Speaker 1: It's ten pm at a book publishing party circa nineteen
Speaker 1: seven in New York City, and you're listening to Night Call. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Night Call podcast for your Strange Days
Speaker 1: and lonely nights. My name is Emily Oshida. I am
Speaker 1: here in New York and with me on the other
Speaker 1: end of the line is Molly Lambert and Tess Lynch. Hello, Hello, Momo.
Speaker 1: That's what I was just gonna say. Hello, Hello, A
Speaker 1: minute for momos, the Momo minute, a Momo mom, a
Speaker 1: meme mom for momoh. If you haven't heard about the
Speaker 1: Momo challenge, Molly and Emily and I just kind of
Speaker 1: talk about it. There was this hoax going around that
Speaker 1: um there's this Japanese sculpture, uh that is called Mother Bird,
Speaker 1: and it looks it's like a chicken. It's it's like
Speaker 1: a breasted bird lady like a like a junji Eto
Speaker 1: slash Tim Burton, like like circa Beetle Juice creation. It
Speaker 1: looks specifically like the bird face people in Beetlejuice. It's
Speaker 1: like a woman with a bird face who has like
Speaker 1: crazy bulging out eyes and like a mouth that's just
Speaker 1: kind of a straight line in a v and it's scary.
Speaker 1: It's super scary. Yeah, but what what exactly happened? I
Speaker 1: have questions happened? Is that somehow I don't know how
Speaker 1: it started, but this meme, essentially it's a meme. There
Speaker 1: was like people started hearing that Momo was appearing in
Speaker 1: YouTube videos in the middle of YouTube videos aimed at
Speaker 1: children and telling children, like in the middle of like
Speaker 1: a pepper Pig video, this is the story urban legend.
Speaker 1: You don't know, like YouTube for your kids, and in
Speaker 1: the middle of a puppet pig video, Bomo appears and
Speaker 1: tells your kids to kill themselves and their parents. Yeah
Speaker 1: or yeah, it's the Momo challenges to kill yourself and
Speaker 1: get others and kill your parents. So I was so
Speaker 1: I was under the impression that the Momo challenge was
Speaker 1: to watch the pepper Pig video in question and come
Speaker 1: out of it not wanting to kill yourself. Challenges to
Speaker 1: kill yourself and your parents right to kill yourself. But
Speaker 1: then I was researching it and there was another one
Speaker 1: called the Blue Whale Challenge, which is what that Black
Speaker 1: Mirror episode Shut Up and Dance I think is based on.
Speaker 1: And the Blue Whale Challenge is another like apocryphal urban legend,
Speaker 1: like you know, the challenge kids loft challenges, and that
Speaker 1: one supposedly starts with like mundane things and then escalates
Speaker 1: to like you have to kill somebody. You know, it's
Speaker 1: do this challenge first. It's like, you know, go take
Speaker 1: the milk and a bike and starting scavenger hunt and
Speaker 1: ends really dark. Again. I couldn't find any real information
Speaker 1: about it. They are like news articles from every country.
Speaker 1: It seems like that one was more like Eastern Europe based.
Speaker 1: So it feels like the deal with Momo though, is
Speaker 1: that all these parents have been talking about it, like
Speaker 1: saying it's traumatized their children or something. But yet the
Speaker 1: videos that I've seen are all like videos taken of
Speaker 1: somebody else. It doesn't exactly panic however, breaking news, which
Speaker 1: won't be breaking news when you listen to this episode.
Speaker 1: The sculpture has been destroyed. Why the creator of the
Speaker 1: sculpture decided to throw it away? I'm sure it'll reform
Speaker 1: out of the pieces, the shattered pieces. Maybe Momo is
Speaker 1: getting all the blame here, and I am a Momo
Speaker 1: stand I think Momo is stand legend, stay allegend. I
Speaker 1: feel like almost just the female slenderman. But for some reason,
Speaker 1: the fact that it's female and like just a weird
Speaker 1: looking like weird girl makes me be like, Momo has
Speaker 1: never done anything wrong. Did you see that somebody tried
Speaker 1: to face tune Momo? They were immediately like CUTEI Momos.
Speaker 1: I have two things to add to this discussion. Number
Speaker 1: one is that my husband had mentioned to me that
Speaker 1: we need to be careful of that he had heard
Speaker 1: about the Momo challenge. She bought into it. He was like,
Speaker 1: no more pepper Pig, and so I sent him this
Speaker 1: really great article from the New York Times. John Hermann
Speaker 1: wrote it called Momo is as real as We've made her,
Speaker 1: which has like a lot of good points about how
Speaker 1: Momo looks like a sleep deprived mother, Uh, exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of person who is handing the phone to her
Speaker 1: child saying watch all the pepper Pig and the streaming
Speaker 1: to crap that you want. So how it's basically momos
Speaker 1: kind of playing on our like guilt of the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, the real threat is that you're just
Speaker 1: kind of giving your kid a stream of YouTube and
Speaker 1: you don't know what they'll see, the possibility that they'll
Speaker 1: see something that's like, actually horrifying exists also, So I
Speaker 1: texted this to my husband. Then on Sunday morning, I
Speaker 1: was sick, so I decided to let my three year
Speaker 1: old have my phone and watch Pep a Pig on
Speaker 1: YouTube and I give her the phone and she like
Speaker 1: sees that there's a thumbnail of Momo that I've texted
Speaker 1: to my husband, and she's like, what's that? And I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't worry about this Momo, and she
Speaker 1: was like, I can't wait to tell my friends about Momo.
Speaker 1: And you can't mention Momo. You're gonna say you've just
Speaker 1: unhoaxed the Momo. Sometimes that happens that like a fake
Speaker 1: thing becomes a real thing. So I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: ever did the tide pod challenge, but all the articles
Speaker 1: that were like these children stop eating tide pods. Hysteria.
Speaker 1: Um we you also want to revisit real quick at
Speaker 1: the top of the show, Um, the city of Denver,
Speaker 1: beautiful Denver, Colorado. Uh, we have gotten somewhere. Intel. For one,
Speaker 1: there is a mobile game that was released just last
Speaker 1: month or I guess two months ago now, in January
Speaker 1: of this year, about Bluesifer, in which you are Bluecifer
Speaker 1: the horse and you run around rampaging through Colorado. Um, well,
Speaker 1: link to that on the Twitter. Actually I already did
Speaker 1: link to it on the Twitter. Um. And so the
Speaker 1: mumification of Bluecifer continues apace. And then the gargoyles. UH.
Speaker 1: For a fun anniversary trick, they made the gargoyles come
Speaker 1: to life at the Denver Airport and start talking to people,
Speaker 1: which is not at all horrifying. Again, Denver Airport way
Speaker 1: to just continue to meet the meet the expectations of
Speaker 1: all air travelers that they should be just like surprised
Speaker 1: and frightened upon landing. And you're, WHOA, what's that? I
Speaker 1: saw gargoyle the other day. I was doing a hike
Speaker 1: and there was a gargoyle in somebody's backyard. I thought
Speaker 1: that was a good thing to put in your backyard.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't like gargoyles, but I like them
Speaker 1: better than I like murals. Well, it's like the least
Speaker 1: amount of chill. Again, in keeping with all things d
Speaker 1: I A. Yeah. Also on the subject of art that kills,
Speaker 1: which somehow has become a running theme because we love,
Speaker 1: we love Haunted portrait for the Velvet buzz Pod. I
Speaker 1: just watched that again with David and uh and uh
Speaker 1: it's it's real fun. It holds up on a second joid.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, uh. Still Velvet tide pod nice. Uh.
Speaker 1: This this comes from our listener rum. This is going
Speaker 1: back to we were talking about there's um ah, there's
Speaker 1: a sculpture that's uh that that are these holes that
Speaker 1: basically the way that they're presented, it looks like they
Speaker 1: just go down forever because they're painted. Um they're painted
Speaker 1: this particular shade of prietary black and the artist is
Speaker 1: a Niche Kapoor. And our wrote to me on Instagram, So,
Speaker 1: I hope it's okay to use this, but I feel
Speaker 1: like this is this is a night call. But uh,
Speaker 1: he said an Italian man. He shared an article from
Speaker 1: Fast Company but about an Italian man who fell into
Speaker 1: Nichs hole a few months ago. Maybe I misremembering, but
Speaker 1: the first story I read about it said the man
Speaker 1: stepped into the hole because he was trying to prove
Speaker 1: a point that the hole wasn't really a hole. It
Speaker 1: was just a circle painted on the floor in vant
Speaker 1: to black Capor's proprietary black paint. That's apparently the darkest
Speaker 1: paint ever produced by science UM. And there's there is
Speaker 1: an article about this that somebody tried to call the
Speaker 1: Hole's bluff and it was a real hole and they fell.
Speaker 1: Don't the Holes? By the way, Holes is great, great movie, UM,
Speaker 1: So thank you for bringing that to our attention. This
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Speaker 1: promo Nightcall to get this deal while it lasts. Speaking
Speaker 1: of calling bluffs exactly, Molly pointed us to this article
Speaker 1: in the New York Times magazine, which will be a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks old at this point, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth a read. That is about this sort of operation,
Speaker 1: or I guess multiple operations. They all have very fun names.
Speaker 1: Um done by a woman named Susan Gerbick to kind
Speaker 1: of debunk these psychics, which you said, celebrity psychics. So
Speaker 1: I was thinking at first like psychics to the stuff ours,
Speaker 1: but these are like psychics who are actually celebrities and
Speaker 1: like commanded crowd, and you buy tickets to go see
Speaker 1: them do uh, you know, readings and stuff in it,
Speaker 1: although some of them are also like yeah, there's an
Speaker 1: overlap for sure. I thought this article is super interesting,
Speaker 1: especially the ending, Like I feel like, um, I've definitely
Speaker 1: not just for stuff around psychics, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: astrology and everything like that. You and if you write
Speaker 1: about this stuff or or um, you know, you you
Speaker 1: express any kind of interest in it, you automatically kind
Speaker 1: of come in contact with these types of rationalist debunker
Speaker 1: types who are um, you know, just trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that nobody believes in astrology or whatever whatever the
Speaker 1: case may be. Uh. And I just thought that the
Speaker 1: ending was so interesting because it was kind of about
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it too much because it
Speaker 1: does feel like a spoiler, but it was sort of
Speaker 1: about the way in which even like a you know,
Speaker 1: supposedly bullshit psychic reading can have some kind of power
Speaker 1: or be important for people in a way besides it
Speaker 1: just being like actually accurate and somebody talking to a
Speaker 1: spirit or somebody uh, from Beyond the Grave. I thought
Speaker 1: that was really interesting, but but the whole getting into
Speaker 1: the operation was super interesting as well. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think it definitely. You kind of start reading thinking
Speaker 1: that it's going to be very unsympathetic to the psychics,
Speaker 1: but then the author has like a very emotional experience
Speaker 1: at one of these readings and you realize that there's
Speaker 1: a need for something like this. Although the issue is
Speaker 1: that you know that there was like another link um
Speaker 1: within the article to one of my favorite pieces ever,
Speaker 1: which is a few years old now, about the guy
Speaker 1: who spent like seven and eighteen thousand dollars on psychics
Speaker 1: and they were all just leading him on this like
Speaker 1: wild Goose, she used to find this woman and it
Speaker 1: just ruined his life. So obviously there are a lot
Speaker 1: of bad actors there. But it's interesting because, like when
Speaker 1: you totally do away with you know, people who deal
Speaker 1: with things like grief and you know, people being very
Speaker 1: lost in their lives and stuff, within a metaphysical way,
Speaker 1: there's like a need there. So it's not all bad
Speaker 1: and it does affect people positively, but it also you know,
Speaker 1: you can definitely lead people down. It is religion a scam.
Speaker 1: It's like if it's a helpful thing for people, like
Speaker 1: is it a scam? Uh? When when money starts getting involved,
Speaker 1: that's when I think I get comes a scam. But
Speaker 1: but also cold reading is a skill right right itself.
Speaker 1: I mean just like going into a crowd of people
Speaker 1: or like finding a role row of elderly people or
Speaker 1: people getting along in years at a in a conference
Speaker 1: room and the back of a Crown Plaza hotel and
Speaker 1: like saying, somebody here just lost a parent. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna be right, probably, But like also
Speaker 1: some like the fact that somebody would raise their hands
Speaker 1: kind of means that they want they want to be seen.
Speaker 1: They want to have a chance to like express um
Speaker 1: or like you know, be able to talk about it
Speaker 1: in public or or with a stranger, um to be
Speaker 1: recognized in that way or have their pain recognized or something.
Speaker 1: I think it's like therapy. It's like somebody pretending to
Speaker 1: understand you or just like listening to you, and that
Speaker 1: is like something maybe everybody needs. Well, this is the
Speaker 1: thing I always say about astrology is that, like I
Speaker 1: feel like the appeal of astrology is reading something that's
Speaker 1: talking to you in second person, like addressing and telling
Speaker 1: you things about yourself, like the the the idea that
Speaker 1: somebody knows you and is like and can reflect that
Speaker 1: back to you, even if it's not necessarily always accurate,
Speaker 1: but that feels good. Like we want to hear people
Speaker 1: tell us things about ourselves because I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of times we don't have an idea, like you know,
Speaker 1: we it's hard to tell like what we're putting out there,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, there was some really good eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: gossip kind of dropped into the middle of this article.
Speaker 1: Just quote it. The poet Robert Browning once exposed the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century Scottish psychic Daniel Home, who claimed to
Speaker 1: conjure the spirit of Browning's infant son who died young.
Speaker 1: Except Browning hadn't lost a son. Worse, the poet lunged
Speaker 1: at the apparition to unmask it and found himself clutching
Speaker 1: Homess bare foot. It was like, what excuse me? Which
Speaker 1: is like an interesting thing to add to your idea
Speaker 1: of Robert Browning. Um, I think I also told you.
Speaker 1: I found out Thomas Edison was really into psychics and
Speaker 1: believed in the afterlife. Yeah, yeah, I think the logic
Speaker 1: is not incompatible with like there are things beyond logic. Also,
Speaker 1: it's interesting how much time and energy the skeptics kind
Speaker 1: of poured into creating these fake Facebook profiles and like
Speaker 1: getting all costumed up and going to these psychic readings
Speaker 1: and you know, kind I mean, it's a real gig man,
Speaker 1: and you have to respect it because they are trying
Speaker 1: to protect people from getting defrauded. But they're going they
Speaker 1: must like it a little bit. Oh yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the movie Cruising exactly. This is the under of her assignment.
Speaker 1: You chose, yes, Yeah, It's really interesting. The way they
Speaker 1: do it is just like they create this entire profile
Speaker 1: and then they basically use it as bait for the
Speaker 1: psychic to have already looked it up ahead of time,
Speaker 1: because you you know, you give your information when you
Speaker 1: buy a ticket, and so they can you know, they
Speaker 1: can name names and stuff. But then you kind of
Speaker 1: set that as a trap so that they'll fall for
Speaker 1: this fake profile it's been created and give your reading
Speaker 1: based on the fake profile. Yeah. Um. Related, Molly also
Speaker 1: sent us an article about the Crystal influencer who is
Speaker 1: also a fraud. What's her name again? Audrey kitchen MySpace
Speaker 1: scene Queen Yes, and starting a smashing Pumpkins video that
Speaker 1: part of her MySpace scene Queen. She was famous for
Speaker 1: having pink hair and being like she did hair I
Speaker 1: think for a long time. And she dated a guy
Speaker 1: from either Panic at the Disco or one of those. Uh,
Speaker 1: And now she has pivoted to new Age. And this
Speaker 1: was an article about how she's like a fraud because
Speaker 1: she's stealing other people's one idea, like here's my one.
Speaker 1: It was about how she's like she she has rebranded
Speaker 1: herself as new age, but like all of her quotes
Speaker 1: are just stolen from other people. It kind of got
Speaker 1: to the same place of like, well if it helps
Speaker 1: somebody doesn't matter, like um, but also that all of
Speaker 1: her supposedly like handmade whatever products that she's selling all
Speaker 1: come from Ali Express, and like has these assistants who
Speaker 1: the writer interviewed who were like, yes, she ruined my life,
Speaker 1: um by promising me things and then forcing me to
Speaker 1: do her laundry. Yeah, I don't know. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I it is interesting to think about, like why this
Speaker 1: makes me a little more irritated than like a likely
Speaker 1: very fake psychic or media or something I don't know.
Speaker 1: They talked to the other New ag people that she
Speaker 1: like ripped things off from, and those people are like devastated.
Speaker 1: This well those people are also like so silly, but
Speaker 1: you're like they're serious about it. I mean, at least
Speaker 1: the fake psychics are taking time to sit down and
Speaker 1: like connect with people, even if they're kind of using
Speaker 1: clues that they found elsewhere or they're just after getting
Speaker 1: a cynic exploiting. Yeah, it's cynical. Like even if you
Speaker 1: know yourself on some love, if you're if you're a
Speaker 1: touring psychic and you know that your thing is mostly
Speaker 1: bullshit and you're using and you're looking at people's Facebook accounts, like,
Speaker 1: there's still some part of it where it's like, well
Speaker 1: I want to, like you know, hey, you're putting in
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I want to, And I want to
Speaker 1: give a meaningful experience to somebody, like you know, you're
Speaker 1: like an actor. Yeah, sure, it's a girlfriend experience. She
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like somebody that anybody would want to be like,
Speaker 1: so it's weird she's formed a cult to personality. But
Speaker 1: it also goes into the way that like New Age
Speaker 1: stuff can just be narcissism, you know, like all the
Speaker 1: group stuff that's like you wants is just like a
Speaker 1: rich board person who doesn't have to work, like turns
Speaker 1: entirely inward into the yoni yon just becomes one big
Speaker 1: Yoni yoni fied. I think it's also kind of ties
Speaker 1: in with the whole like thinking of each object as
Speaker 1: having like a soul or a spirit or whatever, like
Speaker 1: does it spark joy? What does it represent? Well, if
Speaker 1: you're selling that and then you're really selling exactly, then
Speaker 1: that's that really makes you wonder about the joy that
Speaker 1: things can spark. I mean, I will say that, like
Speaker 1: crystal yoni ones are not trademarkable, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people make them. It was just clearly like she had
Speaker 1: gotten them. That's my question. They show up on The
Speaker 1: Real Housewives a lot. I've heard you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: put crystals. You are not supposed because they're poorous, they're porous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't um, but people sell it as it's
Speaker 1: like that they were the jade egg is giving people
Speaker 1: like right, right, But that's natural, guy to make your bread. Yeah, nice,
Speaker 1: that's how you get the mother. I'm so sorry to
Speaker 1: our listeners for what you We've just done to you.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, momos here, hello kids, I am at
Speaker 1: would talk. That's exactly actually, but that's what it sounds
Speaker 1: like in the video. You know who reminds me of Momo?
Speaker 1: Who could that be? Someone else who pops up when
Speaker 1: you're not expecting? Oh slip. Let's talk about fatal attraction.
Speaker 1: So we are embarking on a series of I guess
Speaker 1: undetermined length as long as we feel like it. I guess.
Speaker 1: Um call it an erotic journey. Yeah, an ironic hodyessey.
Speaker 1: Now please join us as Night Call embarks on its
Speaker 1: first erotic odessey. We are going to be discussing films
Speaker 1: that fit into the erotic thriller slash drama genre, a
Speaker 1: genre which doesn't really exist anymore, and which is still
Speaker 1: all of our favorite the most interesting. Even if it's
Speaker 1: not my favorite, I just feel like it's the most like.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I could talk for ages about some
Speaker 1: of these movies. Um, yeah, it might be our favorite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it passes the night Called Test, the Venor Diagram,
Speaker 1: it goes in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: originally going to have this be a double feature. We
Speaker 1: may have double features in the future. Um Our first
Speaker 1: film that we're going to talk about is Fatal Attraction.
Speaker 1: I had pitched that we do Fatal Attraction and the
Speaker 1: Hand that Rocks the Cradle because they go really well together.
Speaker 1: Do you call that one Natal Attraction, in which I
Speaker 1: really wanted to use. We'll do that one in the
Speaker 1: future for sure. Put it on Netflix. Netflix. Put it's
Speaker 1: somewhere Netflix because we know where to see not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't watch it, but I've seen it so many
Speaker 1: times that I feel like I could talk about it anyway,
Speaker 1: but I would like to watch. You know what I
Speaker 1: watched instead of uh, well, I watched two things instead
Speaker 1: of Handle that Rocks to Cradle when I couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: But the first thing was the Ciskel and Ebert episode
Speaker 1: that included a review of Hand the Rocks of Cradle,
Speaker 1: which just made me miss Ciskel and Ebert so badly.
Speaker 1: It was so it's like the most civilized television show.
Speaker 1: Guess what this show is. It's basically the same. Put
Speaker 1: us on TV and give us some big sums. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had never seen Fatal Attraction before in my life,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, Which is crazy because I have you
Speaker 1: drive a truck Times, and I've known that it's one
Speaker 1: of Tess's favorite movies if not, And this podcast is
Speaker 1: all about tests, forcing us to watch movies that tell
Speaker 1: me baby canon Yeah, a nineties lady like Tesla, and
Speaker 1: it always has Glenn Close in it. De Um Fatal Attraction.
Speaker 1: It was so good, so good. But before we start
Speaker 1: talking about it, I have to say that, Um, when
Speaker 1: we dug deeper into Glenn Close's character development for Alex
Speaker 1: forrest Uh, She's consulted with a bunch of psychiatrists and
Speaker 1: kind of made up this backstory that the character had
Speaker 1: suffered from sexual abuse. So if we end up talking
Speaker 1: about that, it might upset you if you're a survivor
Speaker 1: of sexual abuse. So just you can mosey on by
Speaker 1: if that Alex forrest Uh Fatal Attraction nineteen seven an
Speaker 1: Adrian Line picture, Um, which I've seen this one. I
Speaker 1: had seen this one a while ago, but I really
Speaker 1: want to get to nine and a half weeks, which
Speaker 1: is for me, I'm rare in my mind. It's just
Speaker 1: like proto fifty shades of gray, but like have seen it,
Speaker 1: You've never seen that, We're seen it. I really want
Speaker 1: to see it. But like he was clearly such an
Speaker 1: a tour of the forum, and so I feel like
Speaker 1: we'll definitely be revisiting him. This movie is so good.
Speaker 1: I had no idea took place in yuppie New York.
Speaker 1: Absolutely where else could Where is it? Bedford? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: most everything. Um, I've obviously seen so many things from
Speaker 1: this movie out of context, and I was saying that, like,
Speaker 1: in context, you really feel for Glenn Close. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is the kind of thing. The more you watch it,
Speaker 1: the more you realize that there are clues all along
Speaker 1: that are kind of painting. Dan is his name, but
Speaker 1: Michael Douglas's character as the actual villain, and I think
Speaker 1: two of them I've never noticed these before. But in
Speaker 1: two instances, he approaches versus secretary and then the police lieutenant.
Speaker 1: And with his secretary he just starts like barking off
Speaker 1: things he needs and then at the end looks at
Speaker 1: her and says like, oh good morning. And then with
Speaker 1: the police lieutenant, same thing. He's like I need you
Speaker 1: to do this, this, this, this, this, and then like
Speaker 1: shuts the door and the police lieutenant says something to
Speaker 1: the effect of like oh, well you're welcome. So he's
Speaker 1: an asshole. He also talks about how he's like a
Speaker 1: lawyer with no morals and just like does whatever he
Speaker 1: wants to get paid. But he's charming. He was filming
Speaker 1: Wall Street, I guess at the same time. It was
Speaker 1: a little bleed over. Yeah, I've never seen Wall Street.
Speaker 1: It's so good. So this movie, in case you are
Speaker 1: not familiar with the premise of Fatal Attraction, um, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Earth. It is about Dan Gallagher played by Michael Douglas,
Speaker 1: who has this kind of a weekend fling with Alex
Speaker 1: played like Glenn Close. He's a married guy in New York.
Speaker 1: He's like it, works as a lawyer for a publishing
Speaker 1: company and uh, you know, a real yuppy guy. But
Speaker 1: they're about to make their move up state and escape
Speaker 1: the city. But before that happens, he uh, he has
Speaker 1: some weekend fun with another lady and then she becomes
Speaker 1: obsessed with him and will not leave him or his
Speaker 1: family alone even when they move. It is I think
Speaker 1: hearing about the actual planned ending, which actually feels much
Speaker 1: more like a kind of hitchcock. He sort of noir. Um,
Speaker 1: do you guys know about the actual ending? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is the ending that was the original ending,
Speaker 1: and when they changed it, Glen Close was like furious,
Speaker 1: quite mad, which I would be too, honestly, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. In the original ending, um, there is a
Speaker 1: face off with a kitchen knife and Glenn Close Alex
Speaker 1: Forrest uses it to kill herself, but because it has
Speaker 1: been handled by Dan, it's used to like implicate him
Speaker 1: in her murder, and he's hauled off to the police.
Speaker 1: But then his wife, who is Beth played by Anne Archer,
Speaker 1: finds this cassette that Alex had made for Dan where
Speaker 1: she's just like ranting about how she has to have
Speaker 1: it and you know, he's so horrible and it basically
Speaker 1: exonerates Dan when Beth brings it to the police and
Speaker 1: they realize that she's him, end it with him going
Speaker 1: to jail. Well, he, oh, not quite. The thing is
Speaker 1: he got himself into this position and he acts as
Speaker 1: though he should not have to claw his way out,
Speaker 1: which you know, you can get yourself into a position
Speaker 1: and claw your way out, that's fine, but you can't
Speaker 1: just ghost he wants to go. This is like it's
Speaker 1: a revenge fantasy about somebody ghosting. Yeah, right, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting choice about the script is that
Speaker 1: it does not give you any reason. It doesn't set
Speaker 1: up like a sexless or passionless marriage or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't give him any reason to want to do it.
Speaker 1: So that when he you know, ends up, you know,
Speaker 1: getting stuck in the rain with Glenn close and going
Speaker 1: and having a drink with her and then one thing
Speaker 1: leads to another, there's no reason that we would believe
Speaker 1: this would happen other than he's just like a dude,
Speaker 1: and this is like what dudes apparently do in nine
Speaker 1: eighties New York. Uh So when she, you know, later
Speaker 1: brings back this idea of like, you know, you thought
Speaker 1: that you could just sleep with me over the weekend,
Speaker 1: nothing would happen. I mean, even though she's done plenty
Speaker 1: of stuff that she is not a good person, let's
Speaker 1: just like make that clear. But like on that tip,
Speaker 1: she is definitely right, Like he yeah, complicated by the
Speaker 1: fact that she claims to be pregnant, which is then
Speaker 1: verified when he calls her gynecologist, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: a guy in ecologist would not tell a stranger over
Speaker 1: the phone. Anything goes when you get the gynecologist number
Speaker 1: on your rolodex, you know, but I mean that kind
Speaker 1: of like that's kind of glossed over, is like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's crazy, is she lying? But then when you think, well,
Speaker 1: if she actually were pregnant, she'd suffered a miscarriage the
Speaker 1: year before, so she obviously, you know, has kind of
Speaker 1: like some baggage with that maybe wants to get pregnant.
Speaker 1: Now he's pregnant. She thought it was impossible, and she's
Speaker 1: trying to tell him, but he won't answer her calls.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I feel like these hysterical woman movies, you're
Speaker 1: gonna identify with the hysterical woman. Well yeah, but also
Speaker 1: I think like a lot of the things that have
Speaker 1: been written about Fatal Attraction rightfully deal with the fact
Speaker 1: that she's a career woman and Beth is like the family.
Speaker 1: She's the perfect wife because yes, Emily said, like she's
Speaker 1: she's still passionate about her husband, and she's like totally
Speaker 1: understanding that he's, you know, taking a weekend to stay
Speaker 1: in the station. She's the perfect wife and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: H Glenn close seduces him, but he never says no,
Speaker 1: He goes with it. It's all his fault. But then
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to take any responsibility and she's just
Speaker 1: keeps showing up being like you have to take responsibility
Speaker 1: for your actions. That's how it works. I think one
Speaker 1: reason that it doesn't come off as pure just like
Speaker 1: a nightmare about a clingy bitch, is that he does
Speaker 1: so much stupid ship beyond just having the affair, like
Speaker 1: every single moment, every single I had to like I
Speaker 1: usually never do this, Like I usually like watch movies
Speaker 1: at home with my full attention. But about halfway through,
Speaker 1: like somewhere around the pregnancy thing, I got so stressed
Speaker 1: out by his inability to just like cut ties and
Speaker 1: and like kept the way he kept screening her along
Speaker 1: and kept like kind of trying to like trying to
Speaker 1: the attention, love the attention. I got so stressed out
Speaker 1: I had to take out my phone and start like
Speaker 1: looking at something stupid, not like go with him. I
Speaker 1: was saying, it's like she gives me strong real hunter
Speaker 1: in general. But I was also saying, like, you know
Speaker 1: that I always resented this movie for the fact that,
Speaker 1: like her hair is supposed to makes you she's so
Speaker 1: crazy and her hair is so big and some of
Speaker 1: us just have big, curly hair. Well. In this interview
Speaker 1: or nos a talk that like going close to which
Speaker 1: we'll go to us in a second. She does say
Speaker 1: that a lot of Alex's personal style, including her hair,
Speaker 1: might be owed to the way that Glenn Close looked
Speaker 1: when she went in for her audition. But also like
Speaker 1: an archer also has like a perm everybody everybody has,
Speaker 1: so again, in context, it all seems more motivated. Um,
Speaker 1: she's so good. This is the thing though, is like
Speaker 1: also in that thing she talks about, and I think
Speaker 1: this is true, Like she was really not seen as
Speaker 1: somebody who could be like sexual on screen. Um. And
Speaker 1: and a lot of people, like including the producers of
Speaker 1: the film, didn't think that she could do it. But
Speaker 1: then if you know anything about Hollywood casting, you know
Speaker 1: that it is people saying that broads aren't fleable enough. Um.
Speaker 1: Sherry Lansing was one of the producers that she named
Speaker 1: who said who like was totally convinced that it goes
Speaker 1: it's all internal life. What they're saying a lot of
Speaker 1: the time is I don't want to see you be sexual.
Speaker 1: And what is so great about her performance is that
Speaker 1: she's hot in it. I was very like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Glenn Close could be sexual. She's very
Speaker 1: hot at it. I also think that from the first
Speaker 1: time that you see her, which is when one of Um,
Speaker 1: one of Dan's colleagues, is checking her out at a
Speaker 1: dinner where they're all there with their wives, but of
Speaker 1: course the lawyers are eyeballing all the women. She basically
Speaker 1: shuts him down with this like icy stare that is
Speaker 1: so incredibly like red Flag. And it's interesting because I
Speaker 1: think what draws him to her the whole time is
Speaker 1: how powerful she isn't how scary, and there's a scene
Speaker 1: she's intense. There's a scene when Alex kidnaps um the
Speaker 1: daughter Ellen. That's when you maybe turn on Alex. Well.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is there's a scene where they're on a
Speaker 1: roller coaster and Ellen is supposed to be five or
Speaker 1: six years old, so she's probably like on the younger
Speaker 1: end to ride a roller coaster, that's the first thing
Speaker 1: I think. But you see her face and she's like terrified,
Speaker 1: and then eventually by the end of the roller coaster
Speaker 1: she's loving it. And I think that it kind of
Speaker 1: plays on the fact that what Dan wants from Alex
Speaker 1: is like something dangerous that could almost blow up his life.
Speaker 1: That it's the ultimate luxury for someone who has it
Speaker 1: all it is, And it's also like the ultimate sexual thrill,
Speaker 1: like on the elevator when she's giving him a blowjob
Speaker 1: and it stops between floors, like she has the hook
Speaker 1: in him at that point, and he ends up going
Speaker 1: back to her apartment. When I've noticed about erotic thrillers,
Speaker 1: is nobody ever has sex on a bed. Yea, It's
Speaker 1: always going to be running water in this movie. It's
Speaker 1: stressful to be living in l A. I'm like someone
Speaker 1: turned off the water. It's part of it too. It's
Speaker 1: like she doesn't care. The water is just gonna overflow.
Speaker 1: The boiling on this dove, bunny or stew doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The opera is too loud. Everything too loud. And I
Speaker 1: like that he has a daughter because you're also like,
Speaker 1: the daughter is totally clocking all the stuff that's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's the other thing. Is so the ending that
Speaker 1: they went with, which I think Glenn Close in the
Speaker 1: Oxford Union talk Um discusses as being you know, she
Speaker 1: was like, I don't think that it could have been
Speaker 1: a hit without that ending. Is that spoiler alert? Again?
Speaker 1: Beth ends up shooting Alex uh the good way woman,
Speaker 1: to protect the family, to protect the family, and Glenn
Speaker 1: Close was obviously, you know, very against this because to her,
Speaker 1: Alex was a victim and Alex was like a person
Speaker 1: struggling with mountal illness. And when she was looking into
Speaker 1: the character, one of the psychiatrists who she consulted with
Speaker 1: suggested that in a scene where alex um is peeking
Speaker 1: through a window and sees Dan giving his child this
Speaker 1: bunny and they're having this like warm moment and Alex
Speaker 1: runs away to throw up, the psychiatrists suggested that maybe
Speaker 1: that reaction was because Alex was the victim of incest
Speaker 1: at that age. Alex's father had died when she was
Speaker 1: seven of a heart attack, and that you know, she
Speaker 1: was re living kind of like the gagging nausea that
Speaker 1: she had when she was that age around her father. Again,
Speaker 1: when you when you put it that way, you're just like,
Speaker 1: this person will deserve sympathy because her life but just
Speaker 1: as much as ruined. This is why I like, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of surprised that you guys describe her Alex as
Speaker 1: like this powerful woman because like I think that she
Speaker 1: has a career, yes, and she's like not you know,
Speaker 1: she hasn't like decided to be a housewife. But like
Speaker 1: I feel like from the get go, like that's not
Speaker 1: the first word I would used to describe her, Like
Speaker 1: she like obviously has an appetite, but I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that she hasn't she has an
Speaker 1: appetite that like matches his. But she also has a magnetism,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's her powers, like a sexual power.
Speaker 1: And also I mean just the fact that she deals
Speaker 1: with men as an equal basic I mean, like when
Speaker 1: they when she's asking him in a very forward way,
Speaker 1: like if he can be discreet, and it's a total lie.
Speaker 1: You know, she can't be dis eat at all, But
Speaker 1: I mean she's just bluffing in a very believable way.
Speaker 1: That kind of speaks to this confidence that she has.
Speaker 1: But then obviously there's no core there. There's like no
Speaker 1: center to her, right, Yeah, And that, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: thing is like knowing somebody past the first weekend, Like
Speaker 1: you can get away with not having an actual core
Speaker 1: to you or being like empty inside for a weekend,
Speaker 1: but being a wandering void. But because like Michael Douglas
Speaker 1: is a wandering Yeah, that would be more than her
Speaker 1: because with her you feel something for her, and with him,
Speaker 1: you're just like, well, he deserves to lose his family.
Speaker 1: He made the choices that lead to he should lose
Speaker 1: his family. Yeah, I mean it's also kind of one
Speaker 1: thing that really like is hard to swallow is how
Speaker 1: long he goes without telling his wife because you're just like,
Speaker 1: why are you suffering like this? When he finally tells her,
Speaker 1: she's kind of like, okay, want when he needs her
Speaker 1: to help him address the problem. That's the only time
Speaker 1: that he gets the like when when the value way,
Speaker 1: like you know, tips over to like okay, I should
Speaker 1: tell my tell my wife right, and then he can't
Speaker 1: even you know, she's got a killer, Like he can't
Speaker 1: do anything right. Yeah, it's true. Also, I have to
Speaker 1: say that the architecture in this movie, like I just
Speaker 1: love looking in people's apartments and houses and how the
Speaker 1: crazy person always lives in a loft because only crazy
Speaker 1: people can really exist would live in the meatpacking district.
Speaker 1: I love whenever they're walking through the alleyway and the
Speaker 1: meat packing and everything is like on fire. Yeah they
Speaker 1: have like normal fires happening, yes, eighties. Yeah, lives on
Speaker 1: the edge. Yeah, there's like graffiti on her window, but
Speaker 1: it's a really expensive looking apart. Talk about Glenn Close
Speaker 1: for a minute, because we all learned something about Glenn Close.
Speaker 1: Oh god, right close, And so again we highly recommend
Speaker 1: you can google list or or look it up on YouTube.
Speaker 1: There's a talk that Glen Close gave at Oxford University
Speaker 1: out a year ago. Um, where she's it's it's about
Speaker 1: it's about mental health, uh in general, what it's about
Speaker 1: her career and kind of her life and then her
Speaker 1: approach different characters. So that's where you know a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff about Alex Forrest comes in, but also
Speaker 1: has and I mean, this is not new, This was
Speaker 1: not news, I don't think at the time. But apparently
Speaker 1: going Close grew up in a cult and lived in
Speaker 1: one from age seven to twenty two apparently, and she
Speaker 1: decided so long break out of the cult as a
Speaker 1: twenty two year old so she could go to college
Speaker 1: where she went to William and Mary and she studied
Speaker 1: theater there and then like you know, the rest is history.
Speaker 1: But like that was fascinating to me, Like she I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I guess I don't know that much about
Speaker 1: Glenn Close. In general, I guess I knew nothing about her.
Speaker 1: I think I always I think I always thought she
Speaker 1: was like a Juilliard person, like Meryl Streep or something.
Speaker 1: But this, this makes more sense. She has so many layers.
Speaker 1: She in this topic. MARYL. Streep go to Vassar. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I thought she was born into
Speaker 1: the theater. I thought she was born into the theater.
Speaker 1: I would have assumed she was like from old money
Speaker 1: or something. I would not have guessed that she grew
Speaker 1: up in a cult. If her father was a famous surgeon,
Speaker 1: I believe um. But I mean she also talked about
Speaker 1: how her family, like her sister, suffered from mental illness,
Speaker 1: and um, no one was allowed to see a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: or a psychologist growing up. She said it would have
Speaker 1: been as frowned upon as inviting a democrat to dinner.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's just a phenomenally interesting actor and person.
Speaker 1: I love her. I'm getting well, it's interesting too, because
Speaker 1: she's so she didn't win for the Wife. But she
Speaker 1: is doing Sunset Boulevard the musical next, which she's done
Speaker 1: like several She's done several times, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be the filmed version of it Um And I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting because obviously Norman Desmond is like another one
Speaker 1: of like films great female monsters, who I think is
Speaker 1: like a sympathetic character that I love, you know, where
Speaker 1: you're like, oh what, she's a villain because she's like
Speaker 1: old and still wants to be famous. Like it's more
Speaker 1: about like men's projected fear of women than anything else,
Speaker 1: you know, because she's like a cool Dracula. So I
Speaker 1: can't wait. That's gonna be I mean, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: the thing. It's good that she didn't win it for
Speaker 1: the Wife. She's not near death, She's not anywhere near
Speaker 1: the end of her career. She has so much left
Speaker 1: in her she's going to be fed. We asked a
Speaker 1: lot of great Here's here's an idea, Glenn Close play
Speaker 1: Momo when the Oscar misunderstood. I'm just saying she does
Speaker 1: well with character roles and difficult women. My mom said
Speaker 1: that her performance and The Wife was like one of
Speaker 1: her favorite performances in years. She's really good in the way.
Speaker 1: I want to say. I didn't see The Wife, but
Speaker 1: I saw the Hoo Weekly Live show where they showed
Speaker 1: Bobby Finger showed like a super cut of just Hall
Speaker 1: of her reactions of just like looking away, sadly great,
Speaker 1: great acting, She's awesome. She also looks fantastic in it.
Speaker 1: She did not, Yeah, she she writes a concorde. It's
Speaker 1: a period piece, so she's like, shall in the concorde
Speaker 1: like being close. It's just it's I mean, that movie
Speaker 1: isn't great by any means, but it's it's relaxing, It's
Speaker 1: got its mama. I will also recommend Glenn Close a
Speaker 1: great follow on Instagram. I just learned I followed her
Speaker 1: on Instagram. She posts a lot of pictures of her dog,
Speaker 1: whose name is Pip, and then she posts close up
Speaker 1: photos that are called hip quizzes. Very big at the
Speaker 1: Indie Spirits. He was like the celebrity. She'll post a
Speaker 1: close up photo and be like what is this and
Speaker 1: then like two weeks later be like it was some
Speaker 1: rust on a window sill. I love that me too.
Speaker 1: I feel like going close with kids are like like
Speaker 1: clothes come on nightcall gun, clothes, come on nightcall. C um.
Speaker 1: One other question I have for you guys, which can
Speaker 1: maybe like lead us to a future erotic thriller. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you guys. Think of the sex in Fatal Attraction.
Speaker 1: The sex scenes. I mean, there's the elevator one, there
Speaker 1: is uh oh gosh. Now I'm like, I'm having a
Speaker 1: weird brain melt because I watched two erotic throw yeah
Speaker 1: you sink uh and like the pant pants around the ankles.
Speaker 1: They're good. They're good sex scenes. I'm totally down with
Speaker 1: those sex scenes. What do you think. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: very like they're very like Madonna musical video level, like
Speaker 1: the like either in the white room or in the
Speaker 1: elevator with like the light coming through the shafts while
Speaker 1: she's like up against the wall. It's very the guy
Speaker 1: walking by. Honestly, the weirdest thing to me is when
Speaker 1: she like grabs like a handful of water and kind
Speaker 1: of like her down. But it's funny because it's her.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to react like, WHOA so kinky? Do I
Speaker 1: feel like anything weird? And specifically that's why I like
Speaker 1: the peeling off the eyebrows and the stars point and
Speaker 1: you're just like never thought of that, think you can
Speaker 1: make that hot. But like the best part in Fifty
Speaker 1: Shades of Gray is like somebody like bites into toast
Speaker 1: you weird, right, You're like, that's the best part of
Speaker 1: the movie. Um, it's weird specific things, and this movie
Speaker 1: has some weird specific things. Emily, what did you think
Speaker 1: of the sexy sex in Fatal Attraction? Oh, I'm into it.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I feel like her bedroom, which is
Speaker 1: where I mean there's the sexy sex ends after like
Speaker 1: the first third obviously, Um, he does not go back
Speaker 1: for more, keeps flirting even when he's telling your yeah
Speaker 1: or do mixed signals. Yeah, I mean this is one
Speaker 1: of those things also where I think getting used to
Speaker 1: like that kind of nudity again, that kind of casual nudity,
Speaker 1: like even in movies that are R rated and have
Speaker 1: sex in them that come out now you just don't
Speaker 1: see that is much like you don't just see grown up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't see a woman just like as she would after sex,
Speaker 1: like casually like hanging out with her tips out, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels she's also so tan's because I think that's
Speaker 1: the thing. It's like, she's so dangerous, she's so tan.
Speaker 1: Where has she been that she got this tan? Don't
Speaker 1: have that a little crazy from the beginning, So you're
Speaker 1: like he went for it because of that well, that
Speaker 1: was all I know. We're going like really long on
Speaker 1: fatal Attraction. That was a thing she said is in
Speaker 1: the Oxford address about how she was like so nervous
Speaker 1: about the audition. She couldn't do her hair and she
Speaker 1: always has a hard time doing her hair and she
Speaker 1: was just like fucking and it was crazy. And she
Speaker 1: was wearing this black dress and she was like, you know,
Speaker 1: just she She's like, you're like, I'd like to get crazy.
Speaker 1: She did the like can just a white shirt dress? Thing?
Speaker 1: Like oh she was the black dry That's what she said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she did that can you be discreet? Thing? And
Speaker 1: she was like just trying to throw some things out there,
Speaker 1: but she was freak out and it was so it's
Speaker 1: so interesting because her hair, her hair being like Medusa,
Speaker 1: like definitely part is when she's sitting alone in her apartment.
Speaker 1: I took a video of that for the Instagram and
Speaker 1: I will send you. I like any movie that whose
Speaker 1: message is be terrified of women, because I'm always like,
Speaker 1: that's right correct, That's what I love. Audition Also, yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: any movie that's like flur you in with femininity and
Speaker 1: then your life becomes a nightmare. We'll get to basic instinct.
Speaker 1: I mean, Michael Douglas not farewell in any of these movies,
Speaker 1: like if ever there was a man to see be
Speaker 1: made miserable and by various like wildly hot and amazing women.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's very satisfying. Um. Well, if you have
Speaker 1: any erotic thrillers you would like to hear discussed on
Speaker 1: Night Call, please give us a call to four oh
Speaker 1: four six night Also, if you have any erotic thrillers
Speaker 1: that really bother you or really bad, tell us about
Speaker 1: those two and through misery. Yeah, I believe it's called
Speaker 1: wild Orchid is the one. Yes, and that's added to
Speaker 1: the list. Now. We are also on Twitter at Nightcall Pod,
Speaker 1: Instagram at Nightcall Podcast, and Facebook at Nightcall Podcast. Uh
Speaker 1: and you can also subscribe to us on iTunes and
Speaker 1: give us a review at a rating. Maybe you can
Speaker 1: talk about your favorite erotic thrillers in your review. There's
Speaker 1: no rules, you can do whatever you want. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: be back next week with more erotic thrillers. This is
Speaker 1: now a show about erotic thrillers, erotic tillers, and Momo.
Speaker 1: And just like Momo, we will not be ignored. Bye. Okay,