Speaker 1: On the bed Cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women and um, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
Speaker 1: husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in
Speaker 1: best start changing it with the bec del Cast. Hey, Jamie, Hey, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I have an idea for a new podcast that I
Speaker 1: want you to co host with me. Okay, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I'm in great because here's what it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It will be me describing how I will murder my lovers,
Speaker 1: and then when my lovers end up dead in like
Speaker 1: a year or so, this podcast will be my alibi
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to be so foolish as to
Speaker 1: kill my lovers in the exact same way I described
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Okay, yeah, okay, So I mean and
Speaker 1: and honestly, because you got so close to my face
Speaker 1: while you were telling me that I believe you, and
Speaker 1: also I'm in love with you perfect and don't worry,
Speaker 1: I will not frame you or anything. Oh no, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't know, because what we have is real as opposed
Speaker 1: to all the others. I'm not like the other boys. Um,
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas, Great, Kiss, Kiss what I'm Katherine Zada Jones
Speaker 1: is I. Honestly, I there was like a world in
Speaker 1: which I was going to try to go through this
Speaker 1: whole episode, referring to Michael Douglas as Catherine Zada Jones's
Speaker 1: husband because that's how I think of him. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus, my name
Speaker 1: is Caitlin Dronte, and this is our show where we
Speaker 1: examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens. Using the Bechtel
Speaker 1: tests simply is a jumping off point. But you know
Speaker 1: what the Bechtel test is? I don't, because I do,
Speaker 1: Can you tell me? Well? It is a media metric
Speaker 1: created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechtel
Speaker 1: Wallace Test. A lot of different versions of it. The
Speaker 1: one we use requires that a piece of media have
Speaker 1: two characters with names of a marginalized gender talking to
Speaker 1: each other about something other than a man for two
Speaker 1: lines of dialogue. And it should be a sort of
Speaker 1: meaningful interaction. You know it when you see it, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've we've got it. We've got kind
Speaker 1: of a It's complicated today. Everything is complicated today. It's
Speaker 1: very it's a very complicated day. Yes, you're on the
Speaker 1: picktel Cast. Do you remember that Facebook? Did you ever
Speaker 1: have that? Oh, it's like a relations relationship status. I
Speaker 1: loved that. That's so inviting conflict um that you have
Speaker 1: to respect it. I don't have the personality to publicly
Speaker 1: declare it's complicated, but there were plenty of teenagers who did. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, it's complicated with Chris are. They were
Speaker 1: like doing it in earnest because everyone I saw who
Speaker 1: put that it was like a joke. Who would be like,
Speaker 1: it's complicated with my bff t. He joked a joke, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: uh no, No, when you're fourteen, it's serious. It really
Speaker 1: is complicated because you don't you don't even understand what's
Speaker 1: happening to your body. So everything, even if it's going
Speaker 1: great in your in a relationship, it's still complicated. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: welcome to the backcast. We're talking about basic Instinct today.
Speaker 1: Long time request, and we were simply waiting for the
Speaker 1: perfect guest to come along, and here she is. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's get her, let's get her in the mix. She
Speaker 1: is the host of Your Wrong About podcast and the
Speaker 1: co host of You Are Good Podcast, it's Sarah Marshall. Hi, welcome.
Speaker 1: This says what a how are we going to talk
Speaker 1: about this movie? Like? Because defies? What is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It is so I've I've read so
Speaker 1: many takes that my brain started leaking out of my nose.
Speaker 1: There doesn't seem to be any or I mean, this
Speaker 1: is true of every movie, but like this one in particular,
Speaker 1: it's like there's just no right answer. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like everyone's got a different take. We hate it, we
Speaker 1: love it, we're reclaiming it, we're putting it in the trash.
Speaker 1: It's good, it's bad. We don't know. It's empowerment for women,
Speaker 1: it's horrible for women. Yeah, it's it's every take on
Speaker 1: every end, Fanti cop. We don't know, we don't know.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what we know. It is. It was
Speaker 1: a three million dollar screenplay. That is one thing that
Speaker 1: is known. What a thing to know, which is absurd
Speaker 1: and which is more than Sharon Stone got paid to
Speaker 1: be in the movie. She only got paid five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to be in this movie, right, which is
Speaker 1: like obviously good money, but not for what she fucking did. Also,
Speaker 1: this screenplay was written in thirteen days, which makes so
Speaker 1: much sense and right right, And the budget was million
Speaker 1: dollars and only thousand of that went to the lead
Speaker 1: of the movie. That makes me feel very bad. There
Speaker 1: there's so much I mean, there's also not only is
Speaker 1: there a ton to talk about about the content, but
Speaker 1: there's so much to talk about about behind the scenes
Speaker 1: some of it. I mean, we'll just see where this goes,
Speaker 1: because there's like some things that aren't necessarily relevant to
Speaker 1: the topic of this show that I was sort of
Speaker 1: still like, what the fuck? I just wrote so much
Speaker 1: stuff down. Every fact I learned was scarier than the last. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this episode may just be as chaotic as
Speaker 1: the movie itself. That sounds great. I'm very excited to
Speaker 1: talk about it, and I feel like this discussion honestly,
Speaker 1: I I hope it will be clarifying for me because
Speaker 1: I'm all over the place. I did enjoy watching it.
Speaker 1: It's highly entertaining or is it. I don't know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm board, it's over two hours long. Why
Speaker 1: isn't this half hour shorter? It's taking itself very seriously,
Speaker 1: which is a flash doesn't have But one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things about this movie is that we have two
Speaker 1: women famously and to distinguish them from each other and
Speaker 1: create some symbolism, one wears beige clothing and the other
Speaker 1: wears brown clothing. It's I mean, how else were you
Speaker 1: supposed to tell high status white women apart in the nineties.
Speaker 1: The only way you could do it except by what
Speaker 1: color neutrals they put on head to toe that morning.
Speaker 1: So many loose neutrals in this movie, which have kind
Speaker 1: of come all the way back around. Much like many
Speaker 1: elements of this movie. I was just thinking that true murdering,
Speaker 1: murdering people is so in right now, It's totally in fashion.
Speaker 1: Look as a as a bisexual murderer, representation matters. It's
Speaker 1: just nice to see an early version of the media
Speaker 1: landscape we have today. So I'm so excited to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this movie, Sarah, Like, what is your
Speaker 1: history with Basic Instinct. I think I first saw it
Speaker 1: when I was like fourteen or fifteen, and I just
Speaker 1: knew that it was a movie that adults talked somewhat
Speaker 1: fearfully about. I think specifically I had heard of it
Speaker 1: in the part and Sleepless in Seattle, where Tom Hanks's
Speaker 1: son obviously alludes to it because he's like, so, if
Speaker 1: you date, you're probably gonna have sex, right, And his
Speaker 1: dad's like, I certainly hope so, and he's like, and
Speaker 1: if you have sex, I think she's going to scratch
Speaker 1: up your back, which he like learned from probably from
Speaker 1: watching Basic Instinct on cable or any of the other
Speaker 1: abundant like sort of Glossy got really bad reviews but
Speaker 1: did amazing when they hit the video rental market movies
Speaker 1: of the time, like other Joe esther Haws films, including
Speaker 1: Sliver and Jade. So I think I guess like I
Speaker 1: watched it because I was like, this is a movie
Speaker 1: that scandalize as adult ELTs, and I want to see
Speaker 1: something that scandalized adults. And then I remember just being like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I think about this. It felt
Speaker 1: like it was too deep a look into like the
Speaker 1: sordidness of adult culture. And then when I came back
Speaker 1: to it as an adult, the thing I really noticed
Speaker 1: was that the score by Gerry Goldsmith is doing so
Speaker 1: much work I think to sort of try and be Hitchcockian, right,
Speaker 1: It's like it's its own character and it's a very
Speaker 1: loud character that won't stop screaming, and it always kicks
Speaker 1: in after Catherine is like I enjoyed having sex with him,
Speaker 1: It's like what, Like, oh, that's it's like a big
Speaker 1: scary reveal just happened. And it also does that when
Speaker 1: she's like, I was having sex with my girlfriend or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: it did feel like I was trying to put myself
Speaker 1: in brain and I was like, that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be like a huge reveal, right, like her queerness was
Speaker 1: a reveal when it's like you could also watch that
Speaker 1: scene and still have it be very Verhoeven exploitative, where
Speaker 1: she like grabs her girlfriend's boom the second she enters
Speaker 1: the room. But it's like you can also watch that
Speaker 1: with goggles. Would be like, oh, okay, she's with someone
Speaker 1: and that is why he's upset. But it's clearly like
Speaker 1: he's upset that she's with someone and that person is yeah,
Speaker 1: very upset to him. This movie is so weird. This
Speaker 1: movie is so weird, Jamie, what's your history with it?
Speaker 1: Not much? Um, I've never seen it before we started
Speaker 1: prepping for this episode. It's weird. I feel like Sharon
Speaker 1: Stone is just popping up in my life a lot. Recently.
Speaker 1: I've gotten many, many recommendations to read her her memoir
Speaker 1: that came out last year, which I haven't started yet,
Speaker 1: but I'm very, very excited. And then I also recently
Speaker 1: saw Casino for the first time, and she's amazing in movie.
Speaker 1: Because Sarah, you were talking to me about Casino. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love her so much in Casino. She's amazing Casino.
Speaker 1: If you've seen bass against inco, watch Casino and see
Speaker 1: what it's like when Sharon's giving it a percent right
Speaker 1: and like she's given like a part that's maybe a
Speaker 1: little more cogent um. But but yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've been in a Sharon state of mind. I was
Speaker 1: very ready and excited for this. And also Paul Verhoeven
Speaker 1: just came out with a new movie that I want
Speaker 1: to see, Benedetta. It's a lesbian nun thriller, so I
Speaker 1: will be seeing that and hopefully, Well this is interesting
Speaker 1: too because it's like he's returning to lesbians. I hope
Speaker 1: he does a good job. Growth is important. Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: I know it's it's it's so I've got a series
Speaker 1: of He's tricky, He's tricky. This is the second for
Speaker 1: Hoven movie we've covered on the show. We covered Starship
Speaker 1: Troopers last year, which um is an extremely different movie,
Speaker 1: but there are still themes that kind of crossover in
Speaker 1: most of his work, and I'm interested to talk about
Speaker 1: how this movie depicts police work. Also, like there's just
Speaker 1: there's just a lot going on. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to feel about any of it. My take I I've
Speaker 1: done a ton of research and done a ton of reading,
Speaker 1: which I know how to do. Congrats. My takeaway is
Speaker 1: that I love Sharon Stone. So we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: really tease this apart today. Caitlin, what's your history with
Speaker 1: Basic Instinct? My history is that I saw Hot Shots
Speaker 1: Part Do as a child, a movie I watched over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, which very heavily spoofs. It's
Speaker 1: a spoof. It is a spoof, not specifically of Basic Instant,
Speaker 1: because it's spoofs a bunch of different movies of that era.
Speaker 1: Oh it's so it's like that, it's sort of like,
Speaker 1: what are those other like like scary movie, scary movie,
Speaker 1: but like the Leslie Nielsen movie. Yeah exactly, yes, So, um,
Speaker 1: I'm learning anyway, the very famous scenes in Basic Instinct
Speaker 1: are heavily referenced in Hot Shots Part Do, but I
Speaker 1: didn't understand the references to Basic Instinct or any of
Speaker 1: the other movies it's spoofs until years later when I
Speaker 1: finally got around to watching all those other movies. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the like famous imagery from Basic
Speaker 1: Instinct I was very familiar with. And then when I
Speaker 1: saw the movie for the first time, which was I
Speaker 1: think I was in college, I was like, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: what Hot Shots Part Do was referencing. So I saw
Speaker 1: I so funny. What are the things that it's specifically
Speaker 1: spoofs in this The scene where you see Sharon stones vagina,
Speaker 1: the scene that I just kept referring to that as
Speaker 1: thus seen because I had not seen this movie and
Speaker 1: everyone knows that scene right, it's like the chess Burster
Speaker 1: an alien, it's that big of a surprise. And Hot
Speaker 1: Shots Part Do, however, you that's shot differently. It's shot
Speaker 1: with the woman from behind and you just see her
Speaker 1: leg very um exaggeratedly lift up over her head to
Speaker 1: like cross to the other side. That's pretty good. And
Speaker 1: then there's a sex scene and Hot Shots Part Do
Speaker 1: where she's having sex with Charlie Sheen is unfortunately in
Speaker 1: the movie, and she ties his arms to the bed
Speaker 1: post with this white silk scarf, and then she is
Speaker 1: like reaching for something and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what's she reaching for? And then she grabs a screwdriver
Speaker 1: and kind of unscrews part of the bed frame to
Speaker 1: make it creakier so that when they continue to have sex,
Speaker 1: it's like way more like you have to have hot
Speaker 1: shots part do because those movies can get pretty like
Speaker 1: gnarly and exploitative and like really bad. And that sounds
Speaker 1: just like I think he's just like superhand in this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what if Catherine was just really handy. Does either of
Speaker 1: you ever watch those thumb movies? Yes? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: And I took foreverard to download to thumb Wars. There's
Speaker 1: a Caitlin I should show in thumb Tanic. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: it's a series. It's it's the thumber Verse. But it's
Speaker 1: like a series of spoof movies where it's just like
Speaker 1: a spoof movie but only with thumbs. It was really funny.
Speaker 1: Me and my cousins used to watch thumb Wars long
Speaker 1: before I saw actual Star Wars. I thought I saw
Speaker 1: thumb Wars many times beautiful, and it's just as good.
Speaker 1: So in conclusion, I saw Basic for the first time
Speaker 1: in college. I saw it again. I think I rewatched
Speaker 1: it right when we covered Fatal Attraction, because I get
Speaker 1: those two movies confused a lot because they're both Michael
Speaker 1: Douglas and it's both about a scary woman who murders
Speaker 1: and who wants to have sex with Michael Douglas for
Speaker 1: some reason. Right, It's it's like literally, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas is a character who's threatened by a woman's agency,
Speaker 1: but it turns out he's right. That's a classic class
Speaker 1: So sorry, the movie was called thumb Wars the Phantom Cuticle.
Speaker 1: Pretty funny. I love it. It's pretty great. Sorry, Okay,
Speaker 1: I done so anyway. Yeah, I had seen Basic Instinct
Speaker 1: a couple of times before prepping, and I've seen it
Speaker 1: twice since we started prepping. And I, similarly, who don't
Speaker 1: really know what to make of this movie. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of all over the place. There's so much to unpack.
Speaker 1: I feel like my notes are so long, and yet
Speaker 1: I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Like it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're all kind of on the same page here,
Speaker 1: of like, well, let's just talk about it and see
Speaker 1: what happens. You got us for Hoven uh for. Movies
Speaker 1: are honestly very hard to cover on this show. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. Um, so we're going to try. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then I'll get into the recap. Wait. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm like the guy who wrote thumb Wars has written
Speaker 1: so many famous movies. What written He wrote The Nutty Professor,
Speaker 1: he wrote Patch Adams, he wrote Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius.
Speaker 1: He wrote Kung Pau Enter the Fist, which I used
Speaker 1: to really love. And he wrote Bruce and Evan Almighty Wow,
Speaker 1: and also, most famously, thumb Wars. I am interested in
Speaker 1: thumb Tanic. It's pretty good. All the next time I
Speaker 1: come over, I'll it's got to be somewhere. I'll find it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll pay money to rent it. Let's charge it to
Speaker 1: the Yeah, that's what Patreon money is for to watch tank.
Speaker 1: I think our our matron's will will understand. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: that's what we could cover for our for our Titanic episodes,
Speaker 1: because we're running out of Titanic content. UH speak for yourself. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, it's on YouTube in full. Okay, perfect. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's basic instinct and I'll place a trigger warning
Speaker 1: at the top here because, um, there is a rape
Speaker 1: scene in the movie. Okay, So we open on a
Speaker 1: woman having sex with a man. We never quite see
Speaker 1: her face because her blonde hair of obscuring it. We
Speaker 1: see her tie up the man's hands with a white
Speaker 1: silk scarf. Then she pulls out an ice pick and
Speaker 1: stabs him repeatedly to death. Titanic reference. Um oh, because
Speaker 1: of the ice pick slash iceberg. Yeah, maybe if the
Speaker 1: that the joke going there was maybe if they had
Speaker 1: nice pick they could on board. She would have been like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I love doing this, sice a whole glacier guest for
Speaker 1: me exactly. Wow, makes you think. Then we cut two.
Speaker 1: Detective Nick Curran played by Michael Douglas and his partner
Speaker 1: Gus Moran there at the scene of the crime. We
Speaker 1: are in San Francisco, by the way. The victim, Johnny Boss,
Speaker 1: was last seen the night before with his girlfriend Katherine Trammel.
Speaker 1: So Nick and Gus go to Katherine's house to question her.
Speaker 1: She isn't there, but Katherine's friend Roxy is, and Roxy
Speaker 1: directs them to where Katherine is, which is like her
Speaker 1: second home summer where she's being hot on a balcony. Right,
Speaker 1: Nick and Gus Fine, Katherine trammel Um. She is Sharon Stone.
Speaker 1: Of course, she's very sultry and sexy, and she has
Speaker 1: the same exact hey and body type and skin color
Speaker 1: as the lady who murdered Johnny Boss. I wonder if
Speaker 1: she did it, which is so wild, you're like she
Speaker 1: and she did. And then Catherine tells the detectives, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was fucking that guy, but I didn't go home
Speaker 1: with him and I didn't kill him. Now go away.
Speaker 1: That's a fun place to start the movie, where she's
Speaker 1: just I mean and and yes does the movie ultimately
Speaker 1: undercut the fact that she enjoys sex and isn't ashamed
Speaker 1: to admit it and implies that if you, if that's you,
Speaker 1: you two could be a murderer. But I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: her like delivery in that scene, and when she's just
Speaker 1: like telling, like Sharon Stone telling to cops to go
Speaker 1: funk themselves is an inherently satisfying experience, no matter the
Speaker 1: subtext of what the movie wants me to think I
Speaker 1: like to see her neg cops. I hope that if
Speaker 1: ever I have the misfortune of having to interact with
Speaker 1: a cop, I have the guts to say, I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk to you, fuck off and get the
Speaker 1: funk outta here. I mean, she's also yeah, she's also
Speaker 1: protected by a lot of privilege, but it's still very
Speaker 1: cathartic to watch. Yeah, they got to go on a
Speaker 1: tour of all her real estate before they meet her
Speaker 1: and see all her sports cars in the driveway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, she's got holdings, she's got a Picasso. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then they leave at her request, and Nick goes
Speaker 1: to see a counselor Beth played by Jean triple Horn
Speaker 1: awesome name, who he is mandated by Internal Affairs to
Speaker 1: see for reasons that we don't yet know. They're talking
Speaker 1: and he refers to the sexual relationship he used to
Speaker 1: have with Beth, and then she tells him that she
Speaker 1: still misses him so already, Like it's so funny. There's
Speaker 1: like police corruption for the jump where they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: so everyone in the office is aware of this relationship,
Speaker 1: which we find out right away, and his him keeping
Speaker 1: his job relies on you know, him remaining in her
Speaker 1: good favor or her being hung up on him, and
Speaker 1: everyone's like, yep, that's fine, that's which, I'm sure, which
Speaker 1: which is like, I'm sure not too far from the truth. Na,
Speaker 1: your ex girlfriend will be very therapeutic, right. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: there's there's so much this movie's views on psychiatry. There's
Speaker 1: so much yes, yes, yes, yes, Okay. So then Nick
Speaker 1: and Gus go over more details of this case and
Speaker 1: the victim, Johnny Boss, who was a former rock and
Speaker 1: roll star. They also discussed Katherine Trammel as a suspect.
Speaker 1: She is an author, and it turns out that she
Speaker 1: published a book the year before under a pen name,
Speaker 1: about a retired rock and all star who gets murdered
Speaker 1: by his girlfriend when she ties up his hands with
Speaker 1: a white silk scarf and stabs him with an ice pick. Amazing.
Speaker 1: So Katherine is starting to seem extra suspicious. So then
Speaker 1: Nick and Gus bring Catherine to the station to question
Speaker 1: her on the way. She tells him about a new
Speaker 1: book she's writing about a detective who falls for the
Speaker 1: wrong woman and then she kills the detective. I think
Speaker 1: that there's so many scenes in this movie that I
Speaker 1: know that we um, what have we renamed the bush
Speaker 1: Emmy test? But we could run the bush Emmy test
Speaker 1: on Sharon stone several times in this movie and be like,
Speaker 1: if this were a regular looking person saying these things,
Speaker 1: she would be so in jail, Like it's wild how
Speaker 1: in jail she would be? Yeah, absolutely so. Then at
Speaker 1: the police station, the assistant district Attorney A. K Wayne
Speaker 1: Knight questions her. Wayne Knight was like cranking out the
Speaker 1: hits in this series of years. Oh yeah, because in
Speaker 1: the next year he's in Jurassic Park and oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: he gets to see a vagina and a dinosaur in
Speaker 1: a single calendar year. We should all be so lucky.
Speaker 1: So he's questioning her, and this is when we get
Speaker 1: the famous Sharon Stone on crosses her legs and flashes
Speaker 1: her volva scene. There's plenty to talk about with this,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it. Katherine says, do you think I
Speaker 1: would be so foolish as to murder someone in the
Speaker 1: exact way I described in my book? So she's basically
Speaker 1: using her book as an alibi, which is what a
Speaker 1: few psychologists had said she would do if she is
Speaker 1: in fact the murderer right, and even though Catherine passes
Speaker 1: a lie detector test, Nick still thinks that she's lying
Speaker 1: and that she is probably guilty, especially because of some
Speaker 1: deaths in the past that Catherine could be linked to,
Speaker 1: such as her parents died in a voting accident, a
Speaker 1: professor she had in college was murdered, and a boxer
Speaker 1: boyfriend died while they were dating. To quote her, everyone
Speaker 1: I love dies and she doesn't seem to be wrong there,
Speaker 1: And Stephen Tobolski is there, which I think is fun. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that coming. That's yet another thrilling basic
Speaker 1: instinct twist. He's also having a good couple of years,
Speaker 1: because he's in Groundhog Day right around this time, being
Speaker 1: ed Ryerson. Well, I'm glad that the boys are thriving
Speaker 1: in the early nineties. Good for them. The white men
Speaker 1: are having a blast. I think that they're still doing
Speaker 1: well to this day. Yeah, I think you may be right. Um, Okay.
Speaker 1: So that night Nick goes home with Beth the counselor,
Speaker 1: and then again trigger warning for rape, he rapes her.
Speaker 1: Although the movie is as I'm concerned, treats this as
Speaker 1: a consensual sex scene, I think that there's a there's
Speaker 1: a well, let's we'll get to that conversation. We'll get
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, yeah, I felt a little bit differently,
Speaker 1: but I see what you're saying. Then Nick tails Katherine
Speaker 1: for a while. There's a scene where she's driving like
Speaker 1: a bat out of hell and he's chasing her. He
Speaker 1: pays her another visit. He discovers that she has all
Speaker 1: these articles about him, and we find out why he
Speaker 1: has been mandated to see a counselor. Apparently he had
Speaker 1: shot a couple of tourists a while back, and Catherine
Speaker 1: has been following this story for quite some time because,
Speaker 1: according to her, she's using him as inspiration for the
Speaker 1: detective in the book she's writing, he's a killer cop.
Speaker 1: It's there's so much to talk about. She keeps calling
Speaker 1: him shooter. She also fixes him a drink and then
Speaker 1: breaks the ice with fishemy test. She's in jail again.
Speaker 1: Right then Nick realizes she has access to his psychiatric file,
Speaker 1: which she apparently got from this guy in internal affairs,
Speaker 1: this guy Nielsen, who then ends up dead. He was
Speaker 1: shot in the head and everyone thinks that Nick did it,
Speaker 1: so he gets put on leave, but Nick thinks Catherine
Speaker 1: Tremell did it. So then Catherine shows up at his place.
Speaker 1: She's being all seductive and messing with his head. He
Speaker 1: meets up with her a little later at a dance club.
Speaker 1: Then they go back to her place and have sex.
Speaker 1: She ties him up with a white silk scarf and
Speaker 1: we think maybe she's going to stab him with an
Speaker 1: ice pick, but she doesn't. She just like collapses on
Speaker 1: him in pleasure or something. Um. Then it's called ecstasy.
Speaker 1: Caitlin ever heard of it? Yeah? Nick has had a
Speaker 1: great time. He's like, Wow, that was the fun the century.
Speaker 1: Katherine is like it was a good start. We also
Speaker 1: have learned by this point that Katherine is in some
Speaker 1: sort of romantic and or sexual relationship with that woman Roxy,
Speaker 1: who we met at the beginning, although we don't really
Speaker 1: well we can talk about this too, but we don't
Speaker 1: know that much about their relationship. But Roxy does seem
Speaker 1: to be very jealous of Nick. And then someone tries
Speaker 1: to run over Nick in what looks like Katherine's car.
Speaker 1: There's a high speed chase. The person chasing Nick crashes
Speaker 1: and it turns out to be Roxy, who has died
Speaker 1: in the crash. They kill their gays folks, and we're
Speaker 1: may be meant to think, oh, so was it Roxy
Speaker 1: who maybe killed Johnny Boss question Mark? But now it's
Speaker 1: the person that you are told in the opening scene
Speaker 1: did it right? So then Nick goes to see Katherine again.
Speaker 1: She is upset about Roxy's death. She's all like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have such bad luck dating women, and she tells
Speaker 1: him about this woman that she met in college, Lisa Hoberman,
Speaker 1: who she slept with once, and then this woman started
Speaker 1: stalking Catherine. I immediately was like, oh, so Beth, But
Speaker 1: the movie takes it like fifteen minutes to be like
Speaker 1: and it was Beth. You're like, I think I could
Speaker 1: I think you could tell because you're told, Like, why
Speaker 1: else would you be told? They went to college to
Speaker 1: get right? This movie kind of like skirt around Some
Speaker 1: thinks nobody knows there are multiple nicknames for Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: that this is a really bright quest right, Yes that too?
Speaker 1: Especially yeah, because also Catherine originally was like her name
Speaker 1: is Lisa Oberman and then he's like I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anyone named Lisa Oberman and she's like, I said, that's
Speaker 1: so goofy. I like, why what a waste of five minutes,
Speaker 1: but it made me laugh. The two lines that made
Speaker 1: me laugh the most in this movie where I said Hoberman,
Speaker 1: which should be added to every movie at some point,
Speaker 1: a very human misunderstanding that has no place in a thriller.
Speaker 1: And then at the end when Beth says I love
Speaker 1: you was dying, I was like, this damn movie makes
Speaker 1: no sense. Have some dignity, Beth, I know, and she's
Speaker 1: She's like the twist, I'm not a murderer, and I
Speaker 1: love men so much, even when they're rapist murderers. Remember
Speaker 1: my little Simpson's key Chane, I only loved you. Shout
Speaker 1: out to bart Art high bart visibility. Truly, there's also
Speaker 1: some pizza Hut visibility. I just wanted to shut up
Speaker 1: at um. My favorite line of dialogue in the movie,
Speaker 1: towards the very beginning, one of the few people of
Speaker 1: color in the movie. It's another cop named Sam. He
Speaker 1: says there's cum stains all over the sheets. He sure does,
Speaker 1: and that is a line of dialogue. And then that's
Speaker 1: a sag card. Yeah, okay. So Nick looks into this
Speaker 1: Lisa person who turns out to be Beth, the counselor
Speaker 1: who works for the police department. Beth says, Katherine stalked
Speaker 1: Beth in college. Katherine says Beth stok Katherine in college.
Speaker 1: They're both claiming that the other one was like single
Speaker 1: White Female NG the other which also comes out this
Speaker 1: same year, right, So it's not even like they were
Speaker 1: ripping it from there. They were just this was just
Speaker 1: something that was on the brain. I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: like a real life story that was like on people's mind,
Speaker 1: because I was I was like, that's so bizarre. Why
Speaker 1: were women all supposed to be murdering each other in
Speaker 1: the early nineties right about? Yeah, which you've covered extensively there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not so much the idea that women were murdering other
Speaker 1: women at this time though. That's really interesting. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: covered men's perpetual fear of being murdered by women, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: so Single White Female really subverts some troll hopes. It's
Speaker 1: like women can murder other women too, Like, hey, we
Speaker 1: can murder each other too, don't forget it. And that's feminism. Yes,
Speaker 1: third wave feminism is amazing. It makes so much sense. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're not sure who to trust, we're not sure
Speaker 1: who's telling the truth, but now Nick thinks that Beth
Speaker 1: is the prime suspect, and she's seeming more and more
Speaker 1: suspicious because Beth's husband was mysteriously shot and killed a
Speaker 1: few years back. Meanwhile, Katherine ends things with Nick because
Speaker 1: she was just using him for her book, which she
Speaker 1: has finished. Nick is all hurt, and then he goes
Speaker 1: with Gus to meet up with another woman who knew
Speaker 1: Catherine and Beth in college. But it's a setup. The
Speaker 1: killer stabs and kills Gus with an ice pick. Nick
Speaker 1: rushes in. Beth is right there and I again because
Speaker 1: Nick thinks that she's the prime suspect, he shoots her
Speaker 1: so abruptly, like yeah, I mean, really, is uh being
Speaker 1: a cop about it? Right? And then the cops find
Speaker 1: a bunch of incriminating evidence at the crime scene and
Speaker 1: in Beth's apartment, so it seems like she was the
Speaker 1: killer all along. Nick goes back to Catherine. She takes
Speaker 1: him back. She's all like, I don't want to lose you.
Speaker 1: They have sex. It seems like again maybe she's going
Speaker 1: to stab him with an ice pick, but then she doesn't.
Speaker 1: But but then we pan down to see that she
Speaker 1: has an ice pick on the floor that she maybe
Speaker 1: was or is going to kill him with. So now
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, she is the killer. She apparently just
Speaker 1: framed Beth and that's the end of the movie. Every
Speaker 1: Woman is a murderer. How how many times have we
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show? Every Woman is a
Speaker 1: stone cold killer. Yeah, so let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back to discuss, and we're back. Uh,
Speaker 1: where where should we start, gang, I mean, where where
Speaker 1: makes sense? I mean, I guess what we can sort
Speaker 1: of just state the obvious of Katherine Trammel being a
Speaker 1: pretty classic fem fatale character. You know, she's seductive, she's cunning,
Speaker 1: she uses her sexuality to lure men in and then
Speaker 1: kill them. But she's also like a fum fatale dialed
Speaker 1: up to an eleven because a lot of like fum
Speaker 1: fatale characters were from movies of like the forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: which were under the Hayes production Code restrictions, which meant
Speaker 1: that there couldn't be sex, nudity, overt sexuality, any romance
Speaker 1: or implied sex had to be heterosexual. There could be
Speaker 1: no graphic violence, things like that. So Catherine is this
Speaker 1: like post production code version of the film Fatale, which
Speaker 1: means we see nudity, we see sex. She loves to
Speaker 1: have sex, she loves fucking, she talks about it all
Speaker 1: the time. And then she also seems to be able
Speaker 1: to like very easily detach emotion from sex, which the
Speaker 1: movie seems to be making a judgment call about because
Speaker 1: of these are all the things that make Katherine Tramel
Speaker 1: so sinister and so fatal. It's like she's probably a murderer.
Speaker 1: She's having sex casually, right, Like that's repeatedly insinuate, you know,
Speaker 1: all while and it's I guess part of what I
Speaker 1: struggle with this movie is I can't parse out always
Speaker 1: self aware it's being but yeah, like all all, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Michael Douglas is having casual sex all the
Speaker 1: time and including non consensual casual sex, and um, isn't
Speaker 1: he's not a well actually he is a murderer, but
Speaker 1: it's not as big a deal when he does it.
Speaker 1: It's so confused, like he doesn't well, he's at work,
Speaker 1: so it's better. It's very confusing. So something's been in
Speaker 1: the air on the pod lately. We've been covering a
Speaker 1: lot of different from Fatale characters. We did double indemnity.
Speaker 1: We did a simple favor and now we're doing basic instinct,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it's I understand. I guess why
Speaker 1: people have a hard time with this movie because a
Speaker 1: lot of Catherine's dialogue and a lot of Sharon Stone's performance.
Speaker 1: I think it's like very reclaimable because it's so matter
Speaker 1: of fact and good where she you know, when she's
Speaker 1: like I wasn't dating him, I was fucking him, You're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exciting, you know, or like are you sad he's dead? Yes,
Speaker 1: because I liked fucking him. Like that's it's so like
Speaker 1: can't be it funny and like you don't get to
Speaker 1: see women talk like that very often. But also we're
Speaker 1: supposed to think that she's a supervillain, right, so it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's tricky. Right. On one hand, it's the
Speaker 1: villainizing a sexually liberated woman, which is what the fem
Speaker 1: fay towels whole thing is is like, well, a woman
Speaker 1: who is sexy and and you're seduced by her and
Speaker 1: she likes sex, Well, obviously she's evil because sexual liberation
Speaker 1: and a woman is scary. But then, like you said, Jamie,
Speaker 1: like there's an argument to be made that that's still
Speaker 1: representation on screen of a sexually liberated woman, and you
Speaker 1: don't often get to see a woman just like very
Speaker 1: openly talk about how much she enjoys sex and how
Speaker 1: she likes men who give her pleasure, and she seems
Speaker 1: to be prioritizing her pleasure over giving a man pleasure.
Speaker 1: And it's not a role model situation, but it is, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know this movie is for adults, hopefully, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess what I saw, and it was, like it
Speaker 1: is kind of cathartic to see whether this was intended
Speaker 1: or not, which I don't really think it was. But like,
Speaker 1: see a woman who is like, by far the smartest
Speaker 1: person in the room, playing a bunch of cops and
Speaker 1: doing whatever the funk she wants, like that is inherently exciting,
Speaker 1: like and and fun to watch. I mean, she's she's cool,
Speaker 1: she's she's like, what if I commit a bunch of
Speaker 1: murders and don't try to hide it and then when
Speaker 1: I'm questioned about it, I'll basically be like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a murderer, and then I'll just keep getting away with it.
Speaker 1: Let's just do that again. That was fun last time.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, and it's like she got when they
Speaker 1: quote unquote arrest her the first time to take her
Speaker 1: down for the scene, like the questioning scene. I just
Speaker 1: like it is the most like rich white lady arrest
Speaker 1: ever where she's like, you're arresting me, Okay, we'll let
Speaker 1: me change first, and you're just like she but like
Speaker 1: the way that sheared Stone like owns every second of
Speaker 1: it is so I mean, I really love watching her
Speaker 1: in this movie. And and I'm not that's not even
Speaker 1: really in defense of the movie as much as it
Speaker 1: is of like watching this I get why this movie
Speaker 1: has severe detractors, and I get why it has huge
Speaker 1: camp fans, which is feel like it's true of a
Speaker 1: lot of Verhoeven stuff. Um. And also it's like most
Speaker 1: of the people that she kills seem like they sucked.
Speaker 1: Well maybe not her parents. We don't know that they
Speaker 1: were rich white people, so chances are so she and
Speaker 1: she's awesome, So it's kind of hard anyways, and I
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, so other elements of her character before
Speaker 1: we get to the biphobia discussion, which we which needs
Speaker 1: to be had, things I liked about Catherine. I like
Speaker 1: that she everyone in this movie is doing a police corruption,
Speaker 1: like literally everyone every main character is involved in, but
Speaker 1: she's the She's the only one that's doing like police
Speaker 1: corruption for sort of good, Like she's she's the only
Speaker 1: person in the movie who I mean, and it's for
Speaker 1: selfish means, she doesn't care, but she does almost expose
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas as a murderous cop in a way that
Speaker 1: most people wouldn't have been able to. She gets his records,
Speaker 1: She's constantly like four shootings in five years, all accidents.
Speaker 1: Doesn't sound legit to me, like which I again, it's
Speaker 1: like Paul Verhoven didn't write this movie, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like he demanded that it be rewritten a lot of times,
Speaker 1: and he does have a preoccupation with like militarized police,
Speaker 1: which I do think kind of comes out in this movie.
Speaker 1: It's like, such as making the call to make your
Speaker 1: protagonist a cop who is a rapist and a murderer,
Speaker 1: which is not uncommon things for cops to be in
Speaker 1: in the US in particular. So I thought that that
Speaker 1: was like interesting that she was kind of using her
Speaker 1: power and like intelligence to do a police corruption in
Speaker 1: her own interest. Um. Meanwhile, everyone else's police corruptions are
Speaker 1: for the police, where it's like, we gotta protect Michael
Speaker 1: Douglas and therefore they're fine. Yeah. I also love how
Speaker 1: he's the protagonist, and I feel like this was made
Speaker 1: with the expectation that he's like, like, I think he's
Speaker 1: supposed to be kind of a noir antiher. But I
Speaker 1: assume that the audience when this came out was supposed
Speaker 1: to be like, oh no, that for rapist and murderer.
Speaker 1: He's going straight into the path of that murderer, right,
Speaker 1: I do think that was the intent, Yes, which just like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's so. I I feel if I had watched this
Speaker 1: movie when I was younger, it would have sucked me
Speaker 1: up so bad. It's so it's like it scrambles your
Speaker 1: brain how much you see Michael Douglas like you see
Speaker 1: him do like basically nothing right, Like, at what point
Speaker 1: does he do something that is good at his job
Speaker 1: or good morally? Like you? I feel like usually with
Speaker 1: anti heroes there at least like good at their job,
Speaker 1: like Don Draper was good at advertising. There's a scene
Speaker 1: where he pulls out his little like notebook where he's
Speaker 1: allegedly keeping and all it just has like a few
Speaker 1: different addresses written on it. There's no like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, is that all the Is that the extent
Speaker 1: of the police work you're doing. You're just writing down
Speaker 1: addresses that other people have told you like to go to.
Speaker 1: And at this point he's been on the case for months,
Speaker 1: he's like all right, I think he's just checked out
Speaker 1: and he's using being detective is a way to find
Speaker 1: girl friends. Now, that is what it seems like, because
Speaker 1: he he has everything he does is either bad police
Speaker 1: work where he's like recklessly driving and like putting everyone
Speaker 1: in danger. He's having sexual relationships with both his counselor
Speaker 1: and his primary suspect and his prime suspect, which is
Speaker 1: like very noir. But if you're just like buddy, the
Speaker 1: conflict of interest in everything he does is staggering. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that that's kind of like again just like
Speaker 1: a I guess we're sort of like talking about his
Speaker 1: character here as well, Like he's gullible to the point
Speaker 1: where it's kind of like attributing like a magical power
Speaker 1: to shared's done character, like it's giving her like I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a combination. It's not just like it's her
Speaker 1: like powers of manipulation and like sexual prowess is like,
Speaker 1: I feel like the movie wants you to think it's
Speaker 1: making him bad at his job, and you're like, he
Speaker 1: might just be bad at his job. It sounds like
Speaker 1: he's bad at his job at the beginning. He can't
Speaker 1: stop murdering people and having sex with everyone he shouldn't like.
Speaker 1: And there's no mention of him solving a crime previously,
Speaker 1: like there's so you know, it sounds like maybe he
Speaker 1: just always wasn't very good at it. But I feel
Speaker 1: like the movie wants you to think like she has
Speaker 1: led him, so, you know, far off a cliff with
Speaker 1: her her various college degrees and Bob, he has a
Speaker 1: master's degree. Okay, she's capable of anything, Caitlin, can you
Speaker 1: attest to that? Yes, I can confirm as someone who
Speaker 1: has a master's degree in screen writing from Boston University,
Speaker 1: which I don't like to mention, you can kill people,
Speaker 1: can murder people and get away with it. To quote
Speaker 1: Gus when he's talking to Nick about Catherine, quote she
Speaker 1: got that magna kum laude pussy on her. That done
Speaker 1: fried up your brain? Sorry, that is that is another
Speaker 1: line I wrote down is one of the greatest things
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. Honorary Oscar Worthy Oscar for Best Single
Speaker 1: Line in a Screenplay for Esther hass I want someone
Speaker 1: to say, I've got magnacum laud a pussy. That's who
Speaker 1: I really, honestly do. That's the thing. What a compliment.
Speaker 1: He meant it as an insult, but I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: go go for it. I'd be like, thank you. I
Speaker 1: also like how I read the screenplay to Basic in
Speaker 1: sing this morning. That was really it was really fun.
Speaker 1: And one thing I like is that Gus in the
Speaker 1: screenplay is supposed to be like twenty years older than
Speaker 1: Nick and Oliver Hopean was like, what if they were
Speaker 1: the same age? Interesting, which is funny because in the beginning,
Speaker 1: when Gus doesn't know who Johnny Boss is, Nick is like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's before your time, and it's like, really, they seem
Speaker 1: to be about the same age. So that's um. But Jamie,
Speaker 1: to go back to what you were talking about. I
Speaker 1: feel like that's part of like one of the characteristics
Speaker 1: of the firm fatalel archetype, where she's like a witch
Speaker 1: basically who will put you in a trance and make
Speaker 1: you bad at your job and make you do things
Speaker 1: that otherwise reasonable man wouldn't do. But because he's under
Speaker 1: the spell of this fem fatalel, he's not himself anymore.
Speaker 1: And to kind of complicate that, I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting the ways where this trope is
Speaker 1: like updated for the nineties or just I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess this run of Michael Douglas movies where it's like
Speaker 1: in the forties, you know, your FM faytales, they were
Speaker 1: you know, mostly cunning wives because that is, you know,
Speaker 1: majority what you could be as a middle class white
Speaker 1: woman at that time. But when it leveled up, it's like,
Speaker 1: I feel like they think they're doing a good thing
Speaker 1: by like giving her a higher and higher level of
Speaker 1: education and achievement, but it just kind of becomes messy
Speaker 1: in a different way where I like it also is
Speaker 1: like this, I don't know what did either of you
Speaker 1: think of it. I just was like, obviously, Michael Douglas
Speaker 1: doesn't believe in um mental health in this movie, Like,
Speaker 1: but I also thought it was interesting that like both
Speaker 1: of the women, that he's kind of like ping ponging
Speaker 1: between our authorities in mental health, where like shared Stone
Speaker 1: has a master's in psychology and Beth is a psychologist
Speaker 1: or like a police therapy. I don't want's her job
Speaker 1: title either way, Like they both work in that field.
Speaker 1: And he is clearly unwell and also doesn't believe it,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, does the movie believe in psychology? Like
Speaker 1: it's so confusing. I couldn't tell. Does the movie believe
Speaker 1: in psychology? I couldn't tell either, But I mean, when
Speaker 1: you have a protagonist who has certain opinions and the
Speaker 1: movie asks you to go on this journey with this
Speaker 1: protagonist and like see the world through his eyes, I
Speaker 1: feel like, and that's not the case for every movie,
Speaker 1: but it's tricky when it's of Noir. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But because he's like, you're a psychologist, well, your job
Speaker 1: is to manipulate people, and obviously your whole thing is
Speaker 1: to play games with people's heads, and that's what psychology is.
Speaker 1: It takes a very mid sectury of you of therapy.
Speaker 1: But I feel like it's also very obvious in text
Speaker 1: that he's unwell, and so I don't think that we're
Speaker 1: necessarily supposed to take him at his word in that moment.
Speaker 1: So it's confusing. Yeah, right, I feel like the script
Speaker 1: is maybe like he doesn't need therapy, just belongs to
Speaker 1: the Fraternity of killers or something. But like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like the noir has its roots and like
Speaker 1: the concept of confusing vulnerability with strength or I guess
Speaker 1: because being like, well, I'm traumatized in this way and
Speaker 1: I have to do it. I have to make use
Speaker 1: of it somehow, I guess now. And I feel like
Speaker 1: that's where the tradition of the detective partly comes from,
Speaker 1: this idea that like the detective sort of has to
Speaker 1: stand between society and the French here in whatever way necessary,
Speaker 1: and he can't really like be a happy family man.
Speaker 1: He has to be a loner right right, which lines
Speaker 1: up with the anti heroo stuff as well. It's so
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I like that, it's great for hope.
Speaker 1: The movies are so challenging, like I and I like
Speaker 1: that about them, but it's, um, it's tricky. I I
Speaker 1: felt like my and again I think I was maybe
Speaker 1: I had to too much brain when I was watching
Speaker 1: this because I was like, oh, well, obviously he's very unwell.
Speaker 1: So the movie is probably like he should probably believe
Speaker 1: in psychology, he'd get something out of it. But that's
Speaker 1: almost definitely not what people would have you believe in two,
Speaker 1: I don't know the other thing for Hope and sometimes
Speaker 1: will go rogue and like doesn't have a high opinion
Speaker 1: of cops, and so I'm sort of like maybe, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. To whatever degree the movie wants you
Speaker 1: to think that Nick is unwell, every woman you meet
Speaker 1: the movie does want you to think is way more
Speaker 1: unwell and scary. And because they're like you said, Jamie,
Speaker 1: they're all murderers. Like every woman in the movie who
Speaker 1: has more than a line of dialogue is either confirmed
Speaker 1: murderer or for some chunk of the movie, the audience
Speaker 1: is led to believe that she probably is a murderer. Well,
Speaker 1: and they're also all some well actually I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know about Roxy, but they're also all like the
Speaker 1: depraved bisexual to some extent, Right, all the women that
Speaker 1: we're supposed to believe are murderers. I believe I think
Speaker 1: so or or you know, yes, except again, we don't
Speaker 1: know if Roxy is bisexual or she's we don't know,
Speaker 1: right right right, movie doesn't care. But between like Catherine
Speaker 1: who you could argue that the ending is ambiguous, but
Speaker 1: also pretty clear that yes, she was the killer all along. Beth,
Speaker 1: because of the ambiguity of the ending, is also then
Speaker 1: ambiguous as to whether or not she was a murderer
Speaker 1: of any kind. But at least with my read of
Speaker 1: the movie, Catherine framed Beth. But even so, Beth is
Speaker 1: a character who seems to be withholding information and she
Speaker 1: still seems to be like devious in some way, and
Speaker 1: we can kind of we can get into that more
Speaker 1: in a bit. But then there's Roxy, who we learned
Speaker 1: killed her two young brothers when she was a teenager
Speaker 1: because she just felt an impulse to kill and she
Speaker 1: tried to kill Nick by running him over with a car,
Speaker 1: So she's a confirmed murderer. Roxy is troped literally to
Speaker 1: death in Safe. And then there's this woman Hazel, Hazel
Speaker 1: Dobkins or something, who is a friend of Katherine's who
Speaker 1: also might be in a romantic relationship with Katherine. I
Speaker 1: thought that was so unclear to me, at least in
Speaker 1: a kissing relationship. Yeah, they kiss, and then Catherine calls
Speaker 1: her honey at some point, an implication for movie, right.
Speaker 1: And then Hazel, we learned, killed her husband and three
Speaker 1: small children by stabbing them with a knife, So that's
Speaker 1: not good. I don't think that there's I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's very much like that's where the I mean,
Speaker 1: it's with the depraved bisexual trope, which we just talked about,
Speaker 1: which is a newer concept for us, but we talked
Speaker 1: about it on the A Simple Favor episode. That really
Speaker 1: doesn't work as much for me. But there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of um, there's a bunch of Indians about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: should we get into it? Yeah, let's get I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's so much to talk about there. I had there.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot written about this over the years,
Speaker 1: but the context that you need that I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that it had escalated to this point. But
Speaker 1: the queer community in San Francisco, of which there's obviously
Speaker 1: like a huge historically queer community in San Francisco were
Speaker 1: not happy when this movie was being made. When they
Speaker 1: were filming in San Francisco, the production called in the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Police Department riot police every day, which is
Speaker 1: almost certainly a gigantic overreaction, but the queer community was
Speaker 1: protesting significantly. They were holding signs that said honk if
Speaker 1: you love the forty niners and honk if you love men,
Speaker 1: which is very funny. Um, but they basically did everything
Speaker 1: they could to stop the movie from being filmed cogently,
Speaker 1: like they used lasers and whistles to interfere with the
Speaker 1: filming of the movie. And one of the producers of
Speaker 1: the movie, Alan Marshall, allegedly selected individual protesters and demand
Speaker 1: they'd be arrested, which is um fucked up. And then
Speaker 1: the protesters did a citizen's arrest of the producer, which
Speaker 1: came to nothing because the cops don't give a ship.
Speaker 1: But all that to say, like this was at no
Speaker 1: point was the issue with the depraved bisexual troops in
Speaker 1: this movie not an issue like before it came out,
Speaker 1: it was a very controversial thing. Verhoven I guess defended
Speaker 1: the protesters right to protest, but disagreed because it's his movie.
Speaker 1: Um So, how this kind of is played out is
Speaker 1: as time passes, as time famously does. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are still you know, very for on
Speaker 1: the like this is extremely biphobic in a way that
Speaker 1: is not reclaimable. And then there are queer writers and
Speaker 1: filmmakers who have found prose and reclaimable elements to it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that's the context. So what's happening in
Speaker 1: the in the movie itself is that it's playing into
Speaker 1: stereotypes about bisexual people, such as that bisexual people are promiscuous,
Speaker 1: they are untrustworthy, they are immoral cheaters, the cheaters, And
Speaker 1: then the movie takes it a step further and says,
Speaker 1: any queer woman is an evil murderer who will just
Speaker 1: snap at the drop of a hat and murder without motive,
Speaker 1: just because they had the impulse to do it. That
Speaker 1: was so wow. They're like, yeah, she just saw a
Speaker 1: razor and was like, let's do this. Baby. You're like, what,
Speaker 1: I don't want it to go to waste. I have
Speaker 1: to kill someone with a the sharp object that's near me.
Speaker 1: And yet like, and Jamie, you're a girl boss expert.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm asking you. Is there anything more
Speaker 1: a girl boss than being a sexually motivated female murderer
Speaker 1: of men? Exactly, Ladies, I've been saying this, um, women's
Speaker 1: empowerment means getting away with murder. I wish I was
Speaker 1: my thora nosed T shirts and the male I don't
Speaker 1: have it yet, but and making men fear for their
Speaker 1: right to have sex. It is so like, it's so messy,
Speaker 1: it's so many Like. I found a piece written by
Speaker 1: a queer filmmaker named Adam Morrison who's kind of like
Speaker 1: went to bat for this movie in and I thought, like,
Speaker 1: and also while acknowledging the clear biphobic issues, because also contextually,
Speaker 1: it's important to remember that Basic Instincts came out at
Speaker 1: a time where queer representation in general was kind of
Speaker 1: like an all time low, while the AIDS crisis was ongoing.
Speaker 1: Um like the Silence of the Lambs had come out
Speaker 1: the previous year, which the queer community was kind of
Speaker 1: like rightfully on high alert about how they were being
Speaker 1: represented in film because it was egregiously bad. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he he writes a quote, if we're dying of a plague,
Speaker 1: can't get married, can't adopt, can get fired or evicted.
Speaker 1: If anyone finds out our sexual orientation, why on earth
Speaker 1: will be supportive film that paints us as nothing more
Speaker 1: than He then would like to funk hard and then
Speaker 1: stab each other unquote. But then he counterpoints that twenty
Speaker 1: four years later by saying the following, which I thought was,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I I don't I truly don't
Speaker 1: know where I fall here, but he says, uh, quote,
Speaker 1: when was the last time you saw a movie where
Speaker 1: a gay character was the wealthiest person in the room?
Speaker 1: Katherine Trammels worth a hundred million? When was the last
Speaker 1: time you saw a movie where a gay character was
Speaker 1: the smartest person in the room? One was last time
Speaker 1: you saw a gay character be the most successful? Catherine's
Speaker 1: books are best sellers. When was the last time a
Speaker 1: gay character was all three of those things that once?
Speaker 1: Probably never? And then he sort of goes on to
Speaker 1: like draw this comparison of like, she has these godlike qualities,
Speaker 1: she's kind of like omnipotent, She's she can outwit literally anyone,
Speaker 1: and in the end, for her purposes, she wins. She
Speaker 1: gets away with it. Um, so she's not punished or
Speaker 1: killed off, and so, which I think is like an
Speaker 1: interesting read of the movie. I don't know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that to me is just like, well, when representation
Speaker 1: invisibility is low and bad, all you can do is
Speaker 1: grasp at the crumbs. And that's what that feels like. Well,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, I mean, I'm not suggesting that any of
Speaker 1: that was intended in text, but I do understand that
Speaker 1: argument also, sure, Sure, and then to break down the
Speaker 1: various relationships even further, because I kept thinking we were
Speaker 1: going to learn more about Catherine's relationship with Roxy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you never really do you know that they lived together?
Speaker 1: Question mark? I think so right? Or was that Cannon
Speaker 1: and Esther has trying to write them having a quiet
Speaker 1: night at home and Roxy being like is this chicken
Speaker 1: from Thursday night? You know? And like that's another thing.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, like we never see them interact except
Speaker 1: to kiss in a couple of scenes, but we don't.
Speaker 1: There's no dialogue between them, and so this is a
Speaker 1: movie where like if the movie passed the Bechtel test
Speaker 1: between these two characters, that would be great because we
Speaker 1: would know anything about their relationship. But that's where it's like,
Speaker 1: it's so early nineties where I bet that the writer,
Speaker 1: who what's the writer's name again, Joe Ester, has really
Speaker 1: thought he was doing something by like making her well
Speaker 1: educated and like giving us a lot of information about
Speaker 1: her at the top, but we never yeah, like we
Speaker 1: never get information about and I don't think that it
Speaker 1: would have taken away from the non mystery of this movie,
Speaker 1: which is that she did it and we see it
Speaker 1: in the first scene to flesh out that relationship a
Speaker 1: little bit more. I think it actually would have helped
Speaker 1: the point later where it's like she's saying, like, I, I,
Speaker 1: you know, really cared about Roxy. Like that's the first
Speaker 1: person we see her have a reaction to the depth
Speaker 1: of it all. And so if we saw that that,
Speaker 1: I don't think it would have hurt anything, right, because
Speaker 1: what that does. So when we see Catherine learned that
Speaker 1: Johnny Boss is killed, she doesn't cry. She barely bats
Speaker 1: an eyelash. She's just like, yeah, I guess I'm sad
Speaker 1: because I liked fucking him. But when Roxy dies, she's sorry,
Speaker 1: right iconic. When Roxy dies, she's noticeably upset, she's crying,
Speaker 1: she's having what seems to be a genuine react. But
Speaker 1: because we don't know anything about relationship with Roxy, and
Speaker 1: because Catherine told thing is that she's very untrustworthy, we
Speaker 1: don't know if these feelings she's displaying our genuine because
Speaker 1: we don't have any information about Katherine and Roxy's relationship.
Speaker 1: So it's which could be I mean, which I get
Speaker 1: why that would be a noir writing, but I just
Speaker 1: like I find it so ridiculous that you're supposed to
Speaker 1: spend a lot of it's just like it's not just
Speaker 1: like but you know how like the central quote unquote
Speaker 1: mystery of the movie Doubt when it came out was
Speaker 1: like do you think he did it? And you're like,
Speaker 1: it's so obvious that the that the protagonist did the crime?
Speaker 1: Why is that even the discussion like what about all
Speaker 1: other ship going on? Right? So that's all confusing. And
Speaker 1: then Beth is also revealed to be bisexual or by curious.
Speaker 1: We learned that she had a sexual relationship with with
Speaker 1: Katherine in college, and she's also similarly depicted as being untrustworthy.
Speaker 1: And even though she might not have been the murderer
Speaker 1: that we're led to believe she possibly was for a while,
Speaker 1: she's still not forthcoming a lot about a lot of things.
Speaker 1: She seems to be withholding a lot of information. You
Speaker 1: could make the argument that, like, why would she divulge
Speaker 1: her sexual orientation to her police colleagues. They're probably not
Speaker 1: going to accept her if they learned that she is queer,
Speaker 1: And she also seems to carry a lot of shame
Speaker 1: about it too, because that and I feel like that
Speaker 1: is almost like I guess maybe I talking this at
Speaker 1: in real time. There's some kind of like gray area
Speaker 1: where it felt like when the more she acknowledged that
Speaker 1: she was ashamed of having any queer experience, the more
Speaker 1: her kind of redemption arc started to swing back, or
Speaker 1: it seemed like even but which is hard to say
Speaker 1: because Catherine lives and Beth dies, so she is. I mean,
Speaker 1: movies love to kill people named Beth. I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: of little women. Um but but I so, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's that completely scance, but it does like
Speaker 1: she distances herself from any queer experience she's had as
Speaker 1: much as possible, she tells. And I guess it's unclear
Speaker 1: because we only see her around Nick, who we can
Speaker 1: tell wants her to do that, but she it does
Speaker 1: seem like she's genuine when she tells him that whatever
Speaker 1: that weird apartment they're always having sex at is her
Speaker 1: apartment next to the aerobic studio. Of course it's just
Speaker 1: like windows and you're like, yeah, sure, I'm sure a
Speaker 1: police the officer makes this much money. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: she she says that she's like embarrassed by it at
Speaker 1: some point, and then her literal dying words I feel
Speaker 1: like she might as well be saying I was right,
Speaker 1: and then she dies, Like that was what I was
Speaker 1: getting from, because her dying words are looking Michael Douglas
Speaker 1: in the eye and saying I love you. Here's let
Speaker 1: me tell you my theory, because I've watched this movie
Speaker 1: maybe ten times in the past five years, and I
Speaker 1: I think that Catherine was obsessed with Beth and was
Speaker 1: playing the long game to like manipulate her ex boyfriend
Speaker 1: into killing her. And what that means is that Nick
Speaker 1: is sort of meaninglessly caught up in the crossfire of
Speaker 1: Catherine's obsession with Beth, and she's just going to like
Speaker 1: keep him alive a little while longer because he amuses
Speaker 1: her someone or something like that interesting. And now I
Speaker 1: mean he's and he's killed Beth now, so it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so why bother? I mean, she's got to do something
Speaker 1: with her time. There's that's interesting. Like I I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to make of that. I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: have a theory about it, because I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to make of at like, who's single white female? Who? Like?
Speaker 1: Because even in that is an implication that like, in
Speaker 1: order for two women to be interested in each other.
Speaker 1: They have to also be like stealing each other's identity,
Speaker 1: which is just so right, yes, of course, Like it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't just be attracted to someone, you have to
Speaker 1: also want to wear their skin and like have their
Speaker 1: social Security number, which apparently was a very like potent idea. Ino.
Speaker 1: There's two movies where that's a major plot point. But
Speaker 1: even even when um Nick kills Beth, he like the
Speaker 1: last thing he says to her is inherently tied to
Speaker 1: his insecurities about her having had a queer experience, where
Speaker 1: he's like, I know about your husband, you still like girls, Beth,
Speaker 1: And then he kills her, like, and then she says
Speaker 1: I was straight, And then the movie is over. He's
Speaker 1: advancing on her with a gun and he's saying it
Speaker 1: as if it's evidence again that like he's going to
Speaker 1: have to shoot her, right, because maybe she's still likes girls. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like very overt, yeah, and so it's like it's
Speaker 1: only tragic that she dies because maybe she was straight. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's confused because she loved this horrible rapist
Speaker 1: who represents the shriveled ass of compulsory heterosexuality. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's like that is, well, let's did anyone have
Speaker 1: anyone else anything else to say about the depraved bisexual
Speaker 1: trope before we move into the next horror show that
Speaker 1: come right, I'll just add that and let me know
Speaker 1: if you think this has any merit. But I feel
Speaker 1: like this movie also villainizes ethical nonmonogamy in a in
Speaker 1: a way that like stereotypes about polyamory are on display
Speaker 1: and demonized in this movie because it seems to be that,
Speaker 1: for example, Catherine and Roxy's relationship is ethically non monogamous
Speaker 1: because they are together, but Roxy knows about the various
Speaker 1: other people that Catherine is involved with, so they are
Speaker 1: in this ethically non monogamous relationship. But because they both
Speaker 1: end up being murderers, that's just another way in which
Speaker 1: polyamory is demonized. Right. It's the only relationship that I
Speaker 1: can exist between two murderers. Right. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to point that out because I that's something I'd be
Speaker 1: interested in keeping my eye on more, because I feel
Speaker 1: like it's equating ethical non monogamy with with sexual deviant,
Speaker 1: non ethical promiscuity. Yeah, exactly right, Yeah, that's that is
Speaker 1: something that and it's like I feel like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know when that term came into
Speaker 1: the zeite guys, but I would guess it was not right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess. I mean the last thing with Roxy,
Speaker 1: we mentioned this, but like she's very much subject to
Speaker 1: the barrier gaze trope where, yeah, we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: like how she identified before they attribute a fit of
Speaker 1: murderous rage and they kill her, but you know, there
Speaker 1: it is, which also doesn't make sense because like, if
Speaker 1: she wasn't the murderer who killed like Johnny bos, why
Speaker 1: is she? So I love the name Johnny. There are
Speaker 1: some good fake nuts in this movie. Joe Astrohouse is
Speaker 1: a good bad screenwriter. Yeah, but according to Catherine, Roxy
Speaker 1: liked to watch Katherine have sex with men, right, And
Speaker 1: it didn't seem as though Roxy was harboring jealousy until
Speaker 1: Nick comes along, and then, for reasons that go unexplored,
Speaker 1: Roxy's like, well, I'm jealous of Nick and I have
Speaker 1: to kill him by running him over with a car,
Speaker 1: But did you get the feeling? And then we, I know,
Speaker 1: we've got to move on, but like, but did you
Speaker 1: get the feeling? In bathroom confrontation between Roxy and Nick.
Speaker 1: It sort of sounded like maybe she didn't like watching
Speaker 1: because she's she's just like I watched because like Catherine
Speaker 1: tells me too. So it sort of sounded like maybe
Speaker 1: Roxy is getting kind of manipulated by Catherine as well.
Speaker 1: That's fair. I don't know. That was like a fleeting
Speaker 1: moment that goes completely unexamined by the movie, So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a wash. But I sort of was like
Speaker 1: I felt for Roxy in that moment. If I was
Speaker 1: like reading it correctly, I was like, Oh, that sucks,
Speaker 1: Like maybe she doesn't like even which would complicate things
Speaker 1: even more. But I wasn't. I wasn't sure. God boggles
Speaker 1: the mind. Okay, there's still let's let's get the other
Speaker 1: difficult conversation out of the of the way here and
Speaker 1: talk about trigger warning again, talk about the way that
Speaker 1: sexual assault is portrayed in this movie. Again. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm bring too much to it, but I
Speaker 1: was very conflicted about it. Same. So basically what happens
Speaker 1: is there's a scene in which Nick goes home with Beth.
Speaker 1: They start to kiss. It seems to be consensual at first,
Speaker 1: he gets more and more aggressive. She is saying no, repeatedly,
Speaker 1: he does not stop and proceeds to rape her, which
Speaker 1: we see on screen for several seconds, which apparently is
Speaker 1: in the director's cut but not the theatrical cut, which
Speaker 1: makes sense, And I'm glad. I'm kind of glad. I
Speaker 1: I I don't know because if I saw this movie,
Speaker 1: in which I couldn't have, but if I did, like
Speaker 1: I know that, like the basic idea of being raped
Speaker 1: by someone you know and had already been intimate with
Speaker 1: was not like a common thing to be portrayed in movies.
Speaker 1: And I feel like even having that because we've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the show a bit jillion times where
Speaker 1: it's like there's many many movies where the concept of
Speaker 1: rape and a rapist is like a stranger lurking in
Speaker 1: the corner. It's like you don't know who it is.
Speaker 1: It's deeply traumatic, and then they're often too the night
Speaker 1: and it's all very you know, night's dockery. Not to
Speaker 1: say that that doesn't happen, but it is overwhelmingly somebody
Speaker 1: that you already know and very possibly somebody you've already
Speaker 1: been intimate with, And so I thought that that was
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very very upsetting scene, and it
Speaker 1: feels so obviously like textbook rape. She says no, over
Speaker 1: and over and over. And then my read of this
Speaker 1: scene was that she had to protect her like she
Speaker 1: wasn't really able to fight back for her own safety.
Speaker 1: But then the way that that plays out throughout the
Speaker 1: rest of the movie, I thought, like undercut very like
Speaker 1: common thing that happens to mostly women. So in in
Speaker 1: the aftermath, the immediate aftermath of that scene, Lucy Nick
Speaker 1: and Beth talking, she asks about Catherine. She mentions that
Speaker 1: she knew Catherine in college. Then she refers to the
Speaker 1: encounter they just had, saying, you've never been like that before.
Speaker 1: Why and and he says, you know you're the shrink
Speaker 1: you tell me, and she says, you weren't making love.
Speaker 1: It's kind of open to interpretation what she means, Like,
Speaker 1: is she calling him out for forcing himself on her
Speaker 1: and raping her? Or is the movie just not aware
Speaker 1: of what rape is like? It's to me, it's hard,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell Sarah, what's what's your take? I
Speaker 1: think that she's calling him out in the mildest possible way,
Speaker 1: as if he's like put his feet up on her
Speaker 1: coffee table. So you know, it's it's I mean, you
Speaker 1: can interpret that as her saying like that was rough.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. That was too rough for me,
Speaker 1: and that being all the understanding the filmmakers had of this,
Speaker 1: and I would totally buy that and like and then
Speaker 1: maybe they do have more knowledge than that, but it's
Speaker 1: not on display, right, Yeah, and then you know, she
Speaker 1: continues trying to mother him for the rest of the movie,
Speaker 1: and it's never discussed. I also think it's fascinating that
Speaker 1: this movie is taking so many cues from Vertigo, that
Speaker 1: she's totally in the Barbara Bell Getties role and there's
Speaker 1: the same glasses. It's really Yeah, this movie didn't Dare
Speaker 1: have two blonds. Yeah, she's very much Katherine is so
Speaker 1: stylized the way that and I haven't seen that movie
Speaker 1: in a long time, but yeah, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of visual symmetry. Yeah, there's a movie that earned its
Speaker 1: overbearing score, right, a score that's really turning your head
Speaker 1: to what you're supposed to be thinking. I had a
Speaker 1: I had a So I was very mixed up on
Speaker 1: this subject, and so I wanted to know more about
Speaker 1: what the filmmakers. I was like, I assumed that they've
Speaker 1: been asked about this. I didn't get. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't speak to the writer's intent, which I have like
Speaker 1: a quick thing on him. And but just because like
Speaker 1: he's just a weird guy. But Verhoeven specifically has whatever
Speaker 1: themes and things that he returns to in there's movies
Speaker 1: all the time, one of which is women being brutalized
Speaker 1: and sexually assaulted. So there was one press cycle and
Speaker 1: again I'm like, I don't know what to feel about
Speaker 1: any of this. There's a press cycle from a movie
Speaker 1: he did inten called l which I have not seen.
Speaker 1: I guess it's in French, where he was asked kind
Speaker 1: of repeatedly about why this comes up in his movies
Speaker 1: so frequently, and like what is it about this that
Speaker 1: keeps coming up for him? And so this is from
Speaker 1: an interview in Slate from where he's basically just asked, like,
Speaker 1: wire women raped and brutalized in your movie so much?
Speaker 1: He says yeah, because of course, let's say, especially with
Speaker 1: the element of rape, if you look at the statistics,
Speaker 1: they say someone is raped about eighteen hundred or nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred times a day in the United States, So that
Speaker 1: means a rape a minute. If you express that violence,
Speaker 1: then you can only express it in what it is.
Speaker 1: If you aren't honest about that, then I think that's
Speaker 1: very dangerous because then it becomes banal. It makes it
Speaker 1: smaller than it is. It's really something where people are
Speaker 1: traumatized for the rest of their lives. Even the word
Speaker 1: sexual assault is already making it less than it is.
Speaker 1: I think the word rape expresses exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: If you hear rape, you know you're talking about brutal
Speaker 1: violence against women also men, of course, But if you
Speaker 1: use sexual assault, that makes it softer. And so there
Speaker 1: is in general a feeling that I get in the
Speaker 1: United States that it's very dangerous or very not done
Speaker 1: to use the word rape, which is replaced by sexual assault,
Speaker 1: which I think I did, um five minutes ago. Um.
Speaker 1: But I'll have to say, I see what he's saying,
Speaker 1: but I like it's a matter of execution and making
Speaker 1: sure that that is clearly telegraphed in the plot, which
Speaker 1: I think this movie fails at. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that Show Girls actually does a much better job
Speaker 1: of doing what he's saying here. In jest. I still
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen show girls. It's been a request
Speaker 1: for a million years. Yeah, we got it. We'll get
Speaker 1: to it. But it's tricky because I fundamentally agree with
Speaker 1: what he's saying. I just don't think that the execution
Speaker 1: is there in this movie. It's just hard to know
Speaker 1: what the purpose of the scene is. It even has one.
Speaker 1: I don't think it does, like I I know, like
Speaker 1: what function. My My best guess is that because this
Speaker 1: scene takes place right after Nick has gone to see
Speaker 1: Katherine in her home and she was being again very
Speaker 1: fem fatally. She was being very sultry and seductive, and
Speaker 1: I think the movie is suggesting that he's starting to
Speaker 1: fall under her spell and he's getting really horny, and
Speaker 1: he goes and he takes out that horny nows on
Speaker 1: Beth because she's right there, and then it's doing the
Speaker 1: thing where it's conflating her, who's like, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, having lots of sexual adventures with people consensually.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I'm emulating you, Catherine, I'm raping my
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend. And it's like what, no, right, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like there there is this element yeah, of
Speaker 1: like all of Nick's bad behavior is like the subtext
Speaker 1: of it is like, and it's somehow Catherine's fault that
Speaker 1: he's doing all of this because she's infuriating him. She's
Speaker 1: frustrating him, she's like fucking with his head. She's making
Speaker 1: him drink again, she's making him smoke again, like right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's somehow all of his behavior that we know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that blows my minys like that we
Speaker 1: know predates his knowing her by a lot, Like so,
Speaker 1: but now he has the perfect person to blame everything on. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I also love how she's like superpowered for a woman.
Speaker 1: Like they have a part where Nick is listing all
Speaker 1: of her assets basically, and he's like, she fox rock
Speaker 1: stars and boxers, she has a hundred million dollars, she
Speaker 1: writes books, and she has a degree and messing with
Speaker 1: people's heads. And it's like, yeah, it seems like he
Speaker 1: finally found a worthy adversary, a woman who's got enough
Speaker 1: expansion packs to scare you. That's the Michael Douglas plot point.
Speaker 1: I guess, like it's so. And then there's other elements
Speaker 1: of Beth where it's like I just think that Beth
Speaker 1: is such a like poorly developed character because really like
Speaker 1: everything about her hinges on us, assuming that she still
Speaker 1: loves Nick no matter how awful he is in avoid
Speaker 1: also like we don't get any insight into what from
Speaker 1: her past might make her acted to someone so deeply talkic,
Speaker 1: like what there's no attempt because it's like, you see,
Speaker 1: she's she's nagged for her profession in her first moments
Speaker 1: on screen, and then she agrees with him where he's like,
Speaker 1: this is bullshit and you know it. She's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bullshit, but have a seat. You're like, that is
Speaker 1: a funny way to start a therapy session, but we
Speaker 1: got to do it because you're being mandated to do this,
Speaker 1: not because you clearly need counseling. I hope her. I
Speaker 1: hope my therapist says that to me someday. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is bullshit. She's like, yeah, but I sure I
Speaker 1: sure hoodwinked you out of a lot of money, didn't
Speaker 1: I also, do you guys love the moment where we
Speaker 1: find out that Beth is supposed to have met, potentially
Speaker 1: met Johnny Boss at a Christmas party that her office
Speaker 1: made his therapist through and it's like, of course, we're
Speaker 1: living in a world where therapists invite their patients to
Speaker 1: their Christmas parties. There's no there's no ethical connection between
Speaker 1: people bowl in in this movie. I also, I mean
Speaker 1: that is always an element of like any Norrish movie
Speaker 1: that I have fun with, where it's just like, even
Speaker 1: when it's not necessary, everyone needs to have known each
Speaker 1: other and met each other at some point, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just like a weird stretch like that's not even necessary,
Speaker 1: but just to establish as much suspicion as possible. It's
Speaker 1: like maybe she a friend of a friend of a
Speaker 1: friend of a friend in a Christmas party from could
Speaker 1: be you know, like it's just wild. It is so wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bottom line is the way I mean everything in this
Speaker 1: movie is executed is at best mind boggling, at worst
Speaker 1: extremely harmful. Because again with the rape scene, I think
Speaker 1: you can make the argument that the movie treats this
Speaker 1: as a consensual but you know, maybe more rough than
Speaker 1: best is used to sex scene when in fact is
Speaker 1: rape because she is repeatedly saying and he ignores her,
Speaker 1: and then and then like you're saying, Sarah, she continues
Speaker 1: to look after him and do anything that will support him.
Speaker 1: For the remainder of the movie, and then he kills
Speaker 1: her for having sex with a woman once twenty years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is I guess the legally prescribed penalty for that,
Speaker 1: but you so rarely see it carried out. It is brutal.
Speaker 1: Like it's just brutal. Um. We must also talk about
Speaker 1: the scene. The scene. The scene scene in which Sharon
Speaker 1: Stone's volva is exposed, because Sharon Stone has spoken about
Speaker 1: how she was misled by the director who told her
Speaker 1: that it would not be visible on camera. There's an
Speaker 1: article in Vanity Fair by Sharon Stone. It's an excerpt
Speaker 1: from her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice. The article
Speaker 1: is called you Can't Shame Me Sharon Stone on how
Speaker 1: Basic Instinct nearly broke her before making her a star.
Speaker 1: So she talks about this, and I'll just quote this article.
Speaker 1: She says, quote after we shot Basic Instinct, I got
Speaker 1: called in to see it, not on my own with
Speaker 1: the director, as one would anticipate, but with a room
Speaker 1: full of agents and lawyers, most of whom had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the project. That was how I saw
Speaker 1: my vagina shop for the first time, long after I've
Speaker 1: been told we can't see anything. I just need you
Speaker 1: to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light,
Speaker 1: so we know you have panties on. Yes, there have
Speaker 1: been many points of view on this topic, but since
Speaker 1: I'm the one with the vagina in question, let me
Speaker 1: say the other points of you are bullshit, Sharon. She says,
Speaker 1: now here's the issue. It didn't now here's the issue.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter anymore. It was me and my parts
Speaker 1: up there. I had to decisions to make. I went
Speaker 1: to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left,
Speaker 1: went to my car and called my lawyer, Marty Singer.
Speaker 1: Marty told me they could not release the film as
Speaker 1: it was, that I could get an injunction first. At
Speaker 1: that time, this would give the film an X rating.
Speaker 1: And Marty said, per the Screen Actors Guild, my union,
Speaker 1: it wasn't legal to shoot up my dress in this fashion.
Speaker 1: Who I thought? Then Sharon goes on to say that
Speaker 1: she gave it more consideration and tried to be objective
Speaker 1: about it. And then I'm quoting again. After the screening,
Speaker 1: I let Paul know of the options Marty had laid
Speaker 1: out for me. Of course, he vehemently denied that I
Speaker 1: had any choices at all, I was just an actress,
Speaker 1: just a woman. What choices could I have? But I
Speaker 1: did have choices, So I thought and thought, and I
Speaker 1: chose to allow this scene in the film. Why because
Speaker 1: it was correct for the film and for the character,
Speaker 1: and because after all, I did it unquote. So that's
Speaker 1: and and I mean, Sharon Rocks, I like that is horrifying.
Speaker 1: Verhoven responded in denial that this had happened. But it's like,
Speaker 1: I very much believe Sharon, not just because I believe Sharon,
Speaker 1: but also because she was already so disempowered in this
Speaker 1: creative process and that was already so well established. Was
Speaker 1: like that she was not being paid well, like she
Speaker 1: was not being treated like an equal collaborator on the
Speaker 1: scale that you know certainly Michael Douglas was, or that
Speaker 1: a lot of people involved in this movie was were
Speaker 1: So that totally scams for me. That it's like she
Speaker 1: would be mistreated and her desire to not have to
Speaker 1: flash her vagina on screen and also be like duped
Speaker 1: into doing it would be something that they would try
Speaker 1: to get away with because they already got away with
Speaker 1: so much. And I think that there's that's that kind
Speaker 1: of assumption from especially like in acting, but in a
Speaker 1: lot of industries where you're like quote unquote pay your
Speaker 1: dues by being abused by someone who has more power
Speaker 1: than you. Because in that same section, Sharon talks about
Speaker 1: how she felt like a lot a lot of the
Speaker 1: odds were against her. She was not she was like
Speaker 1: the twelve choice for this role. Michael Douglas didn't want
Speaker 1: to work with her, Like there were all of these
Speaker 1: things stacked against her, and then to be manipulated into like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's so fucking bleak. I'm glad that she
Speaker 1: like got the last word on it, because yeah, it
Speaker 1: just it sucks that she just felt so disempowered to
Speaker 1: the point where she's like, well, what choice do I
Speaker 1: have but to just let this be in the movie,
Speaker 1: because yeah, she She also describes in this article various
Speaker 1: Hollywood horror stories producers and directors condescending to her, harassing her.
Speaker 1: Her manager at the time told her that she wouldn't
Speaker 1: get hired for a part like Basic Instinct because she
Speaker 1: was not sexy or quote fukable. Um, she was she
Speaker 1: always like. She also talks about how she was considered
Speaker 1: to be difficult because she would speak out against being
Speaker 1: mistreated and that she would like refuse to have sex
Speaker 1: with her co star of a movie after a producer
Speaker 1: suggested they have sex because it would give them better
Speaker 1: on screen chemistry, and she said, no, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that, and then she was labeled difficult by
Speaker 1: people and all this kind of stuff. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I I completely believe Sharon. And there are just all
Speaker 1: these other examples of movies where the director misleads the actors,
Speaker 1: often women, to get a particular shot or to get
Speaker 1: a reaction that seems more genuine. There there I remember
Speaker 1: Kubrick and Shelley Duval. I feel like it's the most famous.
Speaker 1: There was also, um a scene from them that movie
Speaker 1: Last Tango in Paris. A story broke about that a
Speaker 1: few years ago that really I forget specifically what it
Speaker 1: is and I'd have to go back and read it.
Speaker 1: But a woman was assaulted as the camera was rolling
Speaker 1: and was not told what was going to be happening
Speaker 1: in the middle of the scene so that the director
Speaker 1: could get like a genuine reaction out of her. It
Speaker 1: was something I might have some details a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd have to double check on some details,
Speaker 1: but it was something along those lines, and so there's
Speaker 1: there's various examples of actors and again especially women being
Speaker 1: mistreated as cameras are rolling, being assaulted as cameras are rolling,
Speaker 1: all this stuff happening without their knowledge or consent, just
Speaker 1: so this aw tour can like see his vision come
Speaker 1: to life or whatever, you know, some bullshit excuse which
Speaker 1: is like not just abusive, it's like Sharon Stone is
Speaker 1: right there, like she collaborate with her. You've got fucking
Speaker 1: Sharon White. I hate it. It's awful. So justice for Sharon.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very excited to read Sharon's book too. One
Speaker 1: of the last things I have here in my notes
Speaker 1: that again I feel like I'm only scratching the surface
Speaker 1: of But um, you'll never believe it. But this is
Speaker 1: another movie with mostly white people in the cast, which
Speaker 1: is predictable. But like, also, this is San Francisco in
Speaker 1: the nineties, This is not like this is a very
Speaker 1: diverse area. Yes, for fox sake, the few people of
Speaker 1: color in the movie are minor characters with very few
Speaker 1: lines of dialogue, no real narrative impact. They're relegated to
Speaker 1: the sidelines, and all the major players are white people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like, ultimately, like this movie has got a
Speaker 1: very weird legacy where there's plenty to talk about inside
Speaker 1: of it, but mostly it's the kind of movie where
Speaker 1: people mostly take away uh single shot versus at any
Speaker 1: sort of like it doesn't seem like this movie, even
Speaker 1: though there's like all of this like very era specific
Speaker 1: history involved. People mostly just remember a scene where Sharon
Speaker 1: Stone was being coerced into doing something she didn't want
Speaker 1: to do and it was hailed as the sexiest thing
Speaker 1: ever committed to film. There's also a there's a good
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair piece about sort of how that shot and
Speaker 1: like the scene had a an impact on um porn
Speaker 1: for decades after that, and like the ripple effect of
Speaker 1: that scene alone is significant. I think the ripple effect
Speaker 1: of like the unexamined biphobia in this movie. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is a very influential movie. Like the stuff that they
Speaker 1: got wrong here did carry on for for some time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a tricky one. Do you guys want
Speaker 1: to know all the actresses that turned down the role
Speaker 1: of Catherine? Do I? Ever? Yeah? I I also have
Speaker 1: this list. So I'm gonna put forward two guesses, And
Speaker 1: by guesses, I mean I think I kind of remember
Speaker 1: this list. Okay, wait, let me guess a few. Jodie Foster,
Speaker 1: Michelle Phiffer, Kelly McGillis, Michelle Phiffers, one, Meg Ryan, Meg
Speaker 1: Ryan one, Wow, Killia Roberts, Yes, whoa Okay, Kim Basinger
Speaker 1: was Michael Douglas's pick. She said no, Gretta Scotchy who that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure who that is. That was like the
Speaker 1: one day Miles my British. I think Gina Davis said
Speaker 1: no fucking way. Kathleen Turner said no way, Kelly Lynch,
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is. Ellen Barkin said no,
Speaker 1: maryel Hemingway said no. And I guess Demi Moore was considered,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if she was ever asked. And
Speaker 1: as you alluded to, Jamie, Michael Douglas was really reluctant
Speaker 1: to work with Sharon Stone because she didn't have any
Speaker 1: star power at the time. This was before where she
Speaker 1: this movie made her a star. And also she was like,
Speaker 1: this is my star power, bitch, right, So Michael Douglas
Speaker 1: didn't want to work with her because she wasn't in
Speaker 1: a list celebrity at that point, and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm an A list or, and if this movie is
Speaker 1: received poorly, I need to have another A list or
Speaker 1: to take the fall so that all the blame doesn't
Speaker 1: get on me. Like I'm not taking the only l
Speaker 1: on this movie that might suck, which I get, but
Speaker 1: it's like, come on, Sharon, Sharon, Sharon, get a grip.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that's really about all I had
Speaker 1: written down. Lease, does anyone have any other thoughts about
Speaker 1: the film? I mean, I'm gonna go on this movie forever,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to say no. I guess I will
Speaker 1: say that ultimately, I am pro Sharon Stone, and I'm
Speaker 1: happy that this movie created a launch add for her
Speaker 1: to do more of what she wanted to in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think it belongs to a museum. I mean,
Speaker 1: it has that going for it. It really expresses like
Speaker 1: a lot of the fear around gender roles in the
Speaker 1: early nineties and sort of the way that heteronormativity was
Speaker 1: responding to the lightest prodding. Yeah, I'm happy that we're
Speaker 1: all equally speachless about it. Yeah, I'm ultimately, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know a lot of bad stuff going on. I Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like the legacy of this movie
Speaker 1: is kind of like net in terms of like the
Speaker 1: tropes that like really really continued or popularized. It's got
Speaker 1: kind of a net negative effect. But how much of
Speaker 1: that isn't It's just all very messy. We've spent two
Speaker 1: hours talking about it and I still have no fucking
Speaker 1: clue how I feel. Um. But does it pass the fact?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. The two women do interact when
Speaker 1: Roxy and Katherine kiss each other a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and it's implied they were having a conversation that Michael
Speaker 1: Douglas walks into, but we don't actually hear any of
Speaker 1: their dialogue, and then Roxy walks away, so we never
Speaker 1: see them actually speak on screen. And I think those
Speaker 1: are the only two women who interact in the whole movie.
Speaker 1: There's Hazel Dopkins and Katherine, but I don't see them
Speaker 1: talking to each other either. No, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: scenes where there's a kiss and no dialogue, or a
Speaker 1: boob squish and no dialogue, or I think there might
Speaker 1: be one part where Katherine says something to uh, wait,
Speaker 1: what's her name, Hazel, and she calls her honey. She says, honey,
Speaker 1: I'll be right with you, or something, but then Hazel
Speaker 1: doesn't respond, you know, things like that. So there afore
Speaker 1: women in this movie, and they're all convicted or potential murderers.
Speaker 1: I mean I do honestly, I like that. I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely ridiculous. And yes, this movie is a net negative.
Speaker 1: And yet the fact that all of the female characters
Speaker 1: in this movie who have any kind of impact are
Speaker 1: actual or probable murderers is kind of amazing. You don't
Speaker 1: kept that a lot. I do it Like it's like
Speaker 1: the camp element is hard to deny with this movie.
Speaker 1: It's like it's hard to there. I wanted to give
Speaker 1: a quick shout out to the women who plays Hazel,
Speaker 1: who's an oscar winning actress, Dorothy Malone. Hello Dorothy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this basic Instinct was her last on screen appearance before
Speaker 1: she died. But she she before she retired, Sorry because
Speaker 1: she she just died a couple of years ago. But
Speaker 1: she's in the big sleep. She won an oscar in
Speaker 1: ninety six for a movie called Written on the Wind,
Speaker 1: which I've never heard of, but she she won an
Speaker 1: oscar the Hudson Fantastic and then she was a big
Speaker 1: success on TV. She was on Peyton Place in the sixties.
Speaker 1: So it turns out she was a terrifically successful actor
Speaker 1: and this was her last movie, So shout out Dorothy Malone.
Speaker 1: Sorry you didn't get I don't think a single line
Speaker 1: of dialogue. Really. I think she called him a shooter once,
Speaker 1: so yeah, she's like, oh, you're the shooter, aren't you.
Speaker 1: And then but sorry, you didn't get a whole scene.
Speaker 1: Like imagine being an Oscar winning actress and they're like, um,
Speaker 1: you're essentially a glorified extra. Yeah, so have fun with
Speaker 1: that and uh, you know, make your own movie. I
Speaker 1: guess there, which which brings us to our rating system,
Speaker 1: the nipple scale zero to five nipples, based on how
Speaker 1: the movie fares looking at it through an intersectional feminist lens. Well,
Speaker 1: even though there are things that are arguably reclaimable about specifically,
Speaker 1: I would say Sharon Stone's character, I'm just not in
Speaker 1: a place where I feel fully comfortable doing that, although
Speaker 1: isolating a few lines of her monologues where she's like,
Speaker 1: I like fucking, I like men who give me pleasure.
Speaker 1: I like fingers and hands. I want to just like
Speaker 1: tweet that out is like red classic sex fingers in hand.
Speaker 1: I want her to get together with Wayne Knight. I
Speaker 1: like it when she tells the cops she says something
Speaker 1: like I don't feel like talking anymore, so unless you're
Speaker 1: going to arrest me, you can get the funk out
Speaker 1: of here, and they're like, I can't argue with that, okay,
Speaker 1: so we got to get the funk out of here.
Speaker 1: I love it when she's like, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Was smoking and they're like, well, dog got it. She's
Speaker 1: because stopped us right in our tracks. We don't know
Speaker 1: what to say to that. Another another thing that is
Speaker 1: spoofed in Hotshots part do so I gotta And I
Speaker 1: also like the moment, like there's just certain moments where
Speaker 1: it's like she's being villainized, but also her reaction to
Speaker 1: anything that is like a suggestion of typical heterosexual domesticity
Speaker 1: results in her getting angry or violent, which I kind
Speaker 1: of do. Like that scene at the end where he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, we're gonna fucking pop out a couple
Speaker 1: of kids and get married, and her response is to
Speaker 1: like clutch an ice pick, like that's kind of cool,
Speaker 1: Like there he goes, we can fuck like minx, have
Speaker 1: a few rug rats and live happily ever after. And
Speaker 1: then she's like, she's like, I hate rug Rats and
Speaker 1: then she's like clearly fondling her ice pick, ready to
Speaker 1: like stab him. And then he's like, forget the rug Rats,
Speaker 1: we can just funck like Minx and live happily ever after.
Speaker 1: And then she takes her hands off the ice pick
Speaker 1: because apparently she was going to kill him if he
Speaker 1: wanted to have children with her, which is kind of
Speaker 1: who wants kids? But that like that's a cool moment.
Speaker 1: I don't know how boy, he would not be a
Speaker 1: good dad. I bet she's going to kill him like
Speaker 1: four days later, right, because do you feel like he's
Speaker 1: on condition of not making her board right his day?
Speaker 1: His days are extremely numbered. I feel like it's very clear.
Speaker 1: But inter Caitlin was he'sier, what is your rating for? Okay?
Speaker 1: So even though there are things, they're very isolated things
Speaker 1: I like about the character of Catherine Trammel and Sharon
Speaker 1: Stone's performance, I would say, overall, like you said, Sarah,
Speaker 1: this is a net negative movie between the villainizing of
Speaker 1: a woman's sexuality being open and liberated between the depraved
Speaker 1: bisexual trope. Because like gosh By, Visibility was extremely low
Speaker 1: and still is. But in the early nineties it was
Speaker 1: basically absent, and if it was there, it was being
Speaker 1: villainized in very harmful ways, much like what Basic Instinct does.
Speaker 1: So there's all these harmful things that the movie does. Um.
Speaker 1: And it is too long. Um. But the score is
Speaker 1: memorable and the plot is convoluted and um. According to
Speaker 1: this movie, all women are murderers and they will have
Speaker 1: no motive. They will just decide to murder, I mean,
Speaker 1: for no reason. Okay, UM, So I'm going to give
Speaker 1: the movie with all that in mind, I'll give it
Speaker 1: one nipple, and I'll give it to Sharon Stones nipple
Speaker 1: which we see many times. And it's a great one too.
Speaker 1: There's two. There's two of them. There's two of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll match you there. I feel like ice.
Speaker 1: I see why some of the camp here, isolated moments
Speaker 1: are reclaimed. And I also had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: and really appreciated that. Also, you know, there's I don't
Speaker 1: think I have anything new to new to add. I
Speaker 1: think that I'm gonna meet you at one and I'm
Speaker 1: going to give my nipple to um Hazel because she
Speaker 1: should have had more lines or lines true, Sarah, I
Speaker 1: am also going to give it one nipple, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to give it to Sharon Stone, so now she
Speaker 1: has three nipples. And yeah, because I think she's just great.
Speaker 1: And at this point, I've seen this movie enough times
Speaker 1: that I can guess kind of enjoy the idea of
Speaker 1: this like freewheeling murderer who likes to go around announcing
Speaker 1: herself as a murderer to men who just continually are like, what, no,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I'll be fine. I'm different. And
Speaker 1: how that just is what she does for a hobby apparent.
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting. I love that for her. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you have a hundred ten million dollars, We've
Speaker 1: got to find another place for you to put this energy. Girl,
Speaker 1: Like there's she could be doing so much like a magazine.
Speaker 1: I was kind of hoping I wasn't able to find one,
Speaker 1: but you know how like sometimes when there's like a
Speaker 1: famous writer in a like oh, Gone Girl is a
Speaker 1: good example, the fake book and Gone Girl was a
Speaker 1: real book that was sold like amazing amy, And I
Speaker 1: was hoping that Catherine's books, like the fake novelizations of
Speaker 1: the Katherine Trammel books were somewhere, but I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find them. That would have been amazing. It's not
Speaker 1: too late to hire one of us two ghost right then? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know my next project. Well, Sarah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us, Thank you so much, Thank you
Speaker 1: for exploring this. This is strange, beast, this is really fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you for bringing us this movie. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we talked about it. And you know, hopefully if you
Speaker 1: are a listener watching this movie, you're just as confused
Speaker 1: as we are. Uh, Sarah, Where can people check out
Speaker 1: your stuff? Follow you on social media? Plug away, you
Speaker 1: can hear me and You're wrong about and you can
Speaker 1: also hear me on You Are Good and other podcasts
Speaker 1: from time to time. And I'm trying to not use
Speaker 1: social media so much, so I find me there if
Speaker 1: you must, but I shan't encourage you. Perfect. You can
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter and Instagram, which you know what,
Speaker 1: I'd encourage it, but you don't have to do whatever
Speaker 1: you want. Sometimes we get stressed out and we don't
Speaker 1: check it, so I don't get mad if we don't
Speaker 1: reply right away, right, But yeah, you can follow us
Speaker 1: there at Bechtel cast. You can also subscribe to our
Speaker 1: We would definitely encourage this. Subscribing to our Matreon at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash backtel Cast. It gets you too
Speaker 1: bonus episodes every month plus access to the whole back
Speaker 1: catalog of bonuses, and it is five dollars per month.
Speaker 1: And you can also get merch at t public dot
Speaker 1: com slash the PacTel Cast if that's something that you
Speaker 1: are in the mood to do. And with that, I
Speaker 1: want to say, wait, what is that line again? I
Speaker 1: the my favorite line in the movie that Magnicum Laude pussy, Yes,
Speaker 1: Friday up your brain. Let's um, let's take our Magnicum
Speaker 1: Laude Pussy's out of Bye bye bye