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Speaker 1: Trigger warning. This podcast involves discussions of child sexual abuse

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Speaker 1: and pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised. In nineteen fifty eight,

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Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick was a director on the rise, but had

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Speaker 1: yet to release a big hit. Before the age of thirty,

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Speaker 1: he had already directed four movies, the most recent of

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Speaker 1: which was a war movie called Paths of Glory and

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Speaker 1: starred pretty big star Kirk Douglas. This was also his

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Speaker 1: first collaboration with producer James Harris. But Kubrick wasn't the

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Speaker 1: legend we know him as today. Yet we know him

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Speaker 1: now as the director of two thousand one, A Space Odyssey,

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Speaker 1: or The Shining or Doctor Strain Glove or Clockwork Orange,

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Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be until nineteen sixty that he released

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Speaker 1: his first major hit, Spartacus. Kubrick and Harris didn't quite

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Speaker 1: have the major cred yet, but they did have good

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Speaker 1: reputations in Hollywood, and most importantly, they had a hundred

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars in nineteen fifty eight money to pay

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Speaker 1: for the rights to adapt Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, convincing Nabukov

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Speaker 1: that Lolita should be adapted to the screen wasn't much

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Speaker 1: of a challenge. The book of had been a movie

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Speaker 1: buff for years, with a reputation for bursting out laughing

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Speaker 1: extremely loudly in movie theaters, and he'd even written his

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two Russian language novel Laughter in the Dark

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Speaker 1: with film adaptation in mind. What was not going to

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Speaker 1: be so easy was convincing Nabokov that he should be

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Speaker 1: the one to write the script. The first draft of

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Speaker 1: the Lolita screenplay was written by Calder Willingham, a very

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Speaker 1: British name for someone who was American. He was a

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Speaker 1: Kuber collaborator who had co written Paths of Glory and

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Speaker 1: would go on to write drafts of Spartacus and The Graduate. Now.

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Speaker 1: All we know about this draft now is that Kuper

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Speaker 1: didn't like it, and so Koper can Harris were essentially

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Speaker 1: begging Nabukoff to adapt the work himself. By nine, here's

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Speaker 1: a telegraph from Kuber to Nabukoff. Book a masterpiece and

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Speaker 1: should be followed even if Legion and Code disapproved. Stop

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Speaker 1: still believe you are the only one for the screen

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Speaker 1: a stop. If financial details can be agreed, would you

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Speaker 1: be available? And here's Nabokov's reaction. Written in the foreword

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Speaker 1: of the published screenplay, the idea of tampering with my

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Speaker 1: own novel causes me only revulsion. But there were some

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Speaker 1: butterflies worth catching in the region, so the Nabakos packed

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Speaker 1: their bags for Beverly Hills to meet with Stanley Kubrick.

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Speaker 1: It did not go well in person. Kubrick was far

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Speaker 1: more conscious of skirting their production code that held content

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Speaker 1: coming out of Hollywood in a vice gript from the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties until the late nineteen sixties. Here's how

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Speaker 1: Nabakov describes that meeting. I was told that in order

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Speaker 1: to appease the sensor, a later scene should contain some

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Speaker 1: BEAUTI hint to the effect that Humbert had been secretly

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Speaker 1: married to Lolita all along. Nabukov says, no way, and

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Speaker 1: he turns the gig down. And at this time the

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Speaker 1: book off wasn't even totally comfortable with a young actress

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Speaker 1: playing Lolita at all, and was actively trying to think

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Speaker 1: of ways around it. But while he was back in

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Speaker 1: Europe this summer, he couldn't stop thinking about how he

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Speaker 1: would do the adaptation. Ideas continued to pop up, and

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Speaker 1: so when his agent came back with an offer from

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Speaker 1: Kubrick and Harris forty dollars to write the script. Nubukov agreed.

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Speaker 1: On March one, nine sixty, Kubrik and Nibakov met again

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Speaker 1: and they had a debate of what Nabokov would concede

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Speaker 1: to the Hollywood Code and what absolutely needed to stay.

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Speaker 1: On March nine, Nabukov began to meet with prospective Lolita's

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Speaker 1: and I am going to be calling her Lolita in

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Speaker 1: this episode because that is the name she is referred

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Speaker 1: to as for the entire movie. But the casting of

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Speaker 1: Lolita was a decision that had caused a lot of talk,

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Speaker 1: and over eight hundred young actors had auditioned for the park.

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Speaker 1: The first choice had been child star Hailey Mills, who

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Speaker 1: was and is most famous for her Disney roles in

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Speaker 1: movies like Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, not the Lindsay

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Speaker 1: Lohan one. Much later in her career, Mills had this

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Speaker 1: to say of Lolita. I wanted to do it. I'd

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Speaker 1: read the book but didn't under stand the implications of it.

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Speaker 1: My parents were put under quite a bit of pressure

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Speaker 1: to let me do it. They were offered a renoir

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Speaker 1: still under contract at Disney. It wasn't a huge surprise

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Speaker 1: that this did not end up happening, So Nabukov doesn't

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Speaker 1: meet Hayley Mills on March nine. Instead, he meets the

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Speaker 1: seventeen year old Tuesday Weld, who was a pretty interesting

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Speaker 1: choice for this part. Weld had been the main source

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Speaker 1: of her family's income since she was a toddler. After

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Speaker 1: her father suddenly died, she had suffered a nervous breakdown

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Speaker 1: by the age of nine. She, like Lolita, had been

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Speaker 1: a victim of sexual abuse as a child beginning at eleven,

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Speaker 1: and had been linked to several men far older than

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Speaker 1: her in her early teen years, and had it framed

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Speaker 1: as consensual, including a forty four year old Frank Sinatra

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Speaker 1: when she was fourteen. This is your annual reminder that

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Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra fucking sucks. Nabukov, however, did not think that

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Speaker 1: Tuesday was the right fit, saying this a graceful engineer,

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Speaker 1: but not my idea of Lolita. Later in life, Tuesday

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Speaker 1: Weld agreed and said this, I didn't have to play Lolita.

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Speaker 1: I was Lolita. Meanwhile, a lot of actors are chomping

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Speaker 1: at the bit to play European child sex abuser, Humbert Humbert,

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Speaker 1: We're talking Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Marlon Brando, but that

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Speaker 1: part ends up going to James Mason, who fits Nabokov's

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Speaker 1: description of Humbert from the book pretty well, although he

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Speaker 1: is in his fifties and the Humbert of the book

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Speaker 1: is thirty seven. And by September nineteen six, Nabokov had

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Speaker 1: written a six hour, sprawling version of the script that

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Speaker 1: Kuper said was unfilmable, and then a second draft that

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Speaker 1: would eventually be published that Nabukov was considerably less enthusiastic about.

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Speaker 1: The part of Lolita still hadn't been cast, and on

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Speaker 1: September twenty nine, Nabukov and Kubrick meet for the last time.

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Speaker 1: It's here that Nabuko first sees photos of an unknown

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Speaker 1: actor named sue Lyon, and he has this to say.

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Speaker 1: Su Lean was a demure nymphete of fourteen or so

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Speaker 1: who said Kubrick could easily be made to look younger

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Speaker 1: and grubbier for the part of Lolita for which he

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Speaker 1: had already signed her up. On the whole, I felt

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Speaker 1: rather pleased with the way things had worked out. Yes

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Speaker 1: he was supposed to have said, Sue Lion. They're not

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Speaker 1: su Lean, but Robert is really busy and I didn't

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Speaker 1: want to ask him to do it again. And it's,

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Speaker 1: you know, not the least funny mistake I've ever heard.

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Speaker 1: It is Sue Lion. Thank you, Robert Evans. The movie

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Speaker 1: was released in June two and lead with this tagline.

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Speaker 1: And that's actually a pretty easy question to answer. How

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Speaker 1: did they ever make a movie of Lolita? They didn't,

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Speaker 1: And Stanley Kubrick would never make a movie of even

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Speaker 1: a whiff of a female protagonist ever. Again, this is

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Speaker 1: Lolita Podcast. Yeah, welcome back to Lolita Podcast. My name

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Speaker 1: is Jamie Loftus, and today we are talking about the

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Speaker 1: first attempt and I cannot stress the word attempt enough

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Speaker 1: to adapt Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to the big screen. Now,

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Speaker 1: when I say they didn't make a movie of Lolita,

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Speaker 1: here's what I mean. In this case. Kubrick's movie doesn't

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Speaker 1: just scale back the abuse towards Lolita and style her

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Speaker 1: to appear much older than the twelve year old of

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Speaker 1: the book or even the fourteen year old of the movie.

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Speaker 1: This movie has played as comedy for the most part,

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Speaker 1: with more focus on the inflated role of Claire Quilty

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Speaker 1: and Humbert. Humbert trying to deceive everyday people from the

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Speaker 1: reality of who and what they really are. What happens

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Speaker 1: to Lolita is not made clear is abuse, and more

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Speaker 1: often than not, her behavior is framed as inviting Humberd's attention.

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Speaker 1: The fact that a fourteen year old cannot consent to

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Speaker 1: an adult is a non issue, and the truth of

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Speaker 1: it is ignored entirely as far as nineteen sixty two

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Speaker 1: is concerned. This is a slightly problematic love story, and

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Speaker 1: I know I'm coming down hard on it right at

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Speaker 1: the beginning, but particularly after speaking with psychologists who specialize

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Speaker 1: in treating survivors of child abuse, these changes do matter.

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Speaker 1: We'll be speaking with her at length next week, but

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Speaker 1: I wanted to share this part of my interview with

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Speaker 1: author of reading Lolita to Understand child sexual abuse, Lucia Williams.

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Speaker 1: So he shows it with through literary, you know, in

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Speaker 1: a subtle way. But he shows her crying, He shows

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Speaker 1: how upset she is, that she's isolated, that you know,

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Speaker 1: he cannot play with her friends, cannot go to school

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Speaker 1: with her friends. So he showed is that. But one

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Speaker 1: of the issues that perhaps people get confused. And I've

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Speaker 1: seen very young modern writers talking about this, saying, oh,

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Speaker 1: she's the one who seduced him. She wasn't even a virgin.

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Speaker 1: Well why is first of all, is she really a

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Speaker 1: virgin or not? She describes to him that when she

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Speaker 1: was at camp she made sex for the first time, right,

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Speaker 1: but if she did, it was with the pal, it

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Speaker 1: was somebody with her own age. And that, you know,

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Speaker 1: a twelve year old kid having sex with a thirteen

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Speaker 1: year old kid. That's called an introduction to sex, which

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Speaker 1: might or not be violent. That's going to depend, right,

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Speaker 1: but it might be okay. But according to him, he

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Speaker 1: describes it in a way to say, you know, he

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Speaker 1: has to defend himself. He considered, and so poets never killed.

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Speaker 1: I'm a poet. I could never ever heard her. So

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Speaker 1: it's it's to his interest that she was already very

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Speaker 1: precocious sexually. Thanks so much to Lucia, and we'll be

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Speaker 1: talking to her again soon. And virtually all of the

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Speaker 1: misconceptions she's describing are represented to some degree in this movie.

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Speaker 1: Have the artistic merit argument all you want, but the

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Speaker 1: way Kubrick trivializes abuse. Here is undeniable, and he's not

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Speaker 1: doing this alone. And we're going to have a talk

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Speaker 1: about Nabokov's adaptation choices for his own work that I

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Speaker 1: found pretty surprising. But this movie does stand out among

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Speaker 1: other adaptations for a couple of reasons. It's the only

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Speaker 1: one that Nabokov himself was involved in writing. It sets

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Speaker 1: many of the precedents that haunt future adaptations, and maybe

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Speaker 1: more than anything else, it establishes a very particular aesthetic,

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Speaker 1: because seriously, when you picture Lolita, what are you picturing

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Speaker 1: Here's might be different, but the most common answer is

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Speaker 1: a teenage girl looking over a pair of heart shaped

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Speaker 1: sunglasses seductively at the viewer. Sometimes she's got a lollipop,

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Speaker 1: other times she doesn't. This is an image pulled directly

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Speaker 1: from the ninety two movie poster, and it's possibly the

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Speaker 1: most enduring and iconic image associated with Lolita the cultural figure.

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Speaker 1: It's an image that's referenced in pop culture up until today.

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Speaker 1: If you count laundel raised music as relevant, it still

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Speaker 1: has an impact on fashion and music and movies that

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Speaker 1: followed it. And guess what, that shot does not appear

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Speaker 1: in the movie at all. Lolita first appears in the

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Speaker 1: movie looking at Humberg, granted in a way that is

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Speaker 1: deeply sexualized that we'll talk about, but it's over regular sunglasses,

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Speaker 1: the dark glasses that Nabokov describes in his book, no lollipops,

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Speaker 1: no heart shapes, and yet this is the strongest image

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Speaker 1: we have of anything. So today we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about how the sixty two Lolita movie got made, what

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Speaker 1: Nabokov's experience was working on it, and how the image

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Speaker 1: of Lolita the cultural product was cultivated through an unknown

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Speaker 1: actor named Sue lions excellent performance, as well as some

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Speaker 1: insight into how her treatment on the side of Lolita

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Speaker 1: and the media after affected her life. Moving forward, we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk Kubrick with a Kubrick scholar who has

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Speaker 1: some insight on how Kubrick and James Harris approached the

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Speaker 1: story and began a long line of misinterpretations of Lolita

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Speaker 1: that get us all the way up to Lana del

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Speaker 1: Rey singing Hey, Lolita Hey. And that's not to mention

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Speaker 1: details of Sue lions experiences on the production that have

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Speaker 1: only come to light in the public weeks before I'm

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Speaker 1: recording this. Sarah Wineman, who I will be speaking to

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Speaker 1: next week as well, has written about Lolita extensively and

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Speaker 1: is the author of The Real Lolita, The Kidnapping of

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Speaker 1: Sally Horner, and the novel that scandalized the world. In October,

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Speaker 1: she reported for Airmail that producer James Harris had taken

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Speaker 1: Sue Lyon's virginity either during the production when she was fourteen,

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Speaker 1: or shortly after on the subsequent press tour, depending on

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Speaker 1: who you ask in Lyon's life. We can't ask Lyon

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Speaker 1: herself because she passed away in late but we're going

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Speaker 1: to be dedicating a future episode to the experiences of

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Speaker 1: the girls and women who have played the part of Lolita.

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Speaker 1: But I did want to include this passage from her

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Speaker 1: piece here. Quote. A July fourteenth, nine sixty two column

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Speaker 1: by Dorothy Kilgallan carried the headline Lolita virus catching for

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Speaker 1: Sue Lyon. The item reads, quote within a quote, oh no, quote,

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Speaker 1: Sue Lyon, the pretty star of Lolita, has bowled over

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Speaker 1: her producer, James B. Harris. Her age is sixteen according

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Speaker 1: to her studio, and he's an old man of thirty three.

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Speaker 1: She prefers the company of mature men, and James maybe

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Speaker 1: her cup of tea when she's a little older and

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Speaker 1: decides that it's proper to court her. Unquote, Sue Lyon

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Speaker 1: later had used to say when the nineteen nineties adaptation,

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Speaker 1: directed by Adrian Line was first announced in nine quote,

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Speaker 1: My destruction as a person dates from that movie. Lolita

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Speaker 1: exposed me to temptations no girl of that age should undergo.

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Speaker 1: I defy any pretty girl who has rocketed to stardom

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Speaker 1: at fourteen in a sex nymphete role to stay on

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Speaker 1: a level path. Thereafter. We will pick up on lyons

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Speaker 1: experiences later in the series. And while this movie has

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Speaker 1: a generally negative legacy, Nabokov ends up getting an Oscar

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Speaker 1: nomination for Best Screenplay, which is ironic given how next

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Speaker 1: to nothing of his scripts actually appeared on screen. Here's

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Speaker 1: what he said in the foreword to the published screenplay

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Speaker 1: when adapting Low Leader to the speaking screen. Cubrick saw

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Speaker 1: my novel in one way, I saw it in another.

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Speaker 1: That's all. Nor can one deny that infinite fidelity maybe

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Speaker 1: an author's ideal, but can prove a producer's ruin. My

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Speaker 1: first reaction to the picture was a mixture of probation

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Speaker 1: and reluctant pleasure. So when we talk about the script

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Speaker 1: to the sixty two Lolita, the one we're referring to

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Speaker 1: is Kubrick's and Harris's. Kubrick fans don't discuss Lolita that

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Speaker 1: much when they talk about his work, because it's honestly

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Speaker 1: far from his best. But I finally excuse made for

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Speaker 1: why it's not his best to be pretty telling, and

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Speaker 1: it's this something he said years later. Had I realized

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Speaker 1: how severe the censorship limitations were going to be, I

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Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have made the film. So, you guys, he

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Speaker 1: like would have made an amazing movie that was respectful

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Speaker 1: to its central character, but like he couldn't. And he's

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Speaker 1: right in saying his Lolita doesn't tackle any of the

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Speaker 1: anti child sex abuse themes of the book, and part

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Speaker 1: of that can be attributed to the production code still active.

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Speaker 1: But no one had a gun to Kubrick and Harris's

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Speaker 1: head saying their adaptation had to be comedy heavy. No

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Speaker 1: one said, let's let Peter Seller's improvise in a movie

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Speaker 1: about a pedophile for minutes at a time about absolutely nothing,

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Speaker 1: and certainly no one forced them to lay the foundation

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Speaker 1: for Lolita's sexualized image through both the script and the

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Speaker 1: language of the camera. So the arcuman I'm going to

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Speaker 1: lay out here is that director Kubrick and producer Harris

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Speaker 1: scapegoating the production code as troubling andrewcon Ian as it

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Speaker 1: absolutely was, is a way of dodging a lot of

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Speaker 1: accountability about their own bad choices. And I say this

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Speaker 1: for many reasons that will discuss later in the episode,

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Speaker 1: but for starters, Kubrick, like every other man who was

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Speaker 1: attempted to adapt Lolita and it has been all men,

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Speaker 1: saw the source material as a love story. Here's a

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Speaker 1: clip from an interview he did with Terry Southern at

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Speaker 1: Esquire at the time of the movie's release. Is certainly

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Speaker 1: one of the great love stories, isn't it. I think

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Speaker 1: Lionel Trilling's piece and encounter is very much to the

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Speaker 1: point when he speaks of it is the first great

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Speaker 1: love story of the twentieth century, unless we forget the

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Speaker 1: tone of that Lionel Trilling piece he's referring to from

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Speaker 1: the magazine and counter from Here's a quote quote. We

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Speaker 1: naturally inclined to be lenient towards a rapist who eventually

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Speaker 1: feels a deathless devotion to his victim unquote. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you don't laugh, you're just going to cry. So

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Speaker 1: the issues here extend past the production code. The director

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Speaker 1: and arguably co writer of the movie didn't get what

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Speaker 1: the story was about. But all right, Kubrick, I'll play ball.

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Speaker 1: What kind of Hollywood landscape was Lolita released into? Because

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Speaker 1: to understand the four D blame game being played here

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Speaker 1: and why it's taken until October for the abuse of

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Speaker 1: power associated with this production to come to light, we

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Speaker 1: do need some context what that code was, how it

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Speaker 1: was connected to Hollywood, and how it was connected to

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Speaker 1: the sexualization of young girls in nineteen sixty two. Buckle up, yeah.

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Speaker 1: The Hayes production code of was named for ex Republican

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Speaker 1: politician and ex Postmaster General William H. Hayes, who was

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Speaker 1: appointed the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and

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Speaker 1: Distributors Association. And this code is well, it's a lot.

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Speaker 1: Here are some excerpts from the original text read by

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Speaker 1: my dear friend Grace Thomas. Though regarding motion pictures primarily

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Speaker 1: as entertainment without any explicit purpose of teaching or propaganda,

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Speaker 1: producers know that the motion picture within its own field

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Speaker 1: of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress.

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Speaker 1: For higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking.

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Speaker 1: The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home

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Speaker 1: shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms

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Speaker 1: of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing. Sex

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Speaker 1: perversion or any inference to it is forbidden. Children's sex

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Speaker 1: organs are never to be exposed. Misgenation, sex relationships between

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Speaker 1: the white and black races is forbidden. A book describes

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Speaker 1: a film vividly presents one presents on a cold page,

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Speaker 1: the other by apparently living people. So all of that

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Speaker 1: with the exception of protecting children from being exploited on film,

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Speaker 1: although as we will discuss, this did not protect them

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Speaker 1: from their own bosses and co stars behind the scenes.

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Speaker 1: So again, really normal stuff. It goes without saying racist, sexist, homophobic. Really,

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Speaker 1: every bad thing you can be is what this code is.

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Speaker 1: And there is no doubt that this code had a

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Speaker 1: huge effect in suppressing progress in popular art. I mean hell,

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Speaker 1: next to the amount of pushback writers and directors got

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Speaker 1: while the code was in place. Nabokov's concerns about being

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Speaker 1: simply taken to court over the Lolita Manuscript in the

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Speaker 1: publishing industry seems kind of like a cakewalk. Back in

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Speaker 1: the early days of the production code and the nineties,

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Speaker 1: the concept of Hollywood was full of powerful men exerting

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Speaker 1: pretty extreme control, both financially and sometimes sexually, over young

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Speaker 1: girls in the name of art and more significantly profit.

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Speaker 1: And there's some overlap between the literary and film world here.

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Speaker 1: We talked in the last episode about how much of

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Speaker 1: Nabokov's female characters across his fiction suffer extensively while their

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Speaker 1: stories are being narrated by men. Kind of exactly what's

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Speaker 1: going on in Hollywood too, thanks mainly to, as in

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Speaker 1: literature and in life, men exerting an extreme amount of

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Speaker 1: creative control, particularly over their female and child leads. So

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Speaker 1: over on the director side, there are notoriously antagonistic and

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Speaker 1: abusive directors like D. W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hughes,

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Speaker 1: the list goes on, And on the other side we

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Speaker 1: have draconian profiteering producers with stars under contract that squeeze

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Speaker 1: every last drop of labor out of actors like Louis B. Mayor,

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Speaker 1: Jack Warner, David ol Selznick. The list goes on there too,

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Speaker 1: and the long term issues that these creative heads had

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Speaker 1: on their stars, particularly younger ones, really can't be overstated.

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Speaker 1: One needs to look no further than examples like the

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Speaker 1: long term abuse and exploitation of child stars like Judy

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Speaker 1: Garland and Mickey Rooney, or the endless promotional tours and

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Speaker 1: photos that starlets were required to do in order to

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Speaker 1: promote men's move fees using their bodies like Jane Russell,

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Speaker 1: like Marilyn Monroe. And there are a number of wonderful

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Speaker 1: books podcast documentaries that cover this time in Hollywood in

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Speaker 1: gruesome and fascinating detail, and I'll include them in the

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Speaker 1: footnotes of this episode. Particular recommendations are Karina longworths you

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Speaker 1: must remember this and be kind rewind on YouTube. So

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Speaker 1: Hollywood is not an industry known for being kind to

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Speaker 1: really anybody except rich white men, and had no vested interest,

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Speaker 1: especially at this time, in changing that. But this exploitation

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Speaker 1: wasn't limited to the profiteers alone. It extended to the

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Speaker 1: consumers to an extent. When child stars first came into

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Speaker 1: the mainstream, they were immediately made to act more like adults,

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Speaker 1: and for young girls, this automatically led to being sexualized

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Speaker 1: from a very early age, and this is ridiculous. A

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Speaker 1: writer named Graham Green, who you might remember from the

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Speaker 1: last episode is the English critic who would later be

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Speaker 1: the first to give Lolita the book its first big

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Speaker 1: critical break back, says this about Shirley Temple's movie from

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Speaker 1: seven called Wee Willie Winky. He says that she has

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Speaker 1: quote a certain adroid coquettery which appealed to middle aged men. Unquote, Okay,

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Speaker 1: it does get worse from here. I didn't even feel

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Speaker 1: right having a friend voice this because it's so gross,

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Speaker 1: So I am I'm doing it myself. Trigger warning. Graham

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Speaker 1: Green continues, quote in Captain January, she wore trousers with

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Speaker 1: the mature suggestiveness of Dietrich. Her neat and well developed

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Speaker 1: rump twisted in the tap dance. Her naked eyes had

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Speaker 1: a sidelong, searching coquetterie. Now and we Willie Winky wearing

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Speaker 1: short kilts, she is completely TAZZI watch the way she

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Speaker 1: measures a man with agile studio eyes with dimple depracity,

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Speaker 1: using her well shaped and desirable little body on quote

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Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. So twentieth century Fox files a libel lawsuit

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Speaker 1: and bankrupts the magazine these words were published in. But

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Speaker 1: Graham Green goes on as a writer and hails the

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Speaker 1: novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabulkov as a great work in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. And yes, the distance between nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: seven and nineteen fifty five isn't insignificant. But knowing Graham

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Speaker 1: Green's attitudes in nineteen thirty seven about young girls at

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Speaker 1: age thirty three and then his opinions on Lolita in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, it's worth saying, were these nineteen fifty

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Speaker 1: quotes said with a full understanding that the book Lolita

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Speaker 1: is not taking Humbert side. And this is a somewhat

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Speaker 1: extreme example of how child stars were talked about at

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Speaker 1: this time. But there is no doubt that the child

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Speaker 1: stars of the nineteen thirties were asked to be adults

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Speaker 1: in many ways and were sometimes physically and sexually abused

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Speaker 1: by their employers. Again, Judy Garland's experience as a girl

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Speaker 1: with Louis b. Mayer is a tragic and clear example

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Speaker 1: of this. In the nineties, this same wave of child

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Speaker 1: stars became preteens and teenagers in the industry evolved to

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Speaker 1: make new stories and develop new tropes for them. Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: Taylor transitions from child roles to young on Genuine Love.

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Speaker 1: Judy Garland's body continues to be regulated as her plotlines change.

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Speaker 1: Within the same couple of years, She's asked to sing

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Speaker 1: you made Me Love You at age fourteen to Clark Gable,

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Speaker 1: and just a few years later, her breasts are taped

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Speaker 1: down to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz to

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Speaker 1: appear more childlike. And this isn't even to mention the

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Speaker 1: handful of high profile child sex abuse cases surrounding stars

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Speaker 1: of early Hollywood who are still held in extremely high

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Speaker 1: regard today. Consider Charlie Chaplin, one of Hollywood's biggest stars

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Speaker 1: ever who made a number of slapstick comedies that involved

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Speaker 1: very young girls and not for no reason. In the

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Speaker 1: biography Tramp, written by Joyce Milton, and there's an anecdote

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Speaker 1: about Chaplin being fixated on a fifteen year old named

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Speaker 1: Hetty Kelly, who turned him down when propositioned. Chaplin remarked

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Speaker 1: on seeing her a year later that he quote was

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Speaker 1: disappointed to notice that she had developed breasts which he

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Speaker 1: did not find attractive unquote. There's another example Chaplin fixated

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Speaker 1: on a twelve year old named Maybelle Fournier around this

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Speaker 1: time and said this, I have always been in love

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Speaker 1: with young girls, not an enamorous way. I just loved

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Speaker 1: to caress and fondle Maybell, not passionately, just to have

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Speaker 1: her in my arms. Really a master class in absolute bullshit.

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Speaker 1: And then there was Mildred Harris, who met Chaplin at

423
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 1: age fourteen and was pregnant by him at sixteen, just

424
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:44,920
Speaker 1: from being in his arms. I'm sure they got married

425
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: and divorced pretty quickly. Then again, Lolita Gray was fifteen

426
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,520
Speaker 1: when thirty five year old Chaplain got her pregnant and

427
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:55,320
Speaker 1: married her. This was disturbing to both Lolita and her mother,

428
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:59,120
Speaker 1: who kept careful records of Chaplin's behavior under the assumption

429
00:26:59,240 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: that they would have to go to court over it

430
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: some day. When that divorce happened, the media finally reported

431
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: on Chaplin's repeated history of child molestation, but it didn't

432
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 1: damage his reputation enough to end his career. I mean, hell,

433
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,399
Speaker 1: it barely affects how we view him now if people

434
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 1: know about this at all, which honestly I didn't. And yes,

435
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 1: that's Litlita, not Lowlita, but it's a near certainty that

436
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 1: Nabokov was aware of this scandal and may have had

437
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: the name in the back of his head when he

438
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:32,359
Speaker 1: began writing. Then there's Errol Flynn, who is accused of

439
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 1: statutory rape by two teenagers, Peggy Saturley and Betty Hansen

440
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: in ninety two, and Flynn is actually brought to a

441
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: very public trial for twenty one days. He is, as

442
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:47,760
Speaker 1: rapists often are, acquitted and returns to stardom. And he

443
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,679
Speaker 1: is accused again at the end of the nineteen forties

444
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 1: by a different fifteen year old girl. He's acquitted again.

445
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: All evidence proved that he knew the girls were under

446
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: age and had in fact glorified it, calling things like

447
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:04,280
Speaker 1: jail bait and san Quentin quaile. The reason he isn't

448
00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: found guilty appears to be that his victims may not

449
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: have been virgins. And again there is that glimmer of

450
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 1: Lolita the book. Humbert assuages his obvious guilt after raping

451
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: Lolita for the first time by reminding himself that she's

452
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: had sex before, as if that matters. And that's not

453
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: even to mention how the abuse of child performers, women

454
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: and people of color would continue into today. In the

455
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,200
Speaker 1: forties and nineteen fifties, the Hollywood Blacklist and the production

456
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: Code worked seamlessly together under McCarthy is um to prevent

457
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: progress in what could be shown on screen. The majority

458
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: of Hollywood got on board with persecuting any writer or

459
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: director that had so much as indicated a mild interest

460
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 1: in the idea of communism, and this caused a number

461
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: of writers to be fully blacklisted and sent the message

462
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,760
Speaker 1: to those that were not blacklisted that the envelope was

463
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: not to be pushed. Interestingly enough, the first of the

464
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: Hollywood ten black listed, Dalton Trumbo, would only come back

465
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: into prominence under his own name, when Kirk Douglas publicly

466
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: and proudly recognized him as the credited writer of Stanley

467
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: Kubrick Spartacus in nineteen sixty. By the time Lolita is

468
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: first published in ninety five, the Hollywood landscape has shifted

469
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 1: yet again. The Code is still in place, but now

470
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe is the world's biggest star, and she is

471
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: most frequently cast as a very childish character within a

472
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 1: very adult body. In the book Chasing Lolita, which I

473
00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: can't recommend enough, writer Graham Vickers makes this argument about

474
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: Monroe quote had the nineteen fifties version of the damaged

475
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: little Victorian girl syndrome and projected it with an impersonation

476
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:47,120
Speaker 1: of mental vacuity, physical vulnerability, and a constant need for

477
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,959
Speaker 1: a father figure to look after her. Unquote. Within Monroe,

478
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: the child woman's stereotype was solidified as an image. On

479
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: the other end of that was Andre Hepburn as well.

480
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: As the increasing popularity of rock and roll, film is

481
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 1: becoming edgier and sexier. And I sound like a freshman

482
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:09,840
Speaker 1: film professor, but it's true. There's a movie called Bonjour

483
00:30:09,920 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: Tristees by Auto Premature, which is based on a French

484
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: novel where a young Jeane Sieberg plays a teenager with

485
00:30:16,600 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: a fixation on her bachelor dad's sex life. Writers and

486
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: directors like Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan entered the mainstream,

487
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,480
Speaker 1: which continue to push the boundaries even further. And this

488
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: is a time in Hollywood that can be viewed a

489
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 1: number of ways. On one hand, teenagers sex lives or

490
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: something that hadn't really been acknowledged in mainstream cinema at

491
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: this point, even with the bizarre Olympian loopholes that Hollywood

492
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: movies of this time needed to find in order to

493
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: be up to code, because, of course, teenagers were exploring

494
00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:50,160
Speaker 1: their sexuality, and it's good that popular art was recognizing

495
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: that that's worth representing on screen. The inverse of that

496
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: is who were the people in charge of putting it

497
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 1: on screen and who is profiting the most? The nifties

498
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 1: bring us movie like Baby Doll, and nineteen fifty six

499
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: movie starring actress Carol Baker that's adapted from a Tennessee

500
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 1: Williams comic play twenty seven Wagons Full of Cotton. The

501
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: movie concerns a failed cotton gin owner named Archie Lee Megan,

502
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: whose nineteen year old wife Baby Doll Megan and yes

503
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:21,560
Speaker 1: that's what she's called, will not have sex with Archie

504
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 1: until she turns twenty, although she seems pretty open to

505
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: doing so with another character called Silva. The way the

506
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:33,479
Speaker 1: movie was marketed played to the sexualized child persona Marilyn

507
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 1: Monroe had made famous before, but turned it up to

508
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: an eleven. Baker is seen in press stills in a

509
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: short ninety sucking her thumb and sleeping in a broken

510
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: down child's crib, and the backlash to this was so

511
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: intense that Warner Brothers actually pulled the movie from a

512
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: national release shortly before the movie came out, so only

513
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: a year after Alita the novel is first released in

514
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: France and three years before it reaches shelves in the US.

515
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: Carol Baker as Baby Doll bears a striking resemblance to

516
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: how Sue Lion will later appear as Lolita in nineteen

517
00:32:06,880 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: sixty two. At the time of Baby Doll's release, it

518
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: was considered the dirtiest American made motion picture ever dot

519
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: dot dot legally exhibited, according to Time magazine. Like Lolita,

520
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 1: status as a band book only increasing its popularity, so

521
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: it was for Baker for Baby Doll. She's eventually nominated

522
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 1: for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance,

523
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and one a Golden

524
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: Globe for Most Promising Newcomer, which she ended up sharing

525
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 1: with Jane Mansfield and Natalie would But Baker's career never

526
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: gets too much higher than Baby Doll. She went on

527
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: to appear in a number of other films and turned

528
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,959
Speaker 1: in some really great performances, but the shadow cast by

529
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: her role and Baby Doll one that deeply sexualized and

530
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: stressed her. In terms of the type of media attention

531
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: it drew proved to be too intense to escape from under,

532
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 1: no matter how talented and she really was. That is

533
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: to say, she did incredible work in classic films for

534
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: years after, survived being blackballed by Hollywood over being over publicized,

535
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: and made a name for herself an independent film and publishing.

536
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: But even as of last year, Baby Doll is what

537
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: leads her headlines. Baker is still alive today and has

538
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 1: written four books, both her autobiography and some fiction, and

539
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: is an absolutely fascinating person. I highly recommend her work.

540
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 1: And in a twist that could only happen in Lolita,

541
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 1: Carol Baker of Baby Doll later has a daughter who

542
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 1: is also an actor, and Blanche Baker goes on to

543
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: star as Lolita in a failed Broadway adaptation by Edward

544
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: albe In. Seriously more on that in the future episode.

545
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: To borrow an example from the Lolita saga, you can

546
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 1: be Vladimir Nabokov and write an anti child sex abuse book,

547
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: and one of the people who glorifies what you're condemning,

548
00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: Graham Green can be the same person that makes your

549
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 1: book famous. It doesn't change anything about the content, but

550
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: it does change the way it's framed to the general public.

551
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 1: So by nine sixty two we're reaching the tail end

552
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:18,040
Speaker 1: of the production code Heyday, after nearly thirty years as

553
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:21,520
Speaker 1: the law of Hollywood. It would be skirted with increasing

554
00:34:21,600 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: cleverness throughout the early sixties and would ultimately be abandoned

555
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: by the end of that decade, making way for greedy

556
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: mail auteurs of the seventies. And if you want to

557
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:33,880
Speaker 1: talk about a class of directors that really loved to

558
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:37,919
Speaker 1: brutalize women, will that's more time than we have here.

559
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 1: But ninety two doesn't just see the release of Kuperck's Lolita.

560
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: It's also the year the original version of Cape Fear

561
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 1: is released, a movie that really pushes the production code

562
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:54,320
Speaker 1: to its absolute limits. Robert Mitchum's character Max Katie, a

563
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,839
Speaker 1: convicted rapist, swears to take revenge on the lawyer who

564
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: landed him in prison, and there is an a specially

565
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:03,960
Speaker 1: vicious scene where he clearly intends to rape the lawyer's

566
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: teenage daughter, Nancy. It's terrifying, and director Jay Lee Thompson

567
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:11,359
Speaker 1: fought to keep this scene in the movie. When Cape

568
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 1: Fear was remade by Martin Scorsese in the early nineties.

569
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:19,240
Speaker 1: The scene appears completely differently. While it's clear that Katie

570
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: still intends to rape Nancy, this time she appears to

571
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 1: be turned on by it, and she kisses him consentually

572
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:29,800
Speaker 1: with an open mouth. It's yet another coincidence that's shared

573
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 1: with Lolita. The nineties update of the sixties adaptation is

574
00:35:34,920 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 1: you know what, We're still in the nineteen sixties. Let's

575
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:41,960
Speaker 1: stay focused, Stanley Kubrick, What say you? There is demonstrable

576
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:44,879
Speaker 1: proof that it was possible, even in a flawed way,

577
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:49,160
Speaker 1: to present a predator as a predator in Hollywood movies

578
00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two. If we're using Cape Fear as

579
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 1: an example, you just didn't Now that we have an

580
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: idea of the media landscape, the kuber caress Lolita is

581
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:02,000
Speaker 1: being released in to what are we working with here?

582
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:04,360
Speaker 1: I want to give you a quick summary of what

583
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: happens in the movie to give you an idea of

584
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: exactly how much is changed from the book. It's a lot,

585
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: a lot changes. The movie starts on a long credit

586
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 1: sequence where Humbert Paint's lowlitast to nails, arguably the most

587
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: erotic scene in the entire movie, setting the president for

588
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: many adaptations to come. This movie starts at the end

589
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:41,520
Speaker 1: of the book. Humbert shows up to Quality's mansion to

590
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: murder him. Humbert again is played by James Mason, and

591
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: Quialty is played by Peter Sellers, who will later be

592
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:50,320
Speaker 1: famous for being in movies like Dr. Strangelove and the

593
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:54,799
Speaker 1: Pink Panther series. And Peter Sellers is improvising a whole

594
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: lot in this movie. And so are you and I tonight,

595
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: She's mine, yours? So Quilty dies and we flash back

596
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: to four years earlier. Now, this adaptation does not take

597
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: place in seven. It seems to be taking place closer

598
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty seven based on context clues we get.

599
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: And speaking of context, here's the only context we get

600
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 1: for who Humbert. Humbert is. I decided to spend a

601
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: peaceful summer in the attractive resort town of Ramsdale. No Annabelle,

602
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: no sanatorium, no valeria, no psychologist genre jr. No letting

603
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:33,880
Speaker 1: us know that the protagonist is well aware that he

604
00:37:34,200 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: is a pedophile. Another thing I find interesting is that

605
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: they used the word nymphed very early in the movie,

606
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:42,800
Speaker 1: but never define it. Then we go straight to the

607
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 1: Hayes household, where Shelley Winters as Charlotte Hayes is playing

608
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: this character to the comedic hilt as in the book.

609
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 1: Humbert sees Lolita for the first time, and there is

610
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: sue Lyon su Lean in a bikini gazing at him

611
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: over dark sunglasses. Lolita is aged up to be fourteen

612
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 1: years old in this adaptation. Sue Lyon is fifteen at

613
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 1: the time of shooting, and she's been styled to look

614
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: closer to seventeen. There's a lot of word play in

615
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: this movie, which Nabokov is famous for, but this word

616
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:18,839
Speaker 1: play is gross. What was a decisive factor? Hi Gard

617
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:28,279
Speaker 1: Humbert spends his time in Ramsdale watching Lolita. There's a

618
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,240
Speaker 1: short scene where he grabs Lolita's hand during a movie

619
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:34,320
Speaker 1: all goals her hula hooping, and watches her go on

620
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: a date with some kid named Kenny at a local dance.

621
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: Claire Quilty is also at this party, although in this

622
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 1: version he is a TV writer who is apparently hooked

623
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 1: up with Charlotte in the past. Later that night, Lolita

624
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 1: goes to a sleepover, which means Charlotte gets Humbert alone,

625
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:50,239
Speaker 1: and Humbert tries to give in Charlotte that she needs

626
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 1: to keep Lolita on a shorter leach, I didn't think

627
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: beginning to grow out. Charlotte is in the middle of

628
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: coming on to Humbert strong when Lolita gets home, which

629
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 1: noise Charlotte. They have this short exchange when Humbert is

630
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:04,799
Speaker 1: out of the room. Do you have a good time

631
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 1: dancing with Claire quilty? Of course, he's a very area

632
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 1: that a gentleman. Yeah, I know all the girls are

633
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 1: crazy about him too. And after Lolita goes upstairs, Charlotte

634
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 1: pitches a fit. He isn't my thought. If I feel young,

635
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:23,360
Speaker 1: why shouldn't min child resented? You don't resent it, do you?

636
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,760
Speaker 1: When this is the start of another popular adaptation trope,

637
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: making Charlotte completely unstable and interpreting the hysteria that Humbert

638
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: describes in the book as simply what happens. Lolita and

639
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: Humbert talk alone for the first time and guests which

640
00:39:39,040 --> 00:39:46,320
Speaker 1: author they read Edgar, who's the divine dragon? Then she

641
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 1: feeds him a piece of ham As in the book.

642
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: Lolita is then sent to camp. She hugs him before

643
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: leaving instead of the book's kiss, and as in the book,

644
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: Humbert receives Charlotte's confession of love. He finds it hilarious

645
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 1: on me as much as I do you as a

646
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: lifelong maid, and so they get married. Charlotte is insecure

647
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 1: in his affections and during one night, says she will

648
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:14,479
Speaker 1: kill herself if Humbert doesn't believe in God and takes

649
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 1: out a gun. Then they make out while Humbert stares

650
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:20,320
Speaker 1: at a framed picture of Lolita. Humbert's blatant sexism towards

651
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: his new wife is captured pretty cleanly here. Even in

652
00:40:23,440 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 1: the most harmonious households such as ours, not all the

653
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 1: decision to taking brother female. Then, while she's out of

654
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 1: the room, Humbert loads her gun and fantasizes about shooting

655
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: her and framing it as an accident, calling it the

656
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:39,239
Speaker 1: perfect murder. But then chickens out and Humbert's voiceover is

657
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: used pretty sparingly throughout this movie, but this is one

658
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:44,800
Speaker 1: of the only times it sounds like the voiceover is

659
00:40:44,840 --> 00:40:48,280
Speaker 1: addressing a jury or an audience. What do you know, folks,

660
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 1: it's goodn't to make myself do it? Charlotte finds his journals,

661
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 1: is horrified what he's written about her daughter, and then,

662
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 1: unlike the book, she yells at her dead husband's ashes,

663
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 1: you are the soul of integrity. How do we produce

664
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 1: such a little beast? She leaves, is hit by a

665
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,759
Speaker 1: car and is killed. Another deviation from the book. This

666
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 1: blow of her death is softened for some reason when

667
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: Humbert learns that she didn't have long to live anyways,

668
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 1: and that her kidneys were failing. Humbert then picks up

669
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:20,319
Speaker 1: Lolita at Camp Climax and tells her that her mother

670
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: is sick. On the way to the Enchanted Hunter's Hotel,

671
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,839
Speaker 1: where Quilty is there with Vivian dark Bloom and he's

672
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: talking to his secretary about their kinky sex life. For

673
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: some reason, when Humbert and Lolita arrive, they go up

674
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,239
Speaker 1: to the one bed hotel room. Lolita lays kicking her

675
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:39,080
Speaker 1: legs sleepover style, and this exchange happens two people showing

676
00:41:39,120 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 1: one inevitabody into into KINDI. Why is she gonna go

677
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: down to say about the cut? Now? You might remember

678
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 1: from when we discussed the book that this is ordinarily

679
00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: where Dolores says the line it's called incest. This adaptation

680
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:59,720
Speaker 1: avoids the idea of drugging women altogether, both Charlotte and Lolita,

681
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: but Humbert still goes downstairs to the hotel lobby and

682
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: unknowingly has a discussion with Quilty. Again a lot of

683
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:09,919
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers improvising here, she was really lovely. I wish

684
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:12,320
Speaker 1: I had a lovely, pretty, tough, lovely little girl like that.

685
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: I mean my daughter. This scene is too long. Humbert

686
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,280
Speaker 1: then goes back up to the hotel room, almost doesn't

687
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 1: bring in the cot the hotel has provided for him,

688
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: but then decides to, and there's a long physical comedy

689
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:26,919
Speaker 1: scene where the hotel employee and Hubbert try to set

690
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,720
Speaker 1: the cot up without waking Lolita. Now, if you remember,

691
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 1: this is a significant deviation from the book, as this

692
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: next morning at the Enchanted Hunter's hotel is when Humbert

693
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:40,319
Speaker 1: first rapes Dolores. In the movie, the physical intimacy only

694
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 1: gets as close as them touching hands and twirling hair.

695
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: Lolita talks about a fun game she learned a camp,

696
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: and they get pretty close to towing the nineteen sixty

697
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: two production code line. Here, I learned some real good

698
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:56,279
Speaker 1: games in camp one in particularly was fun, but I

699
00:42:56,360 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 1: played it with Charlie. Are you sure you can't us

700
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 1: what came I'm talking about? She then whispers the answer

701
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: to him, and his eyes bug out. I mean you'd

702
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 1: never played that game when you were a kid, he

703
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:09,439
Speaker 1: or She laughs, leans over to him on his cot

704
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:12,839
Speaker 1: and we fade to black. They hit the road. There's

705
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 1: no expression of physical pain from Lolita as there is

706
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 1: in the book, and Humbert tells her that her mother

707
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,080
Speaker 1: is dead. That night at the next hotel, Lolita weeps

708
00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:24,839
Speaker 1: from the other room. She says this to Humbert, true,

709
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: and she'll never leave me. I don't want to ever

710
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: be in one of those horrible places for juvenile linquds.

711
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: We then flash forward to Beardsley several months later, as

712
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,440
Speaker 1: Humbert is already in his second semester of teaching. Humbert

713
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: is painting Lolita's nails and grills her about what she's

714
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: doing in her personal life, and it's clear to us

715
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: that he's been following her around. He mentioned one of

716
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: her friends, and we get this. But now for a change,

717
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you something about Michelle. You can't

718
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: have her. She belongs to Marie, and she asks him

719
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: if she can be in the school play written by

720
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:01,720
Speaker 1: Quilty and Vivian dark Bloom. For some reason, Humbert doesn't

721
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:04,879
Speaker 1: remember that he definitely knows who these people are. Then

722
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: Doctor zemp arrives and it's Quilty in disguise doing a

723
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:12,680
Speaker 1: Doctor Freud cosplay. I think, but it really is just

724
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:19,759
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers doing an accent anybody instarted Lolita in the

725
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: Fix of Fly. It ends with Quilty and Disguise convincing

726
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:25,800
Speaker 1: Humbert to let Lolita do the play. So Lolita is

727
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,760
Speaker 1: in the play and Humbert attends. Back at home, Humbert

728
00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: and Lolita have a blowout argument, and Humbert ends the

729
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 1: discussion by suggesting they leave Beardsley. Lolita is resistant and

730
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:43,440
Speaker 1: finally says how she really feels about him Hi. They

731
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,279
Speaker 1: leave again. Lolita doesn't feel well and she goes to

732
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 1: the hospital. When back at the hotel, Humbert gets another

733
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: mysterious call from Quilty, even though he still somehow doesn't

734
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: know it's Quilty. Then Humbert goes to pick Lolita up

735
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 1: and finds out she's already left with her quote unquote

736
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: uncle Flash too. Lolita writes Humbert the letter asking for money,

737
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,800
Speaker 1: saying she's married and pregnant. Humbert turns up at the

738
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:11,399
Speaker 1: house and there's Lolita. She and Dick aren't as poor

739
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: as they are in the book, and she starts this

740
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:16,920
Speaker 1: scene by apologizing to him, fine thing he's dropping out

741
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:18,840
Speaker 1: aside for so long and then writing you for a

742
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,760
Speaker 1: hand off. Humbert insists on knowing who took Lolita away,

743
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: and she admits it was Quilthy, saying the following he

744
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: wasn't like you and me. He wasn't a normal person.

745
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: He was a genius. She says she had a crush

746
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: on him, and he took on a number of disguises

747
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: to help her escape, and instead of saying she was

748
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: asked to do pornography as she does in the book

749
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 1: the movies, Lolita says that he had a bunch of

750
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:52,760
Speaker 1: weird friends. What kind of weird friends, weird painters, nudice writers, weightlifters.

751
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:55,120
Speaker 1: He gives her the money, and we find out at

752
00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 1: the end that Humbert has died of coronary thrombosis. But

753
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 1: Lolita of the end, and I really do think that

754
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: this last choice is kind of a beautiful deviation from

755
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:10,320
Speaker 1: Dolores's death during childbirth in the book strictly on a

756
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 1: cathartic level, because in this movie, the survivor of all

757
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:18,080
Speaker 1: of this abuse actually survives. I was actually really touched

758
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:21,040
Speaker 1: by this. Having her survive at the end is a

759
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: really heartening message for survivors who are watching the movie.

760
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 1: But of course Kuper did not make this movie for

761
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:30,680
Speaker 1: survivors of abuse. He made it for men. Ending a

762
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 1: book of scholar including the book of himself, will admit

763
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:38,399
Speaker 1: that his talents did not always translate to scripts. In fact,

764
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,560
Speaker 1: a lot of what he wrote in the screenplay would

765
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: have been pretty impossible to translate to a scene at all.

766
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,400
Speaker 1: But it wasn't a total novice like he claimed na

767
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:48,839
Speaker 1: book of had written a number of plays and had

768
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: been in talks to write Hollywood screenplays in the past.

769
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 1: So the script is far from perfect, but reading through

770
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 1: his published lowly to screenplay was really interesting. He includes

771
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:01,880
Speaker 1: several key elements from the book that are critical to

772
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:06,880
Speaker 1: understanding who Humbert is. The psychologist John Ray Jr. Contextualizing

773
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,720
Speaker 1: Humbert as a clear cut child sex abuser, the story

774
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:14,960
Speaker 1: of Annabelle and Humbert's childhood fixation, and glorification of a

775
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 1: young girl. There's even an entire scene at the beginning

776
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:22,440
Speaker 1: taking place at a sanatorium where Humbert frankly discusses his

777
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:26,320
Speaker 1: obsession with underage girls with the psychologist John Ray and

778
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,840
Speaker 1: acknowledges it as a serious issue. It is maybe my

779
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:33,239
Speaker 1: favorite choice he makes in the entire screenplay is Nabukov

780
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:37,719
Speaker 1: has Humbert's voiceover kind of instruct the director from the

781
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: very beginning of the movie. So Humbert's voiceover will say,

782
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:43,440
Speaker 1: give me a shot of two hands being held, and

783
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 1: then we'll cut to that shot. He'll ask for a

784
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:48,880
Speaker 1: shot of the French riviera, and that shot will appear.

785
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:51,640
Speaker 1: And it's one of the more elegant attempts ever made

786
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:54,560
Speaker 1: at making it clear that Humbert is the person pulling

787
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: the strings here, and it's not just the omniscient no

788
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,360
Speaker 1: name narrator that we're used to. There is no tracted

789
00:48:00,440 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: quality disguises. Humbert is actually a lot more unlikable and

790
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:07,360
Speaker 1: a lot less debonair, and there's more focus on the

791
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:10,000
Speaker 1: road trip. One of my favorite editions is a short

792
00:48:10,040 --> 00:48:14,360
Speaker 1: scene where Humbert and Lolita run into Vladimir Nabokov himself,

793
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: Nabokov is like catching butterflies on the side of the road,

794
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: and it's really funny. I was surprised to read that

795
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 1: a lot of the issues and perpetuating of false ideas

796
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: about child abuse and framing Lolita as temptress are very

797
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: rooted in what Nbulkov writes in the adaptation of his

798
00:48:31,600 --> 00:48:34,960
Speaker 1: own work. So while our knowledge of what his discussions

799
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 1: with Kubrick and Harris about adaptation are are very limited,

800
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: we do know that Nabukov was resistant to having a

801
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: real underage actor play the role of Lolita, and that

802
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: by the time he was writing the screenplay it had

803
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,239
Speaker 1: been decided that Lolita was going to be aged up

804
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:54,320
Speaker 1: to fourteen. So nabukov script includes a lot of scenes

805
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:57,840
Speaker 1: between Humbert and Lolita, but the scenes taking place earlier

806
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:01,280
Speaker 1: in the movie in Ramsdale, in particularly, lean more heavily

807
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: on making Lolita seemed flirtatious, teasing in a way that

808
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:09,279
Speaker 1: his book leaves extremely ambiguous. So instead of letting the

809
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 1: viewer wonder how much Humbert is projecting onto Lolita's behavior,

810
00:49:13,760 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 1: the script makes it clear that she is flirting with

811
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: him the entire time, and Humbert's voiceover interjects into the

812
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 1: script less and less as the movie goes on, and

813
00:49:22,560 --> 00:49:25,840
Speaker 1: there are fewer and fewer reminders that this account is

814
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: not to be taken at face value. The physical assaults

815
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:32,279
Speaker 1: on Lolita are implied in a book of script and

816
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 1: are unsurprisingly scaled back considerably in an attempt to appease

817
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:39,960
Speaker 1: the code, but again, in doing so, Nabukov takes the

818
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:43,399
Speaker 1: root of making this more of a seduction that she's

819
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: very much in on and a consenting participant with it.

820
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: These are issues that are exploited and turned up to

821
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: an eleven in future adaptations, and Kubrick certainly would have

822
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: been wise to include a lot of the necessary contact

823
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: that Nabulkov includes. But even if Nabokov's published script had

824
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 1: been made to the letter, there is still a fair

825
00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 1: amount of blame and asking for it put on Lolita,

826
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: and of course we have little to no clue what

827
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,240
Speaker 1: he included in his six hour draft of the script,

828
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 1: And after seeing the movie in nineteen sixty two, the

829
00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:17,200
Speaker 1: Book of grows less kind to Cooper and Harris's adaptation

830
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,080
Speaker 1: of his script over time, and by the nineteen seventies

831
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: he referred to the movie like this, a scenic drive

832
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:28,439
Speaker 1: is perceived by the horizontal passenger of an ambulance. So yeah,

833
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 1: I would say that even in the book of script

834
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: there's not much of the books Dolores Hayes to be found.

835
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: The culture was certainly the one to shape Lolita as

836
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 1: a sex icon, but Nabokov is not pushing very hard

837
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 1: back in this screenplay. So while there's no doubt that

838
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 1: the advertising surrounding Lolita is one of the largest issues

839
00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 1: with how Dolores the character became corrupted in the minds

840
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: of the general public, but it doesn't let this movie

841
00:50:56,360 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: all the way off the hook. For example, the cinematography

842
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 1: of Kubrick's Lolita was done by Oswald Morris. Morris is

843
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: a legend in the field. His cinematography works fans from

844
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 1: Lolita to Oliver to Fiddler on the Roof to the

845
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:14,959
Speaker 1: Great Muppet Caper What's Up? He definitely knows what he's doing,

846
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 1: And again, the nineteen sixty two Lolita is certainly not

847
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: the worst offender of framing the character of Dolorous Hayes

848
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: hands down. That goes to the Vassiline lens used in

849
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 1: the version, but some choices are worth pointing out here.

850
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:33,280
Speaker 1: Also worth mentioning is that Kubrick was a very hands

851
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:36,120
Speaker 1: on director who edited his own films, so he is

852
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:39,600
Speaker 1: very involved in these choices as well. Generally, their writing

853
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 1: and cinematography of a movie jail together. That is to say,

854
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 1: the cinematography serves as a way of making the writing

855
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 1: clearer and serves as being complimentary. This isn't a hard

856
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:51,960
Speaker 1: and fast rule, and doing so doesn't make a movie

857
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:55,080
Speaker 1: good or bad, but it is common in some cases

858
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: though the script and the cinematography of a movie seemed

859
00:51:58,360 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: to be saying something slightly to a great example of

860
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:04,879
Speaker 1: this is and bear with me Michael Bay's first Transformers

861
00:52:04,960 --> 00:52:07,440
Speaker 1: movie in two thousand seven, in which a lot of

862
00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:11,400
Speaker 1: pretty innocuous dialogue said by Megan Fox's character is directly

863
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: at odds with the camera's fixation on her body when

864
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:17,400
Speaker 1: she is saying the words. Lindsay Ellis has a wonderful

865
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,479
Speaker 1: video series on YouTube on this exact subject. So listen

866
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:24,600
Speaker 1: to this line of dialogue from Megan Fox's character, MICHAELA,

867
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:30,160
Speaker 1: it looks like you're distributor caps a little loose. Yeah,

868
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 1: how did you know that? My dad? He was a

869
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 1: he was a real grease monkey. He taught me all

870
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 1: about this. I could take it all apart, clean it,

871
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: put it back together now just hearing it. That's not

872
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:44,919
Speaker 1: a hyper sexual line of dialogue. But how do people

873
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:49,320
Speaker 1: generally remember that character as being hyper sexual? One of

874
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 1: the reasons that is is likely because for that entire line,

875
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 1: the camera is slowly panning over her body. It's just

876
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 1: like male gaze one oh one. So as a viewer,

877
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: we are actively encouraged by the camera to sexualize her,

878
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,279
Speaker 1: even though the character herself is not inviting that. And

879
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 1: the cultural takeaway, as it was with Megan Fox at

880
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 1: this time, seems to hold an actor or character accountable

881
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: for how a director or cinematographer is encouraging us to

882
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: look at her. It's foxed and Kuprick's Lolita has small

883
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:25,719
Speaker 1: whiffs of this tame by comparison, but worth noting two

884
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:29,279
Speaker 1: examples that come to mind our Lolita's introduction, she is

885
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:32,960
Speaker 1: gazing at Humbert in her bikini, posed very deliberately like

886
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 1: a centerfold, looking directly at him. Another images Lolita laying

887
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 1: on the bed at the Enchanted Hunter's hotel, kicking her

888
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:43,799
Speaker 1: legs while teasing him about his clear desire for her.

889
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,279
Speaker 1: She's even kicking her shoes off seductively, and we see

890
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:50,720
Speaker 1: a nervous Humbert shot from over her legs. It's certainly

891
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 1: less egreed to than future adaptations, but the camera does

892
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:56,720
Speaker 1: frame her as it would a romantic interest in a movie.

893
00:53:56,920 --> 00:53:59,920
Speaker 1: She's framed the same way that a consenting adult female

894
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 1: star would be. The camera is giving you permission to

895
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:06,120
Speaker 1: look at her the way Humbert Humbert does. Now, if

896
00:54:06,160 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: you're thinking, like Jamie, how else would they have framed it? Well.

897
00:54:09,160 --> 00:54:12,280
Speaker 1: Contrast this with the way that the camera treats Lolita

898
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 1: when she's seventeen and pregnant. It is very static. It

899
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 1: seems pretty uninterested in her physically. The Book of even

900
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:22,040
Speaker 1: adds in the book what doubles as cinematic shorthand for

901
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:25,759
Speaker 1: undesirable woman by throwing a pair of glasses onto her

902
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: like never been kissed style. The closer Lolita gets to

903
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:34,879
Speaker 1: becoming a legal adult, the less the camera sexualizes her. Now,

904
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:38,319
Speaker 1: for all the Kubrick fans that are maybe possibly very

905
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: mad at me right now, this movie does have some

906
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,560
Speaker 1: unique strengths. I think it succeeds in a way that

907
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 1: many of the adaptations don't by making the on screen

908
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:50,800
Speaker 1: relationship between Humbert and Lolita pretty stiff and stilted, and

909
00:54:50,880 --> 00:54:54,200
Speaker 1: it's clear that it's difficult for them to connect because

910
00:54:54,440 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: she is a preteen and he is a fifty year

911
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:00,320
Speaker 1: old English professor. And although Lolita is aged up and

912
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:03,239
Speaker 1: is definitely styled to be closer to college age than

913
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:07,080
Speaker 1: middle school, their age difference and worldview are clearly in

914
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:10,480
Speaker 1: extreme conflict, and Humbert comes off as much more of

915
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:14,760
Speaker 1: a stiff, uncomfortable older guy than the romantic hero Humbert

916
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 1: that he presents himself as in the book's pages. Now,

917
00:55:17,880 --> 00:55:20,839
Speaker 1: of course, this compliment can kind of fall apart when

918
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:23,160
Speaker 1: you consider that the movie sort of wants you to

919
00:55:23,200 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: believe that they are an odd couple, and because movies

920
00:55:26,239 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: at this time can't show or tell much of anything

921
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:33,320
Speaker 1: regarding humbrig criminality, he is still humanized in the process.

922
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:36,399
Speaker 1: It's again the comedy of manners more than anything else.

923
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:38,880
Speaker 1: We get a lot more dialogue with Lolita here, and

924
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: Sue Lyon really makes a meal of what she's given,

925
00:55:42,200 --> 00:55:46,399
Speaker 1: but ultimately this movie does miss the point, yes, due

926
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,799
Speaker 1: to the production code to an extent, but also willfully

927
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:53,959
Speaker 1: misses the point prioritizing Peter Seller's comedy monologues that feel

928
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:57,240
Speaker 1: like they belong in literally any other movie. It actually

929
00:55:57,239 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 1: reminds me of like Jotapatow movies from the mid two thousand's,

930
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:04,320
Speaker 1: where it's clear that he just won't tell his actors

931
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: to stop talking. And James Mason actually agrees with me here.

932
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:10,719
Speaker 1: He commented rather snarkily at the time this movie was

933
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:16,480
Speaker 1: released the following Kubrick was so besotted with the genius

934
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 1: of Peter Sellers that he never seemed to have enough

935
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:23,360
Speaker 1: of him. Yeah, James Mason went off and in the

936
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: final sinister commonality with its literary predecessor, that was a

937
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:30,120
Speaker 1: lot of fancy worth him brow. A lot of the

938
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: reviews of Kubrick's two Lolita missed the point of why

939
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:38,920
Speaker 1: the movie doesn't seem to work, winds up the Lolita

940
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 1: doll and it goes to Hollywood and commits him fanticide,

941
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:45,800
Speaker 1: and closed with Lolita is the saddest and most important

942
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:49,359
Speaker 1: victim of the current reckless adaptation fad. It's a film

943
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 1: about this poor young English guy who's being given the

944
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:55,440
Speaker 1: runaround by this sly young broth Sue Lion makes an

945
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 1: auspicious film debut as the deceitful child woman who's just

946
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:02,279
Speaker 1: soon go to a movie as Romp in The Hay.

947
00:57:02,560 --> 00:57:06,239
Speaker 1: The distinction is fine, we will grant you, but she

948
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: is definitely not a quote unquote named fact. As played

949
00:57:11,480 --> 00:57:16,480
Speaker 1: by Sue Lion, a newcomer, she reminds one of Carol

950
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: Baker's baby doll right away. This removes the factor a

951
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:24,560
Speaker 1: perverted desire that is in the book and renders the

952
00:57:24,640 --> 00:57:29,960
Speaker 1: passion of the hero more normal and understandable. It also

953
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: renders the drama more in line with the others we

954
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 1: have seen. Older men have often pined for younger females.

955
00:57:38,680 --> 00:57:41,600
Speaker 1: Sue Lion is perhaps a little less than enough, but

956
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:45,720
Speaker 1: not because she looks seventeen. Have the reviewers looked at

957
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:49,440
Speaker 1: the schoolgirls of America lately? The classmates of my fourteen

958
00:57:49,520 --> 00:57:52,240
Speaker 1: year old daughter are not nearly new vile. Some of

959
00:57:52,320 --> 00:57:59,400
Speaker 1: them look badly used. Pauline Kale. That said, Koprick and

960
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:02,920
Speaker 1: Harris's voices are far louder than the source material in

961
00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: the finished product, and Kubrick, like Nabokov, was not known

962
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:12,720
Speaker 1: for his strength in writing and representing female characters. Unlike Nabokov,

963
00:58:13,040 --> 00:58:16,720
Speaker 1: Kubrick worked in a deeply collaborative medium, and this general

964
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 1: mistreatment of some of his female stars extended off the

965
00:58:20,240 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 1: page and the celluloid and caused very real harm to

966
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:26,080
Speaker 1: a number of women who worked with him. But to

967
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: examine this and to wear Lolita falls into his cannon.

968
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:32,480
Speaker 1: I got to speak with James Fenwick, one of the

969
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:36,120
Speaker 1: leading living Kubrick scholars, who has gotten personal access to

970
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 1: Kubrick's archives and is releasing a new book called Stanley

971
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:43,840
Speaker 1: Kubrick Produces on December eight. I was really excited to find,

972
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:47,200
Speaker 1: like Nobukov scholars, I spoke with, how open he was

973
00:58:47,360 --> 00:58:51,800
Speaker 1: to examining his subjects less savory aspects. I also want

974
00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:54,800
Speaker 1: to mention that this interview was recorded about a month

975
00:58:54,960 --> 00:58:59,000
Speaker 1: before the story regarding James Harris's treatment of Sue Lion

976
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:03,840
Speaker 1: was broken. Here's a little bit of our conversation. So

977
00:59:04,160 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 1: this adaptation scales Lolita's roll back and enhances Charlotte's present,

978
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:12,520
Speaker 1: And it seems like Lolita is styled and written to

979
00:59:12,600 --> 00:59:16,840
Speaker 1: seem like a consenting participant, which is impossible, but this

980
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 1: movie seems to appear that it feels that it is,

981
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:22,680
Speaker 1: and that's definitely like a far cry from the book.

982
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:25,920
Speaker 1: I mean, whether Charlotte Hayes one, I always feel it's

983
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:29,040
Speaker 1: kind of very vindicted what Kubrick does to that character.

984
00:59:29,200 --> 00:59:31,440
Speaker 1: She's made to be almost kind of a villain, you know.

985
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:34,120
Speaker 1: It's kind of the shrieking voice and the way that

986
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 1: it's really kind of a funny scene, but at the

987
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:39,840
Speaker 1: same time I find it really dark, where after Charlotte

988
00:59:39,920 --> 00:59:41,840
Speaker 1: is killed in the street, you know, the natives think

989
00:59:41,880 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 1: that's really depressed, but secretly it's absolutely relieved to be

990
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,920
Speaker 1: rid of Charlotte Hayes. And I think it was kind

991
00:59:48,080 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 1: kind of similarly with the scale back of the kind

992
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: of you know, roll off Loli to herself. It almost

993
00:59:53,960 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: seeks to the way that kubric lies to kind of

994
00:59:56,360 --> 01:00:00,320
Speaker 1: position his films about men. His films are masculine films.

995
01:00:01,280 --> 01:00:03,040
Speaker 1: In the book, you kind of start to kind of

996
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: feel sympathy for the lead kind of you know, here

997
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:08,600
Speaker 1: her kind of thought processes in the way that she's

998
01:00:08,760 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: kind of being treated in the film that just doesn't happen,

999
01:00:11,840 --> 01:00:13,640
Speaker 1: And I think it is all about bringing to the

1000
01:00:13,720 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: fall of the male characters and almost kind of reducing

1001
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:21,960
Speaker 1: the women to kind of um you know, props for

1002
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:24,439
Speaker 1: the narrative, and with kind of Thelita, you never really

1003
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: do kind of get a sense that she has any

1004
01:00:26,680 --> 01:00:29,200
Speaker 1: kind of emotion whatsoever. And I think that is just

1005
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:31,160
Speaker 1: part and passed up kind of the way that Kubrick,

1006
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:35,560
Speaker 1: you know, as a kind of creative visionary, that is

1007
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:38,880
Speaker 1: the way that he approached his kind of films generally.

1008
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:41,320
Speaker 1: I kind of in the archives you can see kind

1009
01:00:41,360 --> 01:00:43,520
Speaker 1: of examples of this is you know, kind of early

1010
01:00:43,600 --> 01:00:45,400
Speaker 1: scripts that he was right in the nineteen fifties that

1011
01:00:45,680 --> 01:00:49,440
Speaker 1: very similar in tone to the leit. It's often kind

1012
01:00:49,480 --> 01:00:52,840
Speaker 1: of very vindictive to female characters, kind of you know,

1013
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: punishes them kind of an act kind of really cruel

1014
01:00:57,240 --> 01:01:00,040
Speaker 1: kind of episodes upon these women, you know, with it

1015
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:02,720
Speaker 1: being so controversial, and as you kind of said that

1016
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:05,600
Speaker 1: about kind of you know, making Lolita herself, which one

1017
01:01:05,640 --> 01:01:07,440
Speaker 1: kind of adult character kind of you know, booking the

1018
01:01:07,520 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: age and so forth, I think that is all the

1019
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 1: kind of again, part of the reason why you get

1020
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:15,240
Speaker 1: this kind of the changes to the film that you know,

1021
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 1: compared it to the novel, and it is because it

1022
01:01:18,640 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 1: kind of got to get it past the production code

1023
01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 1: that you know, ensure there is acceptable towardiences. Um, and

1024
01:01:26,440 --> 01:01:28,200
Speaker 1: I think kind of that is one of the ways

1025
01:01:28,360 --> 01:01:31,800
Speaker 1: of kind of achieving that. Um. And then speaking to

1026
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:36,760
Speaker 1: the casting of Lolita, I mean I've heard different accounts

1027
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 1: of the casting and and similar to Humber, a lot

1028
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 1: of young women passed it over and didn't want to

1029
01:01:41,880 --> 01:01:44,840
Speaker 1: get anywhere near it. So, um, yeah, I'm curious about

1030
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:49,520
Speaker 1: what you know about her casting. Well, I mean the

1031
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:52,960
Speaker 1: kind of due a range of people to kind of,

1032
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:56,280
Speaker 1: you know, take on the role. I think it did

1033
01:01:56,400 --> 01:01:58,560
Speaker 1: come down very much to kind of the idea of

1034
01:01:58,600 --> 01:02:02,360
Speaker 1: the Lolita image. Um. Now, one thing to say with

1035
01:02:02,720 --> 01:02:06,640
Speaker 1: kind of Kubrick when it comes to casting, he um,

1036
01:02:07,720 --> 01:02:11,360
Speaker 1: how do I put it? He has certain kind of tendencies,

1037
01:02:11,400 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: He had a certain image of what a woman should

1038
01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 1: look like. He was sexist in terms of his kind

1039
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:19,320
Speaker 1: of a professional approach to casting, and I think that

1040
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:22,600
Speaker 1: is very much the way that you know, he approached

1041
01:02:22,680 --> 01:02:24,560
Speaker 1: kind of Lolita as he did with other films. He

1042
01:02:24,600 --> 01:02:28,680
Speaker 1: would make notes about the physical appearance of an actress

1043
01:02:29,120 --> 01:02:32,600
Speaker 1: rather than think about candy actually act It was always

1044
01:02:32,600 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 1: about appearance, and I think that is essentially what kind

1045
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 1: of sold kind of you know, Sue Ian casting. So

1046
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:42,720
Speaker 1: it was very much about does this fit this image

1047
01:02:42,800 --> 01:02:44,160
Speaker 1: of this kind of girl that I have in my

1048
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:48,000
Speaker 1: head rather than anything else. Essentially. Also, I also think

1049
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:52,120
Speaker 1: with the treatment of Sue Lion when you look at correspondence,

1050
01:02:52,120 --> 01:02:57,080
Speaker 1: because she was eventually contracted to Harris Cube Pictures and

1051
01:02:57,200 --> 01:03:00,480
Speaker 1: to Seren Arts, and she was treated essential as an

1052
01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:04,240
Speaker 1: object again kind of this is somebody that we now own,

1053
01:03:04,600 --> 01:03:06,400
Speaker 1: let's decide what kind of projects we're going to put

1054
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:11,600
Speaker 1: her in. She had no kind of agency essentially at

1055
01:03:11,680 --> 01:03:15,160
Speaker 1: that time, the kind of os the age, and therefore

1056
01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:18,800
Speaker 1: in the publicity, this is an eighteen you kind of sorry,

1057
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:20,840
Speaker 1: next races You're going to kind of you know, you

1058
01:03:21,040 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: want as an audience, you want to see if Humba

1059
01:03:23,720 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 1: is going to have sex with Clarita. That's the entire

1060
01:03:26,160 --> 01:03:28,240
Speaker 1: point of this film. And so in all of the publicity,

1061
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:32,720
Speaker 1: not just the birds stern Folk photographs, kind of essentiality

1062
01:03:32,720 --> 01:03:35,960
Speaker 1: and the kind of you know, the kind of adult

1063
01:03:36,040 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 1: image of Sue Line was completely exploited to the max.

1064
01:03:40,240 --> 01:03:43,080
Speaker 1: Any inside of you know who who was looking out

1065
01:03:43,200 --> 01:03:47,400
Speaker 1: for her and she she describes having a wonderful friendship

1066
01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:50,600
Speaker 1: with James Mason, but a slightly more complicated one with

1067
01:03:50,760 --> 01:03:54,040
Speaker 1: Kubrick where she describes at times being afraid of him,

1068
01:03:54,640 --> 01:03:58,840
Speaker 1: um and intimidated and I mean, you know, you know

1069
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:00,880
Speaker 1: way better than I do. That that seems to be

1070
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:04,480
Speaker 1: kind of a trend in how Kuber relates to actresses

1071
01:04:04,680 --> 01:04:07,120
Speaker 1: throughout his career. So yeah, I just want to talk

1072
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 1: about that. I imagine kind of the relationship being very

1073
01:04:10,920 --> 01:04:13,240
Speaker 1: similar to the one with kind of Shelley Davao and

1074
01:04:13,360 --> 01:04:16,560
Speaker 1: kind of shining. Um. Kubrick had a job to do.

1075
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: He needs to get performance out of someone, and he

1076
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:21,640
Speaker 1: would kind of behave in whatever way necessary to kind

1077
01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:26,080
Speaker 1: of elicit that performance. Um. From my own experience again,

1078
01:04:26,160 --> 01:04:28,680
Speaker 1: going through the kind of Kubrick archive and kind of

1079
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:31,000
Speaker 1: talking to people, you often kind of get a different

1080
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 1: kind of conflicting accounts. If you talk to the Kubrick family,

1081
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:36,560
Speaker 1: they always kind of defend Kuber and say, yep, he's

1082
01:04:36,560 --> 01:04:39,400
Speaker 1: a kind of an artist, the genius. You know, he's

1083
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:41,560
Speaker 1: kind of allowed to do whatever he wants. But when

1084
01:04:41,640 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: he starts to look at other kind of evidence, she

1085
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 1: just had to kind of question his behavior and the

1086
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:50,000
Speaker 1: way that he was treating someone. Someone particularly it's kind

1087
01:04:50,000 --> 01:04:52,640
Speaker 1: of as young as Sue Lion was and the way

1088
01:04:52,680 --> 01:04:55,240
Speaker 1: that she perhaps was susceptible and kind of, you know,

1089
01:04:55,520 --> 01:04:59,240
Speaker 1: susceptible to kind of manipulation. Um, particularly when he kind

1090
01:04:59,240 --> 01:05:01,600
Speaker 1: of think about the sub such a matter of the

1091
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:05,360
Speaker 1: film as well. You know, this is not necessarily a

1092
01:05:05,560 --> 01:05:08,200
Speaker 1: nice way that she was treated by all these kind

1093
01:05:08,240 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: of men in powerful positions. Correspondence between Kubrick, they both

1094
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:15,480
Speaker 1: kind of start suggesting, how can we exploit Sue Lion

1095
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 1: to the max. We got our own contract, we need

1096
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:19,960
Speaker 1: to use her and kind of, you know, get as

1097
01:05:20,080 --> 01:05:23,000
Speaker 1: much publicity out of there as possible. And constantly she's

1098
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:26,480
Speaker 1: kind of reduced to the Lolita image. That's all she's about.

1099
01:05:26,800 --> 01:05:28,840
Speaker 1: It's not somebody that's kind of you know, that should

1100
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 1: be respected. This is somebody that we now essentially own.

1101
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:35,120
Speaker 1: She's on our payroll. How can we go about now

1102
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,240
Speaker 1: using that? So for me, there's always uncomfortable kind of

1103
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:44,160
Speaker 1: aspect the way that uh Kubrick did kind of use

1104
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:48,400
Speaker 1: and treat to line. I think almost two months after

1105
01:05:48,520 --> 01:05:52,720
Speaker 1: our first interview, following the story detailing the allegations of

1106
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:56,960
Speaker 1: James Harris's sexual abuse of Sue Lion, James Fenwick and

1107
01:05:57,040 --> 01:05:59,920
Speaker 1: I caught up again and preparing for This interview was

1108
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:03,240
Speaker 1: interesting because listening back to our first talk, I was

1109
01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:05,920
Speaker 1: kind of taken it back because, based on all of

1110
01:06:06,000 --> 01:06:07,800
Speaker 1: the press that I had read up till that point,

1111
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:11,040
Speaker 1: Harris had very much been characterized as an ally to

1112
01:06:11,160 --> 01:06:15,720
Speaker 1: Lion until a reporter like Sarah Weinman took a closer

1113
01:06:15,800 --> 01:06:19,520
Speaker 1: look and asked the right people the right questions. So

1114
01:06:19,640 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 1: the tone of my second conversation with James Fenwick was

1115
01:06:23,240 --> 01:06:26,760
Speaker 1: very different. Here's a little bit of that. Yeah, I mean,

1116
01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 1: I saw the story only a couple of weeks ago,

1117
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:33,000
Speaker 1: and for me, it wasn't a surprise as such, by

1118
01:06:33,080 --> 01:06:35,200
Speaker 1: which I mean kind of. I was already kind of

1119
01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:38,120
Speaker 1: aware of the stories from the early nineties sixes in

1120
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, you know, I mean it almost kind

1121
01:06:41,880 --> 01:06:45,480
Speaker 1: of in a weird way. The film is an allegory

1122
01:06:46,040 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 1: of the kind of production itself, and I find that

1123
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:54,720
Speaker 1: dynamic now you know, it can be unseen again. You know,

1124
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:59,040
Speaker 1: people clearly within Hollywood knew that there were rumors. That's

1125
01:06:59,360 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 1: the one thing that I think is kind of important.

1126
01:07:02,520 --> 01:07:05,000
Speaker 1: Rumors in the sense of, you know, the friendship and

1127
01:07:05,040 --> 01:07:07,680
Speaker 1: the closeness of James B. Harris and Sue Lion, not

1128
01:07:07,840 --> 01:07:11,120
Speaker 1: suggesting that there was kind of an outrun allegation at

1129
01:07:11,160 --> 01:07:12,960
Speaker 1: the time that it was sleeping with her. But you know,

1130
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:15,480
Speaker 1: this suggestion that, oh, Sue Lyon, you might want to

1131
01:07:15,600 --> 01:07:19,960
Speaker 1: kind of one day Mary James B. Harris, Um, I

1132
01:07:20,080 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 1: think perhaps now for me, you know, it reframes the

1133
01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:28,440
Speaker 1: whole film. It reframes the way that we view that film.

1134
01:07:29,440 --> 01:07:33,440
Speaker 1: It reframes I think the relationship between kind of powerful producers,

1135
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,880
Speaker 1: as I said a bit back, and child stars. Um.

1136
01:07:36,960 --> 01:07:39,960
Speaker 1: And I think that is the bigger issue here really

1137
01:07:40,040 --> 01:07:43,120
Speaker 1: actually now, and also the issue with the fact that

1138
01:07:43,960 --> 01:07:49,320
Speaker 1: again Sue Lyon's voice is not part of this or

1139
01:07:49,680 --> 01:07:51,640
Speaker 1: you know that the moments that she ever has talked

1140
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:54,280
Speaker 1: about stuff, it's kind of being ignored. The example I

1141
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:57,400
Speaker 1: always used, for instance, is this official Stanley Cooper exhibition,

1142
01:07:57,800 --> 01:08:00,600
Speaker 1: and there's one letter in that exhibition, and he said

1143
01:08:00,960 --> 01:08:04,800
Speaker 1: kind of a letter that almost exonerates anyone any responsibility

1144
01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:07,040
Speaker 1: for the way that her life and career panned out,

1145
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:09,320
Speaker 1: kind of saying thank you, Stanley, you know you did

1146
01:08:09,400 --> 01:08:12,840
Speaker 1: wonders for me, I loved at etcetera, etcetera. Actually kind

1147
01:08:12,840 --> 01:08:16,040
Speaker 1: of forgetting the few moments where she said that Lolita

1148
01:08:16,320 --> 01:08:19,040
Speaker 1: damaged her. That kind of was the start of the

1149
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:23,080
Speaker 1: kind of downfall of her own personal life, and James

1150
01:08:23,160 --> 01:08:25,400
Speaker 1: Fenwick and I will be discussing this more at length

1151
01:08:25,720 --> 01:08:29,479
Speaker 1: in an episode about the actors who played Lolita. Thank

1152
01:08:29,479 --> 01:08:32,280
Speaker 1: you so much to him. So as we discussed in

1153
01:08:32,360 --> 01:08:37,000
Speaker 1: the interview, Kubrick proved himself famously antagonistic and cruel towards

1154
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:40,839
Speaker 1: many of his female stars. But Kubrick's willingness to torture

1155
01:08:41,000 --> 01:08:45,240
Speaker 1: his female stars extends far beyond Sue Lyon. Shelley Winters,

1156
01:08:45,320 --> 01:08:47,800
Speaker 1: who played Charlotte Hayes in the movie, had had a

1157
01:08:47,840 --> 01:08:50,960
Speaker 1: bad relationship with Kubrick as well that almost resulted in

1158
01:08:51,120 --> 01:08:54,080
Speaker 1: him firing her in the middle of a take. The

1159
01:08:54,160 --> 01:08:57,200
Speaker 1: most famous example, as you might know already, is Shelley

1160
01:08:57,280 --> 01:09:00,400
Speaker 1: Duval in The Shining, who Kubrick prided him himself on

1161
01:09:00,520 --> 01:09:03,920
Speaker 1: antagonizing in order to get a heightened performance from her,

1162
01:09:04,080 --> 01:09:08,000
Speaker 1: and he actively encouraged his crew to ignore her clear distress.

1163
01:09:08,080 --> 01:09:11,200
Speaker 1: There is literally footage of this. He refused to encourage

1164
01:09:11,320 --> 01:09:13,240
Speaker 1: or praise her, he wouldn't tell her what was going

1165
01:09:13,320 --> 01:09:16,320
Speaker 1: to happen before very violent shots, and she said later

1166
01:09:16,439 --> 01:09:19,559
Speaker 1: that she was crying. Twelve hours a day while Kubrick

1167
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:22,679
Speaker 1: and Jack Nicholson were hanging out and playing chess. Here's

1168
01:09:22,680 --> 01:09:32,280
Speaker 1: how Nicholson and Kubrick talked on set. Very good, check, excellent.

1169
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:39,200
Speaker 1: And here's Kubrick talking to Duval. Look at this, pull

1170
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:42,560
Speaker 1: all my hair, pulled, honks of hair out, and the

1171
01:09:42,640 --> 01:09:47,960
Speaker 1: windows sill and the bat got caught of hair. Okay,

1172
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:54,439
Speaker 1: I don't sympathize with Shelley, And as we talked about

1173
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:57,599
Speaker 1: with Griffith and Hitchcock and Chaplain, there was a clear

1174
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:00,519
Speaker 1: precedent for this behavior. And while I can't stand that

1175
01:10:00,600 --> 01:10:03,879
Speaker 1: the Kubrick estates still defends his doing this, he certainly

1176
01:10:03,960 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 1: had no reason to believe the culture he worked within

1177
01:10:06,760 --> 01:10:09,360
Speaker 1: would ever have a problem with it, and he was right.

1178
01:10:09,880 --> 01:10:12,640
Speaker 1: By and large. He was rewarded for this type of

1179
01:10:12,720 --> 01:10:15,760
Speaker 1: behavior up until very recently, and this is not at

1180
01:10:15,800 --> 01:10:19,040
Speaker 1: all unusual for male auteurs. It's it's a discussion that's

1181
01:10:19,040 --> 01:10:22,400
Speaker 1: been had at lengthen is continuing to be had throughout

1182
01:10:22,439 --> 01:10:25,600
Speaker 1: the Me Too movement. But since Kubrick up until the

1183
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:28,680
Speaker 1: last few years have allowed a number of abuses to

1184
01:10:28,720 --> 01:10:31,920
Speaker 1: take place in the name of art. Think Gaspar No,

1185
01:10:32,320 --> 01:10:35,840
Speaker 1: Lars von Trier, James Tobackwoodie, Allen David o' russell, and

1186
01:10:35,920 --> 01:10:39,759
Speaker 1: it hits especially ironically in the case of Lolita, because

1187
01:10:39,880 --> 01:10:44,880
Speaker 1: Humbert Humbert, while committing abuses against an adolescent girl, uses

1188
01:10:45,160 --> 01:10:48,719
Speaker 1: this same bullshit artist argument to attempt to get away

1189
01:10:48,840 --> 01:10:51,639
Speaker 1: with the abuse of Dolores Hayes. He is a poet,

1190
01:10:51,720 --> 01:10:54,680
Speaker 1: He is an artist. Poets don't kill the book off.

1191
01:10:54,840 --> 01:10:59,679
Speaker 1: The novelist knows this argument is bullshit. The culture Lolita,

1192
01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:02,519
Speaker 1: the book is released into, not entirely, but in no

1193
01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:05,880
Speaker 1: small part, allows Humbert to get away with it by

1194
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:09,760
Speaker 1: declaring it the greatest love story of all time. The

1195
01:11:09,920 --> 01:11:13,679
Speaker 1: Hollywood Stanley Kubrick worked inside of let him get away

1196
01:11:13,840 --> 01:11:16,880
Speaker 1: with mistreating the women he worked with, because he argued

1197
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:21,040
Speaker 1: that the art demanded he do so. We let James B. Harris,

1198
01:11:21,200 --> 01:11:25,320
Speaker 1: according to these allegations from October, get away with it.

1199
01:11:26,000 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: We let Poe get away with it, We let Chaplin

1200
01:11:28,240 --> 01:11:30,559
Speaker 1: get away with it, we let Louis Carroll get away

1201
01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 1: with it, and in many cases we still are. Ultimately

1202
01:11:34,680 --> 01:11:37,920
Speaker 1: Kubrick's Alita has it a number of different ways and

1203
01:11:38,120 --> 01:11:41,599
Speaker 1: is trying to claim a number of different cakes. Sue

1204
01:11:41,680 --> 01:11:45,599
Speaker 1: Lyon embodies closer to the child woman that Marilyn Monroe

1205
01:11:45,720 --> 01:11:50,080
Speaker 1: had popularized, instead of a child being strategically and falsely

1206
01:11:50,200 --> 01:11:54,320
Speaker 1: presented as a woman by a predatory, unreliable narrator. It's

1207
01:11:54,360 --> 01:11:57,960
Speaker 1: unfortunately not that difficult to see why this happened. After all,

1208
01:11:58,040 --> 01:12:01,479
Speaker 1: the male directors, writers, and produced hers served as real

1209
01:12:01,640 --> 01:12:05,559
Speaker 1: life predators at times, nearly always projecting a false narrative

1210
01:12:05,600 --> 01:12:09,400
Speaker 1: about their female stars whose lives were rigidly controlled by them,

1211
01:12:09,640 --> 01:12:13,040
Speaker 1: and in missing the point of the book Lovelita entirely

1212
01:12:13,360 --> 01:12:17,520
Speaker 1: knowing the history of Kubrick's adaptation almost serves to reinforce

1213
01:12:17,640 --> 01:12:22,160
Speaker 1: the novel's ideas. Even more so, it is my deep

1214
01:12:22,280 --> 01:12:26,880
Speaker 1: displeasure to tell you that Stanley Kubrick's sixty two adaptation

1215
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:30,920
Speaker 1: of Lolita is possibly the best one that currently exists,

1216
01:12:31,439 --> 01:12:34,240
Speaker 1: Given that I have just spent over an hour unpacking why,

1217
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:36,479
Speaker 1: it has little to nothing to do with the message

1218
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:38,759
Speaker 1: behind the source text. So I would like to close

1219
01:12:38,800 --> 01:12:42,720
Speaker 1: this episode with Sue Lyon First, a quote from her

1220
01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:47,120
Speaker 1: at fifteen during the relentless promotion of this movie. We

1221
01:12:47,240 --> 01:12:49,719
Speaker 1: know now that this is very well the same time

1222
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:52,240
Speaker 1: that her producer is having sex with her on this

1223
01:12:52,439 --> 01:12:58,320
Speaker 1: press tour while remaining in complete control of her career. Well,

1224
01:12:58,400 --> 01:13:00,040
Speaker 1: I have a five year contract. I have a have

1225
01:13:00,080 --> 01:13:02,320
Speaker 1: a year contract with Harris Kubrick. There will be five

1226
01:13:02,400 --> 01:13:05,280
Speaker 1: years left and they make the decisions from now on.

1227
01:13:05,520 --> 01:13:08,560
Speaker 1: Mr Harris is reading properties now looking for something for

1228
01:13:08,640 --> 01:13:11,639
Speaker 1: me to do. And when he finds it and we'll

1229
01:13:11,640 --> 01:13:15,400
Speaker 1: be making another picture. Have you any special wishes? I

1230
01:13:15,479 --> 01:13:18,800
Speaker 1: heard the many and then her leader reflecting on this

1231
01:13:19,000 --> 01:13:22,800
Speaker 1: experience in the nineties, they felt that they were going

1232
01:13:22,880 --> 01:13:26,400
Speaker 1: to build a star and in the fashion of the

1233
01:13:26,479 --> 01:13:31,479
Speaker 1: old studios, UH, create an image and it would go

1234
01:13:31,600 --> 01:13:36,800
Speaker 1: on for there. And but after they realized that and

1235
01:13:36,960 --> 01:13:42,439
Speaker 1: understood my motivation for doing the film, and also I

1236
01:13:42,560 --> 01:13:44,200
Speaker 1: pointed out to them, I said, you know, you've made

1237
01:13:44,240 --> 01:13:47,160
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of money off of me, and I

1238
01:13:47,280 --> 01:13:49,840
Speaker 1: think you owe me the respect to be who I am.

1239
01:13:50,680 --> 01:13:53,880
Speaker 1: I was once on a television show, a talk show.

1240
01:13:54,640 --> 01:13:59,560
Speaker 1: My brother had just died two days before that. The

1241
01:13:59,680 --> 01:14:02,880
Speaker 1: inner viewer opens his show by saying, and now I

1242
01:14:03,000 --> 01:14:06,879
Speaker 1: was sixteen years old. He said, did your brother kill himself?

1243
01:14:07,000 --> 01:14:11,920
Speaker 1: Because you played Lolita? I didn't say a thing. I

1244
01:14:12,120 --> 01:14:18,599
Speaker 1: gotta walk up. So by all accounts, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita

1245
01:14:19,160 --> 01:14:22,439
Speaker 1: is a failure and continues the domino effect of the

1246
01:14:22,560 --> 01:14:26,680
Speaker 1: active harm surrounding the stories legacy. Next week, we're going

1247
01:14:26,720 --> 01:14:29,280
Speaker 1: to talk about what that active harm entails and what

1248
01:14:29,439 --> 01:14:32,439
Speaker 1: some have done to combat it. A discussion about abuse,

1249
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:36,479
Speaker 1: the abductions that inspired the story, how Freud fucked us

1250
01:14:36,479 --> 01:14:40,879
Speaker 1: all over, and one psychology professor's argument for reclaiming Lolita

1251
01:14:40,960 --> 01:14:45,760
Speaker 1: on behalf of Survivors next week on Lolita Podcast. This

1252
01:14:45,880 --> 01:14:48,400
Speaker 1: has been a production of I Heart Radio. My name's

1253
01:14:48,439 --> 01:14:51,440
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus, I right and host the show. My producers

1254
01:14:51,479 --> 01:14:55,200
Speaker 1: are the wonderful Sophie Lichtman, Myles Gray, Beth Ann Macaluso,

1255
01:14:55,400 --> 01:14:58,960
Speaker 1: and Jack O'Brien. My editor is the amazing Isaac Taylor.

1256
01:14:59,200 --> 01:15:02,960
Speaker 1: Additional rece search and transcription work from Ben Loftist music

1257
01:15:03,040 --> 01:15:06,639
Speaker 1: Kid by Zamie Blade, and her sin is from Brad Dicker.

1258
01:15:07,080 --> 01:15:08,880
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to my guest boyson on this

1259
01:15:09,040 --> 01:15:12,200
Speaker 1: episode as well. Robert Evans as Vladimir in a Book

1260
01:15:12,240 --> 01:15:15,600
Speaker 1: of Anna Has Name, Jeri Monti, Unis, Grace Thomas, and

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Speaker 1: Miles Brant will be you next week. M