of 1950s, 1960s, mid-Atlantic accent. I like it.

There's something very charming about it. And it's weird. It almost feels put on. But they really talked like this. Mm-hmm. So one question is, do we think she really loved her mother this much? Or was she scared that Big Edy might read her diary someday? I think she loved her mother.

I don't know. I think so, too. There used to be this character on SNL that I'm forgetting the name of the actress. But the whole character was this, like, 11-year-old girl who just, like, loved her mom and thought her mom was the coolest. And she'd be, like, telling all her friends all the time, like, I guess I'm going to hang out with that towards my mom. Yeah. So cool. You see that dream in the corner? That's my mom. It was, um, Asim.

What was her name? Nassim Padraud, I think. Nassim Padraud. Oh, she was great. I loved her. Yeah, it was really good. So these diary entries are really interesting. She spent a lot of time wrestling with who she wants to be, whether it's a wife and a mother, which obviously is what's expected of her by society,

or if she wants to be a star. And obviously we know she wants to be a star. And around this time, the Beals lived in a very fancy Park Avenue apartment with servants who took care of everything for them, so they're not particularly used to keeping a house by themselves. And in 1923, they bought Grey Gardens. By the late 20s, Little Edie spent almost every weekend there probably because her parents' relationship was an absolute disaster. Now, some sources claim that Big Edie cheated, others claim Phelan cheated.

Doesn't really matter. They were just a terrible match from the beginning. She really wanted to perform and sing and hang out with artists and like she's very colorful and big and he's just kind of a stick in the mud. He's like, can you please iron my tuxedo like and sit back down in the corner? He really did not, I don't think he liked her that much. And by the mid-1930s, they were separated and they were running out of money. They survived the stock market crash in 1929, but they were nowhere near as rich as they used to be. But as many, as many, Many a Bravo star has done, they kept spending in order to keep up appearances. So Phelan actually asked Big Edie not to tell Little Edie about their financial situation because he felt it would, quote, rob all her joy. So Little Edie had no clue that they were running out of cash. Wow. And Big 80's like, sure.

Wait, little Edie had no clue about something? It's crazy. Listen, she might be more aware than we give her credit for. and Big Edy does a great job. She kept a full household of staff. She sent Little Edy to a fancy prep school. One of the reasons that Big Ety was able to do this is because she was still being supported by her father. And just like her husband, her father was prioritizing keeping up appearances.

It turns out that he was bankrolling really extravagant summers for his 10 grandchildren by selling like all of his stock and putting the money in annuities, which I don't understand. understand finances, but apparently this means that he was getting a high return while he was alive, but as soon as he died, it was not going to be worth anything. So he was sacrificing the future for the present, and not telling anybody that he was doing that. Meesh. Very bravo. Very bravo-coded, I'd like to add. Yes. So one of those grandchildren enjoying these lavish summers was Little Edie. Another was Jacqueline Bouvier, who would of course become who?

Jackie O'O. Jackie Kennedy first, actually. That's right. Jackie Kennedy and then Jackie O'Nassus. So it seems to me like they are constantly being pushed to keep up appearances by the men in their life. And this was kind of maybe the first time that I sort of understood that while watching this documentary is that this was literally their job. I don't know. Coming from sort of the world of Bravo in terms of like how much you are required to kind of keep up with the Joneses. Like, what do you all make of this in terms of them kind of being forced into this level of lifestyle, even though they cannot afford it? Well, I mean, were they forced into it, or did they

just, that was just what it was. I mean, their dad was just trying to hang on to that cash and play it out, you know? I mean, we see it happen all the time still today with everything going up and down and people just clinging on. We just saw somebody get arrested for their fraud, you know, trying to defraud insurance companies doing the exact same thing that they were doing. So I I don't know. I think once you live like that, you don't know how to live any other way, you know? Like to them living poor or living how they ended up living is beyond their comprehension. I don't even think they would have understood that. None of their peers. And 10 grandchildren all living like that too.

I don't think there was any understanding that there was anything else, you know. Yeah, there was a guy in the Hamptons about a year ago, a year and a half ago, who died by suicide because he was this, he was like a financier or he was something with finance and he was broke. And so they became more and more desperate, but he was hiding in. And his wife was a socialite and an influencer. And it was a whole thing. And everything came crumbling down. And he killed himself. And then she fell out of society.

It was like a whole giant article in the New York Times that was riveting. But like this is like, this is what happens. I mean, this is, it just time and time again in history. Yeah. It's just wild because like the whole premise of arrested development is this set up. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

But what's wild is, like, had they let go of the need to meet these wild expectations, they would have been fine. Like, as we'll get to what their financial situation was, it was completely survivable had they not tried to maintain this kind of lifestyle. Well, they would have been fine. They would have been fine monetarily, but they wouldn't have been fine in their standing in their community, in their family. They would have been outcast. That's probably the most terrifying thing to them, you know. That's true. Yeah, that line they have, the hallmark of aristocracy is responsibility.

Yeah. And like, what's the responsibility to maintain, you know, where they are right now, the status quo? And instead, they go so far on the other direction. So during this time, little lady who was now an adult, had made at least three attempts to start her own life outside of gray gardens. But it's interesting in her diary, she always refers to these as running away from home. And she gets dragged back by her father pretty much every time. Now, Chris, you mentioned this. She dated quite the run of suitors, including Howard Hughes,

Joe Kennedy Jr., which is why she insisted that she would have been First Lady, had he not gone down in that plane crash, and Jay Paul Getty. The last two of those, she most likely did have proposals from. We can't for sure confirm that, but people seem to think it's true. So funny of that time when you would just like, you would have, you'd be pretty and you'd be a deputant. he'd be like come out into the world, and a rich guy would come up and be like, I'll choose that one.

I propose. I'll take this one. And then she starts talking. Yeah. It's like, what's interesting is that Joe was supposed to be the one who was going to be president. And like who had been groomed by Joe Sr. And then John was kind of the fuck up. Well, and also like he wasn't in good health growing up.

He was a little scrawny. Right. And then it becomes this unexpected war hero. And so Joe signs up for the. most dangerous possible mission, you know, basically a suicide mission, bombing mission in the Air Force, dies. And then Jackie O, weirdly, her cousin becomes first lady. Like, it's such an odd sliding doors moment there. It really is. And I think that stuck with Edie forever. I think she was very jealous of Jackie and also Lee. I'm jealous of Jackie. I don't even know her. And could you

imagine, like, that's your cousin who you grew up with? I don't know if I'm jealous of Jackie. It looked like she had a horrible time with JFK and everything she was dealing with there. I am jealous of Lee Radswell. She was so gorgeous. Her clothes were fabulous. I think she had a better time. Well, yeah. I mean, I think of better times, but growing up, just all I ever saw of Jackie was just, you know,

glamour and gorgeous pictures and, like, keep the tears inside, you know, until you're at home, you know? Yeah. Yeah. She always looked great. Yeah. Well, the relationships never lasted for whatever reason. I think a lot of the time E.

Edie was dumping them. And she had a habit of ripping their faces out of their photographs together after the relationships had ended. As one does. Yeah. Good for her. Love her more every minute of this. She loves ripping things.

Now, sometime in her 20s, her hair also started to fall out, but she got creative about concealing it. But eventually she climbed a tree at Grey Gardens and lit what was left of her hair on fire. Well, you know, yikes. Truly going out in a blaze of glory. Yes. Was this just like hormonal alopecia? They believe that it's related to stress.

Kind of unexplained, but it seems like maybe an autoimmune condition related to stress. So meanwhile, Big Edie was also having a really rough time. Her mother, who had been her closest ally, died in 1940. A couple of years later, which is mentioned in the documentary, Phelan did divorce her by Telegram from Mexico and married another woman. That's one of my funniest moments. The unrecognized Mexican divorce. The Catholic Church doesn't recognize that. So it doesn't count.

No, no, we had the happiest marriage. Yeah. Sam. Fake Mexican divorce. A fake Mexican divorce. Nobody recognizes that. Nobody recognizes it. It doesn't matter.

The three most important things to me, the Catholic Church. What was there other things? I only cared about three things. The Catholic Church, swimming and dancing. And I had to give them up. Swimming and dancing. You had to give up the Catholic Church. Catholic Church as well.

It was so good. Yeah, the fake Mexican divorce is one of my favorite moments in that. It was real. It was very real. And she came away from the divorce with some child support, but this is really interesting. No alimony. That's the one thing that makes me wonder if she was doing a little something on the side. Because to walk away from a marriage with no alimony at that time, I think maybe somewhat

unusual. I don't know. But she got gray gardens. And that's kind of all she got in the divorce. So with no money from her husband to maintain it, you have to assume that she was just relying on her father, which as far as she knows, her father is still very, very wealthy. So she's probably like, it's fine. Except in 1948, her father also passed away. And Big Eady and her siblings were mighty surprised to discover that he had way less than they thought.

And beyond that, he had a habit of rewriting his will when his kids pissed him off. And Big Eady had pissed him off just a couple years earlier. She did this by showing up late to her own son's wedding and swanning up to sit in the front of the church. And he did not like that. So he left her $65,000 in a trust controlled by her own sons, not even controlled by her. I would be around $870,000-ish thousand dollars today, which sounds like a lot, except when you think about what it would cost to run a house like Grey Gardens and maintain that lifestyle, in which case, that's not very much at all.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. She was very depressed. She started gaining weight, and eventually she couldn't afford to send Little Edie money anymore. So in 1952, at 34 years old, little Edie finally gave up and returned to Grey Gardens to be with her mother, and she would stay there for the next 25 years. Wow, 25 years? 29th.

That's a long... That's a lot of winters in the house. A lot of winters at Great Gardens. It's a lot of winter. I just love that line when Big Eadie says, it's very hot on July 29 in New York City. Like, not it's hot in July or the summer. No, July 29.

She's very specific. That's the hottest day known for it. So one year later, Jackie Bouvier became Jackie Kennedy when she married JFK, and suddenly the Beals of Grey Gardens were related to, well, he would become the president. By the early seven,

the house had fallen into pretty insane disrepair, actually worse than you see in the documentary Grey Gardens. And that's because a local paper ran a headline that Jackie O's relatives were being told to clean their house by the health department or they would be kicked out. So health department officials got a search warrant. They entered the house. And one of them told the paper, quote, three people vomited when they went back outside. Boots were needed to walk through the house. there were fleas everywhere. Wow. So they told the beals, you have to clean up, or we are evicting you.

And the paper reached out to Little Edie's brother, Phelan Jr., who told them, quote, My brother and I have done everything possible, short of kidnapping them to get them to move. They just left them. I mean, where's the effort? Where is the effort? Yeah. Sort of kidnapping. Hello, do the kidnapping.

Yeah, but have you seen those ladies? I mean, I don't think there's any telling those two what to do either, you know? I think they probably were like, this is, we're staying. And I don't know what the connection, you know, what the remedies for mental health weren't great at that time either. So, you know, I think their options were probably like, do we just let them stay? Do we have them committed? I mean, what do we do? And probably the most humane thing to do would have just been to let them stay, right?

Because I think a lot of people would have committed them, especially if you're walking in your house and people are walking out vomiting, you know. That's true. true. My guess is they just didn't, they hadn't checked on them in years. I mean, you could send someone to help clean it. You could send someone to help them maintain it. You could send them some money because they were destitute. They didn't have any money. Jackie did. Uh-huh. She did. So this kicked off a series of raids by the health department on Grey Gardens, which they talk about in the documentary. And these were actually like pretty inhumane. They showed up and they like removed the women from the house, they came in with a hose and just like fire hosed everything down, which I don't

know how that's supposed to make it better. That's just going to mildew everything. Right. They were just constantly pestering them, bothering them. You know, neighbors are complaining, but they're not complaining about, like, can someone take care of these women? They're complaining about, you know, what the outside of Grey Gardens looks like. In spring of 1972, finally, Jackie and her sister, Lee Radzwell, got involved. So Jackie visited the house in May. And then And she sent a high-powered lawyer to a hearing before the health department, which ended up getting them to leave them alone. By June, the house was also being cleaned and renovated.

But Lee Redsoil turned up with cameras. Lee had decided to spend that summer in the Hamptons because she wanted to make a documentary about her own childhood. And she thought it would be fun to have my eccentric aunt narrate it, meaning big-easy. Which this to me right away, I'm like, I don't get it. I don't totally get what she's doing here. It's a little exploitive, right? Like, I want to have my eccentric aunt. Big Edy of all people to be your narrator.

I think she's just like, my aunt's crazy, and I got to include this in my documentary because people are going to want to see this. I think so, too. But as we're going to discuss the footage that ends up getting shot, you can actually now see in a new documentary, new-ish, in the last, like, eight years called That Summer. And Lee Radzweil is a complicated character because I actually think she does care about them and love them. but to your point, I don't know why she wants to shine a spotlight on them. I don't know that she knows why either.

So she brings on her friend photographer Peter Beard, and he brought on his friends documentary filmmakers, David and Albert Maisels. Now, have you ever seen any other Maisel's documentaries? I have not. I've seen some of Gimme Shelter. Maybe I saw the whole thing in school. I took a lot of film classes in college,

and I feel like, actually, you know what? I think I watched Gimme Shelter, but I think I may have fallen asleep during part of it. Sorry, Maisel. But they look fascinating. Salesmen are looking to the lives of four door-to-door Bible salesmen. I mean, hello. Salesman is good.

Yeah. I saw salesmen a long time ago, and it's really interesting. And it's also interesting. It's, again, I think it feels obscure for Door-to-Dore Bible salesmen, in the same way that Grey Gardens might feel obscure or niche, and yet it feels incredibly universal in how American it is. at the intersection of like commerce and independence and libertarianism and sales and religion, you know what I mean, in America at this point in time.

That's a good documentary. I like that one. You should watch Gimme Shelter. That's what they were probably most known for at this point. It had come out in 1971. If you don't know what it is, they were following the Rolling Stones on tour. They end up at the Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Raceway, which ended up just being a complete disaster. Someone hired the Hells Angels to supply security.

it goes horribly wrong and a man is shot to death in like the front row of the concert, which you see captured on camera from like right behind Mick Jagger's head. Wow. It's incredibly well done. A lot of it is actually the Rolling Stones watching the footage back and like experiencing, you know, themselves on stage seeing this. And it's just,

it's sort of fascinating to see these like massive, massive rock stars just completely stripped down. Anyway, highly recommend. it. But they were big on cinema, Verite. And Chris, could you explain what that means in this context? Real cinema. Yes. Okay. Yes. So, I mean, basically, they end up being very focused on showing the truth. And to them, that also generally involves exclusively observing. They do not want to be involved in what they're capturing at all. A little different than what we wind up with, but that was their intention.

I'm not to say, they're like eating tomato order. being passed around by you, but that's okay. I know. I don't think you have a choice with those ladies. They call the shots in their life. I would, first of all, I would have a hard time just like being in that house, but also when they pass around, that sort of like amorphous tomato thing. This crackers for the cameraman.

Yeah, I'll be like, no, thank you. No, and they're like literally eating liver pets. They're basically eating cat food. It is cat food. They're eating cat food and ice cream. Yeah. A lot of ice cream. Well, I got to get away from the ice box.

It's just that is the icebox as the antagonist. It's the funniest. I'm taking these like weird little mini, mini, mini, mini scoops. But like, like, Big Edie is sort of like pawing at it as if, like, there might be something under the vanilla that's like more vanilla-y. And it's just like. And Beattis, like saying her ice cream bill was $171, which at that point in time is so much money. Well, they open that ice box and it's all ice cream. And then little Edie is just eating it with a knife, which cracks me up.

And she's like, I'm not gaining the weight. I'm not gaining it back. So this sort of documentary filmmaking that was very unobtrusive is the reason that Peter Beard suggested bringing the mazes along. Apparently, Lee was concerned that they were not going to let them into the house with cameras. So Peter Beard suggested them because he's like, listen, they're very unassuming, they're very charming, they shoot on 16mm. They're not going to freak out the beals. According to Lee, she says that they spent weeks driving back and forth to the house to try and get the east. to let them in. But this is a bit conflicting to Albert Maisel's version of this. Now, this is what Albert

says. He says, when she called him up, he was skeptical. He said, quote, at first I thought, how come you're making a film of your childhood when it all took place in the past? And she said, no, no, no. I have a list of some 40 people and things going on right now that would be in the film. And she said, come over. Let's talk about it. So we got the list. Item number 34 was, as she described it briefly, her eccentric aunt and cousin. So we made a deal where she would pay for the filming and we began making this film. So I don't think they're super invested in this. It feels like a bit of a vanity project, but they're just kind of doing it because she's paying for it. And one day, while they're working with Lee, Albert says that she got a call from Little Edie asking her to

come help them with the health department because they were harassing them again. And so the mazes are like, okay, I guess we'll come along and take our cameras. And as soon as they got to that house, they started rolling, and they were like, this is, this is it. This is what we want to see. We don't want to see anything else. This is incredible. Also, Jerry Tori, aka the Mabel Fawn, said that Lee was very uncomfortable during the visit,

potentially because she didn't understand what the actual state of the inside of the house was until seeing it in person. And again, it was a lot worse than it is even in Grey Gardens because she actually additionally called Jackie again, and she ends up getting Aristotle Onassis to, come and pay for them to repaint parts of it. So what you're seeing in gray gardens is not only professionally cleaned, it's also repainted. Like, that's how bad it was before. Oh my God.

It's crazy. So the mazes get like a couple hours of footage and they show what they have to one of their frequent collaborators, Ellen Hovedy. And she helped them pull together a little reel in about a week that they took back to Lee because they were like, hey, this is it, this is the movie, this is what we should make. Will you please fund this for us to go back into Grey Gardens? And what do you think Lee Radzwell said when she watched the footage? Hell no. Hell no. You're going to make me look great. You're going to make my whole family look crazy. I'm not paying for this. It's exactly right. She took the negatives and said no more of this and she thought that it was done. Except that the mazes could not stop thinking about the Edies, especially not David. And he apparently owned a summer house

not very far from Grey Gardens, and he actually kept talking to Little Edie about making a film. Apparently, Big Edie did not want to do it. It was Little Edie, who was like, yes, yes, yes, let the cameras in. And eventually in late summer of 1973, the mazes were allowed back inside the house

and started shooting Grey Gardens. So, I said this at the top, but while the mazes get pretty much all the credit for Grey Gardens, there were actually four directors. Albert and David Maisels, obviously, are the two that you see in the documentary, and they're the ones that are constantly referenced. But there were two women working with them, Ellen Hovedy and Muffy Meyer, both of whom are credited

as directors and editors on this documentary. So only the mazes ever physically entered the house. They actually didn't even let the assistant cameraman in. But that seemed to be okay with everybody because the house stank horribly. Albert and David said that they would park far away from the house and hose themselves down with bug spray while tying flea collars around their ankles. Wow. But they didn't really care because they were really obsessed with Big and Little Edy.

And the Beals seemed to feel the same, particularly Little Edy, who kept bringing the brothers into the conversations on camera, despite this being something that they were actively trying to avoid. So we discussed this a little bit, but like, what does that do sort of for the movie for you all as viewers? Well, it adds a lot because they don't really, they're never overpowering with it, you know? And you can tell that they're only talking when they need to talk. And a lot of it is when it's little Edy alone, just mumbling to herself. You know, it sounds like ramblings of a crazy person. And so having him there to kind of ask her what's going on is keeping it on track. And it's also making them look less crazy.

I mean, it does humanize them a little bit because you can tell they've been around each other so much that they can speak in grunts and, you know, sides to each other and understand what they're talking about. and they go on these loops every day of the same thing over and over again. I could have been something. I could have been something. No, you couldn't have done anything. I didn't do that to you. Yes, you did it to me.

I mean, it's just like constant. It's like your own inside chatter in your brain that we all go to therapists to shut up, you know. But they're both doing it out loud and to each other. And I think having someone else there asking them puts it into context and it makes it an actual conversation instead of just, you know, someone under a freeway rambling. like a crazy person. So I think it actually brought some humanity to it. I think they did them a huge favor with that.

Yeah, it actually brings a little bit of warmth in a weird way because you can see that these are also kind of like two lonely people. They only have each other. And like Jerry, when he comes by or maybe the person who's doing some of the landscaping. And you can see like little Eadie is like so excited just to be able to plead her case to someone, just to show off, just to be a little seductive at times, to do her dancing. it's like a kid, you know. Ron and I were just joking on our podcast

about, you know, being young and your parents have like a dinner party and you come out and like entertain all the adults and you're so excited. And that's kind of like the vibe you get from her which is, it's like sad because you see how lonely she is. But it's also, it's warm.

And also they kind of are pleading their cases. Like they've had these longstanding arguments and disagreements and finally they have someone that they can turn to be like, this is what I think. This is why she never made it. She had all sorts of wonderful men. She turned them down.

And, like, they finally get to plead their case to someone else. But I think it actually adds... Well, it makes the documentary a much more... It adds layers to it and makes it much more accessible, too. I agree. I think it makes a little eating more charismatic. Or it reveals her charm. She's charming.

She's a charismatic person. She's funny. And she's funny. She's a good performer. And I do think what's interesting is, even with reality television, if your stars are not charismatic, it doesn't work.

And one of the, I think it's easy to say, oh, the only reason these people are famous is they're willing to do ridiculous things, or it's that they live in such squalor. But it's that they're, again, if Edy was not charming and charismatic, this movie would just be a real bummer to watch.

Yes. They're both pretty charismatic, actually. I agree, both of them. Yeah, it's just with Edy, you get the more one-on-one, I think, interactions. Yeah. And she's one of those people that if this was today, she would be a huge star. Yeah.

She would be a huge star, have her own show. She would have made $100 million on like OnlyFans slash TikTok and like Instagram and have her own show on HBO Max. It's so hard now that reality has been out, reality TV has been out for so long that it's one of the biggest problems with it is finding people who are themselves. I mean, everybody has learned to play up to the cameras and they're doing it for the likes and the followers and this and that and they're making stuff up. up and, you know, to find somebody who can, like, legit be themselves is really hard. And she can't, she's just herself. I don't think she knows how to do anything else, you know?

Even when she's trying to do something else, you can tell it's just that little girl playing with the shirt over her head. Yes. And she's lived an interesting life. Like she, Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, Joe Kennedy, Jr., like, Jackie and Jackie One Susson is her cousin. This is a fascinating person. She also does not leave dead air.

Yeah. Like, they, those two are talking the whole time, and it's actually, their rapport is so fast. It's actually, like, it's amazing to watch. So, you know, she'll say one thing, like, oh, he was a decent man who came by. So it wasn't that decent. No, he was very decent. You know why? You don't know a decent person.

I had to send them away. You'd send them away. Why'd you send him away? Yeah, dude. It's like, part of that's, like, a very New York kind of banter. But there is, like, that element of, like, she's filling the screen with content in a way that, like, like a really good reality star does. Yeah, you see there were a lot of comparisons like Ben mentioned earlier to Real Housewives of

New York because there was a season where Luann, who's the glamorous countess, has to move in with Sonia, who's the ex-billionaire, you know, the ex-wife of a billionaire who is living in a home that's in disrepair. It's this huge house. She doesn't have the money to take care of it. She's got brown ice. The hot water doesn't work. Nothing.

And so the comparisons, I think at the time a lot of people took it as like these two crazy ladies stuck in a house together, but I don't really think it was that. I think it was Sonia. It was Sonia being in this house and being so completely delusional and seeing everything as like, aren't I fabulous? Like, look at this townhouse I live in. And she just figured they would be cutting all the parts where the water wasn't working or, you know, she just is so delusional that in her mind, she's still telling stories of John John and partying, you know, with, you know, all these people. And it's exactly Little Edie. You mentioned John John, which is in reference to JFK Jr., right?

Mm-hmm. And you know who corrected her on that show, that no one who knew him actually called him John John. It was Carol Radzwell. Yeah, Carol, yeah. Who is, of course, the daughter-in-law of Lee Radzwell. Yes, all connected. It was Jackie O's sister. It's all connected.

But there is something, I mean, like, Sonia, like, everyone compares Sonia to Great Gardens. Because even when she was out of her townhouse, that was, like, falling into disrepair, which it was, the townhouse was in bad shape, but to be fair, it was never like Great Gardens. Like this, Great Gardens is wild. Nothing is like this. But, you know, Sonia winds up in an apartment at one point, and she doesn't like people seeing into her bedroom. So she starts taping tables to the window.

And it's like, there's just something about, like, there's a certain kind of personality that's like, I'm going to live fabulously, but I'm going to do just crazy-ass things to maintain my sense of luxury. I can't afford drapes, so I'm going to tape towels up. And that's just what I'm going to do. And it's like kind of wild to watch. So, I mean, look, Sonia is, that is an open case. There's a lot more years for Sonia.

And she may wind. She is a very good candidate for winding up in the ED lane. Great. Well, I can't wait. So far she's not there. But she's got our eyes on her. So Muffy Meyer, one of the other directors and editors, also pointed out that, quote, in hindsight, I also think it was important.

it was two men engaging with them. Little Edie would flirt and so on because the absence of men in her life was such a strong part of her character and in the end of the film. There were also days where David, Albert, Edy, and Eadie felt so amazing about what they'd captured that they'd shout out. It's been a banner day. So, like, they were really having fun and I think really enjoying the time with these women. In fact, the biggest issue was not what to film, but actually what to keep. And after about five weeks of filming, they had 80 hours of footage, 70 reels of wild track, and 30 to 40 additional reels of just random shit. One has to imagine, at least 20 of those are just cats. And I watched the documentary that summer, which is the one that is the footage that Lee

shot. And it's actually really interesting. You know, it's sort of less cohesive than Gray Gardens is, but one of my favorite moments in the whole thing, there's this one orange cat. And Little Edie goes, isn't he just the image of Teddy Kennedy? Of course, before he got fat, and it's like you're talking to Teddy Kennedy's sister-in-law. It's so funny. Well, it was so beautiful how they used the animals and the cats, and they really conveyed, like, wow, these cats are even looking at them.

Like, what the hell, you know? I mean, they had one of the cat just standing on the very top of the, not even the window sill, the actual window frame, just staring at them, I'm like with kind of a scared look in his eyes, but also just they showed how fascinated even the animals were with them, which was interesting. The editors apparently were like, thank God for the cats because there was something to cut away to all the time for the reaction shots. Yeah. Well, my favorite was the cat that wound up like pooping behind her portrait. Yes, that's an iconic cat.

He's pooping behind the portrait. He's the well, he's got something to do. And they cut to the cat behind the portrait. Be like, oh, my God. Like the cat's also equally as mortified. Like this is not a good moment for me either. So Ellen and Muffy sat the mazes down with a tape recorder and they were like, okay, like, what do you want this to be? What do you want this documentary to be?

What is the story that you're trying to tell with this? And the mazels apparently kind of had no clue. Ellen said the material was all very repetitive and that she and Muffy really had to be the ones looking for motivations and to kind of dig out the psychological tones that were present in this story. And they frequently didn't agree with the mazles about what those tones were. So let me ask you all this. What do you think the main conflict or question of this documentary is? Well, to me, it's about, like, the truth of who did what to who. Like, did the mom hold the daughter down?

Or did the daughter, was the daughter just crazy and has been relying on her mom this whole time? And her mom's really propping her up. Yeah, like, was mom an excuse to return home or was mom forcing me to come home? Yeah. Who depends on who more? Right, because so many of us have that conflict in ourself. I mean, you look at your own life and it's like, well, how much of this is how I was raised? Like, how much of my craziness is because I inherited that and how much of it is my own doing, you know, and whose fault is it?

And then if it's true that it's inherited and a lot of, like, my behavior patterns don't even come from me, then where did they come from from my mom? And then if I listen to, obviously I'm projecting, but if I listen to my own mom's story, that all came from her mom. So it's, I think a lot of people can relate just thinking, what the hell is going on with me? You know? Is this all in my head? Because we see the truth come out multiple times where at first you're believing Edy, like, oh, this woman dragged me back and this and that. And then the mom's saying, no, I didn't. I never did anything.

I wanted you to be married. I wanted you to be happy. You could have done this. You could have done that. But then the mom admits at one point, she's like, of course I brought her back. Then I, what am I going to be? I'd be all alone without my daughter. That's all I have, you know.

I think the deeper question for me is like, how do they get here? And like it kind of ties into all of that stuff. Like what got them to this place? Was it, is it the daughter? Does the daughter have mental illness? Is it the mom? Is she like manipulative? Like everything that Ronnie just said.

But like, but still even an even larger question is with all that, what were the building blocks to this, to this lifestyle that they have right now? How did that lead to this? That was what was going through my mind the entire time and trying to piece together like, oh, I, hearing their stories and piecing together all these little elements and these fragments that you hear, you start to put together a picture

of these two codependent women and how they wound up in squalor. Well, everything you both said was very nuanced, beautiful, and complicated, but according to David Maisel, the main conflict was, is Little Edie going to leave? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, sort of no. Muffy and Ellen were both like, she's never leaving. She's never had any intention of leaving. Yeah, that is not what's happening here. And I think it's so interesting that the two women were like, sirs, no, like, that's not what we're doing. As Muffy put it, nothing really happens.

And so Ellen and I realized that since the beals didn't change, we had to make the audience change how they felt not about the beals, but about the power dynamic between them. So it's exactly what you just described. They absolutely nail this. So they start to weave together three. re-narratives. You said all of them. First, big Edie is taking care of her daughter who can't take care of herself because she was too messed up to live her own life. Second, they flip it and show how Edie was really the one taking care of her mother, who was manipulative and demanding, had maybe

stolen her daughter's life from her. And then finally, third, they combine those two to show that it's really a symbiotic relationship and sort of both things can be true. So they start showing the rough cut to close friends, and then going back to a bulletin board where they have every scene numbered out and they're rearranging to try and adjust the emotional arc of the film. But as they continue to sift through the hours of footage, they realized there was basically no room tone or silence between the dialogue. So they actually sent the mazes back and they were like, hey, we need you to grab room tone. They also asked them to go back and get particularly little Edie to repeat certain sentences

so that they could get them cleaner. And they said she did it perfectly. She was a total pro. They would play her the recording and be like, this is the context in which you're saying this. This is the emotional weight, and she would re-perform it exactly how she had in the moment. So I think like— Well, yeah, she's done it a thousand times. You can tell all that stuff coming out of her mouth.

She's said so many times she says it every day. They just go through these loops, you know? Yeah. And I think the most interesting thing is, you know, we talk about like, how did they get to this point? How did they get to live in such squalor and such dirt? I don't think, to me, that's not the point at all because I don't think they think of themselves as living in squalor at all. I think they're both so completely delusional. All they see is they've got this mansion.

They're part of this family. And they still think it's very glamorous. And they're perfectly happy just living in their own loops. Because that's the only place they can live in that reality. You know, anywhere else they go outside, the reality is crushed by everybody else's perceptions. Yeah. They're not embarrassed at all. How did those, they are not.

But it's like how did they wind up into this, like falling into this delusion? Like, what were the things? that fell apart in their lives that made them have to build this delusion up so that way they could sort of like find this like elegant and beautiful

and like you hear about like love like never having the husband and then having to come back and the mother who wanted to be a singer and like as you piece those together you see how they like wound up in this place which is really interesting to me

but I think it's really interesting hearing about this is hearing how the filmmakers had to pull these narrative threads and when you watch the documentary it really does feel like nothing happens you just feel like you're watching people and you're just learning about them

but it's really cool because there is like a sneaky nuance to it where you are learning about things and like the pretty much the last scene the last major scene is where she really little Edie has that sort of bigger reaction about that one guy would seem like that was someone

that she actually actually actually liked and the mom sent him away. And it feels like, oh, like, it felt like we did reach kind of an emotional climax there. And I'm like, wow, this movie is so interesting how like nothing's happening, but there are all these subtle elements that are moving forward, which is, by the way, very much a precursor to the real housewives. Because you can watch 20 episodes or 15 episodes of people just having lunch or going to parties where, like, you could say there's not really a story happening here.

It's just people socializing. But it advances all these subtle things that by the end of the season, you're everyone's like riveted. So Ellen and Muffy really felt the need to protect the beals. They wanted to make sure they were not exploiting them, not exposing them to any ridicule. And apparently that's something that the mazes were a lot less concerned about. There's one scene in particular that they fought about quite a bit that did end up getting cut from it. And it showed Little Edie, like leaning out the balcony window and kind of waxing poetic about Richard Nixon and how much he sucked. And Ellen and Muffy were like, this is great. She's very funny. She's smart. This shows that she's not

as narcissistic as we're painting her. She is paying attention to current events. She has opinions on them that are actually intelligent and the mazes kept cutting it. They were like, no, it's going to date the film. And Ellen was also like, I think he thought it was self-serving because she's basically a Kennedy. She's related to them and, you know, she's criticizing a Republican. But I do think it's interesting that they were cutting that kind of stuff in favor of maybe making them look a little bit even crazier. And the two women behind the camera were like, no, like we need a little bit more of this context. That's interesting.

I can see an argument for cutting that, though, just because when you bring something like politics into it, it distorts it. Like a viewer is immediately going to take signs. That's true. No matter what they've already seen. They're going to already make a decision about your personality or whether or not they like you based just on that. Yeah.

That's true. That's a good point. But I could, but I could, I would definitely would like to see it as well, you know. Well, they were successful in convincing the mazes to add a different sequence to the film, which is the opening tracking shot that shows all of the beautiful East Hampton houses and then finally lands on Grey Gardens. Yeah. That was beautifully done. And just how they got the picture from the newspaper to exactly match up. Yeah. Yeah. It was really great. That's Ellen and Murphy.

And also showing, also showing all the other homes. I don't know why it stood out to me. I know it's just how it is, but they showed all these other homes right on the beach, and then you kind of have to go back away to their home where they've got the wall of the gardens as kind of like the jail cell, like hedging them in there, you know, kind of keeping them in from the glamour that everybody else is living. Yeah. Well, there was a third woman as well, Susan from Key, who is credited as an editor and associate

producer on the film. So a lot of women working behind the camera on this, which I think is a big part of the reason why it works as well as it does. And she said the editing process took about two and a half years because they had so much footage to get through. So finally, it was time to show the film to the Edies. And according to Albert, Little Edie said, the mazes have created a classic. And I would say she was right. It screened September 27, 1975 at the New York Film Festival, and then it got a limited theatrical release in the U.S.

Little Edie absolutely loved it. Muffy gave her a bouquet at one of the first. screenings with an audience, and she started throwing the flowers down into the audience and the orchestra. The critical reaction to this movie surprised me. Given what sort of a pivotal classic it's become over time, it was really panned by critics. A Virginia newspaper wrote, The movie may strike you as a depressing rip-off of two women whose lives are infinitely sad and who lose whatever vestige of dignity their privacy afforded. It's a painful movie, not because it's sad to see the gulf between the way they were and are now, but because of their

exploitation is so cruel and the film's laughs are at their expense. The New York Times said, To watch Grey Gardens is to take part in a kind of carnival of attention with two willing but vulnerable people who had established themselves for better or worse in the habit of not being looked at, and what happens when the carnival moves on. I have to disagree with those reviews. I do, too. I think that's the easy thing to say. Like, oh, they're exploited, but it's not at all. I mean, I think it's a dream come true for a little Edy. I mean, you've got someone here who always thought she was going to be a star, but was never told, she was always told she wasn't good enough or didn't have what it takes and this and that,

but she knew that she did, and she just kept being her crazy self. And then finally she didn't become a star, and she really didn't have to do anything but be herself that whole time. Like, she was recognized. I think that the people who like Grey Gardens who don't like it because it's like, oh, these two sad ladies living in it. I think they like it because it's these ladies who don't live. in a traditional sense of what would make you happy. Like, the way they live is how you would think of as the bottom of the barrel,

but they're actually two of the most happy people ever. I mean, they've got the love of each other, which is very strong, and it doesn't seem gross. I mean, I'm sure there was manipulation, obviously, we see going on, but it doesn't seem like one is lording over the other as this big monster. They seem to be together because they want to be together, and they're both living a genuinely happy life with a million cats and raccoons eating bread that they feed them. I mean, I think in their minds they're living the dream life.

So I think it's kind of a black mark on reviewers like that who can only see it as, oh, these poor people, we should just ignore them and pretend they never exist, you know. By even looking upon people like that or giving them any kind of attention is humiliating. Instead of thinking, well, it's kind of your snobbery that's turning it humiliating in the first place. There's no humiliation in it, except that you're turning it into that with your judgment, you know? Yeah, the implication is like they must be so mortified that they can't live like us and like we shouldn't be dwelling in their humiliation. But like Ronnie said earlier, these are two women who don't seem actually very embarrassed about their environs. Like they are perfectly happy there. They have guests over.

They put down newspaper, you know, like, you know, you watch you're like, oh, my God, they're putting down newspaper for people to sit on. But actually, to their mind, they're like, oh, we're doing something nice. or like, we understand it's a little dirty. We'll put, we'll put this out. She's, like, happy to show that one bedroom shows her brother's bedroom where she does her makeup. Like, she goes upstairs and shows, like, feeds the raccoons. And it's sort of like, this is just their life.

And, like, it's horrifying probably for us, you know, as the flies are crawling along the bed frames, et cetera. But they're, they just are totally unbothered. And it's just they're happy. They just banter back and forth all day. They're the original podcasters. really. That's true. That's true. Well, Albert and all of the filmmakers defended it, but he said, some people just don't understand the difference between getting to know somebody very intimately and somehow

or other hurting them and exploiting them. There's an interesting word in this regard. The word is vulnerability. As if through the process of being very open with another person, you're going to get hurt because that's what the word vulnerable means. You're exposing yourself to the possibility of getting hurt, which I think is a beautiful way of describing this. Weirdly, many years later, he said, I hope that most people who see it are shocked by it and don't want to see anymore. And I couldn't find more of his sort of explanation around that, but the rest of the filmmakers did very much stand by it.

And so did the Beals, by the way. Apparently, they called up all the filmmakers and told them, don't worry about it. Like, we're not worried about the criticism. It's not true. We believe in this picture. Like, please don't be upset. And a lot of the criticism was saying, you know, oh, they're mentally ill. They're mentally ill.

And all the filmmakers were like, we don't necessarily agree with that. Like they're, you know, they are functional in their own weird way. So if they had still been, if they had still had money and been in beautiful dresses and well-groomed and still had those exact same personalities, nobody would call them crazy. No, not at all. Yeah, that's a great point, Ronnie. That's such a good point. You know, we'd celebrate them. Yes. And it's not their fault. They didn't have any money. Like, they were completely abandoned by whole portions of their family. So Big Edy died just two years after the movie came out in 1977. And according to Albert, when Mrs. Beale was dying, little Eadie happened to be with her and turned to her and asked, is there something we want to say to the world? And Big Edy said, there's nothing I want to say. It's all in the film. Little Edy sold the house shortly after her mother's death, and she only agreed to sell it to someone who would never tear it down.

And journalist Sally Quinn kept that promise. She bought the house in 1979 for $220,000, which, by the way, is probably a lot less than Edy could have sold it to somebody who would have torn it down. And with her husband, they spent over $600,000 to restore it. Also, wasn't her husband, Ben Bradley? Yes. Of the Washington Post during Watergate. That's right. With another presidential tie.

Wow. That's really interesting also, like that she sold the house after her mother died. It also makes you wonder, like, for all her talk about, why? Wine to leave, wine to leave, it sort of shows that she wanted to, I think she clearly just wanted to be with her mother. And then once her mother wasn't there, she didn't need this house anymore. And she, like, because obviously she could have left at any time, right? Yeah. She got out immediately.

And I love this. According to Quinn, Eadie insisted that it just needs a fresh coat of paint. That's all. That's all it needs. Ma'am, there's raccoons in the insulation. Also, you'll love this. Liz Lang, fashion designer to pregnant ladies everywhere, bought Grey Gardens in 2017 for $15 million. That's crazy. I just looked that up. I was looking at Liz Lang's Instagram right now.

Yeah, she has gray gardens. You know, Ben, you just pointed this out, but so many people thought that Little Edie couldn't survive without Big Edie. And that, you know, maybe she'd never leave the house, but she did better than survive. She thrived. She moved to New York City, then Florida, then Montreal, then California. And finally back to Florida, where she passed away at the age of 80. But while in New York, she got to enjoy a few cabaret runs. She had an absolutely wonderful time. She also traveled. She made friends.

She danced. And then the last place she lived, she got to swim every day. Oh, I love that. That is great. That is great. And I think it's actually really warming that she really loved her mother. And as much as she blamed her mother for things going wrong in her life, and as much as her mother probably did contribute to that.

Like, she just wanted to, I think on many levels, she wanted to be with her mom as long as possible. And then she went off and then lived her life. Well, her mom also understood her. And like even from an early age seemed to be one of the few people who did actually support her in the things that she was trying to do in a way that, you know, her father and grandfather did not. Yeah, and her mom was never telling her,

you're not talented, you can't do this, you can't do that. I mean, we had the one thing where she's like, she shouldn't sing like, she shouldn't be wiggling while she's singing. Like, wow, she's got to do that because there, you know, there came to a little competition where it's like, well, I'm the real, the train singer. And she's just this. But the whole film was her saying, oh, you should have, you know, you could have been a dancer. She's a great dancer. And she could have been an actor. And she. It was so beautiful. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And looking up this house online, I just put great gardens now. And what they've done to it is gorgeous. I can't believe it's still standing and looks so beautiful. So, wow, what a happy ending. Yeah. Well, that wraps up our coverage of Grey Gardens. Any sort of final thoughts on what we've learned today? Well, that's fascinating everything that you just said. I mean, I hadn't ever looked into it beyond that, you know, so it's so great to know that it ended up happy for her. Yeah, it's a fascinating story. It's like you want to really learn more about it. And, you know, as soon as I finished watching it, I did like a deep dive. Well, by deep dive, I mean, I went on to the Wikipedia. And then I just read it and then went to sleep. But still, like you, like you want to be like you want to. want to know what her life was like and what she, you know, it's, it's crazy. I actually,

the thing that was, it's what's so amazing to me is how it's such a big, like, cultural touchstone now. Like, that is, if you're referring to someone whose house is dilapidated, but they're kind of like, but the people inside it are living, like, in a sort of a sense of delusion, it's like, that's great gardens. Like, that's, that's the phrase that you use. That's what it's known about. And to know that it was panned, and then now everything I read about at last need, everyone's saying it's basically considered a masterpiece of the documentary genre. It's like crazy story around all of it. I agree. And my, I've, well, I'll just say, I think one of the smart things they did in not focusing on how did they get here is because they were always there. The whole

point is this is what happens when you don't change and you don't adapt to changing circumstances. They, like you mentioned, they continue to have the same arguments, and they continue to act as if they're living in this rich environment, even though there are raccoons in the attic. Raccoons? Raccoons, as I call them. My wife and I were watching it, and she was like, oh, my God, when she said, and I was like, oh, yeah, there's raccoons out there.

And she goes, is that outside? And I go, no, no, no, no, that's in the attic. And I think, you know, it's a, E. E.D. gets her momentum again. but I think it shows my biggest fear is ending up a burden to my child or trapped, you know what I mean, in my own entropy in some way. And so I think it's just, it's an example of why momentum is important. And, you know.

Or is it? I mean, did they die? I mean, did they live as the most original people on earth who just refused to bend to the will of society and not give a shit what anybody thought? That's how I look at it. I mean, I look at it as kind of heroic. And Edie kind of coming out a huge star in such a weird way when that's all she really ever wanted was to be appreciated by people. And look how she is.

I mean, to me, it's kind of a story of winning. I don't know. For me, with Little Edie, she is so invigorated by the presence of the documentaries that I have to imagine that there were 25 really hard, lonely winters there. Oh, 100%. And I think that, and then to know that she did so well going to New York and Florida and California, who knows what the alternative could have been. But I just, I see somebody who clearly wanted more from life and yet felt this tie. I think, you know, it was coming from her.

She wasn't forced into it. But I agree with you with regards to Big Edy, but with Little Edy, I feel like she got, I'm thrilled that she got out for at least a portion at the end of her. life. Yeah. Well, one of my questions was while watching it was, is she tied there by the mother or is she tied there by thinking that she failed? Because, you know, they get to a point where she says, well, you're 30, you know, you were 34.

You didn't make it. You had lines on your face, you know, like, I think there was a sense of like I failed. So she was partly there for her mother and partly giving up on herself. So to see it kind of end up in a way where she could be her authentic self and still find a happy life. I just. found to be oddly inspiring. I think that's one thing that's really great about the documentary

that we're all kind of touching on is that we all have these things that we're kind of projecting onto it and taking away from it because it doesn't really answer any questions. It just presents people, complicated people, where it's not like as simple as like, oh, there was a failure, so she came home and she was never able to face her failures,

her failures ever again. But it's like a big swirl of a lot of things, in terms of like expectations of society and what you want to be and youth gone and love for a mother and manipulation and generational trauma. It's like all this stuff swirling together and like, were they happy? Were they not happy? It's hard to say.

But like that's what's so interesting about it is that we're just like looking at two people living and trying to kind of like figure them out and it's really hard. And another thing I also want to point out in terms of you know, something that sort of

supports how this really wasn't that exploit. is sort of like Jerry coming, you know, in and out of this movie. This guy, Jerry, he shows up, but it's not like... He doesn't, like, smirk at the camera or give the camera eyes like,

oh my God, this is crazy, right? He's just there and he's just hanging out. And at one point, he's, like, lying down on his bed and, like, eating corn. He treats them... Yeah, I can't believe he's lying down on that or eating the corn. I know.

But he's... But Tim, it's like, these are just ladies. And it sort of shows... like, he's not winking at the camera. Like, these are people. They have interactions with people outside the world, just not a lot of them, you know. So a little bit about Jerry, the Marble Fawn, is that he was actually a young, I believe, homeless gay kid who was in the area kind of doing work on other houses. And he sort of stumbled onto the property and met these women and just, like you said, was really fascinated by them and I think loved them.

You see gay icons. Yes. Jerry saw it. Jerry saw it immediately. Did he end up moving in with them? I don't know if he lived with them for different periods of time, but he definitely visited them quite a lot. Yeah. And you're right that he could have like Jim Halperted at it.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And been like, blah, and like mug. But he, no. No one really did, which I thought was interesting. Nobody on camera did that. You know, and I thought that the guests who came. over for the birthday party would do that, you know. Oh my God, the birthday party. Yeah, they didn't.

Yeah. And, you know, even the daughter, or I think it was his daughter he was with, right? She was just, here we are, you know, let's get her. I know, but you know they were like, TikTok, get out of here before the fleas start climbing up our legs. Yeah. They got their half hour in and skedaddled. So I looked up those people, and I don't think they actually were related, but the younger woman, her name was Lois. And she's like into, like she's like a psychic tarot card reader and everything and she actually made like a little bit of a career out of being in the documentary. She has like a book called like I survived like living in gray gardens or whatever and she has pictures of herself older like in gray gardens memorabilia or whatever but she definitely

like took that and ran with it. And the other guy had just a totally different name. So I'm not sure if they were really related. But they were just saying two people. But again they didn't like I mean it's sort of funny because you're, you're, looking at her face. I was looking at her face and I was like, is she cringing? Is that smile like hiding utter disgust? And that's kind of like the fun of this movie is you're kind of like trying to peek behind, you know, the words and the eyes and the expression. Like, what are people

really feeling here? Like what's really going on? No, I think she really liked her and she gave her that little notebook. I mean, I think that just goes to prove. Because it seems like, wow, what a dinky little gift. You know, you brought, you bought her like a little five-cent notebook as her birthday gift. just how much she loved it. Like, yes, this is exactly what I need. I'm going to get on top of things. Just like the self-help, just like the self-help thing was teaching them the whole time. I'm going to get on top of it.

That's all I need to do is write things down. Well, speaking of some of these little moments, if anybody wants a little bit of further viewing in the Grey Gardens universe, I do recommend watching that summer. It's streaming on AMC Plus right now. It's really interesting. It also kind of gives a bit more into sort of like Studio 54, meets the Hamptons vibe, like Andy Warhol's in it. Peter Beard, Lee Redswell's boyfriend slash friend,

is just a very hot 70s man. Everybody has, like, normal hot person's 70s faces, which I really miss. And it was really, it's just, it's good. It's, it's, it's more slice of life than Gray Gardens is, maybe a little less coherent, but you get to see them interacting with the health department quite a bit, which is very interesting,

because they're actually like pretty nice to the health department. So I do recommend that. And then if you haven't seen it, the HBO movie, Grey Garden, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lang, is actually great. I really recommend it. I thought they did a beautiful job at that movie. I wasn't expecting that at all. When I watched that, I cried in that. That was just a beautiful, beautiful movie.

Loved it. Yes. You could see, like, the bad Ryan Murphy version. You know what I'm saying? Getting Made that feels exploitative or, like, unnecessarily melodramatic or whatnot. And I think partly because maybe with like Barrymore comes from a Hollywood family in one, there's just something that feels dignified about it that they give them dignity in that movie. I think they do.

And it was made by people who get it. Yeah. They watched it and they got it. They weren't because, yeah, like you said, they could have just been making fun of them the whole time and made it like almost a parody. But it was a beautiful, beautiful movie. Loved it. Well, thank you both so much for joining us. This was so much fun.

Is there anything that we can plug for you all coming up? Just our podcast. We are recording our show. We put up a new show pretty much every day of the week. We have a cool Patreon. It's patreon.com slash watch for crappins. And our Instagram is Instagram.com slash watch for crappins. So yeah, just find us out there in the world. If you haven't listened to their show, you must. Yeah, thanks for having us. This was great. It was great talking to you guys. And what a beautiful film. Oh, thank you so much. Well, this was an absolute dream for me. It was so nice to meet you. So fun to talk about this. Please come back any time. If there's any other movies you want to talk about or talk about a regular What Went Wrong episode. We really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks so much, guys. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support What Went Wrong. And check out our website at what went wrong. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer, post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched and written by Jesse Winterbauer. You know.