WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1421 - Karina Longworth

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Karina Longworth grew up in Los Angeles and was fascinated by the haunted memories of Old Hollywood. Later in life, her writing and research led her to creating the podcast that explores these forgotten stories, You Must Remember This. Karina and Marc talk about Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, what the history of show business reveals about our current moment, and what exactly is the state of the broader cultural conversation these days. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18-plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome how are you is everybody okay you locked in you strapped in you on the treadmill you in your car are you hiking are you? Is everybody okay? You locked in? You strapped in? You on the treadmill?

You in your car? Are you hiking? Are you walking? Are you doing work around the house? Are you visiting someone in the hospital? Where'd that one come from? Why'd you have to bring it down, man? Why'd you have to buzzkill it?

Are you in the hospital? Am I helping you out? Am I taking your mind off it? Are you mixing me with morphine right now? Are you high? Are you buzzed? I can tell, man. I can tell you're high. That doesn't even matter anymore. Everyone is fucking high. It's crazy. The last time I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, the entire city smells like weed. The last time I was in New York a couple weeks ago, the entire city smells like weed. It's all right.

Enjoy. Numb out, man. Numb out. Because when the shit goes down, you want to be numb. You want to be awake. You want to be alert. When the shit goes down, you want to be ready or you want to be numb. I don't know. So what's happening? Well, let me tell you, Karina Longworth is on the show

today. You might know her, her podcast. You must remember this. I knew about it, but I didn't listen to it until, uh, I knew I was going to talk to her and it's quite good. It's fucking awesome. And it got me kind of going, you know, she's very thorough and she's a real journalist and a real film critic and somebody who clearly knows about movies. She's done major sort of audio series on the Manson thing, on the blacklist, on the two gossip columnists at the beginning of Hollywood. She's very immersed in the first hundred years of film, film history. So I listened to sort of get my feet wet. I listened to her Dino and Sammy, her Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. series. I think it was like seven or eight thorough podcasts about the intersection of, you know, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin. But through that, you get the mob, you get Sinatra, you get the Rat Pack, you get racial and cultural upheavals

around the arc of these guys' lives. You get toxic masculinity, you get women around those men, you get Marilyn. women around those men. You get Marilyn. I mean, it's really high level cultural criticism, you know, which is what you can do with film. Because film is a portal into all of it. You know, once you, I mean, you can do it with paintings and you can do it with other art, but usually that's, it becomes self-referential to the art world most of the time. I mean, you can look at paintings in relation to history and what may have been going on in the world, you know, obviously like, you know, what is Guernica about? What is, you know, some of the early Warhol stuff about? What is the shift from the Middle Ages to

the Renaissance about, you know, there are cultural forces and, uh, are, and creative forces and technological forces that are driving everything. But with film, you know, something we all sort of can engage in and understand on a simplistic level. If you just want to watch a movie for entertainment, you can do that. If you want to use it as a doorway into something much deeper, broader, and revealing. You can do that. It all depends on, you know, what you got in your fucking head, man. So I found it very compelling and I was, uh, I was excited to talk to her. I guess I'm doing standup again in a, in a, in a long-form way. I've agreed to do a date. I'm going to be at the Ice House,

the newly renovated Ice House in Pasadena on Thursday, April 27th at 8 p.m. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour to get tickets. I guess I'm entering the world of an hour of stand-up again. We'll figure it out. You know, if you guys all come, we can go loosey goosey on it. I think I've got about a good, a good half hour of stuff that I've been working on right now. And then we'll just riff it out, man. Come on down to the ice house and I'll riff it out we'll see what we can find all right that's on april 27th 8 p.m go to wtfpod.com slash tour to get tickets the audience was so hot at the fucking comedy store last night it was crazy just one of those nights i don't know

i went on it was pretty early both rooms and, and it just was like everything clicked, and I did a bunch of new shit, and I riffed, and I didn't record it. Great crowds, both rooms. I've been watching a lot of stuff, primarily for research, for interviews. I just watched, I got an interview. I hope that happens. I hope Lily Rabe and I can pull it together. We keep missing each other, but she's in that love and death thing for HBO. The acting was fucking tremendous. The way they fleshed out the story is tremendous.

Something to look forward to. This is a deep tease for a show. I don't even know when it's on. I also watched Ali Wong and is it Steve Ewan? Is that how you say his last name? So I'm going to talk to him. I watched that beef the whole season on a screener for Netflix. That thing was kind of on fire. They acted the fuck out of it. I don't know if I'm just not watching enough stuff or all of a sudden I'm just noticing acting different, but I've been very impressed with the level of performance I've seen lately in some of the shows I'm taking in. Now, when you hear me today, what is it going to be Monday? If you listen to this the day it comes out, I imagine I will have watched Succession last night and I will have been thrilled about it.

I will have been thrilled about it. So I uncrocked the kraut. I pulled the kraut out of the crock. For those of you who've been following along, there's a couple of things going on in my life. And one of those things is fermenting. Again, it's not a huge undertaking I just, I had made some A short ferment kraut Some ruby kraut with red cabbage That was a five day ferment I'm saying this like I know what I'm talking about And then I just did regular kraut for three weeks A day shy of three weeks Because I wanted to get it out

And I got to be honest with you As I said the last time I talked to you That the best that can happen after three weeks, the worst that can happen is I'm out five pounds of cabbage and three tablespoons of salt. The best that can happen is the best kraut ever. And got to say, pretty fucking close. Really amazing.

Really good, tasty, exciting. It's exciting. Is that weird? I mean, what? How big is your life? What are you out there on a boat? Are you out there on water skis? Are you out there fishing for the big fish? Are you out there cooking the meat outdoors? What are you doing? Huh? Are you flying? Are you bungee jumping? Are you jumping out of planes? Are you climbing rock walls? Are you, are you gripping the nubs? Huh? Are you gripping the nubs in the strip mall? Huh? Are you, are you gripping the nubs? Huh? Are you gripping the nubs in the strip mall?

Huh? Are you, what are you doing? Well, I just made kraut from scratch and it's pretty fucking great. I'm no hero. It's not a tremendous victory, but it's a nice thing to know that I can do in a pinch. I can make a kraut. You're gonna have to wait three weeks. So I hope it's not, you know, a panic.

I hope it's not a unleavened bread thing. I hope it's not. We got to get out of here. Bring the kraut. You're gonna have to wait three weeks. So I hope it's not, you know, a panic. I hope it's not a unleavened bread thing. I hope it's not, we got to get out of here, bring the kraut. Yeah, I don't know, man. It still needs another few days. It's not quite, grab the kraut. And then you'll have a, that'll be part of the next Pesach ceremony. The kraut that didn't ferment the fullest because the Jews had to get out quick. It's not fully fermented kraut. It's the half crowded kraut. So Karina Longworth has a very interesting speaking style on her podcast. She paces herself well. She's got a very engaged sense of humor and she's very thorough.

I was happy that her primary resource for Dean Martin, there were several, but she definitely leaned pretty heavily on the Nick Tosh's book, Dino, which I love. One of my favorite books. But it was exciting to get back into the mind of things. Getting back into trying to see the art of things. Not the content of things. Not the box office of things. Her podcast, you must remember this, you can get wherever you get podcasts. There are lots of seasons you can listen to, and tomorrow is the premiere of the new season on the erotic 90s.

I should point out that a few times we talk about her husband, Ryan, but don't mention his full name. And if you're not aware, that's filmmaker Ryan Johnson, who I talked to. So this is me talking to Karina Longworth. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats, but meatballs and mozzarella balls. Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace

of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance, mind your business. I was somehow haunted by the idea of Hollywood when I was very young, and the idea of old Hollywood. Yeah.

But I didn't have any understanding of it. I was just sort of obsessed with black and white photographs of actors and movie stills. Yeah. And I don't know why. What was your experience? Because it feels like you're occupying, in some of the podcasts, a sort of haunted space. Totally. I mean, that was kind of how I thought of it initially, because I had the same experience,

but I grew up here in L.A., not part of the film industry at all. But in the 80s, when I was growing up here, it was just so normal to be obsessed with this stuff. Really? Like other kids? Everybody knew about like Elizabeth Taylor and Bob Hope. Like there are certain figures that were just ever present. Yeah. Because their names were on things.

Well, it was like Bob Hope was like, he had this house in Toluca Lake that he opened up for an open house once a year. Yeah. And so if you lived in that part of the valley, like you'd go to Bob Hope's house once a year. Really? Yeah. So you weren't, you grew up in what, like Woodland Hills or something?

I grew up in Studio City. Okay, so, and your folks weren't involved with the show business? No, my dad was an accountant and my mom was like sort of an artist, just sort of a mentally ill mom. Yeah, and I have one of those. Yeah, yeah.

And so they liked movies, but they weren't in the business at all. What kind of art did your mentally ill mom do Yeah, and I have one of those. Yeah. And so they liked movies, but they weren't in the business at all. What kind of art did your mentally ill mom do? Illustration. She would draw my portrait a lot. She tried to do greeting cards, but there were really sad pencil illustrations, so it didn't really work out. Oh, my mom did abstract sweatpants and sweatshirts. Nice. Her big idea was to splatter sweatsh did abstract sweatpants and sweatshirts. Nice. Her big idea was to splatter sweatshirts and sweatpants. That's like what Julie Klausner is doing now with her tie-dye. Is it?

Yeah. She has a tie-dye business. How's that going for her? It seems like it's going great. Oh, really? Well, she's got at least twice a week she can promote the things. But growing up here, you really found that other, because like when I think about what you're doing, and I know the podcast is popular,

but I wonder how much people know anymore or how much people care anymore. I mean, that's what's crazy is that I'm only 42. I mean, obviously that's older than a lot of people But it's like I – it feels like it was so present not that long ago to me. And now it just feels like it's gone. But isn't that weird? Can you track that as intellectual when that happened? I'm actually kind of trying to do that right now because the season that I'm working on is about the 90s. Yeah. And so I'm really trying to figure out, like, what is the end of this thing?

That you're involved in? Yeah. The romantic, seedy, but glamorous world of Hollywood. Yeah. And it's, you know, I always thought the tagline of the podcast is that it's Hollywood's first century, which could mean a lot of things based on like when you define the start of Hollywood. When do you define it? Around 1908.

With which film? That's basically when they start making movies in the start of Hollywood. When do you define it? Around 1908. With which film? That's basically when they start making movies in the city of Hollywood. Like over in Echo Park? Where was Keystone? That's like Los Feliz. Los Feliz, yeah. But then you could say that the Hollywood business of making feature films doesn't really start until around 1915.

But I've just kind of always thought of it as the 20th century. Right. And, you know, not being— So you're out of it. You're out of the first—we're out of the first century by a few years. I would say so, yeah. But my primary concern has, like, always basically been from about 1915 to, I would say, the end of the 1900s. Right.

And so what are you finding in terms of when you think it's out? Because it was long before, it seems like it was before these platforms and before streaming. It must have been somewhere probably in the late 70s, right? Well, I don't know, because as I said, it felt like it was very present and important in the 80s and to some extent in the 90s. The history or show business? The history. I mean, even just the idea that the Oscars always had this element of trotting out like somebody who won an Oscar 50 years before. Or even later than that, having Jack Nicholson in the front row instead of having Nicole Kidman. I miss him. It's really weird because I used to love watching the Oscars.

I'm obviously not as much of a film nerd as you. It's your job in a way. But you felt that it was a community. And there were these people that were – it's like rock and roll. I mean you can track the beginning of this. It's not like ancient history. So a lot of those cats were still alive. And I imagine there's not many people to trot out anymore.

Yeah, that's true. But, I mean, there are still people. And I think a few years ago they tried to do a segment on the old age home. There's not many people to trot out anymore. Yeah, that's true. But, I mean, there are still people. And I think a few years ago they tried to do a segment on the old age home, the motion picture television fund. I remember that, yeah. And I don't think that people cared in a way that they might have cared 20 years earlier. Sure. And that's an incredible place. Really?

Yeah. And it's just full of people who want to tell their stories. Do you go there? I've been there a couple of times. And my husband is involved now in fundraising for it. Ryan is? Yeah. But who's out there? I'm not exactly sure who's there right now.

I know that Bob Mearish, who was Walter Mearish, he just died. He was his nephew, I think. I visited him there a few years ago. His dad produced Some Lick It Hot. Oh, I remember. Didn't Alan Garfield die there over COVID? Oh, maybe. I think. Marsha Hunt died there. So she was one of the last blacklisted people who was still

around. And I think one of the Selznick sons was there. I'm not sure if he still is. Really? Yeah. Is it a nice place? Yeah, it's great. And they love it. Like, people who live there love it. Really?

It's a community for them. Where is it? It's in sort of Calabasas. Huh. Well, it's pretty out there. Yeah. Oh, and it comes with the pension-ish? Yeah.

If you work enough over the course of your lifetime, you're entitled to it. Wow. It's like the VA. Yeah. And that's, I mean, you know, again it. Wow. It's like the VA. Yeah. And that's, I mean, you know, again, that kind of like brings it back to Bob Hope. But yeah, just the stuff like felt like it was very present. And if you were interested in movies, you wanted to know about it. Not that long ago.

And now it doesn't feel that way. And I mean, now it's just like, it's so hard to get people interested in movies at all. Yeah, because they don't have a context, right? So, I mean, I think in a lot of ways what you do, and I don't know many other like high-level film critics other than Mark Harris because I don't read a lot of them. I guess I don't know if A.O. Scott is, I don't know, it doesn't seem like he's really in the realm of it. Well, now he's leaving. He's moving from being a film, I don't know about that, but he's moving from being a film critic No, no. I don't know about that. But he's moving from being a film critic for the New York Times to being a book critic.

Yeah, see, like, where's his commitment? But, like, I read that. He put in some good time. He did. But there just doesn't seem to be. There's something about what you're doing on an intellectual level is using film, film history, the business of film as a portal into cultural history and a way of assessing changes and shifts in politics, culture, the way people engage. I mean, it is the window and it's something we used to all share.

I think that might have something to do with it. We're not on the same page anymore. And I think you kind of pay reference to that in some of the podcasts where it's like there was a time where we all saw the same movie. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Gone.

I mean, some people, I guess, think that it can still happen with something like Top Gun. I mean, there are people who care about Top Gun Maverick. I'm not one of them. And so it's hard for me to tap into what that is that makes everybody want to see that movie. that is that makes everybody want to see that movie. Well, I mean, there was a point where movies kind of shifted into more of an amusement park ride mode, where it wasn't about assessing a film. It was about this experience of almost a virtual reality experience, like flying. Right.

Like, it felt like a lot of these movies were just rides. Yeah. And, you know, that collective thing of everybody watching the same thing, it's still happening in TV. Kind of. I mean, if it gets enough juice. Yeah. And, you know, that collective thing of everybody watching the same thing, it's still happening in TV. Kind of. I mean, if it gets enough juice. Yeah. But, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that just falls away. Well, yeah.

I mean, we talk about the slop bucket of the streaming services where it's like they're just pouring stuff out there. Right. But some of it, like, I just went and watched, like, I don't know why I decided just because no one seemed to give a shit about it that Amsterdam was a bad movie. Yeah, I heard you talking about it on the podcast. It's a great movie. I haven't seen it. But something that I've been really examining a lot as I talk about in the 90s season that I'm making right now about movies like Showgirls or Sliver, which is a movie I've always really liked, but these movies got such eviscerating reviews, and it became this thing where culturally you couldn't say, like, oh, but actually I liked it, or, you know, but what about this aspect of it that's sort of interesting?

Like, the conversation just stopped at, like, this is a bomb, this is a turkey. I don't even know where the conversation is. I don't even know where to find it anymore. I'm starting to, like, I can't decide whether I'm old or I don't look at the right websites, but I don't know where the conversation is. I just know that somehow or another through whatever algorithms I'm attached to, you know, Amsterdam got dismissed. And, and at some point, you know, on the plane, I was like, how bad could it be with Christian Bale? Yeah. Right. And it's like a very deep movie, but that's neither here nor there. So when do you decide that film is going to be your life? Well, I was always interested in it. I was

watching old movies from a young age. And then I was sort of an indifferent student. So I was not going to be able to get into like an Ivy League or like a great college. And so I set my sights on going to art school because you were allowed to stop taking math and science. Oh, yeah. And so I kind of only applied to art schools and I ended up going to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which is an incredible place where they don't make you pick a major. So you can take classes in anything. What's it called? The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

It's connected to the museum there. Right, okay. And they have an incredible just art house cinema there. Actually, like right when I got there, Gene Siskel died and they named it after him. So it's the Gene Siskel Film Center. Oh, wow. And I'd always like gone to repertory cinema in Los Angeles.

I'd been obsessed with video stores, always watching stuff. But I had never really been part of, like, a social scene of people my age who were into this stuff. Right. Yeah. And in college, I was able to, you know, like, on a Friday night, go see the Bresson movie that they're showing at school. Yeah. What's the name of that other beautiful theater there that, like— There's a music— The Music Box. Yeah, yeah, that's the other one that's great yeah and so yeah it was just part of my it became part of my social life in college like you know go see

a print of lolita or whatever um yeah me too i was a film studies minor but like yeah i guess that it's still a a type of community that happens in you know some schools yeah and some cities i mean there's definitely a passionate repertory cinema scene in New York. Still? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like we're friends with Natasha Lyonne and like she like hangs out at film forums still. Like there are still people who do that. Here in LA, it's much more diffuse. Like there's been, especially over the past couple of years, like there's been some theaters closing and changing management and now there's some new

things opening up. So I hope that it kind of gets management. And now there's some new things opening up. So I hope that it kind of gets a post-COVID. What's the new ones opening up? Do you know the video store Vidiot's that was in Santa Monica? No. So that was sort of a Santa Monica, L.A. video store institution. They closed down. And this woman, Maggie McKay, kind of took on the collection and has been trying to find a space for it.

And she's built out of like an old, like silent era movie theater in Eagle Rock. Yeah. She's restarting it as a movie theater and a video store. But they have a new, if you drive by, they have a new marquee up now that says Vidya, it's coming soon. And they're going to open in the next few months. And they're going to have repertory cinema, you know, indie film screenings and a video store and like kind of a community center around that.

Wow. Was that, I think I know that place. Was it a church for a while? Yeah. Okay. I know where that is. Yeah. It was like this weird Christian church for a while. And before that was sort of this empty space. So there are people who are still passionate about it and we just kind of like need spaces to go to like both in real life and online. Letterboxd is huge. A lot of people are into that. I don't do Letterboxd because I feel like it's sort of like what I do for a living. What is Letterboxd is huge. A lot of people are into that. I don't do Letterboxd because I feel like it's sort of like what I do for a living.

What is Letterboxd? Letterboxd is a social network where you can basically like keep track of all the movies you watch, rate them, write short reviews, and then like comment on other people's pages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh. Now, when you were in school, because I found – because I'm always looking for answers that will explain everything to me. Of course. Who isn't? But, like, when I was studying film criticism and you're reading,

like, I just remember, like, there's this one book that I can't, like, I can, there's the Uri Lottman, The Semiotics of Cinema. It's like I couldn't penetrate it, and I felt like it's all in here. Why can't I get it? No, I mean, I definitely had that experience with like Deleuze and Guattari. Yeah, what the hell was that? What's that other guy's name? Was it Wolin?

Peter Wolin. Peter Wolin and Youngblood. Was it another guy? Andrew Sarris. I mean, I love Sarris. Yeah, he's great. But I mean, for me, like, because then I went to grad school at NYU and cinema studies to get my master's degree. Because then I went to grad school at NYU in cinema studies to get my master's degree.

And a lot of that theory is impenetrable, and it feels like it's so far away from the thing that brought you to it of just being enraptured by what was on screen and wanting to know more about it and wanting to understand how it works. But then the thing that kind of actually hooked me was this guy, Stanley Cavell. Do you know who he is? Of course I do. My buddy, Gus Blaisdell, in New Mexico, edited or was best friends with Cavell, The Pursuits of Happiness? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this idea of bringing the philosophy of skepticism and sort of laying it over the way classical Hollywood cinema works. Give me a practical example of that. So the basic idea of skepticism is that you can't know another person's mind.

Okay. And so in any human interaction, you're constantly playing this game of like what you're putting out there but also trying to guess what the other person is thinking. And, you know, Pursuits of Happiness, like that's probably his greatest work. Okay. And it lays those ideas onto the classical romantic comedy, the screwball comedy, and what he calls the comedy of remarriage. And like this basic idea of a movie being about two people who know each other. Maybe they used to be married. Maybe they used to date and they think they hate each other, but they're actually meant to be

together. And what they have to do is they have to get over the fact that they can never know what's going on in each other's head and just reach like some kind of mutual space in the middle between the two of them. Huh. Okay. And so that – those ideas, you can apply them to many like classically constructed films. So this was sort of the portal into your approach? Totally. I mean, for me, it was like, I had never really been able to take the things that I was reading in philosophy and adapt them to cultural or like art criticism before the way

that you're sort of supposed to at that academic level. And Cavell, I just understood it immediately and it allowed me to kind of move forward and think about things in a more critical way. So, but that what you're talking about isn't necessarily, it's not like going to be in an actor's preparation or even in a director's mind. It might be. But I mean, and it's also probably not in the average viewer's mind. Right. Until you start thinking like, what are these movies really about?

You know, like what are they saying about the way human beings interact with one another? Right. And even if it's a 1930s movie made under the production code where everything is coded, there's no foul language, there's maybe a kiss, but there's an ellipsis where they're going to have sex. How do you understand what's really going on? Right. But that's open to speculation, right? It has to be. Yeah. So that's the issue with cinema academics is that I had an argument with someone recently that a person just sort of like dismisses movies in general because they prefer books.

And I'm like, why are you comparing? What is that? It's like dismissing painting. Right. So like I don't even know what that means. I think it's a limited concept of what film is and what you can sort of project onto film. Right? Yeah.

But, you know, not everything's for everyone. I mean, that's all I can say is, like, I mean, I'm not interested in, like, graphic novels, for instance. I can read them, but I'm not, you know, I can engage with them, but I'm not crazy for them. I find that, fortunately for me and unfortunately, is that my obsessions with things, they don't last forever, which is why I'm not an academic. They peter out. Yeah. But I've been having this weird kind of reengaged experience around the art of cinema with Kelly

Reichardt's movies. Oh, my God. She's so good. I can't wait to see the new one. I saw it. Yeah. It's great. Yeah.

But when you really think about her, especially, I'm very hung up on and it plays into exactly what you're saying in Old Joy. Do you remember the film? Do you know the scene where they're both in those hot tubs? Yeah. It's kind of the key scene. Yeah. It's the key scene because you don't know like it's exactly what you're saying is that, you know, we're an audience member, projecting onto both of those characters saying nothing. And then what's going on between them during the time that they're saying nothing is so loaded up in the silence that she creates.

The aesthetic experience is kind of mind-blowing. Yeah, and that's something that a movie can do that books don't do in the same way because a book has to put it into words. You know, Godard talked about this a lot. It's like what cinema is, it's images. It's not language. Right. So, all right. So, when do you start realizing that, so it happened in graduate school that, you know, that was where it all opened up? No, that's why I went to graduate school, was because I was- But before you had the Cavell catharsis, you were kind of like, you know, wandering

in the world of criticism? So, I ended up going to grad school because I didn't really know what to do after undergrad. I think probably like a lot of people. But I had been in school and then I moved back home to L.A., moved in with my dad and tried to get work. And your mom was gone? My mom died when I was 11. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

That's heavy. It was definitely heavy for my single dad who was sort of left with two daughters and had not been kind of around previously and then suddenly had to be everything. Anyway, so I'm like 23 and I moved back in with him and I'm trying to get work at like post houses, like trying to get work in the industry. Yeah. And, you know, just couldn't get anything. I had no connections, like no one to help me out. And so I was like, I'll apply to grad schools and we'll see what happens. And then I got into this program at NYU and they offered me a big scholarship because I had like I'd done a lot of critical writing in undergrad because, you know, you have to write papers and stuff. And I was I sort of found that I had a knack for it.

And you were just doing it for for school or for school paper? No, just no. Yeah. Just like school assignments. I did this project as an undergraduate where I wrote this long paper about the themes of globalism and colonialism in the music videos of Duran Duran. And so that was my writing sample for grad school. Wow. Yeah, so it's Rio and Hungry Like the Wolf.

Was there some humor in that? Yeah, there was. I mean, I think it was a little tongue-in-cheek. But at the same time, like, once you've, you know, read Edward Said, like, you see this stuff. You see it everywhere. You can't unsee it. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. So, you know, I applied to NYU. I got in. They offered me, like, a big scholarship. And, you know, I was still sort of unsure if I wanted to do academia. And my dad was like, well, you have to go. Like, you have to do this. That's what your brain wants you to do, right?

Yeah. So I moved to New York and I went to graduate school. And then before I finished graduate school, I started getting work as a film critic writing about new movies. There was this website. Do you know who Jason Calacanis is? No. He's like a web entrepreneur guy. And he started a series of blogs like around the same time that Gawker was starting. Okay. And so they started a film blog and I am, you know, they just needed like cheap labor to run it. So I was cheap labor, but I was also like, I'm going to turn this

into my fucking career. Yeah. And so I did. It became really successful really quickly. And then he sold this blog network to AOL. Yeah, I remember AOL. He made like $25 million and like some of us got like $60,000 a year jobs working for AOL. Was that good? No, it was terrible. It was awful.

And so I was immediately trying to figure out a way to get back into film criticism. And so I did kind of work my way back into film criticism. And then I finally got hired at the LA Weekly to be their film editor. So I moved back here. Yeah. Wow. That's a pretty nice full circle. Yeah. I mean, the LA Weekly was so important to me growing up, just as like the Bible to repertory film screenings, but also like punk shows, indie rock. It was like, you know, how you found out where to buy Doc Martens. Yeah. It was so important. The good food.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember the LA Weekly. And those papers are gone. They've been long gone, right? I think it still exists, but it got bought by like Orange County Republicans. So it's the opposite of sort of the ethos. Yeah, but that whole sort of street rag thing, you know, where, you know, the thing you rely on.

It's all gone. We live to see it. I mean, I live to see more of it, I guess, but obviously, but it's really that no one engages that way anymore. You don't go to the little free paper machine. Yeah, no, I mean, it was such a part of my life of, you know, like going to the coffee shop, picking up the LA Weekly, seeing what was going on that week. I mean, but the fact that you found found this niche, a niche, not just at L.A. Weekly, but now, you know, you're a kind of audio star and you can do because I can tell when I listen to the stuff that it's very thorough. And, you know, each one I mean, to do like, what is it, eight episodes on Dean Martin and Sammy, which is the one I'm kind of hung up on because I I was wondering what your source were, because I read Dino, and I brought that up to Jerry Lewis, and he's very anti-Dino. You know, he doesn't like that book.

Yeah. But Jerry Lewis was kind of snotty to me. I'm not sure what he likes or liked. Yeah, I mean, I was supposed to do an hour with him, but he cut me off at a half hour, and he's just like, that's it. But it was not because I did anything wrong. That's just him. But he brought up that.

I brought up the Dino book. He's like, that book is bullshit. What does he know? You know? I mean, he I think he sat down for a long interview. With Nick? Yeah. Of course.

I mean, all these guys are kind of nuts at a certain point. I'm also self-mythologizing in a way where they don't want anybody else to tell their story. It never ends. Yeah. I mean, like Paul McCartney now with the Beatles. Like, come on. I mean, like Paul McCartney now with the Beatles. Like, come on.

You can't just – you can't backload and revisit whatever the psychodynamics were between you and John and then decide that you've both recovered from it. Right? Anyway, another problem. But my point is, is that these are theses, right, that you're doing. Yeah. You couldn't – it's not – I don't think the way that you produce it, you can't, it wouldn't be the same on paper. Yeah. I mean, I guess nobody else thinks so either because I can't publish a book to save my

life. You can't. I published a book a few years ago and I got kind of a big advance and then it wasn't a bestseller. Oh. And so now. What was the book? It's called Seduction and it's about 10 actresses that Howard Hughes was involved with.

10? Yeah. And it's basically kind of a pocket history of his time in Hollywood from the 20s until he died in 71, I think, and through the stories of these 10 actresses. And you did the Howard Hughes series, didn't you? Yeah, it's kind of started as that, and then I sold a book, and then I did a couple of sort of promotional episodes about stories that didn't quite fit into the book. It seems to me, though, like having – I mean, I don't have all – I will eventually listen to all this stuff. No, it's a lot. I've been doing it since 2014.

I mean, obviously, like you've been doing it longer. Yeah, but it's different. I mean, you've got to write and think and execute with a certain amount of order. I just kind of see what happens. and execute with a certain amount of order. I just kind of see what happens. But it struck me that it seems foundationally some of what you do was kind of, and I don't know the dates of things, but kind of debunking Hollywood Babylon is sort of the agenda of the podcast in a way.

That you have this very famous book that kind of becomes mythologized as, you know, these sordid tales and you sort of, you know, fact check everything. But that sort of opens up the door to, it seems like, most of what you're doing. Yeah. Is that possible? Yeah. I mean, Hollywood Babylon was something that was important to me when I was like 20 years old.

Exactly. It was kind of my gateway drug to, especially silent stars, like seeing the photographs of somebody like Gloria Swanson. Or Fatty Arpuckle. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then, you know, those things were not that easy to see at that time, even on VHS.

And so you'd have to go to screenings. But they're hard to contextualize, aren't they? Yeah. Totally. Absolutely. And that's one of the things where like the personal stories matter because they get people excited. Like once you know about like the actual sordidness, not necessarily the Kenneth Inger version, but the actual sordidness of somebody like Clara Bowes' life. Or Mabel Norman.

Yeah. Then you want to see what they looked like and you want to see how they moved and what kind of power they held on audiences at that time. Right. And try to feel it. Yeah. You know, at that pace and with that intensity. Yeah. Yeah.

And then, so from there, where do you go? How long does it take you to get to Manson? That was pretty early, actually, because I started the podcast in April 2014. I think I did Manson about a year later. For me, I came to it through Doris Day. Oh, with Melcher? Yeah. Okay.

Because I got the idea to do the podcast season not because I ever really cared that much about Charles Manson, but because I was at home watching TCM and there was, like, a Doris Day film festival. And I was like, oh, I don't actually know that much about Doris Day. And so I started looking her up. And it's, you know, it's, like, on her Wikipedia profile. Sure. Like, some people think that, like, the Manson family was trying to kill her son. Right. Record executive.

Yeah. And so I was like, well, if you can connect Doris Day to Charles Manson that way, maybe there's something to the way that Manson moved through Hollywood. Well, I mean, it's one of those things. I've talked to Ed Begley about it. And again, you did a whole piece on it. But there's always a Manson. They're just not usually killers. Right. And there's always a Manson. They're just not usually killers. Right. You know what I mean? There's always like some guy. Some guy who like comes with the girls and the drugs and then disappears at night.

He'll do you a favor or whatever. And he probably wants something, but you keep pushing them back and hopefully they just sort of find their level, not kill everybody. Right. Right. So you saw that as a window into the period.

A window into the period and like to talk about sort of like, you know, because those movies of the late 60s and early 70s, like the Nicholson and the Warren Beatty. And, you know, I grew up sort of those were like the gods of cinema. We're still walking the earth. Right. Sure. And this idea that like like something so sordid and like, you know, evil is like so close to it. And but then like kind of really want to like unpack like what what is it that we call evil? Like it's really just a con man.

Like it's really just somebody who wants their own fame and like they want their own attention. In the case of him. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's it for me, it was just it was interesting thinking of it as like the two flip sides of celebrity. OK. me, it was just, it was interesting thinking of it as like the two flip sides of celebrity. Okay. So one being the kind of antichrist of celebrity and the other being, but equally, there's moral bankruptcy on both sides of it, right?

I mean, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, like the thing that was the most disturbing was reading about Roman Polanski and like the way he actually, like what his relationship with Sharon Tate was actually like and like how heartbroken she was a lot of the time. What was it like? I mean, he was, you know, just casual, so casually cruel to her, you know, certainly was not faithful to her. She had had kind of an expectation of what their marriage was going to be. And then, you know, she's nine months pregnant. He's not around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like,

she's nine months pregnant and he's not around. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like, you know, in dealing, like there's a big focus in, in your work around women in the business and in Hollywood and,

and how they're mistreated and how they're kind of marginalized. Yeah. I mean, I think that I also tried to talk about the ways in which they were able to use the power that they did have and the power of their images on screen, you know, but I mean, it's very frustrating

that even still to this day, like the movie books that are able to get published that sell are generally about men. Yeah. And there's just so many stories that, you know, I think I'm so attracted to that I feel like need to be told. What happened to Veronica Lake? I mean, she kind of just like wallowed in alcoholism. Really?

Yeah. That's how that ended? I'm just starting to watch some of these movies now because I couldn't. I had a hard time when I was younger locking into movies from the 30s and 40s and stuff other than noirs. Yeah. Just because they just kind of irritated me for some reason. But I literally just feel like I had the first experience with her like a month ago. What did you see?

I saw one, what did I see? Sullivan's Travels. I saw that. But then I saw some, a kind of a noir with her. Blue Dahlia. Yeah, yeah. I watched that. Was that Alan Ladd?

Yeah. Yeah. That stuff's great. And that's like, you know, where the Black Dahlia kind of got her name from because the blue Dahlia was out at the time. Yeah. When the black Dahlia's body was found. So in the series that you did about the dead blondes, what was the connecting tissue? It was that I wanted to learn more about certain people like Veronica Lake.

And then I knew that I could tell this Marilyn story in the middle of it. And that would be sort of like, you know, everybody always wants to talk about Marilyn Monroe. So that would attract people to it. And then I could sort of force them to hear stories about people like Peg Entwistle, who they've never thought of before.

She was murdered, right? No, she jumped off the H in the Hollywood sign. Oh, that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm really interested in this idea of what the blonde represents, and especially in Hollywood as kind of an ideal. Yeah. And how artificial it is, but also how it's like this combination of, especially when a young blonde woman dies early, it's like endless youth.

Yeah. And that's so tapped into the way Hollywood deals with women in terms of disposability. Yeah. Like, it's, you know, sort of preferable to freeze someone like Marilyn or Jean Harlow in amber, like, at a time when they're gorgeous and, like, never see them decay. Right. And that was invented by Hollywood, really, right? The idea of the blonde goddess? I mean, that kind of blonde goddess, sure.

Yeah. The idea of the blonde goddess? I mean, that kind of blonde goddess, sure. But certainly, I mean, you can go back to the stage and to advertising and paintings, you know, for this idea of like the milky white skin and like a kind of like, you know, angelic beauty. Yeah. Well, when did that get dirty? I mean, Hollywood might have made it dirty. But I mean, again, it's like so much of this stuff is happening at this time when, you know, movies are being highly censored.

Yeah. And so the things that passed as erotic for Jean Harlow to do would be considered so tame now. Yeah, yeah. But they really, like, just seeing, like, side boob was very daring then. Yeah. Or the double entendre, you know, the insinuations of sex. So, like, when you think back on all this research that you're doing and the initial obsession, if we're going to go back to the beginning of it all and you move through the silence and you do all this stuff, is there some sort of fundamental mystical darkness that you see kind of moving? Because I get kind of hung up on it.

There's a chapter in my book, The Jerusalem Syndrome, that I wrote about being in cocaine psychosis and becoming obsessed with the Sunset Tower building. When I was standing out on the porch of the old Ciro's, which was the comedy store, I had these mystical revelations about a certain... I've got to read that. I really put a lot of work into it. I'll give you a copy. It's the comedy store chapter, but you'll probably correct some of it because some of the information I just kind of pulled in terms of who was at Cirrus, but I think it was close. But I did feel that there is something about manufacturing the illusion. And there is something about the initial sort of crew of Jews that designed a reality that they could exist in.

Yeah, totally. That is almost magical, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't want, I don't like using words like magical about things that are real. Well, I mean, magical in the sense that. Especially when it comes to Jews, because it's like, it's like a real quick corner to anti-Semitism saying like these magical Jews are inventing things. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Well. Okay. Well, I mean, maybe magical is not the way, but there is something about the nature of, and I don't remember who said it, but one of them said, you know, that the racket of film is amazing because, you know, people are paying for memories, right? They're paying for something they don't keep. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And who said that? I can't remember. It's in that book, Empire of Their Own, but. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. So like, but there is something about, they harness some sort of – like, it's not – it is magic, the film is.

But, I mean, it doesn't have to be Jewish magic. I get it. I mean, it kind of was, like, in the beginning. I mean, did you hear about that thing with the Academy Museum where they were, like, trying so hard to be inclusive and, like, they launched with stuff about Almodovar and Spike Lee and like they had nothing about the Jewish moguls and so you know then there's backlash to that and it's like I mean I think the thing with film history is that

it's so there's so much to talk about especially in terms of like trying to do this corrective and like you know I talk about like the secret history which for me oftentimes is just the result of bringing a 21st century lens to the 20th century and being like, what was really going on here? What were, like, you know, what were these real experiences? You know, but you still have to talk about the actual history.

You still have to talk about the scaffolding. Right. And I just saw Elvis's doc, you know, Elvis Mitchell's doc about all those black filmmakers that no one in the silent era. Yeah. Oscar Micheaux. Yeah. Yeah. Oscar Michaud. Yeah. It was like, but then again, like, I wouldn't know all that.

I'm not being ignorant. It's just like, someone has to tell me. Right. I have to take a fucking class. I don't know. How is everybody going to know that? I mean, I think that's a service you're providing. Right.

Because you get to a certain age where you think you know things, but unless you're going to go to the new school and take a weekly class on, you know, how are you going to know stuff? Right. I mean, that's the thing. There's a lot of history podcasts, but it's really hard to do something that tells stories that either people have never heard before or to tell stories that they have heard in a way that makes them feel new and makes you feel like you understand something new. But generationally, generationally, you have to assume that nobody's heard fucking anything.

Yeah. No, that's, I do. I mean, like, I think sometimes I've like, as a mistake, I've just assumed that people have the same cultural references that I do. And as I've gone on, I have to understand that, you know, especially as I get older, a lot of the potential audience is a lot younger. Sure. And what do you find? I can answer my fundamental mystical darkness question. I mean, again, it's like, I think that at the end

of the day, like these are people who go to work every day, like they're regular people, but there is something that can be sort of tapped into. I can't remember if it was Luella Parsons or Hedda Hopper, but one of them like was asked about this in the fifties about this idea that like, well, you know, it seems like so many people in Hollywood have these dark lives and like there's so much tragedy and so like drugs and adultery. And she was like, actually, this kind of thing happens in every town. It's just that nobody cares

because they're not making movies. That's true. And so I do think that there is something about Hollywood where there is, certainly there's darkness, but it's just kind of regular lives writ large. It's just seems like it's larger than life. Well, I kind of like that. And I address that question when people say, do you think there's more drug addiction with comics?

I'm like, no. There's cops, plumbers. There's all kinds of drug addicts. And I don't think it's any worse or it's any different. But once you start talking about the power structure of Hollywood, like what struck me even listening to the Dino and Sammy one, and I'm sure it's a recurring theme, is that the nature of the studios, the nature of the mob, and the nature of owning talent. Yeah. The one thing that's different is you have these huge people that have huge charisma and power in terms of how they perform and people wanting to see them and developing parasocial relationships with them. But they're treated like garbage and they don't even own their own souls.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm really interested in that interconnection. And if anything is like mystical or like a conspiracy, it is like it's the banks and the studios and the mob and like criminals all working together. The same with any global business. Yeah. In a way, right?

Yeah. And what ends up happening is that the workers lose out. Right. And the workers happen to be major stars. Right. And so they're projecting this idea of wealth and a fantasy lifestyle. But obviously, in some cases, like the case of Sammy, it's a fucking hustle and scramble every single day because there's no ownership.

Yeah. But they also, you know, the weird thing about talent is talent and charisma, the nature of it. It's like that Anne Magnuson song, the Bongwater song, Talent is a Vampire. Like, I always remember that because if you have it, you have to make choices around it because it can drag you for your entire life because of the fragility of your ego and the strange insecurity that comes with it most of the time. Yeah. And if, you know, asking about like why I'm drawn to women's stories, I think for women it's that is, first of all, there's always this idea of a shelf life. You know, historically in Hollywood there's been like maybe you have 10 good years if you're really lucky.

historically in Hollywood, there's been like, maybe you have 10 good years if you're really lucky. And then there's always this idea of like, you know, you might have some talent for acting or singing or dancing, but really you're here to look good. And then there's the way that you keep that talent in line is by saying you're here to look good, but you don't look good enough. So it's always about undercutting the ego. Right. Right. And that is a surefire way, not unlike negging. Yeah. It is. Yeah. It's institutionalized negging. Yeah. To keep control of these people. Yeah. And keep them off footed, off kilter.

Yeah. I mean, you know, they're like the real thing about, you know, this transition from silence to sound is that it was an opportunity for studios to cut big salaries. Of the major stars. studios to cut big salaries. Of the major stars. Yeah. So it's like, you know, if you, and also the stars who are like difficult and like felt like they had a right to behave badly and like party and stuff like that. Most of the cases were not really about like they can't talk. Interesting.

Right. So they, it's not unlike the Oscars and why they were invented. Well, yeah, the Oscars were absolutely invented as like a labor strategy. Yeah. Just give them an award that will placate their egos. Yeah. And they'll do what we want for how much we want to do it for. Yeah.

But I did. So was the shift to talkies, did that sink the original United Artists or did that, it survived, right? I mean, yeah. It's still around. It still exists in some shell of a brand. And certainly it's a library. And they put out movies. They were putting out movies in 70s, 80s, 90s.

From the original but not – obviously not Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. The only person who did kind of like stick around on the board for many decades was Mary Pickford. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Wild, right? Yeah. Wild, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, I try to, like every time I read this stuff, you know, and you're, you know, your husband is a successful and big time director.

So, you know, he's, you know, he has access and is part of these upper level conversations around how this business works. So now you're kind of privy to some of that. Yeah. I mean, he still kind of acts like an independent. Sure. But like when you read, like I just read a novel. You ever read Bruce Wagner's book?

Uh-huh. Oh, my God. Yeah. How fucking good are they? Yeah. But just the Marvel Universe one. Did you read that last one? Oh, my God.

It's actually weirdly hard to find. Did you read Force Majeure? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's the classic. Right? Yeah. Bud Wiggins comes back

in Marvel Universe. You've got to get a copy. But I just read Tim Blake Nilsson's book about... Oh, yeah. I heard him on your show. It sounded really interesting. And he was on Ryan's show.

He was? On Poker Face, yeah. Oh, he's a great guy. Yeah. But every time I read these books and even listen to your podcast, I'm like, I'm not in show business.

I'm not, you know, I'm not... Well, I don't feel I'm not in show business. I'm not, you know, I'm not. Well, I don't feel like we live in show business either, you know, because we're not like, we're not having the lifestyle that these people have. I guess so. But is it, it must be a fundamentally different business now because you should theoretically, I mean, you have a choice. We have a choice. choice, you know, I'm not at the level of show business that Ryan is, but, you know, you have a choice to be ostentatious or to let your ego get away from you and build up a bunch of gambling debt and be a philandering weirdo and get screwed up on drugs and have

to, you know, get fixers to help you all the time. I mean, we definitely know people who are screwed up on drugs. Sure. You know, people who live like a different lifestyle than we live, but. Yeah. And some of them have no choice. That's the other thing that I think I don't know if you addressed it

in any of the series that these people don't have a choice but to hang around with each other. It's an insulated community. You go to parties and it's sort of like where else are they going to go? Yeah. That's something that's really interesting when you do go to like a Golden Globes party and you see like Jennifer Lopez like really cutting

loose on the dance floor. And it's like this is she can only do go to like a Golden Globes party and you see like Jennifer Lopez like really cutting loose on the dance floor. And it's like, this is, she can only do it because like she's surrounded by like Scarlett Johansson. She's safe. Yeah. She's not going to be surrounded by freaks who want to take selfies. Yeah.

So I think that has to play into the weirdness a little bit. Yeah. That it is sort of a secret society or it was. I mean, there still definitely is. I mean, for me, it's like, I don't understand why people who are super famous go to places like the Polo Lounge still. Yeah. Because it's like you know you're going to be photographed. You know you're going to be seen.

Sometimes that's why they do it. I know. But it's like every conversation is going to be eavesdropped on. And it just seems like so, you know, you're on stage. And that is why they do it. But that's like not the life that I would want to live. No, of course not. But we're talking about Hollywood.

That's true. I mean, there's a reason why I'm behind the mic and not on camera. But I guess that was my point earlier about, you know, when you talk about the shelf life of women, they know it going in. Well, everybody thinks they're going to be different, right? I guess. Everybody thinks they're going to be different. And this is not just a Hollywood thing.

Everybody does things thinking, like, I know all of the risks and it's not going to happen to me. That's just a human nature thing. Yeah. Like, I'm going to be the exception. Like, it's like dating a bad boyfriend. Like, everybody warns you against this guy and you're like, oh, no, but, like, our thing is different. It's drugs. It's alcohol.

It's, like, it's everything. Sure. It's, like, you know, you can del, it's everything. It's like, you know, you can delude yourself with food. You can be like, oh, I've lost 20 pounds, so now I can eat pizza. No, you can't. You've lost 20 pounds because you stopped eating pizza. Right. But if the nature of business, and also we're talking about like the past and the present, there seems to be more opportunity now for actors. Well, there's more shows for sure. That's what I mean. But if you're looking to work, you know, the possibility of working is bigger now in a way.

But I also think that for most people, like the quality of life is much lower than it was in the time that I'm talking about on my show. You know, I mean, like streaming salaries are obviously like a pittance compared to what people used to make on network TV. Right, but if you're willing to sort of adapt to the fact that you're not going to be a star, but you're going to work, like, I would imagine that, like, a studio player, you know, who's, you know, just above background wasn't making a fortune. Yeah, but you can make a middle-class life for sure. Yeah, but that's not possible anymore, I guess, because the work is random and there's no

consistency. And there's no residuals. That's right. And at least you had a studio contract. Yeah. Like, you know, if you work is random and there's no consistency. And there's no residuals. That's right. And at least he had a studio contract. Yeah. Like, you know, if you were re-upped for the year. I mean, there were always working class actors, you know? I mean, like, even, like, people who were on network shows.

Like, I lived around the corner. I lived in, like, the flats of Studio City, like, in just sort of a two-bedroom house. And, like, George Wendt lived around the corner from us, you know? There was always kind of, especially in the Valley, in Studio City, North Hollywood, there was always kind of a working class. Well, they presented as working class because they were not ostentatious and they managed their money properly. But George Wendt was not. He was a little above working class, I would imagine, after the run of Cheers. Sure.

Yeah. But I know what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, Bryan Cranston was sort of the same way when I talked to him. He comes from a studio family. Yeah. But I know what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, Bryan Cranston was sort of the same way when I talked to him. He comes from a studio family. Yeah. And he has a very working class idea of what acting is. Right.

I mean, if you do come, I mean, there's sort of so much criticism of nepotism. But if you've seen your parents go through it, you've seen your grandparents go through it, at least you can have some kind of perspective. But that's such bullshit. There's like almost all sort of like trades businesses are so-and-so and sons. Plumbers, pizza places, everything. It's Joe and sons, Bob and sons, you know, Russ and daughter. You know, we've worked in England. My husband shot a movie there and there it's like the nepotism is such that like you can't get a job as a grip unless your grandfather was a grip. You know, it's like the whole – That's sort of like their version of unions? Yeah, kind of.

It's like you train your son to do your trade. That's right. And so that's like a completely different thing. I mean that makes it hard for people of color and women to break into those jobs. Okay. But, you know, you're right that it is kind of like having like a three-generation plumbing business on some level. Of course. And there is something genetic about one's ability to fit on screen, it seems to me.

I mean, nowadays, you know, genetics are only part of it because of all the manipulation you can do. I guess so. But it sort of is amazing that, you know, all the Baldwins are OK. I mean, you know, like Kate Hudson is legitimately one of the most beautiful people you've ever seen. And like that, there's a reason why. Yeah, I just I think the whole nepotism thing is sort of obviously a right wingy slag. Like when you did the series on the black list, did it was did it was it scary to you for the future in any way? I mean, yeah, totally.

I was doing that, like, right around the Trump election. I think I did that season in 2016. So, of course. I mean, you're always thinking about these things. I'm always trying to bring today to the past and bring the past to today and, like, really, like, use what it's like to be alive now to think about what it would have been like to be alive then. Yeah.

But because something else is happening with the demonization of Hollywood. I mean, I guess it's always sort of been there. It's always happened. This has been happening forever. What is the source of it, do you think? Jews. It's anti-Semitism. For me, it's like that's the core of it.

Yeah. It's fear of Jews having core of it. Yeah. It's fear of Jews having too much power. Yeah. And to some extent, fear of outsiders of any kind, you know, I mean, you know, racism, women can't have too much power. Gay people can't have any power. Yeah. That's all in the history of Hollywood, like from the very beginning. And it like, if, you know, it's, it's lavender marriages. It's like, we, like you can be gay like as long as you keep it in the closet. Right. But that was here, too.

I mean, that was institutional. That wasn't from the outside. It wasn't, you know, working people, you know, being filled with the idea that they're being fucked with by Jews. Oh, no, absolutely. That was the way people wrote about the movie industry. Yeah. I mean, in coded ways. But that was why they had to bring in Catholics to do censorship.

So like as an appeasement to the people who are like, well, these Jews are, you know, taking all the money and putting evil ideas into our children's heads. And that's really become sort of fine-tuned right now, right? The idea of indoctrination, it's, right's, it's right now it's, it's seems to be very efficient and very creepy. Yeah. Yeah. It's terrifying. I mean, I'm doing a podcast season about sex and movies at a time when, you know, there's a lot of rhetoric about like, we should never film sex. Well, I mean, what is happening? Because that, you know, you, you're sort of documenting the eights and 90s around sex.

And it was sort of a prerequisite for actresses to be willing to do it. In some cases. I mean, it's really interesting when you think about a movie like Batman Returns, right? Which is like a movie that's supposed to be for everyone. And then you have this incredible Michelle Pfeiffer performance where she looks like a dominatrix. And her sexuality is so much a part of it and now it's like you cannot cite any sexuality in these big comic book movies at all that's weird because so much of the fandom is driven by utter repression yeah yeah completely and but it's like give them a throw them a bone but I think that the way that like generations

younger than me I think more and more people are like seeing sex makes them uncomfortable. I get that. And my producer, Brendan, has cited that. And I guess through reading and through his own intuition that, you know, what is now being thought of as cringy is coming from a sort of a snarky naivete. Cringy is coming from a sort of a snarky naivete. That vulnerability in and of itself is appearing to be cringeworthy to a generation of young people right now. Yeah. And certainly sex is thoroughly vulnerable in a way, right? Yeah.

So what do you make of that? Why is that happening? I'm still trying to figure it out on, I guess, like a larger scale. I mean, you can cite these sort of different phenomena. I mean, obviously, like, there is this political wave of, again, like trying to take power away from anybody but white men, that, you know, that's kind of leading the anti-gay, anti-trans situation. And then it does, there is a bleed where it becomes like it's not okay to just crack down

on trans people or gay people. Now we have to crack down on women. We have to take away their autonomy. Yeah. And so much of this stuff

is about just like pretending these things don't exist. Yeah. And trying to take it out of the public space. You know, I mean, did you see the thing today

where Florida's trying to pass some bill that kids can't talk about having their periods in school? It's like, I mean, this is really going back to Victorian ideals of like, you know, just keep it all

behind closed doors. Well, that and a lot of the Florida stuff is just him, you know, promoting his willingness to be a full on fascist, despite his kind of wormy personality. Yeah. But so you see that.

But young people, you know, when you talk about the audience or you talk about and also the nature of celebrity now. And because. But people are. The thing is, though, is that there's still people who are excited about, like, you know, people's sex lives. You know, like, think about, like, the whole Olivia Wilde, Harry Styles situation. Sure. That became promotion for that movie. And then that movie had one of the biggest opening weekends of any film directed by a woman.

Yeah. What did you think of that movie? I think there's interesting stuff in it. And then, like, story-wise, it kind of gets away from itself. Yeah, a little bit, right? Yeah. Like, oh, she's just laying in it. And then like story-wise, it kind of gets away from itself. Yeah, a little bit, right? Yeah. Like, oh, she's just laying in the bed the whole time? That seemed like a cop-out to me.

Oh, that's what's at the top of the hill? It's the reality that they're asleep? All right. But so you just see it as a kind of fascistic bleed of where culture is right now. Well, you know, so there's that. of a fascistic bleed of where culture is right now. Well, you know, there's so there's that. And then there's like people who are so far left that they've kind of like met the right, you know, like underneath.

Yeah. And so, you know, there is definitely an aspect of that, of, you know, the trad wife sort of trend of like it's a woman. It's you're doing self exploitationexploitation if you dress sexy. This idea has come back. And this idea was in the 90s as well. I mean, you know, there was a real conflict between different types of feminists in the 90s in terms of the kind of 70s feminism, which was very anti-sex work, very much like we have to not play to the male gaze.

And then this sort of post-porn feminism that was saying, like, no, it's my body. I can do whatever I want with it. And I mean, I kind of just fall on like body autonomy above all. Yeah. Well, that seems practical. You got to find somewhere between Andrea Dworkin and, you know, Camille Paglia. Yeah. So actually, like, that's what a lot of erotic 80s and erotic 90s is, is like trying to find the common sense in between those two poles. But it's sort of interesting that this generation

that is, you know, uncomfortable with sex has never had more access to sex than any generation. But I don't know what, you know, what the internet does to vulnerability. I don't know what the internet does to the idea of intimacy or what sex even is. But I mean, I guess we're not really having that conversation. We're talking about movies. Yeah, but I mean, you know,

a lot of people will say, well, the reason why we don't need sex in movies anymore is because we have so much porn. Yeah. But I don't know. I just feel like movies and any kind of art should be able to talk about anything in human experience.

And when you take this out and say, like, we're not going to do this anymore, by extension, you're also not really having movies about adult relationships. Well, yeah, adult movies are hard to come by. Yeah. Aren't they? Yeah. I feel very untethered from whatever's happening. I'm starting to not know whether or not, you know, I'm just, like I said this earlier, but if that my point of view and my point of reference is that of just one of the new old guys or that we're all sort of floating on our own now. I don't know. What

do you sense? Well, I'm just, I find, I think there is like a collective popular culture, but I just find myself not very interested in it. What is it? I mean, it's like, it's the comic book movies. It's certain TV shows. But that's child, right? That's child stuff. Well, succession is not child stuff. That's good. But I can't seem to care about it.

Really? Yeah. Huh. That's interesting. Yeah. I don't know. I just, there's a lot of like TV shows that, you know, that's like everybody says you have to watch them.

And then I try to watch them and I find sort of no interest. Well, where do you find yourself watching? What do you watch? I mean, of new stuff? Yeah. You know,

I've watched most of the movies that were nominated for Oscars this year. I did too. I loved Banshees. Yeah. I just think that's like kind of an all-time movie.

Yeah. My friend, I found it to be, and oddly, I don't know, maybe I'm getting sappy as I get older, but I'm like,

it was a little sad. It was really sad. But my producer was sort of like, that is the Irish unconscious. That is a fundamentally Irish movie. I mean, that Colin Farrell performance is just like, it really broke my heart. Oh, my God. You know, I'm almost tearing up thinking about that movie right now. That's how much that movie affected me.

But then, you know, again, it's like that's a movie that's like is sort of in this cultural conversation. But like how many people actually saw it? Right. Wins no Oscars. What about Tar? I think Tar is very, very interesting intellectually and not very entertaining. Right. And so it's I think what it's doing conceptually is really exciting.

Yeah. And then it's also three hours long and the story doesn't really start until an hour and a half in. Yes. And so I think it's really, it can be really challenging. And I think that there should be a conversation about it as being challenging. I think instead people are either, you know, saying it's a masterpiece or saying fuck tar. Yeah.

No, I, you know, I found. I found I had to go back to it a couple of times to sort of like decode some of it because it seems like Todd is really honoring his mentor Kubrick in certain respects where there's Easter eggs and weirdness in there. That you kind of have to

someone hit me to it. I think it was some article I read and I was sort of like, what? How do you put that together? I mean, something that bothers me a lot with contemporary movies is, and this, you know, I'm aware of this probably because of studying Polly Platt, but a lack of concern with production design as carrying meaning. And I think Tar is an example of production design and costume design and, you know, every aspect of an aesthetic having an enormous amount of meaning. And it's like, it's not, it's not like an instant gratification film at all. So let's, let's close out with talk about, I found myself enjoying this year's Oscars.

Yeah. Did you? Well, we were there. Oh, so I, I saw it from a different point of view. Yeah. We had a good time at the awards. You know, again, it was like, I was a little heartbroken that this movie that I think is So I saw it from a different point of view. Yeah. We had a good time at the awards. You know, again, it was like I was a little heartbroken that this movie that I think is like an all-time movie, you know, didn't make it. Banshees?

Yeah. But I thought it was a good year. Yeah. I mean, did you see Navalny? No. The documentary? I mean, that is so well made and such a gripping story. It's like watching an action film.

It's really incredible. In terms of docs, I only watched that Fire of Love. Fire of Love is great. The Nan Golden film is phenomenal. What is that about? So it's called All the Beauty in Bloodshed, and it's about Nan Golden, the photographer. No, I know her stuff. It's kind of a combination of sort of her life story, but framed around her mission to get the Sackler company's name off of

art galleries and museums because they're, they profited from the opioid crisis. And it's sort of about her history with drugs, her fairly recent overdose. And it's also kind of about like this art scene that she was part of. And like it was sort of all outsiders coming together that she was documenting. But almost everybody was either bisexual or a drug addict or both. And so she goes to rehab sometime in the early 80s and she comes back and, like, half her friends are dead.

Right, from AIDS. Yeah. Yeah. Like, with David Wojnarowicz. Yeah. Is that how you say his last name? Wojnarowicz, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I remember that whole crew because I was sort of in New York around a little after the time they were kind of popular. Yeah. I remember Dave's activism art. Yeah, I got to watch that because I've always liked her a lot. But I found that, you know, in the same way that, you know, I don't know what's up with Jack or whether it matters to the Oscars, but I grow nostalgic for that. There was that period in the 70s where old Hollywood and new Hollywood were integrated and around each other. And it was kind of beautiful.

Yeah, it's like Gene Kelly and Jane Fonda at the same party. Yeah, yeah. And even like Jack and Gene Kelly. Like there was that crew. And I remember Jack Nicholson telling a story about the Golden Globes when Glenn Ford used to host and Rita Hayworth would come out shit-faced. And Jack just talks about how like, you know, he just had this look on his face like, yeah, all the time with this, you mean, there are two recent examples of Oscars where they kind of brought out somebody older, and both of them, I think, were just really eviscerated. I mean, one was, and this is actually the moment that— Liza was a few years ago. That was the second one I was going to say. But the one that actually is one of the impetuses for me starting the podcast was when Kim Novak came out.

It was in 2014. She came out with Matthew McConaughey, and she had had, you know, evident plastic surgery. And it just turned into this whole, like, you know, 10-day internet cycle about whether or not it was okay for Kim Novak to have had plastic surgery. And it's just like, like, again, it's just, it's the ultimate example of a woman who was so valued for the way she looked. And her looks being used by Hitchcock in such an evocative and mysterious way. And now she looks different and it's her fault that she looks different. And it's like, well, would you have preferred that she like aged without any

kind of intervention? Cause you wouldn't have been okay with that either. Well, I like for me, the feeding frenzy that happens on the internet, like, you know, the fact that you have to adapt to that and integrate it into your own sort of assessment of culture, it's a fucking nightmare. Yeah. It's like, why is that conversation even happening? Because it's faceless usually and it's driven by, you know, content whores who want clickbait. And it's just like, why is the discussion even happening? Why can't it just like in the old days, it would have just been like, you know.

Yeah. Yay. Kim Novick,, you know. Yeah. Yay. Kim Novick, right? Right. Yeah. And there'd be like an article on the front page of the calendar section in the LA Times that like recapped the whole show. That's it, man. And no commentary.

Yeah. I mean, but like I found like something, I talked to the Daniels, you know, and they're goofy, bright guys. Yeah. We're friendly with them. Yeah. And they're goofy, bright guys. Yeah, we're friendly with them. Yeah, but I found that just the amount, oddly, that moment where you realize that Spielberg's going to sit this out.

Yeah. It was kind of stunning. We kind of realized that on the award circuit. At some point, he stopped coming to stuff. He was like, it's not worth it. Well, you know, it's a flawed movie. And, you know, whatever. I don't have to sit here and shit on Steven Spielberg.

They're very interesting to me, though, because I kind of know James Gray. Oh, yeah. We love James. Great. Yeah. He's one of my favorite people. It's great. Great. And a real character.

And really sort of has an appreciation. I love his movies. Yeah, they're great. I do, too. But to me, it was interesting. And I haven't talked to James about this or Stephen, how like their primary cast for both of their – They're not Jews. Yeah.

It's wild. Yeah. And it's – and then, you know, you just hear about Jennifer Lawrence being cast as humongers and like things like that. And, you know, as a Jewish woman, it's frustrating. It's definitely frustrating. You know, as a Jewish woman, it's frustrating. It's definitely frustrating. And it's like it does seem to tie back into this thing of like the foundation of Hollywood where it's like they're coming after us because we're Jews.

We have to bring in a Catholic. Like we can't like get – we can't be too openly Jewish. And that means casting women who are not Jewish to play Jews. Building an illusion we can live in safely. Yeah. But I felt like there was a new energy to it that was kind of uplifting and deserved, I thought, in terms of the whole Oscars somehow. And I thought Jimmy handled it very well. I thought the jokes were pretty good.

I like that, like, you know, dumb old schtick doesn't really work. Eventually they'll stop doing it. Yeah. Like with the donkey. The donkey was better than the bear. Yeah. Well, yeah, the cocaine bear is such a funny thing. It's like it's so ephemeral. You know, like that movie is going to have been in theaters for two weeks. And then it's just going to disappear.

Well, she was plugging the movie. Yeah. I mean, I mean, she, that was a plug. Yeah. But, you know, it's like it's very different from the Oscars I grew up with, with like Jimmy, Billy Crystal. Sure. Doing that kind of bit about the movies of the year, not about the movie that is that weekend. Right, the opening bit, the dance,

and you have the bear come in and whatever, and there was a, you know, shtick. Tolerance for shtick is less than it used to be. That's cringe, right? It is. Like, how is the history of the world part two doing? I don't know. I don't see streaming numbers.

Most people who make stuff on streaming don't see streaming numbers. I know. I'm just wondering because, like, that type of comedy for me was always right on the edge. I can appreciate it. But it was always sort of like, I don't know, is that funny? Yeah. I mean, I think Mel Brooks has a storied track record of ups and downs.

For sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, this was a fun talk. Yeah. Yeah. I had a was a fun talk. Yeah. Yeah. I had a good time. Good. Did we cover enough? Sure. Unless you have more questions about Jewish mysticism in Hollywood.

I do, man. It never ends. Yeah. I mean, I think that I've actually been thinking about trying to do like a documentary series that does center that as like a way of ref reframing this hollywood history because it just seems like how specifically just this idea that like there's this always this push and pull between like the anti-semites who are trying to like destroy hollywood and then hollywood being self-protective yeah huh and where would you start that uh probably around 1908 maybe 1915 well i mean i i it's i i read empire their own you know and it was sort of a life-changing thing for me and you know i i i don't know i have a hard time sometimes um when i romanticize the the nature of hollywood not to become mystical somehow. But that's – I mean that's the thing.

It's like I go back and forth between like really romanticizing it and – you know, my favorite movie of all time is A Star is Born, the 1954 version directed by George Cukor and starring Judy Garland. Yeah. Which to me is just this ultimate thing of Hollywood like trying to acknowledge its darkness but in a way that ultimately in the end reifies the lightness and like the redemptive possibilities of movies and of Hollywood. And I just, I love that push and pull. Yeah. What do you think of the new one? I think Gaga's incredible. I think she's one of our greatest stars.

As a movie, it does not match the level of my favorite movie of all time. What do you think of the Christofferson-Strazan one? I like that one too you know I mean I guess like the rock and roll aspect is not as meaningful to me

sure as the Hollywood setting you know but I love her I love him who was the male in that original

was it James Mason James Mason yeah yeah James Mason walking into the sea oh yeah yeah

alright good talking to you yeah you too. There you go. The new season of You Must Remember This premieres tomorrow, March 28th. Get it wherever you get podcasts. And go back and listen to some of those older seasons, too. I like talking to her. It made me feel smart.

Hang out for a minute. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising.

Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Discover the timeless elegance of cozy, where furniture meets innovation. store and ACAS Creative. difference with furniture that grows with you, delivered to your door quickly and for free. Assembly is a breeze, setting you up for years of comfort and style. Don't break the bank. Cozy's Direct2 model ensures that quality and value go hand in hand. Transform your living space today with Cozy. Visit cozy.ca, that's C-O-Z-E-Y, and start customizing your furniture. Folks, Fridays on the Full Marin, we have a show that's geared for wrestling fans. But last Friday, we posted something that comedy fans might be interested in, too.

Writer and comic illustrator Brian Box Brown came on the show to talk with Brendan and Chris about his book, Is This Guy For Real? The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman. real the unbelievable andy kaufman in your book you uh you have a scene where andy goes to graceland and uh gets a private tour and uh did did elvis actually tape all of uh andy's appearances i don't i mean that's what he says you know you know they say that you know it's been well known he said a few a number of times that andy was his favorite, did his favorite impression. And, you know, I think there's a lot to that too, because like when people, anyone does an Elvis impression,

they often, the first thing they say is thank you very much. Right. That was Andy's thing that he said. That was, that was his thing that he said at the end, because that's what foreign man was saying after all of the jokes. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. And he does Elvis. And he says, thank you very much. And Elvis's voice. And then everybody does. It's like when the George HW Bush impression from Saturday night live, that became everybody's Bush impression.

And that was Andy for Elvis. I think you can get that episode. Plus all our bonus content, including the latest Ask Mark Anything, which we'll post tomorrow when you sign up for the full Marin. Go to the link in the episode description to subscribe or go to WTFpod.com

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