Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: The questions asked if movies have women and them, are
Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they
Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, ZEFFI bast start changing with
Speaker 2: the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 1: I welcome to the Bechdel Cast. I am Illuminati, horny
Speaker 1: overlord of the secret sex called Caitlyn Durante.
Speaker 3: And I'm Caitlyn's friend Jamie, and welcome and welcome to
Speaker 3: our sex party. You might notice our titties are out.
Speaker 3: That's going to keep happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh. Welcome
Speaker 3: to the Bechtel Cast. I'm Jamie, and this is our
Speaker 3: show where we take a look at your favorite movies
Speaker 3: using an intersexual feminist lens, which will be so fun today,
Speaker 3: using the buck Still test as a jumping off point
Speaker 3: for discussion. But Caitlin, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. It's a media metric created by queer
Speaker 4: cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Many versions of the test. The one
Speaker 4: that we use requires that two characters of a marginalized
Speaker 4: gender have names, they must speak to each other, and
Speaker 4: their conversation must be about something other than a man.
Speaker 4: So we'll just see about that for this movie, which
Speaker 4: is Eyes Wide Shut a Christmas movie? A Christmas movie,
Speaker 4: I really do.
Speaker 3: I mean it is a Christmas movie. This, I you know,
Speaker 3: not to be all twenty twelve about it, because I
Speaker 3: feel like in twenty twelve people love to be like,
Speaker 3: did you know Diehard is a Christmas movie? And it's
Speaker 3: like calmed enough, you know, find a new struggle.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In any case, Eyes Bideshut is canonically a Christmas movie.
Speaker 3: I don't think the source material is.
Speaker 4: But the source material takes place during Marty Gras.
Speaker 3: Oh oh right, yes, so h no, but Stanley Kuprick
Speaker 3: loves a twinkly little light excuse and so he's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we got to get these tongs and it looks beautiful.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to talk about this movie. So let's
Speaker 3: just get into it. Let's get our guests in here
Speaker 3: for crying out loud.
Speaker 4: Yes, let's He is a comedian host of the podcast Upgood.
Speaker 4: You remember him from our episode on The Little Mermaid.
Speaker 4: It's Honey Pluton.
Speaker 5: Hello, I'm so happy to be back.
Speaker 3: Welcome back.
Speaker 6: I know I feel like The Little Mermaid to Eyes
Speaker 6: White Shut, Pipeline doesn't really exist.
Speaker 5: So I am glad.
Speaker 6: I mean maybe there's some similarities I guess within maybe
Speaker 6: the curious misogyny of both movies perhaps, but that kind
Speaker 6: of exists throughout media, you know.
Speaker 5: Sure Incarnate, I.
Speaker 3: Think you're you're innovating the space today. This pipeline will
Speaker 3: exist after today. Yeah, so thanks for joining U tells
Speaker 3: what your your relationship to this movie is.
Speaker 6: I watched it for the first time last year, actually
Speaker 6: because I think it was one of the only Kubrick
Speaker 6: movies I had never seen, and I really was immediately enchanted.
Speaker 6: Upon first viewing last year and then watching it again
Speaker 6: over the past two days, I really just fell deeper
Speaker 6: and deeper in lust with the movie.
Speaker 5: To be honest, I.
Speaker 6: Think it's just like it's so hot, it's so freaky.
Speaker 6: I love Tom Cruise. It's such I want to know
Speaker 6: if y'all were Tom Cruise heads. Do y'all like him?
Speaker 4: Okay, we setting aside his not.
Speaker 3: Ethically but performance wise yes of course.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 6: Yeah, scientology, I mean it's so and like also thinking
Speaker 6: about their relationship, like pop culturally, it's such a fun movie,
Speaker 6: I know, I just thinking about the infamous picture of
Speaker 6: Nicole Kidman divorce off.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the picture. No, Oh my god, show
Speaker 3: me pull it up. It's a famous picture of Nicole
Speaker 3: Kitman walking out of her lawyer's office the day she
Speaker 3: divorced Tom Cruise. And it's like the most raw joy
Speaker 3: you've ever seen on a human faith.
Speaker 6: It's like her hands are down at her side, palms open,
Speaker 6: her chest like solar plexus is outstretched, and her face
Speaker 6: is just that of like joy and relief, radiating a sigh.
Speaker 3: And for some reason it's was taken from multiple angles.
Speaker 4: But I bet every paparazzi in the world was just like,
Speaker 4: outside ready for that.
Speaker 3: Wait, Caitlyn, pull this up. It's so amazing.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at it too. Oh, it's so wow. It's
Speaker 5: so good.
Speaker 3: I've wanted to get a framed photo of that for
Speaker 3: my house for a while. Oh my god, that would
Speaker 3: be a great Halloween costume.
Speaker 6: I was just gonna say, yeah, it's really it's a
Speaker 6: signature look.
Speaker 4: Yeah, amazing. But yeah, despite Nicole Kidman hating being married
Speaker 4: to him and his horrible personal life, I do tragically
Speaker 4: love Tom Cruise movies.
Speaker 3: He's got the juice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's an amazing actor.
Speaker 6: He really does have the risk and how much taller
Speaker 6: is she than him?
Speaker 3: I think Nicole Kidman's like five ten, five eleven, She's
Speaker 3: pretty tall.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I really love the movie magic that's present where they're
Speaker 6: always at eye level to one another.
Speaker 3: I know, I was like, I wonder at whose insistence
Speaker 3: that was impossible to say, impossible.
Speaker 5: To know there's no way to really get that answer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, men are famously secure, so it's kind of
Speaker 3: you know, yes, but yeah, I mean the performances in
Speaker 3: this movie are I think, both great and weird as
Speaker 3: a terrible weird. I can't wait to talk about this movie.
Speaker 3: So you are a recent convert to the eyes wide
Speaker 3: shut averse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 6: And I watching it again over the past two days,
Speaker 6: I was like, it just is and watching it again
Speaker 6: knowing we were going to be discussing it obviously, I
Speaker 6: was just kind of starting to like call the themes like,
Speaker 6: I'm just really obsessed with how hell bent straight people
Speaker 6: are on infidelity, and I don't know, you know, it's
Speaker 6: like straight people are obsessed with cheating. It's just like
Speaker 6: in this really unique way that obviously is so like
Speaker 6: present within the movie, this like psycho sexual ringer of
Speaker 6: infidelity and how that is like a tether to completely
Speaker 6: unraveling your consciousness and your psyche.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Kind of complicated. I've seen this movie. I think this
Speaker 3: was my third time seeing it. The first time I
Speaker 3: saw it was in college and I was like, that
Speaker 3: movie looks cool. I didn't really understand what was going on,
Speaker 3: but sure, why not? Like I sort of but I
Speaker 3: think this is a movie that really uh ages with you. Well,
Speaker 3: I guess because each subsequent time I've seen it, I
Speaker 3: feel like I've gotten a little bit more out of it.
Speaker 3: And then this time, especially doing some research on the context,
Speaker 3: I feel like I have a totally different feeling about it.
Speaker 3: And I've come around to really appreciating this movie because
Speaker 3: I think, you know, when I saw it, I also
Speaker 3: went in Gina Bloom, guest of the show, did an
Speaker 3: eesweed Shut themed comedy show I think, like last year,
Speaker 3: and I know, so I rewatched it for Gina's show.
Speaker 3: She had the robe. It was great. I'll see if
Speaker 3: fucking dig up a picture of it please. That was
Speaker 3: really fun. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 3: this viewing in particular, especially with the context of the
Speaker 3: source material and really doing a close look. Like I
Speaker 3: just I have like a whole new theory of how
Speaker 3: I what the I think the internal logic of this
Speaker 3: movie is. And yeah, I mean we'll talk about it,
Speaker 3: but it's like I used to be like, what a
Speaker 3: weird movie with stilted performances that are very it's like pretty,
Speaker 3: you know, male gazy, and all of that is true,
Speaker 3: but I feel like I understand sort of the intention
Speaker 3: behind it. And we're like caught in this like Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise fugue state because he's like and that every woman
Speaker 3: like we're seeing the movie I think from like Bill's perspective,
Speaker 3: and women are just bodies that are ciphers to him,
Speaker 3: and so all we see his bodies and blank stares
Speaker 3: from women, not because that's how women are viewed by Kubrick.
Speaker 3: Not to say that he was perfect, but like I
Speaker 3: don't think that that's the values of the movie. But
Speaker 3: I think it's like we're just seeing him how he
Speaker 3: sees women. So it's just vacant stares, robots, sexual propositions,
Speaker 3: and everyone kind of looks like his wife, and everyone
Speaker 3: kind of has a boyfriend that looks like slightly uglier
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise and I just I don't know. I got
Speaker 3: so much out of it this time, and I'm excited
Speaker 3: to talk about it. What's your Street, Kaitlyn.
Speaker 4: I had seen the movie for the first time in
Speaker 4: the Great Caitlin Movie Binge of two thousand and five,
Speaker 4: Never Forget, Never Forget, and I there's a lot I
Speaker 4: didn't remember about it from that first viewing Alan Cumming
Speaker 4: for example, for example, what a jump scare love it.
Speaker 4: I was under the impression that a much larger chunk
Speaker 4: of the movie took place at the like sex cult party,
Speaker 4: because that's kind of the only thing I remembered about
Speaker 4: the movie. So I just sort of assumed, oh, that
Speaker 4: was like most of the.
Speaker 3: Movie, it's mostly Tom Cruise walking around, walking away.
Speaker 4: Okay, I do like this movie. I will say that
Speaker 4: the pacing makes me furious. It's such a slow movie.
Speaker 4: It is one hour longer than it needs to be.
Speaker 4: I could re edit this movie to be a cool
Speaker 4: one hundred minutes. But I do like the you know
Speaker 4: intrigue that it builds, and you know, he goes to
Speaker 4: the party and you're just like, oh my god. And
Speaker 4: then I watched it again last year in a theater
Speaker 4: one of these oh, theaters in La that just like
Speaker 4: screens older movies. I went to one of those and
Speaker 4: saw it and it was partially because so not to
Speaker 4: brag here, but last year around this time, I went
Speaker 4: to a few sex parties we wo we woo, and
Speaker 4: anyone I told this to, which was a lot of people,
Speaker 4: ninety nine percent of them, would be like, oh, like
Speaker 4: an eyes wide shut was it like that? And the
Speaker 4: sex parties I went to were nothing like that, But
Speaker 4: that's like everyone's frame of reference.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you weren't going to some like Illuminati descent of
Speaker 6: the Worswazzi where you're like.
Speaker 3: Right, what are there other I'm trying to think, are
Speaker 3: there other like pop culture touchstones about sex parties or
Speaker 3: is it really we just have been culturally conditioned to
Speaker 3: think that every sex party is the Illuminati, realizing that
Speaker 3: might just be what I thought.
Speaker 6: It's like eyes wide shot are like epscen Island, right,
Speaker 6: It's like that's all that we know, right.
Speaker 4: Right, So these sex parties were nothing like either of
Speaker 4: those things, and it was just like horny, shy people
Speaker 4: going to a party and like trying to talk to
Speaker 4: each other.
Speaker 3: I love it, Yeah, And it sounded like you had
Speaker 3: really good experiences there generally, Yeah, they were fine. I
Speaker 3: almost went once and then bailed because that's my vibe.
Speaker 4: It's a very interesting social experiment to go to a
Speaker 4: sex party, especially if you're by yourself.
Speaker 6: Did you have to answer a secret question like in
Speaker 6: the movie?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they they gave me a series of passwords that
Speaker 4: I had to know.
Speaker 3: I want to be booked at a sex party. I'm
Speaker 3: not like, I don't think I would thrive as a participant,
Speaker 3: but if they have, for if you book local sex
Speaker 3: parties and you're interested in maybe some light stand up comedy.
Speaker 4: Right, So one of the ones I went to has
Speaker 4: a focus on like performance, and most of the performances
Speaker 4: were like sex someone. Yeah they were sexy someone doing
Speaker 4: like pole dancing and things like that. But there was
Speaker 4: one comic and I didn't even know that was an option,
Speaker 4: or else I would have been.
Speaker 6: Like interrupting the Gregorian chance with a tight five.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, just to just to make everyone
Speaker 3: feel safe, that would be. Yeah, that's that's now on
Speaker 3: my cursed gigs wish list.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: It seemed like he had a good time, and then
Speaker 4: I went to I went up to him afterwards, and
Speaker 4: I was like, who books this anyway?
Speaker 3: Look, I mean shows, shows are sparse in LA. Right now.
Speaker 3: The show is a show, a show is a show,
Speaker 3: a gug is a gig.
Speaker 4: Stage time is stage time. Yep, that's true. So anyway, uh,
Speaker 4: people kept being like, oh, why is Wide Shut? Right?
Speaker 4: And then I was like, right, I need to rewatch
Speaker 4: this movie. And that's what prompted me to go to
Speaker 4: see at the theater. And then I watched it a
Speaker 4: couple of times to prep for this. So you know,
Speaker 4: it's now very top of mind and I have a
Speaker 4: lot to say about it. Let's take a quick break
Speaker 4: and then we'll come back to do the recap.
Speaker 3: Let's do it and we're back.
Speaker 4: Okay, So here is the recap of Eyes Wide Shut.
Speaker 4: The first one second of the movie is Nicole Kidman
Speaker 4: taking off her dress and showing her bare ass.
Speaker 3: Yeah okay, look, by our metrics, not a strong start
Speaker 3: from a horny emetric. Amazing start. Nicole Kidman is unbelievable
Speaker 3: levels I've hot in this movie. This is not an
Speaker 3: original observation at all, but oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, she's a star for sure.
Speaker 6: She's like alluring and aloof but still like with it
Speaker 6: and sharp, you know, classic.
Speaker 5: She's a bombshell for sure.
Speaker 3: She's doing so much. Yeah, and I really like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, like, I feel like I was able to
Speaker 3: appreciate her performance so much more this time because she's
Speaker 3: not even acting like a person. She's acting the way
Speaker 3: her husband sees her. It's just like and it's her
Speaker 3: husband and it's.
Speaker 4: Her real life husband, and yeah, and she.
Speaker 3: Secretly wants to divorce it.
Speaker 5: Like, right, did they meet on set? Do you'll have
Speaker 5: that info?
Speaker 4: Not this set?
Speaker 3: No, they'd been married for almost ten years. Yeah, they got.
Speaker 5: Were married for that long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were married. If I'm remembering correctly, they were
Speaker 3: married from nineteen ninety to two thousand and one. So
Speaker 3: this was like so scary, I know, I like, I mean,
Speaker 3: she really earned that fist.
Speaker 5: Yes that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were married for over ten years and they
Speaker 3: met on the side of a different movie I don't
Speaker 3: remember wh okay.
Speaker 4: But also this movie started shooting in nineteen ninety six
Speaker 4: and it famously lasted, so it was like it has
Speaker 4: a Guinness Book of World Records record for like the
Speaker 4: longest consecutive shoot of a movie.
Speaker 3: Or at least an American movie, Stanley Kuper It loves
Speaker 3: to take his time psychologically torture his cast and crew.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 6: And then I like to Caitlyn say that the movie
Speaker 6: was too long. I love a short movie, but I
Speaker 6: think because this movie is literally about time Cruise being
Speaker 6: a cock and like unable to get his nut. It's
Speaker 6: like it's like two and a half hours of him edging,
Speaker 6: like he's unable to ever true.
Speaker 5: I'm like, so I was right.
Speaker 6: I was down to be part of the plotting because
Speaker 6: it really felt like gooning at a certain point, like
Speaker 6: it was edging.
Speaker 3: I was, yeah, I was like, there's a really good
Speaker 3: video essay about this movie by one of my favorite
Speaker 3: YouTuber's Broid Channel, who did a great sort of round
Speaker 3: up of like the history of this production, and yeah,
Speaker 3: part of it was, like, I mean, it definitely was
Speaker 3: speculated that the length of this shoot and the intensity
Speaker 3: of their scenes together did contribute to like the end
Speaker 3: of Cruise and Kidman that like it was just it
Speaker 3: was a lot, but also that like, like speaking to
Speaker 3: your point, honey, that Stanley Kubrick a lot of like
Speaker 3: crew members were like he was really enjoying clucking Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise to the nth degree and like stuff that I
Speaker 3: don't I wouldn't know or remember, but like once she
Speaker 3: said it, I was like, oh, yeah, Like there was
Speaker 3: a lot of speculation around Tom Cruise's sexuality at that time,
Speaker 3: which Kubrick makes sure to explicitly add like and if
Speaker 3: you know, you know, reference of him, you know, being
Speaker 3: like being harassed by a bunch.
Speaker 5: Of all the apps were I was like, right, like that, Yeah,
Speaker 5: that makes sense to me.
Speaker 6: That was like more like a pop cultural like top down,
Speaker 6: let's include this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it felt like he was sort of I mean,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of hard to be like, oh, it
Speaker 3: feels so bad for Tom Cruise, but it was like
Speaker 3: that was pretty harsh because that was changed from the source.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll talk about it, but like the source
Speaker 3: material was changed. It was an anti symmitic group of
Speaker 3: men in the source material, but Kubrick changes it so
Speaker 3: that they're throwing homophobic slurs at a wasp, so it
Speaker 3: seems more like pushed at Tom Cruise specifically, or that's
Speaker 3: what people speculated at the time.
Speaker 5: Got it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So that's the.
Speaker 3: Second one of the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's after the first second of seeing Nicole Kyman's ass.
Speaker 4: So this is Alice. She and her husband. Her husband
Speaker 4: and husband, doctor Bill Harford played by Tom Cruise, and
Speaker 4: their seven year old daughter Helena, live in a very
Speaker 4: nice and large home in New York City. Ever heard
Speaker 4: of it?
Speaker 3: Poor Helena left in the damn dust this.
Speaker 4: So Bill and Alice go to this big, fancy Christmas
Speaker 4: party and are greeted by the host, Victor Ziegler played
Speaker 4: by Sidney Pollock. At the party, Bill recognizes the piano
Speaker 4: player Nick Nightingale, played by sometimes actor, sometimes director of
Speaker 4: tar Todd Field.
Speaker 5: Oh interesting, Wiles, I know, I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't connect that until until afterwards.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And he tells Bill that he'll be playing at
Speaker 4: this club downtown for the next two weeks and that
Speaker 4: Bill should stop by sometimes so that they can catch up. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: Alice is approached by a man named Sanders Savost who
Speaker 4: comes on very strongly and hornile. They dance a bit.
Speaker 4: On the other side of the room, Bill is flirting
Speaker 4: with two young women, these beautiful models.
Speaker 3: Badly, I might add, which is like another like Kober
Speaker 3: Cucking Cruise moment where it's like flirt but do a
Speaker 3: horrible job.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't stop them from being horny for him,
Speaker 4: and they're kind of throwing themselves at him, but he's
Speaker 4: interrupted when the host, Victor Ziegler, summons Bill to tend
Speaker 4: to a woman named Mandy who has just overdosed on
Speaker 4: a combination of heroin and cocaine, and doctor Bill saves
Speaker 4: her life and Victor is like, don't tell anyone about
Speaker 4: this wink. Now downstairs, Alice is still dancing with that
Speaker 4: guy and it's again very horny.
Speaker 6: Her drunk acting, and this part was by what some
Speaker 6: of my favorite scenes in the whole movie, where she's like,
Speaker 6: she's like, so it's kind of like klanapin Baby, where
Speaker 6: she's kind of like Marilyn Monroe, you know what I mean,
Speaker 6: and really taking her time, like it was so so fab.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's so good.
Speaker 4: But she seems to kind of come to her senses
Speaker 4: and she realizes that she needs to find her husband
Speaker 4: and go home. So we cut to Alice naked again.
Speaker 4: She and Bill are back at home and they're kissing
Speaker 4: on the lips. The next day, the two of them
Speaker 4: are going about their lives, Bill at work seeing patients,
Speaker 4: Alice at home with their daughter, and then that night
Speaker 4: Alice and Bill are in bed together doing marijuana. No,
Speaker 4: I know, no, and Alice asks him if he had
Speaker 4: sex with those two hot women he was talking to
Speaker 4: at the party, and he's like, what, No, were they hot?
Speaker 4: I didn't even notice anyway, What about the man you
Speaker 4: were dancing with? And Alice is like, yeah, he wanted
Speaker 4: to fuck me. And then they have a whole conversation
Speaker 4: argument about how men and women approach sex differently, and
Speaker 4: Bill is being very prescriptive and presumptuous about gender roles,
Speaker 4: basically saying women don't think about sex constantly the way
Speaker 4: men do, and Alice is like, oh, really, well, how
Speaker 4: about that time that I saw a naval officer when
Speaker 4: we went on vacation and how I fantasized about ruining
Speaker 4: my wife to be with him for one night. And
Speaker 4: she's like, yeah, I was prepared to like throw everything
Speaker 4: I had away, my my husband, my family, my daughter
Speaker 4: just to be with this guy who I didn't.
Speaker 3: Even meet again. Helena found dead. Na Ditch like justice
Speaker 3: for Helena.
Speaker 5: Literally, she's like, what's for dinner? Though I'm so hungry.
Speaker 5: She's like.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Helena's raising herself. Yes, that I mean, And oh god,
Speaker 3: that seems so good and yeah, this like I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure that there's like commentary to this too that
Speaker 3: you know, like doctor Bill is the primary medical care
Speaker 3: for so many women, and he's like thirty seven and
Speaker 3: just learned that women can be horny, like right for
Speaker 3: not their husband and this I feel like that that moment,
Speaker 3: like his brain is broken. And then my theory is
Speaker 3: the rest of the movie is kind of like a
Speaker 3: dream that he has. I don't believe that's my hot
Speaker 3: digg is I don't believe most of the movie actually happens.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 6: Also in that scene too where they're arguing Nicole Kimman's
Speaker 6: character like she's the only one who's even able to
Speaker 6: tell the truth.
Speaker 5: Like he's so like there's like a filter.
Speaker 6: Between what he thinks he can acquire for himself with
Speaker 6: his sexuality and what he feels confident and able to
Speaker 6: say it. He's just like this, like liar, he he's
Speaker 6: unable to like sacrament anything because he doesn't actually know
Speaker 6: what he wants and he can't put that to words.
Speaker 3: Yeah, feels so tom Cruise coded, Like it's so well cast. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like it's wild, especially like watching it more carefully to
Speaker 3: get ready for this, the like effortlessness that he lives
Speaker 3: with or like takes advantage of his own station power
Speaker 3: how he's perceived. He's like, you have to talk.
Speaker 5: I'm a doctor with his doctor card. I'm a doctor
Speaker 5: like they're cops. No, literally, I'm like, are you like this?
Speaker 5: SVU was so funny doctor.
Speaker 4: Clashing his like medical ID card as if he's like
Speaker 4: an FBI agent, being like, here's my credential.
Speaker 5: Literally, men in black.
Speaker 3: It's so so great.
Speaker 4: Bill is listening to this story that Alice is telling
Speaker 4: about how she fantasized about having an affair with this
Speaker 4: stranger basically, and Bill does not like this story, and
Speaker 4: he thinks about it for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 4: But then he gets a phone call that a patient
Speaker 4: of his, a man named Lou, had just passed away,
Speaker 4: so Bill goes to pay his respects. He's imagining the
Speaker 4: naval officer having sex with his wife on the way,
Speaker 4: and then when Bill gets there, Lou's daughter Marion is sad,
Speaker 4: of course, but she also kisses Bill and tells him
Speaker 4: that she loves him, and he's like, we barely know
Speaker 4: each other. But this like reinforces what Alice had just
Speaker 4: told him. As far as like if you men only
Speaker 4: knew how women are horny too, right, and this.
Speaker 3: Is another moment, and then I hopefully there was like,
Speaker 3: fans of this movie, you are gonna be like Jamie
Speaker 3: is a dumb ass. But I really do like I
Speaker 3: was getting fully pilled as I was watching it this
Speaker 3: time where she's acting irrationally right, her hair is styled
Speaker 3: to look like Nicole Kidman's, and then her husband to
Speaker 3: be shows up and he right his style. He kind
Speaker 3: of like Tom Cruise completely, So I think he's just
Speaker 3: like projecting mirror images everywhere he goes, and like once
Speaker 3: she says it, every woman acts irrationally horny towards him,
Speaker 3: And like, I just think that that conversation with Alice
Speaker 3: breaks his brain and then the rest of his of
Speaker 3: the movie is like him having this weird protracted dream
Speaker 3: trying to process and like failing to process that information.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like that theory.
Speaker 6: I like that too, And it just shows the like
Speaker 6: lack of totality that he sees any women as where
Speaker 6: it's like my wife is, you know, the mother and
Speaker 6: my children. It's kind of this like virginize Mary, and
Speaker 6: then you're you just kind of like like you're saying
Speaker 6: project that onto every other woman that you see, because
Speaker 6: you only understand women as a role that they inherently
Speaker 6: already negotiate with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it's like his own insecurity too, because it's
Speaker 3: like he's lying and almost cheating on her so many times.
Speaker 3: But he never closes too, which I found was interesting.
Speaker 5: He's a he can't close.
Speaker 3: He is he can't close, but he's somehow irrationally presented
Speaker 3: with infinite opportunities. Like I'm just like, this isn't really
Speaker 3: I don't know, I kind of I'm like, is this
Speaker 3: my favorite movie?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's good? It's good?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay. So he leaves the home of this patient
Speaker 4: of his who has just passed away, and a sex
Speaker 4: worker named Domino played by Vanessa Shaw of hocus Pocus fame.
Speaker 3: Oh what a what a career?
Speaker 4: Right? She approaches him and he goes home with her,
Speaker 4: but decides not to go through having sex with her
Speaker 4: because he gets a call from Alice asking when he'll
Speaker 4: be home.
Speaker 5: So a woman's intuition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So he leaves Domino's place and goes to the
Speaker 4: jazz club where his friend Nick Nightingale had mentioned he
Speaker 4: was playing, and Nick tells Bill about this other gig
Speaker 4: he's playing later that night. It doesn't start until two am.
Speaker 4: He won't know the address until like an hour before
Speaker 4: he has to play blindfolded, so it's all very secretive,
Speaker 4: although Nick says he did get a sneak peek last
Speaker 4: time and the women at this party were so hot.
Speaker 6: I think there's a fun moment in that scene too,
Speaker 6: where like a lot of this movie is Tom Cruise
Speaker 6: being really naive, and I think it's like I've been
Speaker 6: trying to like parse out what that is and like
Speaker 6: why this character has such like an intense naivete Where
Speaker 6: like in that scene where where Nick's.
Speaker 5: Like, I'm blindfolded, He's like, what.
Speaker 6: You're playing blindfolded, where it's like he goes for two
Speaker 6: and a half hours, he's just being like defiled and
Speaker 6: defiled and defiled, and it's like unable to meet the
Speaker 6: like libid in that of the world. For some reason,
Speaker 6: he like can't quite find the dance of this like
Speaker 6: defamatory nature of society that he's been so repressed towards
Speaker 6: because he's been like a man who's a doctor with
Speaker 6: a wife and a daughter.
Speaker 3: Right, it's oh, God, he's a Bill is a mystery.
Speaker 3: Yeah not when I not when I'm eager to see solved.
Speaker 5: Defense. I don't care because I don't care about him at.
Speaker 3: All, right, right, like this is whatever's going on with
Speaker 3: him is none of my business. I just like, best
Speaker 3: of luck to Helena. At least their family is rich
Speaker 3: enough that she'll be able to afford therapy later.
Speaker 6: Yes, she'll have a wonderful Lakhanian psychoanalyst who she'll pretend
Speaker 6: to be her father or something.
Speaker 3: That has to be Oh god, someone had to have
Speaker 3: done that sketch at some point, like if your parents
Speaker 3: were the eyes wide shot parents.
Speaker 5: I love that. I love that.
Speaker 4: Oh that's great.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: So Nick is telling Bill all about this secret party,
Speaker 4: and Bill is very intrigued, especially after Nick receives a
Speaker 4: phone call with the password for the party, which is Fidelio.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought it was going to be Apple. I
Speaker 3: thought it was going to be the Da Vinci code.
Speaker 4: Not quite the Da Vinci code.
Speaker 3: No Da Vinci code has.
Speaker 5: It's really like Pee Wee's Playhouse, Like the word of
Speaker 5: the day is Fidelio.
Speaker 4: So Bill begs Nick to let him join, and Nick
Speaker 4: is reluctant, and he says that Bill couldn't even get
Speaker 4: in the party with the clothes he's wearing because everyone
Speaker 4: is always costumed and masked. So Bill goes to a
Speaker 4: costume shop, even though it's like nearly two am at
Speaker 4: this point, but he convinces the owner, mister Millich, to
Speaker 4: let him in.
Speaker 3: This guy.
Speaker 4: And this is when Bill starts flashing his medical ID
Speaker 4: card around everywhere. He'll do it like three more times.
Speaker 3: You need to give me a sex costume.
Speaker 5: I'm after, all right, it's an emergency.
Speaker 4: It's a medical emergency. I need to go to a
Speaker 4: sex party on.
Speaker 3: Long Island as a notorious chiefs Gate. I was just
Speaker 3: keeping a tap, like I was trying to do that.
Speaker 5: He was spent.
Speaker 3: I did the math. So much money in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: nine money he's spent like seven hundred dollars or something like.
Speaker 4: I think that it's closer to nine hundred dollars.
Speaker 5: And that what like two days just in the one
Speaker 5: night wow.
Speaker 4: Because he pays one hundred and fifty dollars to Domino.
Speaker 4: He pays one hundred and fifty dollars for the costume rental,
Speaker 4: plus an additional two hundred dollars over the rental price,
Speaker 4: plus twenty five dollars for the mask that he loses,
Speaker 4: the eighty dollars for the taxi to the party, plus
Speaker 4: one hundred dollars over the meter, plus whatever the meter
Speaker 4: costs while the driver waits for him, which is probably
Speaker 4: another like seventy five eighty bucks, plus presumably another eighty
Speaker 4: dollars to take him back to the city.
Speaker 5: He's gonna write it off. He's gonna write it off.
Speaker 3: Research research, Yeah right, yeah, as researching bodies. I'm a doctor, exactly,
Speaker 3: researching boobs.
Speaker 5: I'm a doctor.
Speaker 4: And that doesn't even include the beer he bought at
Speaker 4: the jazz club or the taxi to the costume shop.
Speaker 4: So when you do all that math, I think it's
Speaker 4: around nine hundred dollars that he spent that one night.
Speaker 3: Must be nice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that would have really put me back. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: would put me back. That could be That would be
Speaker 5: a lot hard.
Speaker 3: I'd be upset, especially if you spent it doing just
Speaker 3: thinking about cheating on your wife and you.
Speaker 5: Didn't even get laid. You spent nine hundred dollars you
Speaker 5: didn't even get laid, babe.
Speaker 3: Oh many such cases, I'm sure.
Speaker 4: Right, okay. So Bill rents a tuxedo, a cloak with
Speaker 4: a hood, and a Venetian mask. There's also a part
Speaker 4: here which we'll just get to later in the discussion
Speaker 4: where mister Millich discovers his teenage question mark daughter played
Speaker 4: by Lee Sobieski, with two older men, and we will
Speaker 4: address this, but I'm just going to kind of breeze
Speaker 4: past it here. So Bill heads to this party, still
Speaker 4: imagining the naval officer railing his wife. The party ends
Speaker 4: up being in a mansion somewhere secluded.
Speaker 5: You said Long Island, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 4: He gives the password Fidelio and is admitted. Wearing his
Speaker 4: cloak and mask. He enters and sees what is clearly
Speaker 4: some secret society. There are dozens of others in masks
Speaker 4: and black cloaks. There's a leader in a red cloak
Speaker 4: doing some ritual with a group of masked women who
Speaker 4: disrobe and then choose a partner who they go off
Speaker 4: with for sex. And one of the women who has
Speaker 4: this big feathery mask chooses Bill, but it becomes clear
Speaker 4: that she only approached him to warn him that he
Speaker 4: doesn't belong there. He's in grave danger and he must leave. Immediately.
Speaker 4: It is not clear how she knows this, and it
Speaker 4: might just be because Bill is dreaming this whole thing,
Speaker 4: but she seems to know that he doesn't belong there,
Speaker 4: so she warns him to leave, but someone else comes
Speaker 4: and pulls her aside, so Bill continues exploring. He goes
Speaker 4: into the other rooms of the house where several people
Speaker 4: are having sex others are watching. He's like a wooga
Speaker 4: and then the woman with the big feathery mask comes
Speaker 4: back and reiterates the danger that he and possibly she
Speaker 4: are in. Then a masked man approaches Bill and brings
Speaker 4: him to the main room, where surprise, everyone is staring
Speaker 4: at him, and the leader in the red cloak kind
Speaker 4: of puts Bill on trial, knowing that he wasn't invited
Speaker 4: and he's not supposed to be there.
Speaker 3: So that doesn't happen at the party's Caitlin, it doesn't happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't walk into her room and suddenly all
Speaker 4: eyes are on you and they're like, you don't belong here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, uniquely ridiculed.
Speaker 3: I love that that happens if you're like Cinderella or
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise, an eyes wide shut where all all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, yeah.
Speaker 4: So they make him take off his mask, revealing his identity,
Speaker 4: and just then the feather mask woman says, stop, let
Speaker 4: him go take me instead. I'm stop.
Speaker 5: Stop.
Speaker 4: She says, I'm ready to redeem him, and it's implied
Speaker 4: that she he is sacrificing her life to let Bill live.
Speaker 4: So they let Bill go free, but warn him not
Speaker 4: to tell anyone what he has seen or try to
Speaker 4: investigate anything or else he and his family will suffer
Speaker 4: dire consequences. So Bill returns home and he comes into
Speaker 4: the bedroom where Alice is laughing in her sleep, and
Speaker 4: he wakes her up, and she proceeds to tell him
Speaker 4: about a dream she was having where long story short,
Speaker 4: she was having sex with the naval officer and then
Speaker 4: a bunch of other men in front of Bill in
Speaker 4: the dream. And he does not like this either.
Speaker 3: I'll be it now, listen. I'm pro I'm Alice till
Speaker 3: I die. But I was like, what I have shared
Speaker 3: that whole dream with him?
Speaker 6: I would have waited until coffee the next morning, at
Speaker 6: least I would have done it over continental breakfast, maybe
Speaker 6: some grapefruit with some brown shoes.
Speaker 5: That's a morning conversation. That's not nighttime I would need to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would be like, let me just process that,
Speaker 3: let me process that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So cut to the next day and Bill he's running
Speaker 4: some errands, including going to try to talk to Nick Nightingale,
Speaker 4: and he finds the hotel where he's staying. Alan Cumming
Speaker 4: is at the front desk telling Bill that Nick has
Speaker 4: already checked out and two big scary men were with
Speaker 4: him and it seemed like they were threatening him. And
Speaker 4: then Bill goes to return the costume that he had rented,
Speaker 4: although he forgot the mask somewhere. There's more to this
Speaker 4: leey Sobieski subplot that again we'll revisit later. And then
Speaker 4: Bill goes to the mansion where the party took place,
Speaker 4: or at least he's at the front gate, where someone
Speaker 4: brings him an envelope with his name on it, inside
Speaker 4: of which is a letter telling him to stop his inquiries.
Speaker 4: And this is his second and final warning.
Speaker 3: It occurred to me, I mean, it's just it's because
Speaker 3: Halloween was two weeks ago. But like the note, another
Speaker 3: good Halloween cost him just to dress up as the
Speaker 3: note that Tom Cruz to see that.
Speaker 5: Would be really good.
Speaker 6: It can be a couple's costume where it's that note
Speaker 6: and then the other note that is in the Jersey
Speaker 6: Shore that is, yes, the Jersey Shore note would also.
Speaker 5: Be really, wait, what's that?
Speaker 3: Oh it's I can't repeat that can't be repeated in full.
Speaker 6: But it's a note that I'm pretty sure. Snooky writes
Speaker 6: to Sammy, saying that she's been cheated on by Ronnie. Yes,
Speaker 6: oh yes, and it's read aloud equally dramatically, Caitlyn.
Speaker 3: It used to be like hung as a banner at
Speaker 3: the iHeartRadio offices in La We had a banner of
Speaker 3: it hanging up.
Speaker 4: If I saw it, I didn't register that that's what
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they eventually took it down. It's some
Speaker 3: pretty fucked up stuff. But I did see someone dressed
Speaker 3: up as the note that Carrie Bradshaw gets, the post
Speaker 3: it note, the post it breakup note. It's like, sorry,
Speaker 3: I can't so many notes.
Speaker 6: A note of men being disappointing. Yes, yes, it can
Speaker 6: start with like magna karta and it's kind of.
Speaker 3: Declaration of it dependent I mean, yes, anyway, the note iconic.
Speaker 4: Okay, So Bill returns home, Alice is helping their daughter
Speaker 4: with math homework famously, and I think the only scene
Speaker 4: that passes the Bechdel test. But all Bill can think
Speaker 4: about is the dream Alice told him about all the
Speaker 4: men she was fucking. So he leaves again and pays
Speaker 4: a visit to Domino. She's not home, but her roommate
Speaker 4: Sally is, who invites him in, and she's like very
Speaker 4: close to him and being flirty. The vibe is horny,
Speaker 4: but then she reveals that Domino just got some blood
Speaker 4: test results back and they were HIV positive, So the
Speaker 4: mood shifts and he's like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that,
Speaker 4: and he leaves notices a man is following him, so
Speaker 4: he like ducks into a restaurant where he reads a
Speaker 4: newspaper clipping that a beauty queen named Amanda was admitted
Speaker 4: to the hospital after a drug overdose. So Bill goes
Speaker 4: to the hospital. He's still flashing his medical ID card everywhere.
Speaker 3: I'm like, can that get you into the more?
Speaker 4: Like, I mean, of anything that would make the most
Speaker 4: sense to me? Why he shows a diner staff member.
Speaker 5: Funny, but I feel like he.
Speaker 3: Was just trying to like class intimidate her there to
Speaker 3: be like I'm more important than you. You have to
Speaker 3: do what I say, I feel like he's really really
Speaker 3: sly with taking advantage of people he feels are less
Speaker 3: important than him.
Speaker 4: Right, because he does the same thing to Alan Cumming
Speaker 4: at the front desk with the hotel.
Speaker 3: And Alan Coming's being such a little weirdo and I
Speaker 3: love it. He's like, I guess something weird happened, but
Speaker 3: I don't know. You're like, what is this trickster? What
Speaker 3: is this trickster persona?
Speaker 4: I read that Alan Cumming auditioned for this role six
Speaker 4: times before they cast him.
Speaker 6: I also love King because he's doing like an American accent,
Speaker 6: which I think is so funny. But it's like, I
Speaker 6: feel like his lilt is really present as he's getting
Speaker 6: more kind of like curious in the way that he's
Speaker 6: discussing everything.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, it's it's very much like Twink who has been
Speaker 6: up since the night before.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like, that's what's happening.
Speaker 3: My boyfriend works the night shift at a hotel and
Speaker 3: I made him watch the scene with me. I'm like,
Speaker 3: so it's like that, right, and that happens. He's like, yes, site,
Speaker 3: that is how I behave and that is the job.
Speaker 5: That is the job.
Speaker 4: Okay. So Bill goes to the hospital and discovers that
Speaker 4: this woman, Amanda, who was admitted for the drug overdose,
Speaker 4: died earlier that day, and he sees her body in
Speaker 4: the morgue and he suspects it's the same woman at
Speaker 4: the sex cult party who had warned him and offered
Speaker 4: to redeem him. Then he gets a call from Victor Ziegler,
Speaker 4: the host of the party that happens at the beginning
Speaker 4: of the movie. He invites Bill over to tell him
Speaker 4: that he knows what happened the night before at the
Speaker 4: Horny Illuminati party because Victor was there.
Speaker 3: He's like, come over, I have some plot to share
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Victor Ziegler is like, you've got the wrong
Speaker 4: idea about what's going on. No one's dead. It was
Speaker 4: all stage to scare you into staying quiet about what
Speaker 4: you've seen. And Bill is like, well, what about the
Speaker 4: dead woman I just saw at.
Speaker 3: The morgue who seems to be Mandy from the beginning
Speaker 3: of the story.
Speaker 4: Okay, see, I think to me, that's a different woman. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I feel like they did not have the same face.
Speaker 5: I agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, okay, interesting because I sort of assumed this
Speaker 3: was the first time, but that I was like Amanda Man,
Speaker 3: I'm like, is it the same person? Weird that they
Speaker 3: would give her such a similar name in that.
Speaker 4: Well, Ziegler says like, that is the same woman, and she.
Speaker 3: I guess I shouldn't have believed him.
Speaker 4: Right, So he's trying to play it off as like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know she has addiction issues. You know that because
Speaker 4: you saw her overdosed at my party and it had
Speaker 4: nothing to do with her sacrificing herself for you at
Speaker 4: the cult party. But I think he's lying because that
Speaker 4: they have the same hair color. But I don't think
Speaker 4: that's the same woman.
Speaker 3: But also she's like completely blue even though she died
Speaker 3: at three forty five. Today she's like she looks like
Speaker 3: she's been smurf.
Speaker 4: Cry of she's more dead and she has a different
Speaker 4: face than the other woman.
Speaker 3: So who knows? Who knows?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, Bill doesn't really know what to believe,
Speaker 4: and everything is very suspicious. But he returns home and
Speaker 4: the mask that he had rented and misplaced is in
Speaker 4: the bed next to a sleeping Alice. Apparently she had
Speaker 4: found the mask and was going to ask him about it,
Speaker 4: and so he bursts into tears and he's like, I'll
Speaker 4: tell you everything. Cut to Bill having told her everything.
Speaker 3: I kind of liked that we didn't need to watch that. Well,
Speaker 3: I guess we saw it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like the movie's already long enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know that's true.
Speaker 4: So she's very upset. They're both crying, and then they
Speaker 4: have to take their daughter Christmas shopping that day. So
Speaker 4: while they're like roaming around the toy store, Bill and
Speaker 4: Alice have a conversation about their future, if they're going
Speaker 4: to stay together or split up, and they're speaking so
Speaker 4: cryptically that I'm not really sure what they decide. But
Speaker 4: the conversation ends with Alice saying I do love you
Speaker 4: and there's one thing we need to do as soon
Speaker 4: as possible. And Bill is like, ah what and Alice says.
Speaker 5: Fuck blackout the end.
Speaker 3: I forgot that's how it ended. And I was like,
Speaker 3: I he got me, he got me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, Kubrick's last movie ever ending with fuck is so good,
Speaker 6: like that iconic.
Speaker 3: As a famously not fucky guy.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's just fuck. Oh yeah, So that's the great recap.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. That's the movie.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to.
Speaker 3: This US and we're back baby, with everyone's permission. I
Speaker 3: want to start with the source material for this, which
Speaker 3: I did not know very much about, but the title
Speaker 3: of it does support my theory because it's based on
Speaker 3: novella called trom Novelle by Arthur Schnitzler, which translates to
Speaker 3: dream story. But I think, I mean, there are the
Speaker 3: eyeswey shut does like follow the story pretty closely. The
Speaker 3: original story is set in Vienna during Marty Gral like
Speaker 3: you said earlier, Caitlin. Obviously it's switched to be in
Speaker 3: New York around Christmas. I think that the character of
Speaker 3: Victor Ziegler is added, but other than that, it follows
Speaker 3: the beats of the story, just adjusting for time period
Speaker 3: and location.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: But the thing that is worth mentioning that I don't
Speaker 3: feel like, you know, qualified to like intelligently comment on,
Speaker 3: but it is something that has been written about a lot,
Speaker 3: is the fact that Arthur Schnitzler was a Jewish author.
Speaker 3: Their original work was published in nineteen twenty six. I
Speaker 3: don't think it is explicitly stated that the lead character
Speaker 3: in Traub Novelle is Jewish, but it is heavily implied
Speaker 3: it's a character named Friedolin, and in that exchange we
Speaker 3: were talking about earlier, that is changed in Eyeswide Shut
Speaker 3: to be a group of like homophobic frat bros yelling
Speaker 3: at Tom Cruise. Originally that's a group of like anti
Speaker 3: Semitic men harassing freedom. And so it's like it's suggested
Speaker 3: that he's Jewish, and like Schnitzler was like a you know,
Speaker 3: would frequently write about Jewish characters, was an openly Jewish
Speaker 3: author to the point where his works were like banned
Speaker 3: in Nazi Germany. Like he was persona non and was
Speaker 3: a close friend of Freud, which also I feel like
Speaker 3: explains a lot of the treat Yeah, I highly so
Speaker 3: much of this information is coming from that broidational video.
Speaker 3: She did like an incredible job of contextualizing that. But
Speaker 3: just worth mentioning that. Stanley Kuprick is a Jewish director
Speaker 3: who was in the sort of this weird Infinity War
Speaker 3: with his co writer Frederick Raphael, who there's a lot
Speaker 3: of funny clips because I think that they were both
Speaker 3: kind of egomaniacs and like Kubrick wanted to change a
Speaker 3: lot of Rafael's script. Raphael was also a Jewish writer
Speaker 3: and wanted to retain the implied Judaism of the lead character,
Speaker 3: but Kubrick was pretty adamant that it be removed and
Speaker 3: that this character be changed to be like a wasp,
Speaker 3: which is obviously who we end up with. So there's
Speaker 3: been a lot written by Jewish writers about like Stanley
Speaker 3: kuprick relationship to his Jewishness. But I just think it's
Speaker 3: worth mentioning, and that the character that he adds, Victor Ziegler,
Speaker 3: who is not a great guy, isn't the only character
Speaker 3: who's implied to be Jewish in the story. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to start with that. I didn't know
Speaker 3: this was an adaptation of anything.
Speaker 5: But most of Kubrick's work is I believe too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess there's other I can't pull it
Speaker 3: off the top of my head because I am not
Speaker 3: a Kubrick completionist, but I guess this is not the
Speaker 3: only example of Kubrick taking a Jewish character, or even
Speaker 3: an implied Jewish character, and being like, I want to
Speaker 3: change it. So you know, he was not like very
Speaker 3: into talking about his personal life, so we'll never know,
Speaker 3: but it is worth mentioning and has come up a
Speaker 3: lot because it caused a lot of friction within the
Speaker 3: writing team because I think Frederick Grafael was like, why
Speaker 3: the fuck not. Kubrick was like, now, so we'll never know.
Speaker 3: But and then the only other really shift from the
Speaker 3: source material is that Eyes Wide Shut does sort of
Speaker 3: shift the perspective to follow Bill throughout where it's like,
Speaker 3: the height of the dramatic action in the book is
Speaker 3: the Alice is Albertina in the book whatever, but like
Speaker 3: the height of the action is related to her. But
Speaker 3: in the book they add in, you know, like another
Speaker 3: sex party and his like return and all that. So
Speaker 3: that's the source material. That's my little background.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very interesting context. I couldn't find anything to the
Speaker 4: effect of why Kubrick chose to remove the elements of
Speaker 4: Judaism from the source material. At first, I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 4: is it because he's anti Semitic? And then I learned
Speaker 4: that he came from a Jewish family but did not
Speaker 4: practice like he decided did at some point in his
Speaker 4: life that he was not going to be a practicing
Speaker 4: Jew and considered himself to be an atheist. So I
Speaker 4: don't know if like that informed anything. I'm a yeah,
Speaker 4: we don't know, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: We'll never know why the change was made, but I
Speaker 3: was kind of pleased to hear that the story translated
Speaker 3: to dream story, and I was like, it's not really right,
Speaker 3: it's all made up.
Speaker 5: Well, if it is a dream, when when does he
Speaker 5: wake up?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: That's the word fuck the fat the fuck rouses him back.
Speaker 5: He's like, finally I can fuck it's in two and
Speaker 5: a half hours.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've This really is like a grand odyssey of
Speaker 3: watching Tom Cruise not close edge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an edge off, definitely really wild.
Speaker 4: So that theory, which I like, and I feel like
Speaker 4: it makes a lot of sense. Applying that lens to it,
Speaker 4: you're like, oh, yes, this tracks as far as the
Speaker 4: way Bill perceives women and what he thinks about them,
Speaker 4: as far as their role in society and their role
Speaker 4: in his personal life and things like that. If you
Speaker 4: remove that lens, you're like, oh, this is a movie
Speaker 4: full of characters who are women who are not well developed.
Speaker 4: Their functions in the story are to just behave bizarrely
Speaker 4: around Tom Cruise's character, and so if you just look
Speaker 4: at it very face value through that lens, you're just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is a movie that doesn't seem to respect women,
Speaker 4: But when looking at it through the lens of oh no,
Speaker 4: this is how this particular character perceives women and prescribed
Speaker 4: gender roles and all of that, then you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: actually this might be brilliant.
Speaker 6: The disembodiment of women is so on the nose where
Speaker 6: it's like there's that one quick scene where he's at
Speaker 6: work and it's just like a topless woman and he
Speaker 6: has like a stethoscope like in between her boobs. It's like,
Speaker 6: we all know you don't actually have to get fully
Speaker 6: topless when someone's taking your heart beat with stetho scope, you.
Speaker 5: Know what I mean. Like it's just so on the
Speaker 5: nose that it does. It just is satirical, you know.
Speaker 5: It's like it's such a chriacaterre.
Speaker 6: It's so over the top where it's like women don't
Speaker 6: even have faces half the time when you're talking to them,
Speaker 6: Like it's.
Speaker 3: Just they all kind of look the same, like.
Speaker 5: There's one type of body.
Speaker 3: It's all white, white, all white New York City.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: And also for so much of the movie it's like
Speaker 3: New York is empty. Yeah, Like that's the other thing
Speaker 3: that I was like this is not happening because there's
Speaker 3: no one on the street of like Manhattan right in
Speaker 3: the West Villae Saturday.
Speaker 4: Night except for one man who's following him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: It's like the way that I when we were watched,
Speaker 3: when I saw that doctor scene where she's completely topless,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I know, a fourteen year old boy saw
Speaker 3: this and was like, I'm going to be a doctor.
Speaker 5: Literally, I want to see so many boobs.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you're like, you're you're in. You're in for
Speaker 3: a surprise, my friend. Not a sexy environment. But I
Speaker 3: also I like, I wonder how intentional this was, but
Speaker 3: it did, like I don't know, like having had a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, like I know we've all had
Speaker 3: our experiences with like doctors who are not like listening
Speaker 3: to us, or like, you know, the fact that he
Speaker 3: is the first line of defense, and it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like he's a bad doctor to be fair, Like anytime
Speaker 3: there's like an opportunity, if there's like someone who needs
Speaker 3: his help, he does do it. Like I think that's
Speaker 3: part of what's complicated about Bill is like he is
Speaker 3: deeply misogynistic and like baffled by women but he's not
Speaker 3: like necessarily a bad person.
Speaker 5: He's just incredibly insecure. He's just so so so insecure because.
Speaker 3: It seems like he's good at his job and he
Speaker 3: does care about it and and like you know, and
Speaker 3: even in the opening sequence when he like you know,
Speaker 3: prioritizes like we have to take care of Mandy. I
Speaker 3: was really struck by that, Like you know, when Ziegler
Speaker 3: is like, Okay, can I get the fuck out of here?
Speaker 3: And he's like, no, you have to stay here for
Speaker 3: an hour and make sure that she gets home safe.
Speaker 3: And like he is, you know, very professional about what
Speaker 3: he does, but doing that all while having these like
Speaker 3: base assumptions about how his patients see the world. You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's a lot of doctors.
Speaker 4: Yes, I had a doctor who not a man. It
Speaker 4: was a doctor who's a woman because women can uphold
Speaker 4: the patriarchy to But when I told her that, like
Speaker 4: my libido was disappearing, She's like, well, do you have
Speaker 4: a partner? And I said no, And she said, well
Speaker 4: then how do you know that you don't have a libido? Yeah? Oh,
Speaker 4: I was like what do you mean? And how can
Speaker 4: you be a doctor and also think that like what.
Speaker 5: Where did you come from?
Speaker 4: It's still the most shocking thing it has ever happened
Speaker 4: to be in a doctor's office at least, and.
Speaker 5: I'm like, is she a nun like? Were you at
Speaker 5: a nunnery? I'm so confused.
Speaker 4: No, it was just a regular ass doctor's office. But
Speaker 4: it was truly I had, Yeah.
Speaker 3: We talked to I think I brought this up on
Speaker 3: the show recently, but I had, like, I found like
Speaker 3: a lump in my breast a couple of months ago
Speaker 3: that thankfully was nothing, but I went to have it
Speaker 3: tested and then I went back to my primary care
Speaker 3: and she was like, you know, you should try being
Speaker 3: happier because sometimes depression causes breast lumps.
Speaker 4: And I was like, no, you can't see advice.
Speaker 5: No, Well I'm good on that, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: So there are many examples of doctor we're saying is
Speaker 3: women shouldn't be doctors. That's like Caitlin and I are
Speaker 3: trying to be.
Speaker 5: Or also women shouldn't go to the doctor.
Speaker 4: Don't go.
Speaker 5: You're not safe either way, don't go, don't become one.
Speaker 3: Take your chances, take your chances.
Speaker 4: So, yes, Bill seems to be a decent doctor for
Speaker 4: all intents and purposes, but he does have all of
Speaker 4: these assumptions about women that he is not considering from
Speaker 4: a like medical or scientific point of view. He's just like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: I've just always heard that, because I mean, the whole
Speaker 4: movie happens because he's made assumptions about his wife because
Speaker 4: of her gender. And then when he learns that Alice
Speaker 4: has sexual desires for other people throughout their marriage, which
Speaker 4: is a like normal and human thing, which we know
Speaker 4: because he also does it and knows all the time, right.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, that really is the catalyst for the entire movie,
Speaker 6: is that she's like once ahead a sex dream during
Speaker 6: fleet week and he's like, well, I'm going to enter
Speaker 6: a secret society now and I'm gonna kill my h
Speaker 6: how dare you do that? And then during that fight
Speaker 6: he's like, I don't get jealous, and then it's like
Speaker 6: this jealousy fueled like underworldean event that like procures after.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he is so emasculated that he tries to join
Speaker 4: a secret sex cult about it. He cannot handle.
Speaker 3: Try and fails. I've actually failed to join it. Like
Speaker 3: he is turned out of the Illuminati. They're like, sorry,
Speaker 3: you can't hang.
Speaker 5: You have weird vibes. It's like you have weird vibes.
Speaker 3: No, And I mean even his again, I wonder how
Speaker 3: intentional it was, but like even his fantasizing about her
Speaker 3: cheating on him, it feels like weirdly juvenile. Like it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, he's imagining her like basically having wild sex
Speaker 3: with a guy in a like navy eye party outfit.
Speaker 3: Like it just feels very like his conception of sex is.
Speaker 5: So high school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like so yeah, so naive and so very blue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the flashbacks are very blue, and yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: this very muscular, handsome fit man that she's having sex with.
Speaker 4: And I read that Koup like directed those scenes to
Speaker 4: be like as pornographic as possible. And I hope that
Speaker 4: there was like an intimacy coordinator and that Nicole Kidman
Speaker 4: and the man and you know, everyone involved felt comfortable.
Speaker 3: But I was able to find this was I was like,
Speaker 3: of course they didn't ask her, but that Tom Cruise
Speaker 3: was not allowed to go to those filming sessions. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't clear if that was Kubrick cucking him
Speaker 3: again or if Nicole Kidman didn't want him there, both
Speaker 3: of which are possible.
Speaker 5: Oh that's so interesting, but like, of course.
Speaker 4: No one asked her, right right, right right. People speculate
Speaker 4: that Kubrick like wanted to stir up drama on the
Speaker 4: set to like make the performances more realistic.
Speaker 5: He's so messy.
Speaker 6: I'm like, okay, he is a def okay, defaut. That's
Speaker 6: very like Andy Cohen of him. He's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: stir the pot like you're, yeah, the Real Housewives of
Speaker 6: Eyes wise shot.
Speaker 5: He's like the pot.
Speaker 3: I kind of love that. He's like, Okay, I've got
Speaker 3: I've got eighteen months to live. What can I get done?
Speaker 5: Like he's like, can I get two of the most
Speaker 5: famous people on earth to get divorced?
Speaker 3: I won't be around to experience like your last wish.
Speaker 5: It's so traumatic.
Speaker 3: That's so that's diabah god. I kind of am like
Speaker 3: if I knew, because I also confuse it because this
Speaker 3: is his last movie, but like unclear if he knew
Speaker 3: he didn't have much time to live while he was
Speaker 3: making it, but if he did, fan theory, he's like,
Speaker 3: as my last act, I'm gonna make two famous people divorce.
Speaker 6: Like I also was on his Wikipedia before this, and
Speaker 6: I read in his personal life section that he was
Speaker 6: infamously distrustful of doctors. Really, oh yes, so maybe that
Speaker 6: is present and this conversation as well. He's like, I
Speaker 6: got to cock the doctor for my last movie.
Speaker 3: Oh also, and uh, because Katelyne, I know you were
Speaker 3: talking about this before we started recording. But this this
Speaker 3: was like this was kind of like Kubrick's Megalopolis kind
Speaker 3: of like this was a story that he had the
Speaker 3: rights to for like thirty years. He envisioned it in
Speaker 3: all of these different ways with different actors. Like there
Speaker 3: was a point where he was gonna have Woody Allen
Speaker 3: in it. Glad he didn't. Oh interesting, there was a
Speaker 3: point where it was going to be more of like
Speaker 3: a comedy with Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman,
Speaker 3: Warren Batty, Albert Brooks, Alan Alda, Sam Shepherd. Like he
Speaker 3: had like fifty different conceptions of what.
Speaker 4: This Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger because he was like
Speaker 4: really interested in having a real life married couple play
Speaker 4: the married couple. Yeah, but then he finally, I mean,
Speaker 4: in the nick of time, he did it.
Speaker 3: But it was it was interesting too, because I mean
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's interesting to kind of speculate, like
Speaker 3: what drew him to this story so strongly, And I
Speaker 3: guess also his his wife, whose name is Christiane Harlan.
Speaker 3: She sort of was like, he wanted to adapt this
Speaker 3: in I think the seventies, and she was like, it's
Speaker 3: a little too early into our marriage to like be
Speaker 3: making something like that for my comfort level. And He's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: i'll wait, I'll wait, I'll wait. And so it was
Speaker 3: like sort of in deference to her, because she was
Speaker 3: like worried about how it would reflect on their marriage
Speaker 3: as they were raising kids together, and so there were
Speaker 3: all these reasons he waited, but it seems like it
Speaker 3: came together the way it should have.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he had to wait along too. So he
Speaker 5: was also getting cocked by his own movie.
Speaker 4: He was true edging himself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, big time. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: He also apparently considered this movie to be his greatest
Speaker 4: contribution to the art of cinema. Oh wow, And I'm like,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a good movie, but I'm like, you
Speaker 4: made like two thousand and one and Doctor Strange Love
Speaker 4: and stuff, but sure, this maybe is the best of them.
Speaker 3: He's i mean, good for him.
Speaker 5: That.
Speaker 3: I mean, I imagine having a body of work that
Speaker 3: strong that you're like Oswood shut and it's kind of
Speaker 3: mid tier, like because.
Speaker 4: It's so good. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I just I
Speaker 4: find the character fascinating as far as like his perception
Speaker 4: of gender and sex and how men and women are different.
Speaker 4: I feel like we had a similar conversation about the
Speaker 4: Inception episode where it's hard to evaluate the characters who
Speaker 4: are women in that movie, and specifically mal the marrying
Speaker 4: Courtyard character, because it's like Leonardo DiCaprio's characters projection of
Speaker 4: his wife rather than who she actually is, And so
Speaker 4: a lot of that is also arguably present in this movie.
Speaker 3: That's the Christopher Nolan cheat code. He's like, you never
Speaker 3: need to learn how to write a woman.
Speaker 7: Character's not real, She's a projection, right, So I think
Speaker 7: there's a strong argument to be made that that's how
Speaker 7: to read this movie.
Speaker 4: That when we see Alice, she is mostly a kind
Speaker 4: of like fever dream projection of what bills.
Speaker 5: And she's also like always in bed. She's like literally like.
Speaker 3: In bed, in bed, crying, wearing the same outfit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's just asleep or crying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even the way like the way. That's such a
Speaker 3: good point. Like the way she's costumed is either it's
Speaker 3: very Madonna horror Like it's either she is like in
Speaker 3: bed crying in a sheer top, which she looks great in,
Speaker 3: or she's like wearing her glasses and a turtleleg and
Speaker 3: she's being a mother and a wife. Like there's just
Speaker 3: I really feel like he's just totally unable to see
Speaker 3: her as either a sex object or a like quote
Speaker 3: unquote woman doing what woman does. And yeah, again expanding
Speaker 3: on this theory, I feel like we see the real
Speaker 3: her at the very beginning of the movie, but the
Speaker 3: second they have that argument, he just like his brain
Speaker 3: breaks because we see her. I mean it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: she's Nicole kidman. She looks great no matter what. But
Speaker 3: it does feel like it's very specific. It's hard in
Speaker 3: one direction or hard in the other. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that's true because.
Speaker 3: I don't know about y'all, but I'm not sleeping in
Speaker 3: a sheer top like I'm sleeping in a large T shirt. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Cozy, it's good to be cozy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially if I've been married for ten years. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're not catching me dead in a sheer top. I'm
Speaker 3: so sorry.
Speaker 6: But yeah, on that first scene where she's dancing with
Speaker 6: that older guy who's trying to sleep with her, like
Speaker 6: she's really dynamic, Like you're watching a woman negotiate her morality,
Speaker 6: her values, her ethics, like in real time, like both
Speaker 6: as they reflect as her as a wife, but also
Speaker 6: like her as a sexual being as well.
Speaker 5: But it really is. Yeah, when Jamie's saying, I guess
Speaker 5: maybe it is.
Speaker 6: A dream, even though I don't want it to be
Speaker 6: a dream, is that once she snaps and she's the
Speaker 6: only one in that argument that is honest about her desires,
Speaker 6: then she just kind of becomes sleeping beauty and she's just.
Speaker 5: Kind of like relegated to the bed, the bedroom, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And if we see her at the beginning, we
Speaker 3: see her like on the toilet, we see her just
Speaker 3: like seeming more normal than she does for the rest
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 5: Totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, during that scene where she's dancing with that man
Speaker 4: at the party and you know he's being he's coming
Speaker 4: on very strong, but she seems into it. She's receptive
Speaker 4: to it.
Speaker 3: They're vibing, Yeah, they're vibing.
Speaker 4: And she tells him like, oh, I'm actually looking for
Speaker 4: a job. I used to run an art gallery in Soho,
Speaker 4: and he's like, oh, you like art, Let's talk about
Speaker 4: art and da da da, and so like, I could
Speaker 4: see why she would take an interest in him, and
Speaker 4: she does seem to consider like going upstairs with him,
Speaker 4: and maybe that would lead to sex. We're not sure.
Speaker 4: But then you know, she's like, oh, right, I'm married
Speaker 4: to Tom Cruise.
Speaker 3: I better go well, especially, it's like if you could,
Speaker 3: I haven't even thought of that, but like if you're
Speaker 3: considering like he, you know, we never see Bill ask
Speaker 3: her about how she's feeling about work, Like, he clearly
Speaker 3: has no interest in her having a career, and so
Speaker 3: it's like, of course you would be kind of I mean,
Speaker 3: especially if you're like kind of fucked up, and it's
Speaker 3: like a hot old guy, you know, like someone who
Speaker 3: asks you about yourself. Of course you're gonna be interested
Speaker 3: in that person, right, And.
Speaker 6: Then out of the corner of her eye, she's watching him,
Speaker 6: like Tom Cruise laugh with those models.
Speaker 5: You know, he's like, haa so gregarious.
Speaker 3: It's like my cuck husband, I've got to get out
Speaker 3: of here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 4: And then just to kind of like walk through the
Speaker 4: beats of the conversation that like is the catalyst that
Speaker 4: gets him to have this this meltdown, fever dream kind
Speaker 4: of thing, you know, where she says, yeah, that guy
Speaker 4: wanted sex, and she was perfectly honest about it, again,
Speaker 4: because she's able to be honest with him about her
Speaker 4: feelings and about like, you know, uncomfortable truths or kind
Speaker 4: of taboo things that you're quote unquote not supposed to acknowledge,
Speaker 4: such as how even when you're in a committed anogamous relationship,
Speaker 4: many people still have sexual desires for other people. And again,
Speaker 4: that's a perfectly normal part of the human experience. And
Speaker 4: Alice is able to be honest about these things and
Speaker 4: Bill is not, because he's like, I'm never jealous. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: the rest of the movie is him being so jealous
Speaker 4: and jealous, right, but anyway, so she's like, yeah, he
Speaker 4: wanted to have sex with me, and Bill's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: men are like that, not me though, I'm the exception.
Speaker 4: I wasn't even flirting with those two beautiful models because
Speaker 4: I'm married to you. And she's like, okay, so you
Speaker 4: did want to have sex with them, and you just
Speaker 4: wouldn't fuck them out of consideration for me, like, what's
Speaker 4: what are you saying?
Speaker 3: Well, she's like trying to have a conversation with them,
Speaker 3: She's trying to get him to like it seems like
Speaker 3: she would be happier if he just admitted that and
Speaker 3: they could talk about it openly, but like he's just
Speaker 3: too closed off for sure.
Speaker 6: She had her copy of Like Polly Secure like right
Speaker 6: behind her back, was about to bust it out, but
Speaker 6: then the conversation didn't go well, so she buried it.
Speaker 4: This is a couple that probably should just, I don't know,
Speaker 4: try polyamory and see.
Speaker 5: Oh to a swingers party, put your keys in a bowl,
Speaker 5: figure something out, and they.
Speaker 3: Literally did, and like I just write, I yeah, And
Speaker 3: I think, Caitlin, you said this earlier. I was like,
Speaker 3: in my mind, for some reason, there was another sex
Speaker 3: party and she went back, and so I kind of
Speaker 3: like I was like, oh, no, she never gets to
Speaker 3: do fucking anything, And I think that, like it's interesting
Speaker 3: that I don't know. My memory was that, oh, she
Speaker 3: must do something wrong at some point. She never does
Speaker 3: anything wrong. She has a sex dream. That is all
Speaker 3: she does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, She tells him about different sexual desires she
Speaker 4: has or dreams, which again normal human thing for someone
Speaker 4: who is a sexual being, right, And she also conveys like,
Speaker 4: I have never acted on this, Like I'm not acting
Speaker 4: on these desires. I'm just having them the way a
Speaker 4: sexual person has sexual desires for people.
Speaker 5: And then he blames the pot. Yeah, okay, these pots.
Speaker 4: Most hilarious line, classic pot, classic pot, classic pots, always
Speaker 4: making people so aggressive, and then yeah, she says, like,
Speaker 4: what about you when you're with your patients touching their
Speaker 4: breasts like.
Speaker 5: And he's like, no, no, no, I don't think like
Speaker 5: he's he's so offended.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, we've seen him.
Speaker 3: He's like, I do make all of my patients take
Speaker 3: their tops off, right so I can hear their heart beat.
Speaker 3: I'm waiting for them to ask why, but they just happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, And then she's like, well, what about those
Speaker 4: women in your office looking at the handsome doctor And
Speaker 4: he says women don't think like that, and she's like, oh,
Speaker 4: so you think that women only care about security and commitment,
Speaker 4: and then this is and she launches into the story
Speaker 4: about the naval officer, and so it's just yeah, him
Speaker 4: like making all of these very prescriptive assumptions about his
Speaker 4: partner because he just is like, yeah, this is how
Speaker 4: women are, and then she sets them straight.
Speaker 3: If you men only knew you're like And I.
Speaker 6: Think that's also like part of the Kuckoning, where like
Speaker 6: he's at this sex party and I feel like he's
Speaker 6: unable to close because it's the first time in his
Speaker 6: life that he's understanding women having sexual autonomy.
Speaker 5: He's like, oh, all.
Speaker 6: These women came here alone without their husbands, perhaps, like
Speaker 6: they're here on their own volition. Because it's like interesting
Speaker 6: too to think about his the relationship of like sex
Speaker 6: work in the movie too, where it's like these women's
Speaker 6: sexual autonomies are negotiated as part of their career, where
Speaker 6: like a man is soliciting them, so that's why they
Speaker 6: want to have sex. But then at the sex party,
Speaker 6: it's like, I don't believe it's implied that these women
Speaker 6: are sex workers. So it's like, oh, like they're like
Speaker 6: they just want to be here, right, Like a man
Speaker 6: didn't ask them to be here.
Speaker 3: Right, Like he can't conceive a woman having sex for
Speaker 3: pleasure at all.
Speaker 5: Right, all totally yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: His interactions with women.
Speaker 5: I agree.
Speaker 3: It's like it's either like if if you're just looking
Speaker 3: at the movie, like, these are women in this world?
Speaker 3: It makes no sense. I feel like weirdly, the leely
Speaker 3: Sobieski character I found very kind of like clarifying, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because her character acts so irrationally, especially in her second appearance. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're in the first one. I really wasn't sure. So
Speaker 3: she's for listeners. She's the daughter of the costume shop owner.
Speaker 3: He finds her with two older men and like, you know,
Speaker 3: basically threatens to have the two men arrested. But she
Speaker 3: like she hides behind Tom Cruise and she's like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm such a little scamp. And you're like, okay, that
Speaker 3: could happen in the but it still feels very I
Speaker 3: don't know, like conception of a woman versus a person
Speaker 3: who has reason to be afraid of her father.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: But then when we see her the second time, I
Speaker 3: was like, this cannot be real because she says nothing.
Speaker 3: She just stares vacantly ahead basically, and the costume shop
Speaker 3: owner is like, oh, by the way, I am now
Speaker 3: my daughter's pimp, and so if you're interested in having
Speaker 3: sex with my possibly underage daughter, just let me know.
Speaker 3: And she's just staring vacantly ahead. I was like, I
Speaker 3: just I do believe. I mean, Stanley Kuprick is not
Speaker 3: great at writing women characters. Again, maybe this is his
Speaker 3: cheat code, but like it's just so hard to buy
Speaker 3: into that we're supposed to take that scene at face
Speaker 3: value for me for sure.
Speaker 4: Right, I was not sure what to make of these
Speaker 4: beats that involve this character. And I was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: it seems like it's common terry on how people will
Speaker 4: abandon their principles for a large sum of money. Because
Speaker 4: it's implied that this guy Milleg the costume shop owner,
Speaker 4: comes to an agreement with these two older men who
Speaker 4: he had found his daughter with, and that they were like,
Speaker 4: will pay you to not call the cops or you know,
Speaker 4: we'll give you all this money, and that's what changes
Speaker 4: that dynamic.
Speaker 5: And I think it's implied to that he's kind of
Speaker 5: like a sleeze bag, valueless guy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: It's like for sure he was able to be like
Speaker 6: bought in to Tom coming in after hours, like you know,
Speaker 6: he's like a sleazy guy.
Speaker 4: Right, And so it's like, oh, well, this guy just
Speaker 4: you know, for the right price, he'll like literally sell
Speaker 4: out his daughter. And I mean, we see things like
Speaker 4: this happening all the time in the real world, that
Speaker 4: people are corrupted by greed and wealth. But what didn't
Speaker 4: work for me is like first glance is like, well, then,
Speaker 4: like why is the lely Sobieski character seemingly a gleeful
Speaker 4: participant in this scenario? Like that doesn't track at all.
Speaker 4: But if it's through the lens of like how Bill's
Speaker 4: very warped perception of women is informing why she's behaving
Speaker 4: that way, then it tries. And we've seen him shell
Speaker 4: out a ton of money, right, I think it was
Speaker 4: very intentional for him to constantly being like, I'll pay
Speaker 4: you two hundred dollars over the rental price, I'll pay
Speaker 4: you one hundred dollars over the fare for the taxi.
Speaker 4: Like he's he has money to throw around and he
Speaker 4: knows he can use it to manipulate people into doing
Speaker 4: what he wants, and he does not hesitate to do so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, class is really interesting in the movie where I
Speaker 6: definitely do think that this is like a movie about
Speaker 6: the bourgeoisie. It's like, these are wealthy people with lots
Speaker 6: of time and lots of resources, and they're a little bored,
Speaker 6: and their boredom allows them the extra time people to
Speaker 6: get up to no good, you know what I mean,
Speaker 6: where it's like I kind of like got that too
Speaker 6: in the Alan Cumming scene where he's like a working
Speaker 6: person and he's like really like loving the juiciness of
Speaker 6: what these rich people in the hotel that he's doing
Speaker 6: is getting up too, and he said he's having so
Speaker 6: much fun kind of like recounting what he saw, and
Speaker 6: even that with like the waitress and even that with
Speaker 6: the sex worker. It's like all of these more working
Speaker 6: class people are just avenues to me to like get
Speaker 6: information or get what I want. And they're sexual too,
Speaker 6: but they're of less value obviously, right.
Speaker 3: I was sort of wondering that with like, because I
Speaker 3: don't do we ever find out what Victor Ziegler does
Speaker 3: for a living?
Speaker 4: I don't think so, I don't know, Okay, we just
Speaker 4: know that he's very wealthy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I also almost wondered if, like I mean,
Speaker 3: it definitely seems like even though like doctor Bill he's
Speaker 3: like weird, I don't know, he's just weird. He's Tom
Speaker 3: Cruisey's weird. He's weird, but it does feel like part
Speaker 3: of what's tied into his insecurity is like he's rich
Speaker 3: and successful, but not as rich and successful. He's still
Speaker 3: technically working for others. But even though he is in
Speaker 3: a different class, he still interfaces with people at the diner.
Speaker 3: His connection to the sex party is someone who works
Speaker 3: for the sex party. So it's like, true, he's not
Speaker 3: invited or necessarily like openly welcomed by like the highest
Speaker 3: echelon that it seems like he probably aspires to be
Speaker 3: a part of, right, you know, he's he's instead sort
Speaker 3: of like reveling in his power over people who have
Speaker 3: less money than him, as opposed to like you never
Speaker 3: really get the feeling that he is fully accepted by
Speaker 3: the like one percent one percent until he's causing them problems.
Speaker 3: But even then, like Victor Zegler's calling him over at
Speaker 3: the end to be like you shouldn't have been there,
Speaker 3: you don't belong there.
Speaker 5: It's another layer of a masculization for sure.
Speaker 4: I have to imagine that's why the change was made
Speaker 4: for from the source material to have that group of
Speaker 4: like agromen. Yeah, call Bill a homophobic slur because that
Speaker 4: just emasculates him even further and then excuse me. And
Speaker 4: then when he comes back home after the party, after
Speaker 4: like the sex party. That's when Alice describes the dream
Speaker 4: where she was like, yeah, we were naked together. I
Speaker 4: was scared you left. I felt so much better after
Speaker 4: you left. And then that sexy naval officer came out
Speaker 4: of the woods and we started having sex and it
Speaker 4: was awesome. It turned into this orgy where I fucked
Speaker 4: so many people. I don't even know how many men,
Speaker 4: but I was with so many. And then I love
Speaker 4: her performance. She's like, I'm sorry, hah, Like that's so good, right,
Speaker 4: And then she describes in her dream like seeing him
Speaker 4: and laughing at him and like wanting to humiliate him.
Speaker 3: It's even worse in the source material. In the source material,
Speaker 3: while she's fucking other guys, he's crucified.
Speaker 5: No, I love that's so good.
Speaker 6: Well yeah, it's like even though he's a doctor and
Speaker 6: he's wealthy and has a beautiful wife, it's like the
Speaker 6: ego wants more. It's like when everything the only way
Speaker 6: that you're able to define your worth is by what
Speaker 6: you believe you've achieved and like acquired, and he's like
Speaker 6: my wife, I like acquired her, Like that's my property,
Speaker 6: Like that's an investment.
Speaker 5: And my understanding as a man. And when you realize that,
Speaker 5: when he realizes that she has desires and dreams outside
Speaker 5: of him, he's like, wait, why is my thing thinking
Speaker 5: about anything else besides me? I'm about to freak the fuck.
Speaker 3: Out, Like no validation is going to be enough for him,
Speaker 3: like no validation from anybody unless he is And I wonder,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if in the source material,
Speaker 3: like he they have a daughter or son. I know
Speaker 3: they have a kid, but it feels kind of also
Speaker 3: intentional that he has a young daughter and has no
Speaker 3: interest in her whatsoever, right, like another thing to have
Speaker 3: around the house, and.
Speaker 5: Doesn't the daughter look doesn't a cool kitmen too? Like
Speaker 5: same hair color ye strawberry blonde? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And even though I mean I want to say, like,
Speaker 3: you know, it does seem like Alice is a good
Speaker 3: and thoughtful parent, but it's like if we're seeing her
Speaker 3: through Bill's eyes, we see what Alice is doing almost never,
Speaker 3: like we get no insight into what her life is
Speaker 3: like except that she isn't working right now and she's
Speaker 3: a stay at home mom, and we see her do that.
Speaker 3: We see her cooking, we see her helping Helena with
Speaker 3: her homework. We see her enjoying being a parent, but
Speaker 3: we get no insight into her outside of that. And
Speaker 3: it's just like, I don't know this. I have no
Speaker 3: idea how we're going to rate this, because it's like,
Speaker 3: I think this movie has so much to say about
Speaker 3: like masculinity and insecurity, but also by design, and it
Speaker 3: has nothing to say about women because it's about a
Speaker 3: man who doesn't understand women at all.
Speaker 5: Total people know, Yeah, for sure, right.
Speaker 4: I also wasn't sure what to make of the part
Speaker 4: where Domino. Yeah, So Bill pays a second visit to Domino.
Speaker 4: And also this is right after he has made a
Speaker 4: phone call to Marion, the woman whose father had just
Speaker 4: passed away, and presumably he's thinking, oh, she was throwing
Speaker 4: herself at me, and my wife keeps emasculating me, so
Speaker 4: that gives me license to cheat on her and try
Speaker 4: to have sex with whoever has showed any interest in me.
Speaker 4: And so he calls her home. Her fiance answers, so
Speaker 4: he hangs up, realizing, oh, that's probably not a viable
Speaker 4: option actually, So then he goes back to Domino's.
Speaker 5: He's trying every angle. It's like his roster is on zero.
Speaker 5: He's like, it's about to be coughing season, and like
Speaker 5: I have there's no one around.
Speaker 3: Miserable he's so he's so desperate. It's like, go, I
Speaker 3: refuse to talk to my wife, right.
Speaker 5: Exactly, it's so pathetic, right, But.
Speaker 4: Anyway, so he goes to Domino's and her roommate Sally
Speaker 4: is there, and he's also trying to have sex with her.
Speaker 4: It seems like she's receptive to it as well. Again,
Speaker 4: probably because this is a projection of his and not
Speaker 4: what's actually really happening.
Speaker 3: Right, because yeah, who would like come on to you
Speaker 3: by being like, by the way, my dearest friend is
Speaker 3: something horrible. It's just happened to her, like.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, the dynamic changes after that, but prior to that,
Speaker 4: she lets a perfect stranger into her home, stands like
Speaker 4: one inch away from him.
Speaker 3: And also she knows this this information about Domino the
Speaker 3: whole time, Like why would you behave that way?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: That's how he behaves when he has to tell his
Speaker 6: patients that they're like terminally ill.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, yeah, right, that news, babe.
Speaker 4: But I guess my question is, like why is that
Speaker 4: detail in the movie? And I was like Okay, is
Speaker 4: it that like the movie has an anti sex worker
Speaker 4: prejudice where it's like trying to offer some sort of
Speaker 4: cautionary tale of like don't cheat on your wife, especially
Speaker 4: not with a sex worker, because then you'll end up
Speaker 4: with a disease or what exactly.
Speaker 6: My take on it is actually further in the Cockinging,
Speaker 6: which is like it's Kubrick showing at ever it's like
Speaker 6: he's he's he's getting caught from like a like a
Speaker 6: societal perspective where it's like you're not like rich enough,
Speaker 6: and then like you're getting caught from like an interpersonal
Speaker 6: perspective where it's like you don't have enough game you
Speaker 6: understand your wife, and then then now you're getting caught
Speaker 6: from like a cultural perspective where it's like, oh, there's
Speaker 6: actually like a bigger conversation that you're not even like
Speaker 6: aware of that could also impede you having sex.
Speaker 3: Maybe I was curious about that, yeah, because I was
Speaker 3: looking into like if there was a version of that
Speaker 3: in dream Story, but it doesn't in the book. It
Speaker 3: just says he looks for her name's Mitzi in the book,
Speaker 3: but he can't find her. So that was like an
Speaker 3: intentionally added, right, I couldn't make other tales of it.
Speaker 3: I think, honey, what you're saying makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 5: Because Kubrick doesn't really like he's not like a cautious
Speaker 5: man like he's it's kind of like fuck caution and
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: No, this is the guy who whiffed Lolita at unprecedented levels.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, exactly, So I don't know.
Speaker 6: I thought that scene was curious too and why that
Speaker 6: detail would be relevant, But I guess my take on
Speaker 6: it was part of Tom Cruise's character's narcissism where he's like, oh,
Speaker 6: something else is getting in the way of my nut
Speaker 6: and it's aids right.
Speaker 3: And then he's like polite about it, but then gets
Speaker 3: the fuck out of there. It doesn't offer it any
Speaker 3: further help or anything like totally yeah.
Speaker 5: And I mean maybe it's also like part of him
Speaker 5: being like a medical professional or something I don't know, right, Well.
Speaker 4: The same way that he doesn't do anything to try
Speaker 4: to help the lely Sobiesky character, who yes, like he's
Speaker 4: just like, oh weird, the dynamic is shifted.
Speaker 5: It's like a concubine tea and he's like gotta go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's like, well, sorry about the mask, I've
Speaker 4: lost it by what right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like he a man, I'm like, is this
Speaker 3: Vivie so amazing? Where it's like he he always behaves politely,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't mean that he's doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: He's almost never doing the right thing right.
Speaker 6: Well, he only does at the very beginning where it's
Speaker 6: like his willingness to help the model Amanda or Mandy
Speaker 6: Mandy Mandy, where it's like he he was so willing
Speaker 6: to like meet and be the real medical professional, but
Speaker 6: as as the time is going on where he has
Speaker 6: yet to get laid, he's like, I'm kind of need
Speaker 6: to get out of here and go sorry.
Speaker 3: Right, And even like it's it's implied that oh, what's
Speaker 3: her name, Marion, the daughter of the patient who dies,
Speaker 3: It's implied like he's again very polite in extracting himself
Speaker 3: from that situation in the moment, but then it's clear
Speaker 3: he doesn't actually care because when he feels insecure and
Speaker 3: on his heels, he calls her and so it's like
Speaker 3: he is not above any of this. He just can't
Speaker 3: close to save his fucking life, Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: curious a curious little movie. I wanted to mention that,
Speaker 3: because this movie is so much about tumultuous straight marriage,
Speaker 3: that many of the paintings, most of the paintings in
Speaker 3: the Harford Household were painted by Stanley Kubrick's wife, Christian.
Speaker 3: She was like an accomplished painter.
Speaker 5: Oh fascinating.
Speaker 4: Also, that set is a recreation of Stanley Kupbrig's and his.
Speaker 5: Wife's real home, the apartment or the sex party.
Speaker 4: No, the apartment.
Speaker 5: Oh, I got it. Oh my god, he's so messy.
Speaker 5: I'm like, bro.
Speaker 3: Good for Christian being like, we've got to wait until
Speaker 3: you're basically dead to do this, because I'm not carrying this.
Speaker 5: I'm not carrying.
Speaker 4: Because he died, I believe, of a heart attack six
Speaker 4: days after showing the final cut of Eyes Wed Shut
Speaker 4: to Warner Brothers.
Speaker 6: I also like to think about what Tom's character thinks
Speaker 6: he would gain spiritually existentially from infidelity and from closing,
Speaker 6: where it's like this like immense desperation that carries the
Speaker 6: entire movie that's exclusively inspired by his wife having a
Speaker 6: dream once, It's like it's kind of it kind of
Speaker 6: seems like he was never even considering what a different
Speaker 6: libin in all reality for him would even offer him
Speaker 6: outside of it being like conquest that comes from being
Speaker 6: like emasculated. It's like, what's like, what do you think
Speaker 6: you would even get spiritually, like personally from doing this.
Speaker 4: It's all about male fragility. Ever heard of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly, And I think a lot of Kuprick's work
Speaker 3: is about that. The more I was thinking about like
Speaker 3: zooming out on what his filmography seems to be about.
Speaker 3: And again it's like, not that he's making an intelligent
Speaker 3: comment on women at really any point. I can't think
Speaker 3: of an example where he is, but it does seem
Speaker 3: like he has an eye for like very fragile men
Speaker 3: lashing out, I.
Speaker 5: Mean and ruining their lives essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, the shining for us?
Speaker 5: Yeah right, if you will.
Speaker 4: Right, because Bill is again so emasculated by his wife Alice,
Speaker 4: being a real person with real desires and real feelings,
Speaker 4: and he can't He just simply cannot comprehend or handle
Speaker 4: it except to seek revenge. Basically, it seems like he's
Speaker 4: on this quest to, oh, well, if my wife had
Speaker 4: a dream about having sex with someone else, well it's
Speaker 4: payback time.
Speaker 5: It's like you don't have dreams, babe, Like what do
Speaker 5: you do when you sleep? You just cut to black
Speaker 5: and wake up eight hours later.
Speaker 4: So again it's all about like the ownership he feels
Speaker 4: over her, and he can't handle this person who he
Speaker 4: deems as his property having any kind of autonomy or
Speaker 4: anything like that, and so he goes out looking for
Speaker 4: a revenge. Fuck.
Speaker 5: Basically, definitely, and.
Speaker 3: It's kind of I mean, it's like devastating from the
Speaker 3: Alice character's perspective, where she is like genuinely reaching out
Speaker 3: and trying to get her husband to be a little
Speaker 3: vulnerable with her and he will not. Budget Yes, it
Speaker 3: makes me sad for her too, because it feels like
Speaker 3: this marriage has taken a lot from her, a lot
Speaker 3: of things that she wants, like, you know, someone who
Speaker 3: is supportive of her career, like someone who can have
Speaker 3: an honest fucking conversation, like someone who respects her at
Speaker 3: a base level. It seems like she has none of.
Speaker 6: This right and I think that at the end of
Speaker 6: the movie, I think she has the upper hand. Like
Speaker 6: I think by the end of the movie, she sees
Speaker 6: his insecurity is so whole and knows that her admitting
Speaker 6: her truth sent him on a spiral that he will
Speaker 6: never be able to recover from, and she knows that
Speaker 6: her sexuality actually fully holds the power in the releaseationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was curious about that because like her being like, well,
Speaker 4: the way to address this marital issue we're having is
Speaker 4: Rosta's fox. I'm like, is that part of his dream
Speaker 4: still or is that just her kind of like understanding
Speaker 4: that she now has some power in this situation. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure because when he tells her, like the next
Speaker 4: morning after he has told her about this whole you know,
Speaker 4: wild night he's had, she for the first time is
Speaker 4: like seen without a full face of makeup. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: like I'm like, oh, this seems like reality again. It
Speaker 4: doesn't seem like he's projecting or imagining or fantasizing or whatever.
Speaker 4: So is the rest of the movie from that point on,
Speaker 4: which is only like I don't know, five more minutes.
Speaker 4: Is that reality again?
Speaker 5: Or I thought it was reality again?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did too, because it's like again, I'm like, maybe
Speaker 3: I'm overthinking it. But the store is crowded at the end.
Speaker 3: It seems like actually it's New York at Christmas, Like
Speaker 3: there's people where I feel like for all of the
Speaker 3: parts that feel very unreal, like there's no one around
Speaker 3: except the person that he's talking to or reacting to him.
Speaker 3: But towards the end, it's like the lighting is more
Speaker 3: realistic and it's busy and I don't know, and.
Speaker 5: Once again, poor Helena, she's like, I want a Teddy Bear.
Speaker 6: And they're talking about the like libidinal exchange of like
Speaker 6: infinite regrets, and.
Speaker 3: They're like and they're like, Teddy Come, she's been through enough.
Speaker 3: They won't even teach her math, Like she's she's cooked.
Speaker 4: She should have been adding up all the cash that
Speaker 4: her dad was throwing around that night.
Speaker 3: The cook budget. It's built into the budget.
Speaker 4: Does anyone have anything else they'd like to chat about?
Speaker 5: I don't know. Let me look at my little notes.
Speaker 3: That I took.
Speaker 4: Apparently, in twenty nineteen, it was revealed that the voice
Speaker 4: of the mysterious masked woman at the party it was
Speaker 4: done in voiceover because the original actor apparently couldn't do
Speaker 4: a convincing enough American accent, so they had another non
Speaker 4: American do an American accent, but it had a Kate
Speaker 4: Blanchett Oh provide the voice.
Speaker 5: That's so cool, She's everywhere at once.
Speaker 6: The only thing that I wrote down was I found
Speaker 6: that Tom's character was also extremely insecure, and he was
Speaker 6: talking to men too, where he like there's the series
Speaker 6: with Nick and they keep like slapping each other. It's like,
Speaker 6: so this like macho bravado that I was really touched
Speaker 6: by how insecure he was, even in his patriarchal conversations,
Speaker 6: where it's like you could tell he was always trying
Speaker 6: to like get above something, but he could never really find.
Speaker 5: His footing right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean even his approaching Nick above anyone else
Speaker 3: at that first party is like, oh, this is a
Speaker 3: former peer of mine who I now perceive to have
Speaker 3: less power than me. Let me go talk to him.
Speaker 3: So it's like, yeah, he's not comfortable talking to men
Speaker 3: he perceives to be more powerful than him.
Speaker 6: And it's like it's men who are revealing these secrets
Speaker 6: to him as well. It's like it's like this weird
Speaker 6: as hazing that's like fraternal hazing, that.
Speaker 5: He's always one step behind. M h. I'm like, you
Speaker 5: don't talk to your bros, dude, you don't know about
Speaker 5: the secret society.
Speaker 3: Like come on, he's got no friends. We gotta get oh,
Speaker 3: he's got nothing going for him.
Speaker 5: It's really shit.
Speaker 3: We gotta get this guy some friends.
Speaker 4: Stat Another just production fun fact is that the way
Speaker 4: it was shot originally probably would have garnered a more
Speaker 4: like NC seventeen rating. So to ensure that it could
Speaker 4: be released theatrically with an R rating in the US,
Speaker 4: Warner Brothers digitally altered several of the like very sexually
Speaker 4: explicit scenes. And I think I think it's that they
Speaker 4: put in like cgi cloaked figures in front of interesting
Speaker 4: people having sex to sort of like obscure the more
Speaker 4: graphics time.
Speaker 3: I also, this is a movie for how horny this
Speaker 3: movie is. I didn't see I just only saw women.
Speaker 3: Like I know that we've like sort of touched on this,
Speaker 3: but like you only see like cis women's bodies shown
Speaker 3: and put it, which does feed into the theory that
Speaker 3: we're just seeing the world through Bill's eyes. But like
Speaker 3: anyone who is an assis woman, their body is obscured
Speaker 3: for the full movie.
Speaker 6: Yeah right, Oh, there was a I don't know if
Speaker 6: y'all caught this, but as he's leaving the party, there's
Speaker 6: gay couples too.
Speaker 4: Oh I did see a glimpse of that.
Speaker 6: Yes, as he was leaving the party, it's like women
Speaker 6: in tuxedos with naked women, and then it's like men
Speaker 6: in tuxedos with naked men with masks on.
Speaker 5: For like what like ten seconds, I missed that. I
Speaker 5: was like, why not have some representation for sex party?
Speaker 3: And it's just walking past.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And he's like, I didn't get the download
Speaker 5: on that yet. He's like, I don't know about gay yet.
Speaker 3: We'll circle back.
Speaker 5: We'll circle back, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anything else from anybody, I don't think so. I
Speaker 4: do believe the movie passes the Bechdel test. When Alice
Speaker 4: and her daughter Helena talk about math women in.
Speaker 5: STU, women in stad, we did it.
Speaker 2: We did it.
Speaker 5: Yep, we did it.
Speaker 4: But as far as our scale, the nipple scale, where
Speaker 4: we rate the movie from zero to five nipples based
Speaker 4: on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, choosing
Speaker 4: to experience the movie through the lens of this is
Speaker 4: very much the character of Bill's perception and like projection
Speaker 4: of his very intense misogyny and patriarchal values informing why
Speaker 4: the characters who are women behave the way that they do, because, again,
Speaker 4: looking at it, at very phase value. It doesn't fare
Speaker 4: very well on our scale. But I do think the
Speaker 4: movie is an indictment of male fragility and the toxicity
Speaker 4: of men being emasculated and what that and how that manifests.
Speaker 4: So because of that, I mean, I don't know, I
Speaker 4: think like split down the middle a two point five
Speaker 4: nipples or does it deserve more? I don't know. This
Speaker 4: one's really a head scratcher.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that there's like inherent and hilarious
Speaker 6: patriarchy and having the nipple scale be a head scratcher
Speaker 6: because you have to understand it as through men, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean. It's like, obviously patriarchy exists because
Speaker 6: men are really fragile and challenging, and that's bolstered societally.
Speaker 6: So like should y'all change the scale of the nipple
Speaker 6: in order to make room for that? Like, I don't
Speaker 6: even know if that's fair.
Speaker 3: It's blowing up the system. The system is totally.
Speaker 5: Where I guess if the nipples could also be men's,
Speaker 5: it's like if.
Speaker 6: If the nipples are gender neutral, And we're talking about
Speaker 6: like a movie that really does a perverse and wonderful
Speaker 6: job at trying to explain gender, then ramp up the nipple.
Speaker 5: I guess maybe just like a four.
Speaker 4: Even you know what I'm gonna do three point two five?
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, I think that's very fair.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. And I'll give them to Alice
Speaker 4: and Helena because because who were they doing nothing wrong?
Speaker 4: Who were they probably?
Speaker 3: Who were they up to that whole weekend? I don't know,
Speaker 3: We'll never know the last weekend. I don't even know.
Speaker 3: I think I'm gonna abstain from nipples in this one
Speaker 3: because I feel like this movie is doing something very
Speaker 3: weird and unique that I really appreciate, and also like
Speaker 3: I really do like I mean, I feel like this
Speaker 3: with a lot of Stanley Kubrick work I've seen accepting
Speaker 3: Lolita again because that's a trash adaptation and he should
Speaker 3: have gone to prison for it, but he didn't, and
Speaker 3: so we have eyeswead shut. I think this is a
Speaker 3: really thoughtful like it just makes, you know, traditional waspy
Speaker 3: American masculinity look like a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 5: To have to uphold. And it's like, definitely it's a.
Speaker 3: Zero sum game. Doctor Bill is suffering this entire movie,
Speaker 3: and everyone around him is suffering as an extension And
Speaker 3: I was really taken aback by this movie this time around.
Speaker 3: And you know, does it have anything to say about women?
Speaker 3: Not really, but I don't think that that is the point.
Speaker 3: And I feel like this, to me is like Kubrick's
Speaker 3: cheat Code, where it's like he is actually talking about
Speaker 3: gender really intensely and thoughtfully, but like from a perspective
Speaker 3: that he understands. Yeah, and it feels effective. Like I
Speaker 3: don't think I really am interested in Kubrick's I mean,
Speaker 3: I actually kind of know I'm not interested in Kubrick's
Speaker 3: interpretation of women. I don't think he really you know,
Speaker 3: that ever really connected at least in his work that
Speaker 3: I've seen. But I think he has a really good
Speaker 3: eye for like insecurity in these like masculine structures, and
Speaker 3: this is like a really great version of it. And
Speaker 3: again like Tom Cruise cult Leader, however, like I really
Speaker 3: I like this era of his work a lot where
Speaker 3: he was really willing to like give up or like
Speaker 3: you know, give away pieces of this hyper masculine movie
Speaker 3: star persona and really seem vulnerable. Like I feel like
Speaker 3: this movie doesn't work without his performance or without Nicole
Speaker 3: Kidman's performance, because just the amount of layers of like
Speaker 3: she's performing how the character sees her, and it's her husband,
Speaker 3: and it's a Kubrick movie, so they have to do
Speaker 3: three thousand takes of every single shot.
Speaker 4: He made Tom Cruise walk through a doorway ninety five times.
Speaker 3: WHOA, yeah, cook, Truly, he's like the most famous man
Speaker 3: in the world. What can I do? And this is
Speaker 3: this is a sort of another conversation. But I know
Speaker 3: when we talked about The Shining back in the day,
Speaker 3: that it was a more prominent cultural narrative at that
Speaker 3: time that he tortured Shelley Duvall on that movie and
Speaker 3: Scatman Cruthers and Scatman Brothers. I can't speak to Scotmancrouthers.
Speaker 3: I do know that later in her life, because Shelley
Speaker 3: Devalt just passed, she kind of significantly pushed back on
Speaker 3: that narrative. Not to say Stanley Kuperck innocent, it really
Speaker 3: does seem like part of his process is kind of
Speaker 3: torturing his actors. Yeah, and the crew. I mean, this
Speaker 3: movie if you did not need to take two years
Speaker 3: to shoot or whatever, right, But I don't know, I
Speaker 3: just like I have been like thinking about his work
Speaker 3: a little differently since I read sort of Shelley Devall's
Speaker 3: account where she was like, it was brutal, it was horrible,
Speaker 3: but I care about him and I wasn't like, I
Speaker 3: don't hold any sort of animosity towards it, which also
Speaker 3: seems how both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman remember this
Speaker 3: experience where like he was torturing us, but like he
Speaker 3: was cooking. Yeah, which is interesting, and I think that
Speaker 3: there is a level of privilege encoded in that as
Speaker 3: well of like the you know, these like cispenotur geniuses
Speaker 3: are always given a way longer leash with what is
Speaker 3: permissible behavior. That definitely factors into it. But for sure, anyways,
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, he was cooking here, and I don't
Speaker 3: know nipples. I quit for this one.
Speaker 4: That's fine, Yeah, honey, do you have any thoughts.
Speaker 5: I don't know nipples either. I mean, there's probably like
Speaker 5: one hundred thousand nipples in the movie, so it's definitely
Speaker 5: a nipple heavy film home for sure.
Speaker 6: But I think that what y'all are saying is I
Speaker 6: agree with and it's a student To grade the movie
Speaker 6: on a scale of intersectional feminism seems impossible because women
Speaker 6: were only seen as projections of men.
Speaker 5: So I don't think I can rate it on that scale.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I think it's an awesome movie about gender right,
Speaker 6: And I know it's curious thinking about what an insane
Speaker 6: cult leader, misogynist Tom cruises. And then it's like, what
Speaker 6: did you think this movie was about? You know, I
Speaker 6: think it's all you know what I mean, what do
Speaker 6: you think you were doing?
Speaker 4: He's the guy in the red cloak going.
Speaker 5: Literally, yeah exactly, you were the one Gregory chanting what
Speaker 5: do you think is going on?
Speaker 3: I feel that way about Dennis Quaid in The Substance,
Speaker 3: where I was like, yeah, what does he think the
Speaker 3: Substance is about? Because he had he gives a great
Speaker 3: performance and he's a notorious piece of shit, and you're like, right,
Speaker 3: what did you think you were doing? Like I totally
Speaker 3: feeling don't know.
Speaker 4: Well, anyway, that's the episode. Honey, Thank you so much
Speaker 4: for joining us.
Speaker 5: Of course, thanks much for having me. This was so fun.
Speaker 3: The Little Mermaid to Ieswig Chut pipeline is complete. We've
Speaker 3: done it.
Speaker 5: We've done all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, where can people check out your work? Follow you
Speaker 4: on social media? Plug anything you want to plug.
Speaker 5: It's all my name at Honey Pluton. I have a
Speaker 5: podcast that was mentioned up top called Up Good with
Speaker 5: Honey Pluton. We love pod listen up and yeah follow
Speaker 5: me excellent.
Speaker 4: You can follow us on Instagram and Patreon that's patreon
Speaker 4: dot com slash Bechdelcast to join our Matreon community Q
Speaker 4: where you get two bonus I know right, You'll get
Speaker 4: two bonus episodes every month centering on a fun little
Speaker 4: theme that Jamie and myself cook up, plus access to
Speaker 4: the entire back catalog of over one hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: bonus episodes. So there's a lot of good stuff there
Speaker 4: and it's the best way to support the show. Also,
Speaker 4: don't forget to check out our live shows coming up
Speaker 4: in January. We've got one in La on January nineteenth.
Speaker 4: That is a big Bechdel Cast celebration, lots of fun segments.
Speaker 4: We've got stand up from some of your favorite past guests,
Speaker 4: plus from Jamie and myself, chats about movies, all kinds
Speaker 4: of fun stuff. That's live in La. Plus it's being
Speaker 4: live streamed, so you can watch that show from anywhere.
Speaker 4: Then we've got a show as a part of sketch
Speaker 4: Fest in San Francisco on January twenty third that's a
Speaker 4: Shrek Tannic show where we're covering Titanic. And then the
Speaker 4: following night on January twenty fourth, also at sketch Fest,
Speaker 4: is a Honey's show called Jeppar Gay, which I am
Speaker 4: going to be one of the guests on, so please
Speaker 4: come check that out. And then finally we have a
Speaker 4: show in Portland on January twenty sixth that's an other
Speaker 4: Shrek Tannic show, this time we're covering Shrek and this
Speaker 4: one is also going to be live streamed, So all
Speaker 4: the tickets and all the other details are on our
Speaker 4: link tree link Tree slash Bechtel Cast, as well as
Speaker 4: the description of this episode. So please, please please come
Speaker 4: out to the shows, especially if you live in those areas.
Speaker 4: Come see us live. If not, tune into the live
Speaker 4: stream shows. Supporting our shows is the other best way
Speaker 4: to support this entire podcast. So yeah, I hope to
Speaker 4: see you there, and.
Speaker 3: You can get our merch at teapublic dot com slash
Speaker 3: Bechdel Cast. Holidays coming up, blah blah blah. Give it
Speaker 3: to the eyes wide shut in your life.
Speaker 4: And with that, shall we hop in a taxi and
Speaker 4: go to a sex party.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it's time to fuck.
Speaker 5: It's time.
Speaker 3: Yeah that too, Bye Bye bye.
Speaker 4: The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin
Speaker 4: Drante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by
Speaker 4: mo La Boord. Our theme song was composed by Mike
Speaker 4: Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo in merch
Speaker 4: is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Speaker 4: Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
Speaker 4: link tree slash Bechdel Cast