Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
Speaker 1: Beast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Jamie dearest, Caitlin, dearest, thank you. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: show you my cool new wire hangers.
Speaker 3: I got, oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: Was this a known thing about wire hangers where people
Speaker 4: talk or was this specifically a movie thing? Is it
Speaker 4: like low rent to have wirehangers?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I would say we were a.
Speaker 4: Heavily wirehanger household, so was mine, I think. And the
Speaker 4: hangers in question, which are like those plushy hangers I
Speaker 4: think are like kind of stinky and smell like mothballs.
Speaker 3: But what do I know?
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I don't know. Like I have a few
Speaker 2: wooden clothes hangers that I like to hang my heavier
Speaker 2: coats on and stuff, and I feel so classy when
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, putting my wood hangar on the rack.
Speaker 4: And really with the with hangers, there's always the floor,
Speaker 4: which is where most.
Speaker 3: Of it is going to end up.
Speaker 4: Anyways, it's the hangers that I buy are is like
Speaker 4: it's a performance piece that I do every time I
Speaker 4: move is acquirer. Okay, well that was a That was
Speaker 4: a classy opening to the Mommy Dearist episode.
Speaker 3: Agree to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Dronte. This is our show where
Speaker 2: we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Speaker 2: Bechdel test as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what
Speaker 2: on Jamie dearest? Yes, what on earth is that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: It is a media metric created by Alison Bechdel, friend
Speaker 4: of the show originally, and actually it is like pretty
Speaker 4: relevant to talk about the context today. Originally was made
Speaker 4: as a one off joke in her comic collection Dix
Speaker 4: to Watch out For back in the eighties. Has since
Speaker 4: been adapted to a sort of mainstream metric a lot
Speaker 4: of versions of it. The version we use requires that
Speaker 4: two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to
Speaker 4: each other about something other than a man, and that
Speaker 4: conversation can really be about anything narratively relevant, And so
Speaker 4: the movie Mommy Dearist, you know, it doesn't have to
Speaker 4: be a positive conversation.
Speaker 2: That's what I'll say it does not it can be abuse.
Speaker 4: Yes, you so you can you know know that it
Speaker 4: passes the Bechdel test, And we would probably call the
Speaker 4: podcast something else if we started it today. But today
Speaker 4: we have kind of a behemoth of a movie because
Speaker 4: it's a request we've been getting since this show has existed.
Speaker 4: I'd say so for nearly a decade. We have been
Speaker 4: avoiding covering this movie because it seemed difficult to prepare for. Yes,
Speaker 4: and that is in fact true. But we have the
Speaker 4: perfect guest to come and talk about Mommy dear'st with us.
Speaker 3: Let's get it right in here.
Speaker 2: She is the creator behind the YouTube channel be kind Rewind.
Speaker 2: It's Isy Cstadio. Welcome, Thank you, Thank you guys for
Speaker 2: having me. I'm very excited. It is a daunting task
Speaker 2: to talk about this movie.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for being I mean, just to
Speaker 4: get the fangirl moment.
Speaker 3: Out of the way.
Speaker 4: I guess like we cite your work truly like every
Speaker 4: other episode, you are so present on this show.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you. No, I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 5: I love this podcast.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're so excited to have you. Yeah, so much
Speaker 4: of what I've learned about this movie specifically and also
Speaker 4: just Joan Crawford as a cultural figure is from your work.
Speaker 4: I mean we I think we were talking about we
Speaker 4: recently covered Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and so that
Speaker 4: I mean, I just I still have the I bought
Speaker 4: the shirt with the seas and Desist from.
Speaker 3: Olivia to havilin that you put out like just so
Speaker 3: much lore.
Speaker 4: But to get people up to speed, what is your
Speaker 4: history with I guess Joan Crawford as a cultural figure
Speaker 4: and mommy dearist, I would say, I mean, Whatever Happened
Speaker 4: to Baby Jane was my introduction into Joan Crawford.
Speaker 5: I remember renting that at the library as a child.
Speaker 5: I don't think I knew anything about it amazing, but
Speaker 5: I was captivated by it. It's just one of those
Speaker 5: things that kind of hits to a core part of
Speaker 5: your personality that you haven't recognized yet. And so for
Speaker 5: the longest time, I just remembered it as like, what
Speaker 5: is that movie with those two crazy ladies who have
Speaker 5: a doll?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 5: I couldn't remember what it was called, and I kept
Speaker 5: trying to find it again at the library, but it
Speaker 5: just became such an integral part of my pop cultural consumption.
Speaker 5: And then from there as I sort of developed my
Speaker 5: interest in Hollywood history and stuff. I mean, Joan was
Speaker 5: a really natural way for me to get into that
Speaker 5: through Joan Crawford and Betty Davis. So I guess I
Speaker 5: have like a strong relationship with Joan Crawford from my
Speaker 5: early days as a sinophile. And then I don't know
Speaker 5: exactly how Mommy Dearest got into my life. I'm pretty
Speaker 5: sure my mom introduced it to me. Actually, I think
Speaker 5: she had seen it at some point and sort of
Speaker 5: understood it as this sort of important camp classic, and
Speaker 5: we would watch it together and we would quote it together,
Speaker 5: and she would always jokingly say, aren't you glad I'm not.
Speaker 2: This bad.
Speaker 4: Great yardstick to pull out as a parent, exactly exactly
Speaker 4: like you should be grateful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we just have little, I guess inside jokes
Speaker 5: about that. But yeah, and then you know, I made
Speaker 5: that video about it, and so I've just kind of
Speaker 5: dug into it later on in life as well. But yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just it's been part of my life for as
Speaker 5: long as.
Speaker 3: I can remember.
Speaker 2: Wow, amazing, incredible, Jamie, how about you?
Speaker 4: I had not seen in this movie all the way
Speaker 4: through before, which I was kind of surprised for It's
Speaker 4: one of those movies, a huge movie, very different movie.
Speaker 4: But two movies that I was like hoping to, like
Speaker 4: wait to see in theaters for the first time were
Speaker 4: Mommy Dearist and two thousand and one of Space Odyssey.
Speaker 4: I still have similar perfect double feature. I still haven't
Speaker 4: seen two thousand and one A Space Odyssey because I
Speaker 4: really want to see it in the theater, and every
Speaker 4: time it's in theaters here, I magically get the flu
Speaker 4: or whatever. So similar deal where I wanted to experience
Speaker 4: this like it. I think of this movie in the
Speaker 4: same vein as like Rocky Horror, where I wanted the experience,
Speaker 4: but this was my time, and so I watched Mommy Dearist,
Speaker 4: and holy shit, I mean I don't it is like
Speaker 4: a full experience. I still would love to see it
Speaker 4: in an audience.
Speaker 3: Very brief history.
Speaker 4: I went and read the first hundred pages of the book.
Speaker 4: I didn't have time to read the whole thing, but
Speaker 4: I was just trying to get a feel of, like
Speaker 4: what the tone of the book was versus the movie,
Speaker 4: and it is very different, even though a lot of
Speaker 4: the set pieces are the same.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of surprised that this book wasn't brought up
Speaker 4: in conversation more with I'm glad my mom died because
Speaker 4: I think if this movie or if this book came
Speaker 4: out thirty or or whatever forty years later, it would
Speaker 4: have been treated quite differently. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed learning about how I don't know. I'm
Speaker 4: interested in how like abusive dynamics, especially with kids, are
Speaker 4: like portrayed in movies and this is like such a
Speaker 4: huge example of it. And yeah, I don't know, there's
Speaker 4: so much to talk about. I'm interested to get into it.
Speaker 4: Kitlyn w's her history with Mommy dearis had you seen
Speaker 4: it before?
Speaker 2: I had? Okay, I watched it during the Great Kitlyn
Speaker 2: movie binge of two thousand and five, huge, thank you
Speaker 2: so much. And at that point, I don't think I
Speaker 2: had much of a handle on who Joan Crawford was
Speaker 2: because I was only starting to make my way through
Speaker 2: classic Hollywood cinema. I remember it being a difficult watch.
Speaker 2: I am sure I perceived it as being like very
Speaker 2: over the top and campy, but I more remember being like, oh,
Speaker 2: my god. So this is hard to watch, but since
Speaker 2: then I forgot most of it, except for I remembered
Speaker 2: the wire hanger scene.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I feel like that's almost a cultural
Speaker 3: osmosis thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: I get a lot of TCM memes in my algorithm,
Speaker 4: which is great, but they like recently, I don't know
Speaker 4: on what grounds, but I learned from via a TCM
Speaker 4: meme that there was briefly like an AJAX, like the
Speaker 4: bathroom bleacher that was a Mommy Dearest tie in AJAX.
Speaker 3: Wow, just.
Speaker 4: Which we'll we'll talk about, but that was the most
Speaker 4: recent time I was thinking about Mommy DearS before we
Speaker 4: settled on this episode.
Speaker 2: When when was that marketing?
Speaker 3: I think it would have been for the original run
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think I think there were. There was
Speaker 5: kind of a pivot in the advertising where they sort
Speaker 5: of lean into the grotesque miss you know, and with
Speaker 5: wire hangers and things like that, so which I've liked.
Speaker 2: That was part of it.
Speaker 3: I was really surprised.
Speaker 4: I mean, we could talk about it later as well,
Speaker 4: but like, I was really surprised at how instantly the
Speaker 4: pivot was and being like, oh, this is a camp movie, Okay,
Speaker 4: We're like, I assumed that that happened over a period
Speaker 4: of years, but it seems to have happened like inside
Speaker 4: of the first week or so of release.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like how Cats was just immediately true it. Yes,
Speaker 2: I did compare Mammy Dear's to Cats, but I.
Speaker 4: Don't know, like which production is like catching astray in that.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I I'm excited to talk about it. I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm I said this off Mike too, but
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm mostly here to learn from the
Speaker 2: two of you. So I'm I'm ready to learn a
Speaker 2: lot that I think I don't already know. But yeah,
Speaker 2: let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
Speaker 2: for the recap. Hell yeah, and we're back. Okay, So
Speaker 2: obvious trigger warning at the top.
Speaker 3: Really for.
Speaker 5: Child abuse just from Beat one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so beware of that.
Speaker 3: Also, this movie was rated I mean, this movie is
Speaker 3: rated PG, which just isn't not crazy?
Speaker 2: Is it because it was before they implemented PG thirteen.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good question.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know.
Speaker 5: But I mean she drops an F bomb too, which
Speaker 5: I was like, that's a little surprising, Like I don't
Speaker 5: think you'd be allowed in PG, right, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you.
Speaker 2: Were definitely not. Yeah, the F word, okay, I think
Speaker 2: you're allowed one F word in a PG thirteen movie,
Speaker 2: and if it's more than that, it becomes an R rating.
Speaker 2: So PG thirteen ratings were introduced in eighty four. So
Speaker 2: this is a few that's why shy, but also just
Speaker 2: like really great indicator because I think the reason it
Speaker 2: got PG is because there's no like sex proper in it.
Speaker 5: Parental guidance needed. Indeed, I think we can.
Speaker 4: Say if anyone needs some solid parental guidance, everyone in this.
Speaker 2: Movie, yeah, yes, okay. So we meet Joan Crawford played
Speaker 2: by Faye Dunaway, who, of course was a famous star
Speaker 2: during the classic Hollywood era. We see Joan doing a
Speaker 2: very elaborate morning beauty routine.
Speaker 3: We all just something you could see a fourteen year
Speaker 3: old do on TikTok today.
Speaker 4: Also the fact that this was received so poorly, they're like,
Speaker 4: what a vain woman? And now it's like everyone on
Speaker 4: earth is doing that. Yeah, it's like a challenge to
Speaker 4: put your face in ice.
Speaker 2: You know. Oh yeah, she she has so many like
Speaker 2: elastic bands on her head.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, normal, now, the like taping the mouth
Speaker 3: shut of it all.
Speaker 2: I mean you could say she's a pioneer.
Speaker 3: Trail laser. God forbid a woman have a morning routine.
Speaker 5: God for better woman looks Max's geez.
Speaker 2: This sequence reminded me of the like grooming sequence in
Speaker 2: American Psycho, and I was like, Wow, if you have
Speaker 2: like a beauty routine in a movie, it's to indicate
Speaker 2: that that character.
Speaker 3: Is crazy, like a vain, freaking nightmare person. Yeah, is
Speaker 3: the logic that this movie appinds by?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think, Yeah, there's some sort of connection here,
Speaker 5: not just with whatever happened to Baby Jane, but like
Speaker 5: the substance even you know, just kind of like the
Speaker 5: desperation we cast on these women to remain young, and
Speaker 5: pressure from the industry and all of these things, right,
Speaker 5: and then like use it as a shorthand for mockery
Speaker 5: and all this other stuff where I don't know.
Speaker 4: Like there as we'll discuss. There's so many reasons to
Speaker 4: criticize Joan Crawford having a facial routine. Uh, that was
Speaker 4: intense for an aging woman in Hollywood. I wouldn't say
Speaker 4: crocs the top like five hundred right, exactly, but it
Speaker 4: is a shorthand for like, this woman is unhinged.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at this ridiculous woman for trying to adhere
Speaker 2: to rigid beauty standards that society enforces upon her.
Speaker 4: Like I've done worse than everything in the oh absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 4: and will and planned to.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we see her doing that. We also see
Speaker 2: her scrubbing her floors and berating her house. I think
Speaker 2: it's her housekeeper Malan and her cleaner Helga for not
Speaker 2: doing a thorough enough job. So we start to realize
Speaker 2: that she has very intense standards for hygiene and cleanliness,
Speaker 2: and she's just a very intense person overall. A male
Speaker 2: suitor of hers comes over. This is an entertainment lawyer
Speaker 2: named Greg Savat. She tells him that she plans to
Speaker 2: adopt a baby, and Greg tells her that she will
Speaker 2: likely be denied by adoption agencies since she's a working woman,
Speaker 2: she's currently unmarried, and she's twice divorced, which this and
Speaker 2: it's I understand why the movie doesn't get into like
Speaker 2: the business of this, but I just think it's interesting.
Speaker 4: Was definitely true because in California at that time, a
Speaker 4: single woman could not legally adopt a child at all,
Speaker 4: like she had to go to per Christina Crawford. Joan
Speaker 4: Crawford had to go to Nevada to adopt Christina, which
Speaker 4: is definitely true. But for Christina, she had to do
Speaker 4: it through a mafia guy, like through the Jewish mafia
Speaker 4: in Miami.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's like illegal baby markets basically for adoption.
Speaker 2: It's human trafficking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean to the point where and another
Speaker 4: thing that got again understandably cut from the movie. But
Speaker 4: the Christopher, her brother, is not even the first Christopher.
Speaker 4: She adopted a baby named Christopher that the birth mother
Speaker 4: returned for unclear what the situation was, but she was
Speaker 4: very upset. It seems like the baby had definitely been
Speaker 4: trafficked to Joan Crawford. So Christopher one point I was
Speaker 4: taken back by his birth mother. Another kid shows up
Speaker 4: that not shows up, is trafficked to Joan Crawford that
Speaker 4: she names after her husband at the time, Philip. And
Speaker 4: then Joan Crawford and Philip break up and Joan Crawford
Speaker 4: changed just baby Phillip's name to Christopher. Whoa And so
Speaker 4: there is a Christopher Crawford, but it's the second.
Speaker 3: One second Christopher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my gosh, I did not know that.
Speaker 5: And then there are twins who are adopted in nineteen
Speaker 5: forty seven who aren't even in the movie, completely erased
Speaker 5: from the movie. Well, and I think that's kind of
Speaker 5: intentional because they both very much believe that Christina is
Speaker 5: full of it. They have a very different experience growing up,
Speaker 5: and so I think not to get into the details
Speaker 5: of that, but I think, you know, that would have
Speaker 5: complicated the directness of the movie, shall we say, to
Speaker 5: have a yes, yeah, to have an opposing.
Speaker 4: View, definitely, And so for like all of those things
Speaker 4: to be sort of like compressed into the line you're
Speaker 4: too vain to be a mother Joan. Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that's how this movie works.
Speaker 2: So, as we were hinting at, she is denied by
Speaker 2: an adoption agency. The movie does not make it clear
Speaker 2: exactly what happens, but it seems like Greg pulls some
Speaker 2: strings quote unquote and arranges this adoption, and so this
Speaker 2: is baby Christina. We cut to a few years later.
Speaker 2: Joan has also adopted Christopher by this point, and Christopher too.
Speaker 2: We skipped over Christopher one point zero, Yeah, we did.
Speaker 2: And then I'm also like, Okay, we have a child
Speaker 2: named Christina and another child named Christopher. That's too many.
Speaker 2: Those names are too alike.
Speaker 4: Well, Christina was originally named Joan Junior. Yeah, and then
Speaker 4: Joan was like, now, I don't.
Speaker 5: Know what the logic was for switching, yet, I think
Speaker 5: she had done something along lines of like it would
Speaker 5: just be confusing if she also wanted to be an actor,
Speaker 5: because she had been married to Douglas Fairbanks Junior, whose
Speaker 5: father was Douglas Fairbanks Senior, and that caused some confusion,
Speaker 5: and so I think she was just like, well, maybe
Speaker 5: I was wrong about.
Speaker 3: That and changed her to Christina. Yeah. So when the
Speaker 3: maybe gets to Nevada, never mind, it's Christina now.
Speaker 2: So she's just changing her kids' names right and left
Speaker 2: that It's very bizarre, Okay, Christina. At this point, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how old she's supposed to be because the
Speaker 2: movie keeps jumping ahead in time, but they use the
Speaker 2: same child actor, Maara Hoble for that whole time, even
Speaker 2: though she's supposed to advance an age, So I think
Speaker 2: she's probably around like five years old. At this big
Speaker 2: birthday party that Joan throws for her and Joan seems
Speaker 2: like a loving, doting mother, but maybe that's just because
Speaker 2: there are a lot of photographers and publicity people around,
Speaker 2: because things are very different when they're out of the
Speaker 2: public eye. Not all of the time, but sometimes Joan
Speaker 2: is very controlling. She is hypercritical of Christina. There's a
Speaker 2: scene by their swimming pool where Joan makes her daughter
Speaker 2: over exert herself in the pool and then be rates
Speaker 2: her for losing their swimming race, which.
Speaker 3: That my grandma had.
Speaker 4: Uh not to put my dead grandma on blast, but
Speaker 4: my grandma had a I don't know, an undiagnosed personality
Speaker 4: disorder because she didn't believe in treatment mental health, and
Speaker 4: that was it was such a weird scene to like,
Speaker 4: I hadn't been in that exact situation. But my grandma
Speaker 4: was frequently challenging the kids to rigged contests that only
Speaker 4: adults could win, more more mind contests like I was
Speaker 4: losing trivia to my grandma.
Speaker 3: Constantly get alive, rest and piss to Grandma.
Speaker 4: I do think that is one of my favorite line
Speaker 4: deliveries in the movie, though, is when she goes you
Speaker 4: lost again, just like damn it's and.
Speaker 2: She's like, I'll always be bigger and faster than you,
Speaker 2: and I'll always win.
Speaker 3: It's crazy. I love it.
Speaker 4: It's hard not like I I get why people are
Speaker 4: obsessed with Faye Dunaway's performance in this, Like totally there
Speaker 4: was no they They must have used every unhinged because
Speaker 4: I read there was a lot of coverage of this movie.
Speaker 4: There was like a ton of footage shot and maybe
Speaker 4: they just used the most unhinged take of every single angle,
Speaker 4: like she'd it's relentless, It's intense, very.
Speaker 2: Much so this. In this moment of the film, Joan
Speaker 2: becomes very physically abusive toward Christina. She's pushing and striking her.
Speaker 2: There's another scene where Joan finds Christina playing with some
Speaker 2: of Joan's things and like hair products and things like that,
Speaker 2: and she's furious and cuts off Christina's hair. Meanwhile, Joan
Speaker 2: does sperately wants a part in a film that she
Speaker 2: has not yet been offered, and it seems like Greg
Speaker 2: once again pulls some strings and Joan thinks she's gotten
Speaker 2: the part. But and I'm not totally clear what happens here,
Speaker 2: but there's a dinner with MGM studio head Louis B.
Speaker 2: Mayer and some bankers ueby.
Speaker 3: Mahra gets off so easy in this movie. It was
Speaker 3: like genuinely shocking.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but whatever their interaction is, Joan is humiliated
Speaker 2: by and she and Greg get in a huge fight
Speaker 2: about it, and he basically says like, you're all washed
Speaker 2: up actor, you're getting old and your career isn't what
Speaker 2: it used to be, and she's devastated. They break up.
Speaker 2: Some time passes. Little Christopher is now several years older,
Speaker 2: but Christina has somehow not aged. I think it.
Speaker 4: Reminds me of mad Men The Brother. The brother could
Speaker 4: be any age. Nobody really ages in this movie. It's like,
Speaker 4: I think they only put old people make up like
Speaker 4: on them on Carol Anne that and that's it. Cal
Speaker 4: ages twenty years and like I think six story days.
Speaker 2: Oh in a jump cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to Ritania Alda who played Caroline.
Speaker 3: She really she really uh had to deal with a lot.
Speaker 4: It sounds like on that shoot yeah, where Faye done
Speaker 4: Away just kept being like make her uglier.
Speaker 2: To me. Part of the camp is the fact that Christina,
Speaker 2: until she's played by a different, much older actor, does
Speaker 2: not age, but her younger brother like becomes taller than
Speaker 2: her at some point, and I'm just like, how how
Speaker 2: is this? How is this happening?
Speaker 3: The wig too, The wig is is a lot that
Speaker 3: they put on that child.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, some brutal wigs in this movie, I will say, definitely.
Speaker 2: So the children are a little older, but Joan continues
Speaker 2: to be incredibly vindictive and abusive toward them, especially toward Christina,
Speaker 2: berating her taking away her baby dolls. We find out
Speaker 2: at some point that Joan straps I think maybe both children,
Speaker 2: but definitely Christopher to his bed at night, which is yeah, fine,
Speaker 2: which is true? Yeah, Oh my gosh. Then Joan has
Speaker 2: a meeting with Louis B. Mayer, who fires her from
Speaker 2: MGM because her last few movies have lost money.
Speaker 3: And he's such a nice guy about it.
Speaker 2: He's doing her a favor by firing her.
Speaker 3: Just the Louis B. Mayor edit on this is really
Speaker 3: something else.
Speaker 5: Although I do my impression of her leaving is that
Speaker 5: it is pretty much like a mutual my understanding of it.
Speaker 5: I could be misremembering, but I don't recall it being
Speaker 5: like a brutal firing in the same way that it's
Speaker 5: kind of portrayed here, although I don't think she was
Speaker 5: happy about it obviously, because she was kind of she
Speaker 5: understood what was happening to.
Speaker 2: Her basically right well, in the movie version of.
Speaker 4: It, it's like she just has to be the most
Speaker 4: unhinged person in every scene, right, So it's like, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: She lashes out. She destroys her garden in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night and makes her children get out of
Speaker 2: bed and help her. And this is the like Tina,
Speaker 2: bring me the acts scene. Yes, great read, great read,
Speaker 2: thank you so much, Thank you so much. I've been
Speaker 2: taking improv classes, so my performing abilities.
Speaker 3: Are really nice.
Speaker 2: Through the root, we cut to some time later, Joan
Speaker 2: has signed with another studio and I lost track which
Speaker 2: one that warners okay, and she is preparing for her
Speaker 2: role in Mildred Pearce. Then there's a scene where Christina
Speaker 2: does not want to eat her lunch because it's a
Speaker 2: steak that's cooked very rare, And we're seeing Christina becoming
Speaker 2: more defiant toward her mother as she gets older, although
Speaker 2: again she is visibly not aging, so it's impossible to
Speaker 2: tell how old she's supposed to be. In any case,
Speaker 2: Joan refuses to feed Christina anything until she has finished
Speaker 2: this steak. And this goes on for like a day
Speaker 2: or two. Cut to Joan and her children listening to
Speaker 2: because also like the moments this movie cuts away from
Speaker 2: and the time jumps, Yeah, we're giving me such bad whiplash.
Speaker 2: Like I was like, oh, okay, now it's two years later.
Speaker 5: I guess I don't know anyway, So I was wondering
Speaker 5: how you were gonna do this segment because I was like,
Speaker 5: I feel like it's very hard to even there's no
Speaker 5: real plot either, you know, so it is just like
Speaker 5: it's hard.
Speaker 2: It's a series of scene.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a series of unfortunate literally, yes, yes, Okay,
Speaker 4: So we cut to Joan and her children listening to
Speaker 4: a radio broadcast of the Academy Awards.
Speaker 2: I think Joan has faked having pneumonia to avoid going
Speaker 2: to the ceremony. She wins the oscar for Mildred Pearce,
Speaker 2: and there are paparazzi outside taking pictures of Joan when
Speaker 2: she opens the door, and Christina seems to enjoy some
Speaker 2: of this limelight and so maybe that will inform her
Speaker 2: career choices later on. Following that, we get the very
Speaker 2: famous scene of the movie Joan comes into Christina's room.
Speaker 2: There's cream on her face that makes her look very scary.
Speaker 3: She's joker mud.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, the scene is shot like a horror film totally,
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 2: And Joan finds an article of clothing I think a
Speaker 2: dress of Christina's on a wire hanger her and she
Speaker 2: loses it. She starts screaming and ripping all of Christina's
Speaker 2: clothes from her closet. Joan then beats her, forces her
Speaker 2: to scrub the bathroom floor, forces Christina to call her
Speaker 2: mummy dearest, which we've seen prior, but we weren't sure.
Speaker 2: I think up until this point if this was like
Speaker 2: just what Christina happened to be calling her mom, or
Speaker 2: if this was like an enforced thing. Anyway, it's absolutely
Speaker 2: horrible to watch. And obviously this child is completely traumatized.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And and like you're saying, is he like fully shot
Speaker 4: like a slasher movie kind of?
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's kind of like backlit by the closet light. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's it's pretty haunting in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, it's I mean, there's a reason I remembered it.
Speaker 2: Everyone remembers that. Like it's not subtle. Nope. And then
Speaker 2: asked that scene with the next scene, which is Joan
Speaker 2: and her children calmly sitting for a televised interview at
Speaker 2: their home at Christmas time, where they appear to be
Speaker 2: a happy, loving family. Then we meet a new suitor
Speaker 2: of Jones, Ted Gilbert, and we barely see him on
Speaker 2: screen except for Christina is responsible for serving him drinks
Speaker 2: as a child, and Christina interrupts Joan and Ted canoodling
Speaker 2: by bringing her mother a beverage, and this apparently infuriates
Speaker 2: Joan so much that she sends Christina to boarding school for.
Speaker 3: This was the wildest ever.
Speaker 4: Both times Christina goes to school a wild time jump,
Speaker 4: yes happens. It's either a new person or a confusing
Speaker 4: wig new wag stop. The crazy one for me is
Speaker 4: when she leaves the convent school later and she's in
Speaker 4: her new wig and she's like, thank you for like
Speaker 4: sticking with me through this trying time and we haven't
Speaker 4: seen her at all since since I'm what was happening
Speaker 4: to you have no idea? Well, it's like, among other things,
Speaker 4: that's totally understandable why Christina comfort hated this movie because
Speaker 4: it's not about her, Like it's no exactly Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: just like the gnarliest abuse scenes adapted in the broadest
Speaker 4: possible way.
Speaker 3: I wonder if there was ever any I don't know, do.
Speaker 4: You remember Izzy from Like I know that there was
Speaker 4: like a bajillion versions of this script, if there was
Speaker 4: ever more of a focus on Christina's life away from
Speaker 4: Joan or well, I know Christina had wanted to write
Speaker 4: the script originally.
Speaker 5: I don't know if she ever actually turned in a draft,
Speaker 5: but that would be my guess if there ever were one,
Speaker 5: because I think the other versions that I'm aware of
Speaker 5: did more to contextualize Joan or at least give more
Speaker 5: show time to Joan's life than is already in the film,
Speaker 5: Because even that, I feel like doesn't even do justice
Speaker 5: like what was happening with Joan either, So I think
Speaker 5: it just sort of ends up doing a disservice to
Speaker 5: both of them. As you're saying, like, Christina's not benefiting
Speaker 5: from this at all, I think no, no, And at
Speaker 5: both schools there is like one woman teacher and or
Speaker 5: Nunn who clearly sees that something bad is afoot but
Speaker 5: we never find out. We never find out if they
Speaker 5: ever talk about it or what happens it seems like
Speaker 5: Christina definitely likes being away at school better than she
Speaker 5: likes being at home, which matches with her story.
Speaker 2: But right although, when Joan sends her away, initially Christina
Speaker 2: is crying and begging her mother not to send her
Speaker 2: away to no Avail. And then this is a big
Speaker 2: time jump. We cut to many years later. Christina is
Speaker 2: now a teenager played by Diana Scarwood. She's still at
Speaker 2: boarding school studying acting. Then we see a scene where
Speaker 2: she and her mother go out for lunch. Their relationship
Speaker 2: is still very contentious. Where Christopher is we have no idea.
Speaker 2: He disappears.
Speaker 3: Christopher got He's.
Speaker 2: Gone, and then Joan reveals that she's having financial difficulties.
Speaker 2: She has lost her contract at Warner Brothers, so Christina
Speaker 2: will need to do a work scholarship program to be
Speaker 2: able to stay in school. But some time later, her
Speaker 2: mother is humiliated and pulls Christina out of school after
Speaker 2: she is caught making out with a boy, but she
Speaker 2: tells everyone that Christina was expelled, followed by Joan being
Speaker 2: similarly humiliated when a reporter comes from Redbook to do
Speaker 2: a cover story on Joan and she's Barbara hard to
Speaker 2: improve this is barbar Barbara Barba.
Speaker 3: That's Barbara Please.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, okay, one of the one of the five
Speaker 4: lines from this movie. Yes, exactly, Barbara Please, who is
Speaker 4: played by Marlon Brando's sister, which is I thought was
Speaker 4: kind of a fun facter egg.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I saw.
Speaker 3: Joscelyn brand out, I was like, surely not of the
Speaker 3: Marlon Brandos. But it is.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Joan is trying to impress this reporter, but she
Speaker 2: absolutely blows it and then lashes out at Christina. Things
Speaker 2: become incredibly violent, with Joan strangling and nearly killing Christina.
Speaker 2: We then cut to Christina at a con convent I
Speaker 2: wrote covenant, but that is not a convent where she
Speaker 2: has been sent to finish out her schooling, where she
Speaker 2: will have no privileges or contact with the outside world.
Speaker 2: We skip over more years and cut to Christina has
Speaker 2: finished school and returned home.
Speaker 3: She has a new wig, new wig.
Speaker 4: Most importantly, yes, I don't even know how I'd like,
Speaker 4: we're not even yeah, Like, I have no idea how
Speaker 4: old she's supposed to be at this point.
Speaker 3: I think by the.
Speaker 4: Time she's in the soap opera, in reality, she was
Speaker 4: twenty eight. Yeah, and Joan was like sixty three, but
Speaker 4: Faye down Away looks the same the whole movie. So
Speaker 4: it's it's just unclear. It's really tough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that
Speaker 5: I think is really interesting about this film is like
Speaker 5: I think when we're talking about biopics kind of of
Speaker 5: this nature now, what we're so used to seeing is
Speaker 5: these references that are kind of winks to the audience
Speaker 5: to be like, remember this and this film. It's not
Speaker 5: even trying to give you those little touchstone moments to
Speaker 5: be like, oh, the film that she is desperately trying
Speaker 5: to get is this film, Like they'll just not mention
Speaker 5: what it is. I think Mildred Piers is one of
Speaker 5: the only movies they actually name, I believe so in
Speaker 5: the film, and it's like you never see It's like
Speaker 5: you don't see her like hanging out with Barbara Stanwick
Speaker 5: or like any of her friends, or like directors or anything.
Speaker 5: And these kinds of like world building things that we're
Speaker 5: so used to seeing in modern biopics just like doesn't
Speaker 5: exist here in a way that makes this story feel
Speaker 5: so like isolated and prison like totally and very bizarre,
Speaker 5: Like it's just kind of it's hard to keep track
Speaker 5: of is I think one thing that it happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it like just happens out of time, and yeah,
Speaker 4: like it's you never to hold anyone, is what you're
Speaker 4: supposed to be? I don't know, I mean it will.
Speaker 4: Like part of the reason that this movie is, as
Speaker 4: you illustrate in your video, like the definition of camp,
Speaker 4: is because it doesn't seem like this is necessarily intentional,
Speaker 4: like they really thought they were do something with this movie,
Speaker 4: but it is. I mean it like it's a weird
Speaker 4: disservice to everyone too, because it's like showing that Joan
Speaker 4: had friends doesn't only like give you a better idea
Speaker 4: of who Joan Crawford was, which I'm imagining young audiences
Speaker 4: in the early eighties may have needed, but it also,
Speaker 4: like I don't think does a very good job of
Speaker 4: like explaining how someone might be getting away with such
Speaker 4: abuse the entire time. It's not like she was a
Speaker 4: like unhinged person locked up in her house. Like part
Speaker 4: of the reason that abusive parents can thrive is because
Speaker 4: they are perceived as a good person by the people
Speaker 4: around them and all this I don't know, it's very complicated,
Speaker 4: but just every choice in this movie is so weird.
Speaker 2: The scene where she nearly strangles Christina in front of
Speaker 2: a reporter seemingly has no consequences, Like and I don't
Speaker 2: know if that happened in real life, but like you
Speaker 2: would think that Barbara would have written about that or
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know, but I don't know about it.
Speaker 2: I don't think that happened.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: Well, it's like that also like really makes it seem that,
Speaker 4: like Hollywood columnists have such fealty. I'm like, no, that's
Speaker 4: a that's a story. You would definitely print that totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay. So Christina has returned home from her schooling.
Speaker 2: She meets her mother's new husband, Alfred, who is a
Speaker 2: big wig at Pepsi.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the late stage Pepsi.
Speaker 4: Every letterbox trophy of this movie is like, Wow, didn't
Speaker 4: know Pepsi was gonna feature so heavily.
Speaker 2: That's so I forgot about that. And Christina has gotten
Speaker 2: into acting. She's financially struggling and her mother refuses to
Speaker 2: lend her any money, but Joan is frivolously spending money
Speaker 2: on other things like a New York City apartment, and
Speaker 2: then off screen, Alfred dies and leaves Joan with a
Speaker 2: bunch of debt. PEPSI tries to fire her from the
Speaker 2: board of directors, but she refuses to leave. She threatens
Speaker 2: them this is the.
Speaker 4: Don't Fuck with Me Fellas, which I'm also pretty sure
Speaker 4: is not how that went down.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I would say like ninety percent of this
Speaker 5: movie is not as Yeah.
Speaker 4: But like another great example of like, she always has
Speaker 4: to be the loudest, most unhinged person in the world,
Speaker 4: at every second of every day, right for however long
Speaker 4: this movie goes on unclear Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty years question mark. More, basically, she bullies them
Speaker 2: into letting her stay on the board. Meanwhile, it seems
Speaker 2: like Joan and Christina are maybe getting along a little better.
Speaker 2: Christina lands apart in a soap opera, but then has
Speaker 2: to take time off after being hospitalized for an ovarian tumor,
Speaker 2: and while Christina is in the hospital, Joan swoops in
Speaker 2: and steals Christina's role on the soap opera, even though
Speaker 2: her character is twenty eight years old and Joan is
Speaker 2: this in her sixties or fifties.
Speaker 5: This did happen, Yeah, this did happen?
Speaker 4: That yeah is wild yeah, if that happens, you of
Speaker 4: course have to include it in Mommy Dearest. I wish
Speaker 4: she saw more of the fallout. I guess that Christina
Speaker 4: in the hospital reaction shot is pretty pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 4: turn it off. That is that's nuts. That was I
Speaker 4: had never heard about that before.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's wild that she really thought she could
Speaker 5: get away with it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and that she was like, no, I just
Speaker 3: didn't want Christina to lose the part.
Speaker 2: No, you wanted that.
Speaker 3: I'm not buying it, Joan, I'm not buying it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like you said, Jamie, there's not really aftermath
Speaker 2: of that, because the next scene is Joan receiving I
Speaker 2: guess like a Lifetime Achievement type award, and Christina accepts
Speaker 2: it on her mother's behalf because Joan is ill. And
Speaker 2: at the end of Christina's speech, she says, I love you,
Speaker 2: mummy dearest, and she's crying, and Joan watching it home,
Speaker 2: is crying and it seems like a very tender moment.
Speaker 2: I don't really know what the takeaway is meant to
Speaker 2: be there. Then we cut to Joan has passed away all.
Speaker 5: Of a sudden, just like cut to corpse Deead The
Speaker 5: jump cuts in this film are.
Speaker 2: Brutal, suge whiplash. It's wild.
Speaker 5: It's like literally straight from like her taking her firing
Speaker 5: on the chin to being like the most insane person
Speaker 5: you've ever seen.
Speaker 3: There's like no no rhyme or reason.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I have to imagine a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: that was shot isn't included, but like there's just no
Speaker 4: gentleness to any transition.
Speaker 3: But she's dead and Christopher's back. Welcome back, Christopher to.
Speaker 2: Christopher's back, played by I didn't look up this actor's name,
Speaker 2: but I was like, I recognize him from something? What
Speaker 2: do I recognize him from? And he plays the foster
Speaker 2: dad of John Connor and Terminator too.
Speaker 3: Whoa wow?
Speaker 5: And that's the only other that's such a poll that
Speaker 5: you remember that.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: I mean I've seen that movie one hundred times.
Speaker 3: I love that Xander Berkeley, good name.
Speaker 2: Ye. Anyway, that's Christopher. He and Christina are at the
Speaker 2: wake or funeral or something, but they're but Christina is
Speaker 2: like next to the casket and she's crying and she's saying,
Speaker 2: the pain is final over and then Carol Anne comes.
Speaker 3: In saying Carol Ann suddenly a hundred.
Speaker 2: Yes, She's like your mother always loved you. And Christina
Speaker 2: is like, I need so much to believe that.
Speaker 5: Joan is snatched in her coffin.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, never looks better. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then a lawyer reads Joan's will to Christina and Christopher,
Speaker 2: saying that Joan left them nothing. The quote is from Joan.
Speaker 2: It is my intention to make no provisions herein for
Speaker 2: my son Christopher and my daughter Christina, for reasons which
Speaker 2: are well known to them. It is a gut punch,
Speaker 2: and Christopher remarks, as usual, she has the last word,
Speaker 2: and Christina is like, oh does she? Because I'm about
Speaker 2: to write a book about what a horrible her she was.
Speaker 2: The end, the end. So let's take another quick break
Speaker 2: and we'll come right back to discuss. And we're back,
Speaker 2: all right. Where where to begin? Is he that they
Speaker 2: were jumping out to you to? I mean, man, it
Speaker 2: would really be anywhere.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess what I would say about it.
Speaker 5: Just like, having having made that video about it and
Speaker 5: just observed the response to it, I do think this
Speaker 5: is such a complicated, like deceptively complicated film to talk about,
Speaker 5: because there's so many ways that people react to it
Speaker 5: and all of them I think are valid in a
Speaker 5: way sure, Like my experience through it my primary the
Speaker 5: way that I react to it is through the camp lens,
Speaker 5: where I see it as very over the top. It
Speaker 5: does make me laugh, I can't help it. But there
Speaker 5: are other people who see it as like legitimately terrifying abuse.
Speaker 5: There are other people who can't even stand the mention
Speaker 5: of this film because they feel it besmirches Joan Crawford's memory.
Speaker 5: There are people who believe word for word what Christina
Speaker 5: claims happened to her, and it just becomes this really
Speaker 5: strange rarshack test. I guess of like where people are
Speaker 5: landing and thinking about like abuse and legacy and all
Speaker 5: of these things coming together at once, And I think
Speaker 5: like that is very difficult territory to tread in because
Speaker 5: on the like, you want to give people grace, but
Speaker 5: I think it devolves very quickly into like a morality competition.
Speaker 2: It's just like who are we believing.
Speaker 5: And why and all of these things that are just
Speaker 5: so difficult that we can never really answer. So I
Speaker 5: guess like I would just acknowledge that off the bat,
Speaker 5: which is like if anyone hears my take or like
Speaker 5: our take and is just appalled by Like that's fine.
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of ways to react to.
Speaker 2: This, right, Absolutely, It's into such tricky territory when it
Speaker 2: comes to who do we believe and what is to
Speaker 2: be believed because it's this is based on a book
Speaker 2: which is based on a real life account of someone
Speaker 2: experiencing abuse, which you should believe if someone says I
Speaker 2: was abused, but especially with a film adaptation, where some
Speaker 2: things are likely embellished, some things are likely sensationalized because
Speaker 2: that's what like Hollywood studio movies tend to do. It's
Speaker 2: just it gets into such murky territory, very tricky. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I totally agree that.
Speaker 4: It's like there's no it's like not a productive discussion to.
Speaker 3: Like break down like well what do we believe in?
Speaker 3: What do we because we'll just never know, yah know
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But what is interesting is like tracking their reaction and
Speaker 4: like and I guess like where this movie's priorities ultimately
Speaker 4: like lie and how that sort of seems to have
Speaker 4: changed over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Thinking about because it I don't know, it's it was interesting,
Speaker 4: Like I was just like digging around on Reddit at
Speaker 4: two am last night because.
Speaker 3: People still talk about this movie a lot. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: just seeing like you're saying.
Speaker 4: Is he such a wide Like it's because it's a
Speaker 4: movie about first being abused as a child, second about
Speaker 4: having a mother, like of course, and that you can't
Speaker 4: notot have a personal reaction to it. But you know,
Speaker 4: here like reading accounts of kids that were like, I
Speaker 4: really connected with this movie because my you know, it's
Speaker 4: super over the top, but I experienced something similar and whatever.
Speaker 4: It's not perfect, but I didn't see it anywhere else.
Speaker 4: And then there's the you know, huge camp following and
Speaker 4: the queer embrace of this movie. And I still really
Speaker 4: want to go to a screening of it, Like you
Speaker 4: got a common New York City head of Lettuce does
Speaker 4: talk back screenings or she'll she'll talk during the screening
Speaker 4: and like point things out with laser pointer.
Speaker 5: It's really funny. I highly recommend if you're ever around
Speaker 5: for that.
Speaker 4: I would love to, Like, I don't I don't know
Speaker 4: if I've ever seen an LA proper screening of it.
Speaker 4: Like it's just yeah, like every reading of this is valid.
Speaker 4: I was also reminded of there's a recent video essay
Speaker 4: from Sarah z about sort of trauma memoirs and like
Speaker 4: their sort of history, and this is an example of that.
Speaker 4: And I don't mean to sound dismissive in saying that,
Speaker 4: but just in how those works are marketed and monetized,
Speaker 4: like follows a very specific pattern, and that like I
Speaker 4: think part of the reason it's like almost impossible to
Speaker 4: talk about is because of the time it was written
Speaker 4: and released too, where like the way that abuse was
Speaker 4: discussed and received in the public, specifically like maternal abuse,
Speaker 4: like it was just a completely different landscape, and I
Speaker 4: feel like there was just like a lower cultural understanding
Speaker 4: or tolerance for understanding what maternal abuse could look like
Speaker 4: it sounds it. I didn't go super deep on it,
Speaker 4: but like this book was both very successful and widely
Speaker 4: dismissed as exploited it, like exploiting her mother's memory, as
Speaker 4: being like trashy, as being even like as far as
Speaker 4: as far as like saying that she's ungrateful, like all
Speaker 4: of these really blamey narratives that like don't don't serve anything,
Speaker 4: And I think would be really unusual to see in
Speaker 4: a similar book published now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean if you think about it too, like
Speaker 5: Joan Crawford. Speaking of the timing, Joan Crawford died in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy seven, so she died this is a very
Speaker 5: freshly made film, like after her death, when there would
Speaker 5: presumably still be a lot of affection for her. If
Speaker 5: we think about like when Joan Crawford was peaking, this
Speaker 5: was in the nineteen forties, let's say, like early nineteen forties.
Speaker 5: So imagine like somebody who is really big in the
Speaker 5: nineties died and the next year we find out like
Speaker 5: they were actually very different than we presumed, Like of
Speaker 5: course you would see some I think defensiveness. I think
Speaker 5: is part of the the reception to this film as well,
Speaker 5: trying to understand and reconcile how your kind of parasocial
Speaker 5: relationship with this movie star is challenged by like what
Speaker 5: we're discovering. And I think you do have to take
Speaker 5: that kind of sentiment into account when I certainly feel
Speaker 5: that myself, like I have to check myself and be
Speaker 5: like how much of how much of my beliefs or
Speaker 5: like dismissals of Christina, you know, have to do with
Speaker 5: the fact that Joan Crawford is an important actress to me,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean? Like, I think that's you
Speaker 5: have to take that into account when you're thinking about
Speaker 5: this kind of stuff totally.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's I'm you know, it's extremely complicated. I'm
Speaker 4: generally inclined to I mean, Christina Crawford appears to have
Speaker 4: been pretty.
Speaker 3: Consistent on what she's said.
Speaker 4: Not everyone likes the way she said it or the
Speaker 4: amount of time she said it, but it seems like
Speaker 4: Christina and Christopher have been pretty consistent.
Speaker 3: And I guess that's the last I'll say about it,
Speaker 3: but it does.
Speaker 4: I mean, like the fact that this book was written
Speaker 4: so soon after her mother's death, Like it's like a
Speaker 4: really raw book. I can't imagine having to promote this
Speaker 4: book while you're still like kind of processing the fact
Speaker 4: that she's got like whatever. I don't know how many
Speaker 4: people have had an experience like that. But I think
Speaker 4: also about like the power dynamic of it right where
Speaker 4: it's like she is, Christina Crawford is essentially an unknown,
Speaker 4: like she was on a couple of soaps. Like you're saying,
Speaker 4: is like really challenging this carefully this image that was
Speaker 4: carefully constructed over the course of like fifty years. And
Speaker 4: then yeah, and like how she's sort of starting at
Speaker 4: a it's a difficult hill to climb to, you know,
Speaker 4: even if she's being one hundred percent honest, because I
Speaker 4: don't know, like your average reader, you're not going to
Speaker 4: be inclined to sympathize with her because you don't know
Speaker 4: who she is. Yeah, which is like not a pleasant thing.
Speaker 4: But that's just like sort of how people work. Like
Speaker 4: you don't want to believe the worst in this person
Speaker 4: that you grew up with.
Speaker 5: But I think it's also really easy on the other
Speaker 5: side of that, It's it's really easy to like quickly
Speaker 5: demonize a bad mother. Yes, like culture kind of Gidaly
Speaker 5: wants to blame every woman. It's like, are you doing
Speaker 5: formula or like breastfed? Like that'll get you demonized, you know,
Speaker 5: Like then that's the least of it. It's like, so
Speaker 5: to find out that this perfect woman was apparently some
Speaker 5: hysterical monster, it's like just ripe for kind of dismissing
Speaker 5: or just completely reshaping her as a cultural figure and
Speaker 5: her cultural legacy as well.
Speaker 4: Right in a way that like you're saying, like does
Speaker 4: a disservice to definitely Christina, but also Joan and what
Speaker 4: the movie seems like it wants to do but ultimately
Speaker 4: doesn't because in the chunk of the original book that
Speaker 4: I read, because this movie takes place in this like
Speaker 4: weird contextless void kind of of like what Joan Crawford's
Speaker 4: life was actually like prior to the movie starting. Christina
Speaker 4: is like acknowledging pretty consistently in the book and like
Speaker 4: including those I think like necessary benchmarks of like this
Speaker 4: is where she was at in her career, this is
Speaker 4: the way that she felt about it, and also that
Speaker 4: and I don't remember if it's like maybe sort of
Speaker 4: mentioned offhand once or twice in the movie, but that
Speaker 4: like Joan Crawford was the product of a very broken
Speaker 4: home as well, and like grew up in extreme poverty
Speaker 4: and had all of these traumatic experiences growing up. So
Speaker 4: there's like a psycholopopous narrative that Christina doesn't seem to
Speaker 4: be shying away from in her book, but the movie
Speaker 4: like doesn't even really attempt to get into because it's
Speaker 4: more fun if Joan is just evil, Right.
Speaker 2: There's one or two lines where Joan will say, like
Speaker 2: I had to do a work scholarship program too, but
Speaker 2: we we don't know the.
Speaker 3: Exciting what do you mean by like her backstory.
Speaker 5: Well, it just it sounds like that thing where like.
Speaker 4: Your grandpa is like I walked three miles to school
Speaker 4: and you like just don't really it's like okay, grandpa,
Speaker 4: you know, And it's not like that's not the reality
Speaker 4: of what she was going through, you know.
Speaker 2: And so it's sort of.
Speaker 5: Exactly like you said, it's not it's not a serious
Speaker 5: exploration of the way that trauma cycles. And ultimately, like
Speaker 5: the thesis of this film is, isn't she a crazy bitch?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And that's that's like sad to me because it doesn't
Speaker 5: say anything really about like what abuse is or what
Speaker 5: it means or how it comes about. It doesn't do
Speaker 5: Christina any favors because it's not from her perspective. But
Speaker 5: then it also just completely tears down Joan. Not to
Speaker 5: say that there's a way to excuse abuse, but to
Speaker 5: understand how it arises is I think valuable and maybe
Speaker 5: like at least giving a little sympathy to this person.
Speaker 2: I feel like two of the truths, and there are
Speaker 2: I'm sure more you can hold for this movie, but
Speaker 2: at least two of them are that there's an abusive
Speaker 2: parent situation happening, and movies and society love to demonize
Speaker 2: women and make them seem nuts. Because I feel like
Speaker 2: this movie is in conversation with movies like Sunset Boulevard
Speaker 2: and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane in the sense that
Speaker 2: it's like, look at these washed up aging actors that
Speaker 2: have gone hysterical, and you know, some of the like
Speaker 2: exploitation movies of this nature do a better job of contextualizing, well,
Speaker 2: why would an aging woman, especially in an industry like
Speaker 2: Hollywood be so concerned about her appearance or her legacy.
Speaker 3: Or how she's perceived as a mother too.
Speaker 2: For sure, but with this movie, it mostly just seems
Speaker 2: hell bent on like look, how fucking nuts this woman
Speaker 2: is a mess?
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, there are ways that we were talking
Speaker 4: about this from like moment one of the movie where
Speaker 4: like the ice however drug craff are taking the ice
Speaker 4: bucket challenge, but like her complicated morning routine, like there's.
Speaker 3: It's not again.
Speaker 4: Nothing in this movie is subtle, but like the ways
Speaker 4: that it's telegraphed that she is unwell is so all
Speaker 4: over the place, because it can be as extreme as
Speaker 4: overt physical extreme abuse, and this is sort of presented
Speaker 4: on the same plane as like being very conscious of
Speaker 4: what she looks like, which we understand is because that
Speaker 4: is like what her living hinges on the way they.
Speaker 5: When she's jogging, Oh yes, all the way Fae Done
Speaker 5: Away jogs makes me laugh so that she's like punching
Speaker 5: the air. Her form is wild hilarious, yes, but it's
Speaker 5: like it's like she kind of yes, sweating through sweats
Speaker 5: is in la. That's crazy the way she kind of
Speaker 5: snaps and like starts off in a sprint like she's like,
Speaker 5: I'm the biggest star he's ever headgotten dammit that she
Speaker 5: just starts like sprinting as what is she repeating to herself?
Speaker 2: She's like, I don't know if it's something like I'm
Speaker 2: a winner, I'm a winner. I will Yeah, I forget
Speaker 2: what it is, but.
Speaker 3: I wrote it down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's she's she's doing she's doing a very like
Speaker 4: cursed affirmation, right, And it's.
Speaker 5: Just I have such trouble imagining even a person as
Speaker 5: extreme in personality and Joan as Joan Crawford doing something
Speaker 5: like that right in the way that it does become
Speaker 5: it leads into that camp territory of being you know,
Speaker 5: quote unquote Joan you know, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: Well, I it's it's really interesting reading. There's another if
Speaker 4: there's a book about this that came out a couple
Speaker 4: of years ago called We Love Mommy Dearist by a
Speaker 4: Ashley Hoff, which I did some rapid libby scanning in
Speaker 4: preparation for this. But just like pulling from how and
Speaker 4: you talk about this in your video as well as
Speaker 4: you of like how you know, John Waters said that
Speaker 4: this was the first drag performance of a woman by
Speaker 4: a woman, and that this is you know, I think
Speaker 4: that it weirdly feels like and again we can't know
Speaker 4: if it's intentional or not, but the fact that she
Speaker 4: looks physically the same the whole movie that covers twenty
Speaker 4: years where it's like this isn't this is like, that's
Speaker 4: a clear indication that that is like not supposed to
Speaker 4: be actual Joan Crawford. It's like the idea, like the
Speaker 4: salacious idea of these you know, secretly evil Joan Crawford.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you touch on this in your video
Speaker 2: as well, but that Faye Dunaway wanted to be involved
Speaker 2: and play Joan Crawford because she wanted to humanize her
Speaker 2: partly because she felt so much kinship with Joan Crawford.
Speaker 2: And you know, after all these drafts of the script
Speaker 2: and it finally went into production and the filmmakers thought
Speaker 2: they were making this serious film about child abuse.
Speaker 4: But it becomes more about Joan than Christina very quickly,
Speaker 4: it seems, for sure, because that's what sells. Like, no
Speaker 4: one knows who Christina is, so she's always going to
Speaker 4: be at a disadvantage.
Speaker 2: And I feel like, I mean, also speaking to sorry
Speaker 2: to just regurgitate your video back at you. But I
Speaker 2: learned so much. It seems like critics of both the
Speaker 2: film and the book were like, well, there's kind of
Speaker 2: no attempt to contextualize why Joan Crawford was behaving the
Speaker 2: way she was. There's no attempt to sort of understand
Speaker 2: what was going on, which.
Speaker 4: I kind of disagree with. Based on even the short
Speaker 4: section of the book I read, I thought that Christina
Speaker 4: was like, I don't know, I mean, especially if we're
Speaker 4: grading on a curve for mother very recently died. I
Speaker 4: thought that she was going out of her way to
Speaker 4: contextualize the story of Joan's life as Joan told it
Speaker 4: to her, Like I don't know, I think I get
Speaker 4: kind of like antsy around criticisms like that too, where
Speaker 4: it's like she that it's the responsibility of one person
Speaker 4: to completely give full context for someone they are alleging
Speaker 4: was extremely abusive to them. But even with that in mind,
Speaker 4: I think that she does do Like I wonder what
Speaker 4: would have constituted enough, like if not complete forgiveness or something.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so tough because I agree with you. It's like,
Speaker 5: why is it my responsibility to give context to my
Speaker 5: abuser humanize my abuseif Like, I think it goes back
Speaker 5: to kind of what I was talking about before, where
Speaker 5: we're dealing with a very personal relationship that is being
Speaker 5: told in the context of like a societally parasocial relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so it's sort of like you're coming to us with
Speaker 5: this information about someone that we feel like we know,
Speaker 5: and so what do we need as an audience to
Speaker 5: make sense of this? And so like, no, it isn't
Speaker 5: her responsibility, but I also think it probably would have
Speaker 5: been a better told story if that world building did
Speaker 5: exist to kind of understand who either of these people are,
Speaker 5: because we don't really like, yeah, as we kind of
Speaker 5: keep saying is like, I don't really know anything about
Speaker 5: Christina either, tell me one thing other than that she
Speaker 5: wanted to act and we don't know why other than
Speaker 5: like that her mother did it. Maybe that's all she knew.
Speaker 5: Maybe she was never interested in anything else. Like there's
Speaker 5: a lot of conjecture.
Speaker 4: I mean, she had a pretty interesting life. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: like it's it doesn't really do very much to I mean, well,
Speaker 4: whatever she goes on to have like an interesting life
Speaker 4: after this and like works as an entertainment lawyer. She
Speaker 4: worked on the Clinton campaign in ninety two, Not that
Speaker 4: they could have known that then, but whatever, when to
Speaker 4: have on when to have a whole life. But I
Speaker 4: mean all loved to Diana Scarwood. But I feel like this,
Speaker 4: like I don't know, Christina doesn't seem to have a
Speaker 4: lot of like personality or there's just not much for
Speaker 4: you to like hold on to in a movie that's
Speaker 4: like almost allegedly she's supposed to be the co lead of,
Speaker 4: but she's not even credited as the co lead. It
Speaker 4: seems like Greg is second built, which is wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is so weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I it's impossible to unpack in the space of a
Speaker 4: single back to cast episode, but I it does like
Speaker 4: the way that abuse and like specifically maternal abuse is
Speaker 4: like talked about and shown to us like over time
Speaker 4: is so interesting and does still fall into like I
Speaker 4: think your sympathies are always going to You're going to
Speaker 4: be encouraged to sympathize with whoever was the more well
Speaker 4: known or powerful person culturally in that relationship. And having
Speaker 4: read Jeanett mccurty's memoir, which is wonderful and also a
Speaker 4: very like personal story of maternal abuse. First of all,
Speaker 4: it's coming out over forty years after Mommy Dearest and
Speaker 4: is extremely and like rightfully well received, and I think
Speaker 4: it's being adapted into a movie or TV show, And
Speaker 4: I think that you know, Jeanette McCurdy is the narrator
Speaker 4: and the well known person, which I think for readers
Speaker 4: it's easier to say I believe her based on how
Speaker 4: we're like trained to believe people and Christina, so in
Speaker 4: that way, it's like it's not surprising to know that
Speaker 4: like Christina was having a hard time from the jump,
Speaker 4: regardless of the veracity of the allegations because she's not
Speaker 4: the known person, and like Joan I don't know. It's
Speaker 4: interesting seeing how she talks about it now too. She's
Speaker 4: also still alive, she's in her eighties. In like twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: she was trying to stage a musical of Mommy Dearest.
Speaker 4: Question mark, Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3: How I feel about that.
Speaker 2: No, I would up the camp factor even more, would
Speaker 2: imagine for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like she came around to accepting that
Speaker 4: it was camp. But someone asked her if she thought,
Speaker 4: like what she thought Joan would think about Mommy Dari's,
Speaker 4: just like the phenomenon in general, and I just thought
Speaker 4: her answer was very interesting. She basically says that she
Speaker 4: thinks that like whatever, Joan was like shrewd and understood
Speaker 4: how to play into cultural narratives, and like she didn't.
Speaker 4: She thinks that Joan would be showing up at Mommy
Speaker 4: Dari's screenings and being like, huh I get it totally, yeah,
Speaker 4: and then like freaking out about it behind the scenes.
Speaker 5: I mean that would have been my personal hypothesis as well,
Speaker 5: because yeah, she was incredibly smart, and that's what I
Speaker 5: think is So, I don't know, interesting about this too,
Speaker 5: and the way it kind of frames Joan. I think
Speaker 5: you're right. Like, I think it's really interesting too what
Speaker 5: you're saying about how we're kind of more primed to
Speaker 5: be sympathetic toward the person we know more because I
Speaker 5: think like this narrative of abuse is also competing against
Speaker 5: a very well known narrative abuse of abuse, which is
Speaker 5: like the abuse of the studio system specifically. So it's
Speaker 5: like we know just kind of anecdotally from like every
Speaker 5: actress that went through that was being you know, drugged
Speaker 5: or like not given food or you know, sexually assaulted,
Speaker 5: like all of these things that they would have experienced
Speaker 5: on a day to day basis. And so it's like
Speaker 5: we have already done a lot of work to gin
Speaker 5: up a lot of sympathy and like understanding of that
Speaker 5: kind of abuse, that kind of systemic abuse that Joan
Speaker 5: would have been suffering, and so now to have like
Speaker 5: a competing narrative that shows her like in a kind
Speaker 5: of monstrance light. But also I think as part of
Speaker 5: that conversation about the way that abuse cycles is really
Speaker 5: interesting to me and how those kind of compete with
Speaker 5: each other, especially from someone like Joan, who you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of these women who were famous during that
Speaker 5: time were not they didn't come from good places, like
Speaker 5: they were working up from extreme poverty in many cases,
Speaker 5: and in the cases of someone like Joan, like they
Speaker 5: weren't parented. So they were kind of the first generation
Speaker 5: of these like ultra famous career women who had no
Speaker 5: experience of what that kind of fame would look like,
Speaker 5: put on a you know, pedestal that like they were
Speaker 5: terrified to fall off of. So I think like the
Speaker 5: whole context is like you're just not being set up
Speaker 5: to succeed at all with your personal life, and then
Speaker 5: you have society breathing down your neck to have children
Speaker 5: when like by rights, many of them like probably didn't
Speaker 5: actually want to, Like we know that story. That story
Speaker 5: is very familiar, and so it's hard to kind of
Speaker 5: like further complicate that as you're saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's like so much just left on the
Speaker 4: table when you cause, I mean, even you describing those
Speaker 4: two competing narratives of abuse, it's like in a very
Speaker 4: different movie.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, it's like they're so close to.
Speaker 4: Being able to connect how whatever in conversation, those cycles
Speaker 4: of abuse are where I again this is from mommy, dearist,
Speaker 4: and I did not do any sort of further background
Speaker 4: on this, but I guess per Joan telling Christina in
Speaker 4: Mommy dearis that there's like another bizarre layer too, like
Speaker 4: why Joan did not have children in earlier marriages. Her
Speaker 4: first husband was Douglas Fairbanks junior, as you mentioned Izzy,
Speaker 4: whose mother was Mary Pickford, and there was a narrative
Speaker 4: that Joan shared that she did get pregnant but was
Speaker 4: told to have abortions because Mary Pickford didn't want to
Speaker 4: be perceived as a grandmother. So it's another like agist
Speaker 4: Hollywood narrative that like the cycle of abuse is like
Speaker 4: trickling down, so that she wanted children earlier but wasn't
Speaker 4: allowed to have them because it would make a different
Speaker 4: I mean, an older actress experienced the savings that Joan
Speaker 4: eventually experiences of like appearing old.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean the politics of motherhood for that generation
Speaker 5: of women is extremely complex and like scary to think
Speaker 5: about because the studio was like in many cases, for example,
Speaker 5: Judy Garland was mandated to have an abortion by the studio.
Speaker 5: Many of them experienced abortions at young ages that rendered
Speaker 5: them barren basically or unable to have children. Two of
Speaker 5: Joan Crawford's best friends were like that Barbara Sama couldn't
Speaker 5: have children because of an abortion, Marta Lloyd couldn't have
Speaker 5: children because of an abortion. These are all, of course
Speaker 5: back alley performances of abortion. And then the studio is like,
Speaker 5: you can't have children at this age or with this person,
Speaker 5: so you have to have these procedures, or once you have,
Speaker 5: when you'll look too old, so that changes the cut
Speaker 5: things we can give you. Like it's all so timed
Speaker 5: out and bizarre and you have no choice at all,
Speaker 5: and it's ter fine to think about. Yeah, and then
Speaker 5: the flip side of that, or just a different branch
Speaker 5: of that misogyny is because Joan cannot have children of
Speaker 5: her own and chooses to adopt, but as we touched
Speaker 5: on a little bit, already can't because of these incredibly
Speaker 5: misogynistic standards for oh, you're a woman with a job.
Speaker 5: Oh you're not married and there's no father, so you
Speaker 5: can't have a nuclear family unit like all these like.
Speaker 3: Legally either like, yeah, you cannot win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had no idea because again the movie does
Speaker 2: not make it clear that there was like a mafia
Speaker 2: component to her adopting these children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the American adoption system and most adoption
Speaker 3: systems are like disturbingly broken, which yes, it's like almost
Speaker 3: an entirely different another one of the many things that
Speaker 3: this movie doesn't have much interest in touching, but I mean.
Speaker 4: Specific like the Hollywood it it feels one of I guess, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know, let me know what you think.
Speaker 3: Getting rid of the studio abuse component is one of
Speaker 3: the few things that does feel kind of intentionally left out,
Speaker 3: because if you include it, then Joan is less scary.
Speaker 5: And I think also Hollywood at that time might have
Speaker 5: been a little reluctant to tell on itself in that way.
Speaker 5: It's like, we'll tell on her, right, But us is different.
Speaker 2: We absolve all responsibility. We never exploit people or abuse them.
Speaker 3: I mean that like that.
Speaker 4: I think you mentioned in your video that there was
Speaker 4: an earlier version of the script that began with Joan
Speaker 4: Crawford as a young actor being physically like assaulted.
Speaker 3: By Louis b. Mahor in his office, which was like
Speaker 3: his whole thing, if you can call it that, and
Speaker 3: that that is like foregone in favor of the Louis
Speaker 3: by Maher scene we get is just like, oh, this
Speaker 3: movie has no interest in they're not going to touch
Speaker 3: any of it, Like it's not even implied, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then it just like brings you back to like
Speaker 5: that that same kind of circular argument, which is like
Speaker 5: do we need it to tell Christina story? You know
Speaker 5: what I mean, like like you just it's you just
Speaker 5: get caught setting traps for yourself. I guess along the
Speaker 5: way of like trying to make sense of this story
Speaker 5: in a way that feels fair totally that isn't fair
Speaker 5: to anybody.
Speaker 2: No, I know, like I don't know where to land
Speaker 2: on this because I mean, and maybe the solution is
Speaker 2: what was to just center the survivor of the abuse
Speaker 2: far more than the abuser, because by centering the abuser,
Speaker 2: it's doing that thing of like women are horrible see
Speaker 2: and kind of not undermining the abuse. But I mean,
Speaker 2: as this movie does like campify it in a way
Speaker 2: that abuse shouldn't be campified, and that wasn't the intention
Speaker 2: of the filmmakers. But you know, it was directed by
Speaker 2: a man, it was written the many mini drafts were
Speaker 2: either mostly or entirely written by men, and you just
Speaker 2: can't really trust them to handle something like this subject matter.
Speaker 2: It's not these ones well.
Speaker 5: And one thing that I do kind of regret about
Speaker 5: this is like Frank Perry, I think has really great
Speaker 5: subtle films, like you know, Diarrhya of a Mad Housewife
Speaker 5: is incredible. Like one of his films that I recently
Speaker 5: became obsessed with is called Last Summer, which is like
Speaker 5: one of the most fucked up movies I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It's a coming of age.
Speaker 5: Story about how this Yes, it's like it's kind of
Speaker 5: I guess obscure because it's been unavailable for so long,
Speaker 5: but they just restored it and so I'm hoping a
Speaker 5: lot of theaters are gonna get access to it in
Speaker 5: the coming months, so look out for that. It's called
Speaker 5: Last Summer. But it's just a really fucked up, like
Speaker 5: coming of age story about these teenagers who are kind
Speaker 5: of like abusive toward each other, but in a way
Speaker 5: that I think is really mature actually, And I'm just like,
Speaker 5: I know he has that story in.
Speaker 2: Him, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I've seen you tackle similar things really beautifully
Speaker 5: and really subtly. It makes me wonder what this film
Speaker 5: could have been like if his ex wife had also
Speaker 5: been a collaborator on this one as she had in
Speaker 5: his previous works, because maybe like a female sensitivity or
Speaker 5: something like that could have aided in telling this story.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say, but yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's like he's not a bad filmmaker, and that's what sucks.
Speaker 5: It's very unclear who to point the fingerhet for this.
Speaker 5: I think Fay also should take some of that responsibility, sure,
Speaker 5: because I think, like she obviously is a great actress,
Speaker 5: but I think in some ways, I don't know, I
Speaker 5: think people are also really torn on this performance as well,
Speaker 5: Like I don't think of camp as a derogatory term,
Speaker 5: so to me, like the commitment of this is extraordinary,
Speaker 5: but undeniably is not a humanistic portrayal, Like she is
Speaker 5: not trying to make her anything other than the cartoon
Speaker 5: in the screenplay, Right, So I'm sort of like, I
Speaker 5: don't know that that was your choice, and I kind
Speaker 5: of find it an entertaining choice, but it seems counterproductive
Speaker 5: to her goals for the role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, because again, her
Speaker 2: her intention was to humanize Joan Crawford, but all of
Speaker 2: the most memorable moments of this movie are fade down
Speaker 2: away playing Joan Crawford as the most unhinged person imaginable.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, well, say then, which is, why why
Speaker 2: do you do that?
Speaker 4: My operating theory that does take some of the heat
Speaker 4: off of fade underway, because that's my agenda. But also, oh,
Speaker 4: she does deserve some smoke for this is that they
Speaker 4: did ten takes of everything, and on the last take,
Speaker 4: Frank Perry said, go big, go big, go big. Let's
Speaker 4: do a silly one. Yes, he said, just do a
Speaker 4: silly one, go full joker mode on this, and then
Speaker 4: he just used all of those takes. I don't know,
Speaker 4: because it's like she won't. She hasn't really, at least
Speaker 4: that I was seeing. She like, she's definitely She went
Speaker 4: on that like press tour years later to sort of
Speaker 4: illustrate that she felt that it had hurt her career
Speaker 4: and that like the part had stuck to her in
Speaker 4: a way that she felt was like not fair or
Speaker 4: reflective of who she is or her abilities. But it
Speaker 4: seems like most anecdotes I've found about her being asked
Speaker 4: about this are met with a fair amount of hostility,
Speaker 4: which is a common Fay done away reaction. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: I am curious I'm like, I would. I know, she's
Speaker 4: like also method, so, which is like a shorthand for
Speaker 4: like annoying and so hard to work with.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: I feel like she's the one female actor who gets
Speaker 5: pinned with the negative connotation of method, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of right because when men do it, people are like, wow,
Speaker 5: he's so awesome.
Speaker 3: Well that's the performance is bad, and then you know
Speaker 3: it depends.
Speaker 5: Or it's like it's like, oh, Daniel d Lewis lived
Speaker 5: as a penny to like prepare for Abraham Lincoln. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like it's like all these crazy stuff that they're
Speaker 5: trying to like make these actors seem like they're really extreme,
Speaker 5: and often what they'll say, they'll use like examples of
Speaker 5: them being assholes to say like this is method.
Speaker 2: Isn't that wild?
Speaker 3: Yeah? As a positive Yeah, but.
Speaker 5: I feel like, you know, nobody's talking about Sally Sally
Speaker 5: Field is method. Nobody says anything about it because she's
Speaker 5: behaving like a person, because she's not abusing people around her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's upper limits to what she's not mailing.
Speaker 3: What was the Jared Letta thing like mailing dead rats
Speaker 3: to people or whatever?
Speaker 2: Oh god?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think especially when it like not a
Speaker 3: well received performance. It just it's people catch a lot
Speaker 3: of smoke.
Speaker 4: But it's I mean, I'm just I'm just objectively so
Speaker 4: like what was going.
Speaker 3: Through her head because she had like very successfully played
Speaker 3: real life people before with a lot of like sensitivity,
Speaker 3: like she played Bonnie Parker.
Speaker 5: Do we think am I remembering this correctly? You might
Speaker 5: have come across this in your research, but I feel
Speaker 5: like I remember her saying she felt like she was
Speaker 5: haunted by Joan or something like that.
Speaker 4: She said in a clip that I think was in
Speaker 4: your video. She said that she felt like it took
Speaker 4: her months to get Joan out of her body, and
Speaker 4: like use the word possession, which is like great method
Speaker 4: talk totally, But I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can see that.
Speaker 5: I mean, I feel like that sometimes when I'm writing
Speaker 5: about a person where I'm just so focused on that
Speaker 5: person's life or their filmography, where it just feels like
Speaker 5: you're so in it, they can't they can't get out
Speaker 5: of your head, right, And like I could see something
Speaker 5: when you're pushing it to that extreme, when you have
Speaker 5: to live that life and inhabit that body in such
Speaker 5: like nightmarish scenes as that I can't imagine pushing that
Speaker 5: out quickly that that would seem like it'd be really
Speaker 5: hard to get rid of mentally totally.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like in technically it is like the
Speaker 4: job of her director to like guide this performance to something.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's like hard to say, Like I was going to
Speaker 4: be mean and say something like more coherent, but like
Speaker 4: so many people love this performance.
Speaker 3: It's I don't know. Maybe it was just made too soon.
Speaker 3: Maybe all this happened too soon. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, oddly enough, I'm like, this is something that
Speaker 5: would actually be a good mini series. I don't want
Speaker 5: to put that idea in the world. I don't want
Speaker 5: to see it, but I think the scale of the
Speaker 5: story is big enough.
Speaker 4: Ryan Murphy just like his eyes just I know, like, well,
Speaker 4: don't do it again, let's do it again.
Speaker 5: No, Oh my god, that's just like the most cursed
Speaker 5: thing I've ever imagined in my life.
Speaker 2: Wow, he.
Speaker 3: Needs to be stopped.
Speaker 4: It would be really I mean, it would be interesting
Speaker 4: to see how like an adaptation of this would work,
Speaker 4: or how it would reflect the way that we've talked
Speaker 4: about abuses like change or I don't know. I feel
Speaker 4: like it would be hard to get this version of
Speaker 4: the movie again. But we're like regressing as a society
Speaker 4: pretty quickly, so maybe we would get this.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's true. I think Ai could write.
Speaker 4: This for sure, but AI could not do what Fayton doesn't. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: You're right, that's it's it's a hollow argument for humans,
Speaker 4: but it's true.
Speaker 3: Well what is what is for sure?
Speaker 4: And we've like referenced this earlier in the episode, is
Speaker 4: that you know whether this movie intended to be a
Speaker 4: more like thoughtful portrayal of the people in themes involved.
Speaker 4: Paramount Studios did not care. They going to change courses
Speaker 4: to whatever was going to get people in seats, and
Speaker 4: this was I mean, you talked about this in your video.
Speaker 4: It's also expanded on kind of like moment by moment
Speaker 4: in with Love Mommy Dearest.
Speaker 3: Of how like there's a series of.
Speaker 4: Test screenings for this movie that, like an anonymous executive
Speaker 4: said that as they were screening it more the first
Speaker 4: time they screened it, people started laughing about three quarters
Speaker 4: of the way through. The second time they screened it
Speaker 4: was halfway this third time it was like a quarter
Speaker 4: of the way, and they realized very quickly that they
Speaker 4: should be marketing it as a comedy.
Speaker 3: So it's which is wild, really brutal for all parties.
Speaker 4: But yeah, mel Brooks went to an early screening of this,
Speaker 4: which I guess makes sense because Anne Bancroft almost starred
Speaker 4: in it. But there's just like all of these And
Speaker 4: I was talking about him earlier, Harvey, Who was I
Speaker 4: talking about Bruce Bruce Belane, Yeah, Bruce Bruce Flanche was
Speaker 4: at an early screening of that. Like everyone saw an
Speaker 4: early cut of this and was like, this is funny. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: and so the studio pivoted basically right away. It was
Speaker 4: allegedly given the green light by Barry Diller to start
Speaker 4: marketing this. Like the competing taglines, it's marketed as a
Speaker 4: serious biopic that centers Faye Dunaway's performance and then quickly
Speaker 4: changes to no more wire hangers. Ever, they call her
Speaker 4: the biggest mother of them all. They've got the Ajax
Speaker 4: spawn like Paramount was very, very very down to trivialize
Speaker 4: all of the themes that the filmmakers, and I guess
Speaker 4: to Frank period or no, I think Frank Joblondz's credit Yeah,
Speaker 4: he was really upset about this and tried to I
Speaker 4: was kind of unclear on how it shook out, but
Speaker 4: like tried to sue the studio for pivoting on the
Speaker 4: marketing so quickly. But another thing I was surprised about
Speaker 4: is that this movie was financially successful. It made twenty
Speaker 4: five million on a ten million dollar budget, so regardless
Speaker 4: of the intention, it was marketed as a sort of
Speaker 4: how we think about it now.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that is. It is fascinating to see a
Speaker 2: movie that almost instantly becomes a camp classic, because I
Speaker 2: feel like it usually takes a little while, but it's
Speaker 2: this and again cats.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I do think it helps. I think just
Speaker 5: the presence of Joan Crawford as a cultural figure, you
Speaker 5: could imagine a lot of she just would have been
Speaker 5: in like a cultural vocabulary that maybe like smooths the
Speaker 5: route toward camp classic because everybody kind of has these
Speaker 5: touch points with her and their memory, you know, or
Speaker 5: which is interesting. I do think it's it's interesting. I
Speaker 5: always think about this movie when I think about films
Speaker 5: like Wuthering Heights or something where it's like there's sort
Speaker 5: of a narrative going around on the internet. I guess
Speaker 5: about a film that people then enter the film with.
Speaker 5: Does that make it like you hear about what people
Speaker 5: are saying about it first, and then you go see
Speaker 5: it and your interpretation is kind of informed by that
Speaker 5: general consensus, you know, So I could I could imagine
Speaker 5: or what's like another example of that, or the one
Speaker 5: that Harry Styles was in kind of recently that everyone
Speaker 5: was like, he's the worst actor ever.
Speaker 2: Oh don't worry Darling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 5: It's these kinds of things where you're kind of responding
Speaker 5: to the response. And I wonder if Mommy DearS was
Speaker 5: kind of like that, if people just kind of heard
Speaker 5: it as you know, a can't be funny movie, and
Speaker 5: then you go in expecting to laugh. You're going to
Speaker 5: see a different movie than you would have if you
Speaker 5: weren't told that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Nothing illustrated that for me.
Speaker 4: Like last year, I don't know what anniversary was, but
Speaker 4: AMC released Rocky Horror Picture Show into a theater for
Speaker 4: like one night at AMC's, but with none of the
Speaker 4: Rocky Horror frills. So I just saw and and my
Speaker 4: fiancee had never seen it, so we went together and
Speaker 4: I was expecting the rocky horror experience and if you're
Speaker 4: not watching it with the experience.
Speaker 3: He was like, what He's like, that was all right?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I was like, yeah, it's really not
Speaker 3: as fun without all the other stuff. It's weird.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I And that's I just like, and I still
Speaker 4: want to go to a Mommy Jaris screening.
Speaker 3: I mean, the one of the one of the.
Speaker 4: Rituals that you cited in addition to this, like I
Speaker 4: mean Joan Crawford's connection to drag performers, but also like
Speaker 4: Fade Unaway's Joan Crawford's connection to drag performers, but the
Speaker 4: like dragging effigies of Christina in the street was something
Speaker 4: that was we were like, well, if we need a
Speaker 4: further proof this movie missed the mark.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the thing I could see if that movie came
Speaker 5: out today and someone did that, I could see myself
Speaker 5: at that performance laughing. It's so hard, you know, And
Speaker 5: I'm just like, am I a horrible person?
Speaker 3: Maybe? No, though, I mean.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's that like we I mean, we don't know,
Speaker 2: but it would appear on the surface that Christina Crawford
Speaker 2: like turned out okay, Like she went on like again
Speaker 2: we don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, she's like an ultra Christian, like isolated on a farm,
Speaker 5: so yeah, there is also well.
Speaker 4: Much of much of her whole guild now involves living
Speaker 4: in Florida.
Speaker 3: I see, you see, But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's impossible to because we were talking about Carrie Fisher
Speaker 4: recently about how like some of her writing about mental
Speaker 4: health was like not necessarily well received by everyone who's
Speaker 4: like suffering from the same mental health diagnoses that she was,
Speaker 4: and especially when she was like fictionalizing that work, which
Speaker 4: is like another thing that you discussed in a recent
Speaker 4: video of yours and her screenwriting career. But that doesn't
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean, like that doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: whatever people can receive work, however, feels right to them.
Speaker 4: And also if Christina Crawfor is upset about that, that
Speaker 4: is also completely valid and couldn't make more sense totally.
Speaker 5: I mean the way the reason I think it's funny
Speaker 5: is because, like, I take it so seriously that to
Speaker 5: see it portrayed in this way is almost like, oh,
Speaker 5: I recognize this as minimalizing something very serious, and that's
Speaker 5: so off base to me that I cannot help but laugh.
Speaker 4: You know right, Like it's like this is like if
Speaker 4: a if like horrific triald abuse.
Speaker 3: Had been like explained to like an alien. I don't know.
Speaker 3: There are parts that are genuinely funny and we have
Speaker 3: to live with that. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: It's bizarre, but true.
Speaker 5: I do think one thing that does interest me about
Speaker 5: Fay Dunaway's performance is like, I think that Joan maybe
Speaker 5: got some caught some strays for was that. I think
Speaker 5: people think Joan Crawford acts like that in her films now.
Speaker 3: But she doesn't.
Speaker 2: I would She's a much subtler actor than that.
Speaker 5: So I would say, if this movie hasn't completely thrown
Speaker 5: you off of the idea of watching or engaging with
Speaker 5: jen Crawford's work, you will find a better actress than
Speaker 5: you might assume based on this performance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go back and watch Mildred Peers for example.
Speaker 4: Or or I think that Baby Jane, I mean I
Speaker 4: think that she's showing a lot of hers straightened.
Speaker 3: Baby Jane, she's a lot bigger.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean she's letting Betty Davis steal the show.
Speaker 5: I think, Yeah, And I think that's that's a good performer.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Is there anything else that you'll wanted to touch.
Speaker 2: On not especially No, I think I'm good. Yeah, we covered.
Speaker 3: It, We did it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: My last thing was this was a quote from Christina
Speaker 4: Crawford I found in with Love My Mommy Dearist that
Speaker 4: sort of touches on what you were just saying. Is
Speaker 4: he about like, ultimately, how much did this movie affect
Speaker 4: how we think of and talk about Joan Crawford as
Speaker 4: a cultural figure and how much does that matter?
Speaker 3: And like people's mileage are going to vary there.
Speaker 4: I think Christina's perspective on it is interesting, But also
Speaker 4: I agree with you that, like, undeniably this is like affect.
Speaker 4: I think that you know, if you're not like well
Speaker 4: versed in Joan Crawford's work, and you're like, there are
Speaker 4: probably people who picture Faye on Away before they picture her.
Speaker 3: But she so.
Speaker 4: Christina Crawford was asked about this specifically, which again it's
Speaker 4: like if you're being asked this about your abuser, it's
Speaker 4: a very frustrating question.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, yeah, but she takes it in stride.
Speaker 4: When asked about how Mommy Dearist and having published it
Speaker 4: affected Jones's legacy or if it did, and she said
Speaker 4: that's not true. True, her public image is preserved on film.
Speaker 4: Nothing will ever change that. The work she did as
Speaker 4: a professional, the image she created on screen, will live forever.
Speaker 4: Mommy Dearest is not about that, and doesn't in any
Speaker 4: way touch that. In fact, I deal very briefly with
Speaker 4: her career, and in each and every case I think generously,
Speaker 4: But it is not about Joan Crawford's career as a
Speaker 4: public person. As far as her behavior as my mother
Speaker 4: and my life with her, that belongs to me. That
Speaker 4: is my right and it is not my responsibility, nor
Speaker 4: was it possible for me to change how she behaved
Speaker 4: during the time she was alive. So not only do
Speaker 4: I have an absolutely clear conscience about the information in
Speaker 4: the book, but I believe I have the right to
Speaker 4: my own life, and that's all. I took the right
Speaker 4: to my own life, which I think is completely fair.
Speaker 4: But and I feel like we've sort of circled around this.
Speaker 4: That's the book.
Speaker 3: The movie is able.
Speaker 4: To do things that the book kind of can't, and
Speaker 4: it chooses not to for all these different reasons.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think the way that I sort
Speaker 5: of experience it, like going off of what she said,
Speaker 5: her legacy is preserved in these films. But I think
Speaker 5: what's kind of sad about what this film did is
Speaker 5: that so much of you know, if you're participating in
Speaker 5: classic film communities online or whatever, like, like it's ever
Speaker 5: present sort of this like defensiveness of Joan Crawford in
Speaker 5: that way, people who are like very aggressively against this
Speaker 5: film for reasons of their own, you know. But like
Speaker 5: it sucks that that will always be attached to it
Speaker 5: like it is. It is you cannot enjoy the films
Speaker 5: without interacting with that in some way, right, And it's
Speaker 5: it's like I don't think you should enjoy the films
Speaker 5: and not reckon with it. I mean that's kind of
Speaker 5: like one of the main quandaries of like all of
Speaker 5: classic film is there you encounter situations like this all
Speaker 5: the time. So it's not burying it. But I do
Speaker 5: think like this strain is so predominant with her because
Speaker 5: of this movie, when there are so many parents who.
Speaker 2: Are just as bad or worse right, So it is
Speaker 2: sort of.
Speaker 5: Like it dominates in an outsized way I think with her.
Speaker 2: I mean there's also this matter of any biopic or
Speaker 2: any movie that's about a real person, because it's a movie,
Speaker 2: it's going to be like cinematic afide in some way.
Speaker 2: They're gonna alter details, embellish things, just make it more cinematic,
Speaker 2: or they'll leave things out or like any number of
Speaker 2: things that won't do justice to what the real story is.
Speaker 2: I would say in most cases, almost every biopick gets
Speaker 2: some kind of backlash about well, they didn't do this,
Speaker 2: or they didn't talk about this, or they lift this
Speaker 2: out or they added this or you know. So it's
Speaker 2: just it's really tricky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and no one wants a biopic that's like a
Speaker 4: Wikipedia page. That's like the worst kind of biopic, which
Speaker 4: is like all of them, you know mostly these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just very it's very tricky.
Speaker 4: It's tough, yeah, because it's like they you know, there's
Speaker 4: not to like diminish any of Christina's account, but it's
Speaker 4: like money exchanges hands with this too. It's like that's unavoidable.
Speaker 4: Where it's like they're you know, the timing of this matters.
Speaker 4: Do you get as big a kickback if you sell
Speaker 4: this ten years after?
Speaker 3: No, you don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know, the selling of like life rights and
Speaker 4: stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I think about it. It's a it's a it's a
Speaker 3: dirty little business. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And she sold the rights to her book for five
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars in the late seventies. And I don't
Speaker 2: say that as a judgment. I just say that is
Speaker 2: a I think more is a statement, is more than that,
Speaker 2: it's a part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think like in total she earned from selling the
Speaker 5: rights to these books, like more than Joan had when
Speaker 5: she died, oh wow, or around that number. So yeah,
Speaker 5: which is like, I don't know, that's better than the.
Speaker 2: Will Estray, Like well, the wheel hair gave her nothing all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, dealing with this movie requires what so few and
Speaker 4: like online communities are capable of, which is like holding
Speaker 4: many truths at once.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The last thing that I mean.
Speaker 4: Even including with the dispute between Christina and Christopher and
Speaker 4: the younger siblings too, of just the concept that every
Speaker 4: especially with like age gaps and siblings, every kid grows
Speaker 4: up with a different parent basically, which is definitely not
Speaker 4: a conversation that was happening in the seventies. It's just
Speaker 4: revisiting how black and white the conversations were at that time,
Speaker 4: Like you think.
Speaker 3: Of it go differently now, But I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, it also makes me wonder what Christopher's experience was
Speaker 2: because this movie like really skims over it. But because
Speaker 2: he's left out of the will at the end, I'm
Speaker 2: just like, what was that experience like for him? And
Speaker 2: based on the movie, we have no idea?
Speaker 4: But also like are we owed that too? Is like
Speaker 4: that's the tricky Like I don't know, because it doesn't
Speaker 4: it doesn't seem like well, it seems like is he
Speaker 4: correct me? If you have conflicting information from what I
Speaker 4: was able to gather, Like, Christopher has backed Christina on
Speaker 4: her account, but has never wanted to get more specific
Speaker 4: or like be a public figure because he didn't have
Speaker 4: an easy life either, right, I mean, because.
Speaker 3: I believe he.
Speaker 5: Went to Vietnam, oh okay, and then had like several
Speaker 5: arrests for kind of like petty crimes and things like that, which,
Speaker 5: of course, I mean, Joan's a perfectionist, so that immediately
Speaker 5: puts a rift in their relationship. But it's all kind
Speaker 5: of stuff like you know, I'm reading the new Joan
Speaker 5: Crawford biography actually that just came out, which is extremely
Speaker 5: antagonistic towards this film. It describes this film in one
Speaker 5: paragraph and it's like the only good thing about this
Speaker 5: movie is that it ruined everyone who's involves reputation. That's
Speaker 5: all he wants to say about it. Written by A Jonehead.
Speaker 5: I see, yes, But I think like one of the
Speaker 5: things that I've found kind of disappointing is like it
Speaker 5: spends a lot of time kind of correcting the record
Speaker 5: on Mammy Dearist, I guess, and the claims in the book,
Speaker 5: which I think are valid, like these are quotes from
Speaker 5: like the Twins and all these things which we should
Speaker 5: take seriously, But it also doesn't want to make it
Speaker 5: doesn't want to take the analytical view. For example, why
Speaker 5: would a kid who was chained to his bed as
Speaker 5: a child perhaps get arrested for stealing a car?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Like he like doesn't want to go there, and he
Speaker 5: doesn't want to think, like think about maybe the consequences
Speaker 5: like happened through these kids' lives and how it affected them,
Speaker 5: even if it wasn't as extreme as Mammy Dearist portrays it.
Speaker 5: If it's like just very strict parenting, like that is
Speaker 5: something to reckon with. Yeah, but like again it's like
Speaker 5: this is a biography you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 5: these are coming out as like factual accounts and they're conflicting,
Speaker 5: like I've read this is probably my third Jone biography,
Speaker 5: and they're all slightly different on this topic.
Speaker 2: And that's what's so tough, you know.
Speaker 3: And then like having written a nonfiction book, they don't fact.
Speaker 4: Check books like you can really like you get a
Speaker 4: legal pass so that the publisher doesn't get sued, but
Speaker 4: like if you're paying for fact checking, that's out of
Speaker 4: your pocket, not the publishers. And so the way that
Speaker 4: like certain information is canonized, you know, it's not surprising
Speaker 4: there's so many different interpretations of it because you can
Speaker 4: kind of just let loose at some point as long
Speaker 4: as the publisher doesn't think they're going to get sued
Speaker 4: over it. That's yeah, that's so frustrating.
Speaker 3: And it's like that is like why this movie.
Speaker 4: And so many other movies and pieces of media obviously,
Speaker 4: like I think about Lolita a lot, but like that
Speaker 4: they're unable to have a productive cultural conversation around abuse
Speaker 4: and like child abuse specifically, because there's like this unwillingness
Speaker 4: to deal with how like you're describing like how messy
Speaker 4: and how how frequently these like cycles of abuse overlap,
Speaker 4: and that a product of abuse can become an abuser,
Speaker 4: and that like if you can't accept that or talk
Speaker 4: about that, then there's like never going to be a
Speaker 4: productive conversation about it. If someone has to be the
Speaker 4: bad guy.
Speaker 5: Or even just to see people that you admire as
Speaker 5: flawed is like very difficult for a lot of people, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Which I get.
Speaker 5: But it's like you just kind of have to live
Speaker 5: with it, and I think that's being an adult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most traumatized adults came by it honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well, well the movie does pass the Bechdel test.
Speaker 4: Technically, yeah, in an all manner of ways.
Speaker 2: And as we alluded to.
Speaker 3: Earlier faviously genderless wire Hanger.
Speaker 2: And now our nipple scale, where we rate the movie
Speaker 2: on a scale of zero to five nipples based on
Speaker 2: examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Boy, I know
Speaker 2: this is funny.
Speaker 4: I'm like understanding why we avoided this one for so long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so sorry, guys, it had to happen.
Speaker 2: To know, I think I might forego the nipple scale.
Speaker 2: I don't because I don't know.
Speaker 5: Right, it's both off the charts and not and below
Speaker 5: the charts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It does not fall within the spectrum of
Speaker 2: the nipple scale this movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm happy to forgot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you want to know what we think
Speaker 2: about it, listen to the past or in forty five
Speaker 2: minutes that we spent talking about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, IZZI, thank you so much for joining USh
Speaker 3: my gosh, of course. Really, we're such a huge fan.
Speaker 2: Come back anytime, truly. Yes, yeah, I'd love to. I'm
Speaker 2: always I'm always available. I love talking to you guys
Speaker 2: about this. So this was this was fun.
Speaker 5: I hope we don't totally get canceled for our abuse.
Speaker 2: People will love this.
Speaker 3: You We're gonna love it. I can't wait. Send it.
Speaker 4: Fire off an email, see what happens. Yeah, we just
Speaker 4: won't respond.
Speaker 2: Where can people follow your work? Check you out online,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Yeah, you can find me. I mean, the
Speaker 2: bulk of my work goes on YouTube, just the channel
Speaker 2: be kind rewind and then I'm also on Instagram at
Speaker 2: BK underscore rewind.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 2: We are also on Instagram at bechdelcast and you can
Speaker 2: also find us on our Patreon aka Matreon, where Jamie
Speaker 2: and I do two bonus episodes every single month. For
Speaker 2: five dollars a month, you get access to the back
Speaker 2: catalog of around two hundred bonus episodes and we all
Speaker 2: do a fun little theme. We're just wrapping up Catherine
Speaker 2: O'Hara by Tribute, Yes month, bewery Yes Yes. So check
Speaker 2: us out over there patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast
Speaker 2: and with that, should we.
Speaker 3: Let's let's swap wigs. Let's swap wigs.
Speaker 2: Okay, go to bus.
Speaker 3: Funeral h huh, bye bye.
Speaker 4: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
Speaker 4: produced by Me, Jamie Loftus and.
Speaker 2: Me Caitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Speaker 2: Lichtermann and.
Speaker 3: Edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever heard of Them?
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Speaker 3: Oh my God? And our theme song, by the way,
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