Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Scott. I'm excited today it's this is
Speaker 1: this is really exciting. We're introducing a new segment called
Speaker 1: I Am All Minisods. So were there gonna be ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty minute episodes and we're gonna be discussing films
Speaker 1: that are referenced in the episodes of Gilmore Girls. Today. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're going to be discussing my new friend Henry and
Speaker 1: I whose college student in Indiana who is film I
Speaker 1: think a film major at the University of Indiana. Um,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be discussing Rosemary's Baby. And uh, let
Speaker 1: me tell you a little bit about this film. Rosemary's
Speaker 1: Baby adapted from the novel by Eye eleven UH. Adapted
Speaker 1: for the screen UH by Roman Polanski, also directed by
Speaker 1: the Great Roman Polanski, produced by Paramount Pictures UH and
Speaker 1: Robert Evans was at the Helm at that time. He
Speaker 1: also shepherded The Godfather onto the screen as well. If
Speaker 1: I Am not mistaken, UM, William Castle producer, Donna Holloway
Speaker 1: associate producer. The music by was music by Christoph Komada UH,
Speaker 1: cinematography by the Great William Freaker, also Sam Osteen and
Speaker 1: Bob Wyman editing two Giants. Uh. Production designed by Richard Silbert,
Speaker 1: Art direction by Joel Schiller, set direction by George R. Nelson.
Speaker 1: Costume designed by and THEA. Silbert. In the makeup department
Speaker 1: was vidall Sassoon, That Videla Sassunias Allan Snyder, Sherry Wilson,
Speaker 1: and Sydney Grilof. I believe that's the pronunciation anyway it
Speaker 1: is starring let me get to that, Mia Farrow, John Cassavetti's,
Speaker 1: Ruth Gordon, Sydney Blackmyre, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Victoria Vetry
Speaker 1: Um Charles Grodin appears in the film. Philip Leeds, Hope Summers,
Speaker 1: Mary Ann Gordon, and Wendy Wagner, A many, many, many
Speaker 1: and many others. Uh So we're gonna bring in Henry.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about Rosemary's Baby, which was a groundbreaking
Speaker 1: film in terms of its ability to unleash psychological horror
Speaker 1: onto an audience, and it became a very big film,
Speaker 1: blockbuster film um and inspired the likes of the Exorcist
Speaker 1: and other films that dealt in in in realism and
Speaker 1: in horror realism and thriller realism. UM so we're gonna
Speaker 1: bring Henry an. We're gonna talk about this episode, and
Speaker 1: I can't wait to dig into it. Henry, why don't
Speaker 1: you kick it off and tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about Rosemary's Baby? Awesome? Thank you, Scott. Yes, my name
Speaker 1: is Henry Markin. I'm a senior at Indiana University and
Speaker 1: I love movies. Yes. In episode one of The Gilmore Girls,
Speaker 1: in the midpoint of the show, when Rory first meets
Speaker 1: Dean uh In, Deana is you know, of course hovering
Speaker 1: over her items are just scattered. It's a yard sale
Speaker 1: in the hallway. Rory's just says, God, you're just like
Speaker 1: Ruth Gordon standing there with a tennis root make a noise,
Speaker 1: and Dean says, Rosemary's baby. His first words in the
Speaker 1: show is Rosemary's baby. And that is of course the
Speaker 1: n Roman Polanski thriller about witches and satanic beliefs just
Speaker 1: an ultimate cult classic throughout the centuries. Previous one and
Speaker 1: this current one still has a rippling effect today on
Speaker 1: the genre of thriller and horror. Uh, Scott loves the movie.
Speaker 1: I I liked it, I didn't I liked it. I
Speaker 1: think I didn't love it. Because it really just scared
Speaker 1: the hell out of me, just because of just how
Speaker 1: freaky it was and just what was really going on.
Speaker 1: And it's too real. It's too real. It was too real.
Speaker 1: It's too freaking real. Man. It didn't let you breathe
Speaker 1: because it could happen to you or someone you loved.
Speaker 1: And that's what was so psychl It was psychologically terrifying.
Speaker 1: The filmmakers did and give you any room to breathe.
Speaker 1: Nothing you were You were trapped inside that that world.
Speaker 1: That's how gifted a filmmaker. Polanski is um anyway, So
Speaker 1: let's kick it off. What are your thoughts? All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give a plot summary, and I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: as brief as I can, but I gotta hit all
Speaker 1: the major notes that happened, so bear with me. In short,
Speaker 1: a woman named Rosemary and her husband Guy move into
Speaker 1: a new apartment and right away everything is just whack.
Speaker 1: The neighbors are weird as hell. A woman in the
Speaker 1: building jumps out a window and kills herself, and Rosemary
Speaker 1: can hear chance each night, like some twisted group prayer,
Speaker 1: that something is being summoned. But of course her husband
Speaker 1: Guy says don't worry about it. Just play the course, sweetheart.
Speaker 1: Everything will be just fine. Guy then says, let's start
Speaker 1: a family and raise some kids. Well. The next night,
Speaker 1: one of the weird neighbors played by Ruth Gordon, the
Speaker 1: very actress Rory from The Gilmore Girls, refers to when
Speaker 1: she first meets Dean. Uh gives her a drink and
Speaker 1: some food that was poisoned with something vile, and Rosemary
Speaker 1: consumes it and passes out that night. Guy is insistent
Speaker 1: on conceiving a child that night, and so he has
Speaker 1: sex with her regardless even though she was out like
Speaker 1: a light. Guy does it um. And by the way,
Speaker 1: he wakes up feeling just like a champion, like like
Speaker 1: everything is great. Um. And she's like that was really weird.
Speaker 1: What was that? And Guy says, you know, it's not me,
Speaker 1: it's you. You must have dreamt too much that night.
Speaker 1: It's your fault. You need to settle down. That's you know,
Speaker 1: red flag one. But she's Rosemary is like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: her pregnancy is going really wrong. She's losing weight, not
Speaker 1: gaining weight. She impulsively eats rom meat. She's a mess,
Speaker 1: and she's worried. But everyone in her life says, Oh no,
Speaker 1: everything's just fine. You're just crazy, You're just pregnant. You
Speaker 1: need to relax, And this includes her husband, her friends,
Speaker 1: her neighbors, and her doctor. Well, on the night she's
Speaker 1: giving birth, she discovers that everyone in her life I
Speaker 1: just mentioned are all a part of a secret Satanic
Speaker 1: which soci id where Rosemary was chosen to give birth
Speaker 1: to Satan's child. She learns this after her husband and
Speaker 1: doctor tell her that the baby died in childbirth and
Speaker 1: that's why she can't see it. But of course she
Speaker 1: finds out that the baby is alive. She hears a
Speaker 1: child cry, she locates it and escapes the custody she's in,
Speaker 1: and she sees that the baby is half human, half
Speaker 1: devil hidden in the secret society. She wasn't crazy at all.
Speaker 1: As far as the movie, I liked it, I didn't
Speaker 1: love it. You know. It's probably because of how the
Speaker 1: movie made me so uncomfortable. It's really twisted and dark
Speaker 1: and creepy. But of course you can maybe say that
Speaker 1: was a strength of the movie. Anyway you feel about it,
Speaker 1: it's indubitably a cult classic and continues to have a
Speaker 1: rippling effect on the thriller genre and cinema as a
Speaker 1: whole today. That's that's the theme that was definitely touched
Speaker 1: on in that film about the oppression of women and
Speaker 1: the total the controlling of women and the loss of
Speaker 1: control that women had over the own bodies, over their
Speaker 1: own choices, their lives. The constant criticism from John Cassavetti,
Speaker 1: her husband, the constant browbeating, the you know, the doctor
Speaker 1: Saberstein telling her not to read books. You don't want
Speaker 1: to read books. I mean, it was it was very
Speaker 1: very salem Me witch trial kind of stuff, uh, being
Speaker 1: sort of perpetrated by the witches themselves on this poor
Speaker 1: woman and a very you know, a very innocent looking,
Speaker 1: sort of girl ish, baby ish looking Mia Pharaoh, who
Speaker 1: at the time was married to Frank Sinatra Um who
Speaker 1: was and she was under a tremendous amount of pressure,
Speaker 1: uh to leave that filming because he wanted her to
Speaker 1: do this the detective film, the Something Detective that he
Speaker 1: was doing out in Hollywood, and she was flying back
Speaker 1: and forth in New York to work on Rosemary's Baby,
Speaker 1: and he just he divorced her over it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and anyways, it's a movie about the young couple
Speaker 1: who moves into the Dakota and New York and h
Speaker 1: she is manipulated by all of these witches who live
Speaker 1: who are neighbors and who had led by Ruth gordon
Speaker 1: Um and even her own husband's manipulated because he makes
Speaker 1: a deal with the devil at these people saying like
Speaker 1: you know, because he's a frustrated actor. His characters are
Speaker 1: prest like, well, we're going to give you a big,
Speaker 1: big career if you go along with us, because we
Speaker 1: need to impregnate your wife with we need to have
Speaker 1: Satan impregnant your wife so that she can give birth
Speaker 1: to Satan's child. That's the film, and it's terrifying. Yeah, essentially,
Speaker 1: like I mean, as you said, the husband guy, John
Speaker 1: Caspaty's character, he he gets the role of the lifetime
Speaker 1: because the other guy, the next guy in line, who
Speaker 1: got the park, goes blind, you know, cannot cannot see,
Speaker 1: cannot act, and he's like, oh, I got the part,
Speaker 1: and he feels super crummy about it because he knows
Speaker 1: that we may deal with the devil and mean and
Speaker 1: Pharaoh's characters like, oh my god, you did it, congrats.
Speaker 1: You no idea that he's just part of this coven
Speaker 1: of witches, right, yeah, And it's just it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's horrifying. It's horrifying because Polanski shot it in a
Speaker 1: style that's known as uh god, what is it called?
Speaker 1: Me mean as sense, which is this sort of continuous shot.
Speaker 1: It's there's no, no, not a lot of cutting. You know,
Speaker 1: there's it's not a montage style of filmmaking where there's
Speaker 1: cuts cuts, cuts, and there's time ellipses and all this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's just like you know, you sort
Speaker 1: of like see the see the characters work and walk
Speaker 1: through the scene. There's you know, it's mainly from me
Speaker 1: a pharaoh's point of view. You're either seeing what she's
Speaker 1: seeing or you're seeing a close up of her face. Um.
Speaker 1: So it really uh and it does play on these
Speaker 1: themes of u of of the oppressed woman who's completely
Speaker 1: controlled by her husband and demeaned and completely controlled by
Speaker 1: these this coven of witches. And it's you know, and
Speaker 1: it's scar and that was the psychological terror that the
Speaker 1: audience felt because she was so bound up, and she
Speaker 1: was so confused, and she was so deceived, and she
Speaker 1: was so sweet and so baby like, and they just
Speaker 1: completely controlled everything she did or said, or you know,
Speaker 1: couldn't read the whole thing, so not to mention when
Speaker 1: she was raped by her husband to get the baby impregnated.
Speaker 1: You know, like they're they're talking about, hey, let's have
Speaker 1: a kid, and it's like, you know, we're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: let's do it tonight. She passes out from the drink
Speaker 1: that she has and then her husband essentially it rapes
Speaker 1: her and and that's the kind of start of this,
Speaker 1: like this down I was like, wait what and then
Speaker 1: he and then he justifies it by like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I was really hot to trot and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I had an nail you know, I hadn't I hadn't
Speaker 1: cut my nails and maybe had some jagged nails. And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for the scratches on your back, and you know,
Speaker 1: but it was a great night for me. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go brush my teeth. You know. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: super that that part was just super weird because he said,
Speaker 1: She's like, why couldn't we have done it? You know,
Speaker 1: in the morning, he's like, I was just loaded that night,
Speaker 1: Jesus um. And it's also interesting how she started out
Speaker 1: with longer hair with a little more color in her
Speaker 1: face and a little more um, sort of girlish wardrobe.
Speaker 1: And then as the film went on, you know, she
Speaker 1: cut her hair. You know, it's about Vadalla Sassoon did it.
Speaker 1: It's in style now, and it's just like this very
Speaker 1: boyish haircut made her almost look a little bit masculine.
Speaker 1: And the clothing changed and she became you know, and
Speaker 1: the and the makeup was more pale, so she was
Speaker 1: more washed out and um, and everyone kept saying how
Speaker 1: bad she looked. They kept right. So they removed her
Speaker 1: femininity completely. They removed her independence, they removed her freedom. Um,
Speaker 1: they imprisoned her. And Rosemary's Baby had a huge impact. UM.
Speaker 1: When it was released, it did very opened. The opening
Speaker 1: weekend for Rosemary's Baby was better than anything Paramount I'd
Speaker 1: seen in years. And then it went on to be
Speaker 1: a huge block blockbuster because it was such you know,
Speaker 1: it was a type of a psychological horror film that
Speaker 1: hadn't been done before, at least not in the United States,
Speaker 1: or it hadn't been done that well by such a
Speaker 1: gifted artist, uh As Polanski, such a uh and coming
Speaker 1: from the Ira eleven novel, you know, Polansky said that
Speaker 1: he didn't really need to write or rewrite a story
Speaker 1: to suit a screenplay. It was all in the book, right.
Speaker 1: So the first I think the first draft of screenplay
Speaker 1: he he wrote was two u or fifty some odd pages,
Speaker 1: which is twice as long as you want it, but
Speaker 1: they had to cut it down to a hundred and
Speaker 1: ten pages or something like that. But um, it was
Speaker 1: just a master stroke of psychological terror. And it was
Speaker 1: the first time that had happened in an English language film.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it had a big impact and it went
Speaker 1: on to be a blockbuster film and it inspired The Exorcist,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, it was the type of
Speaker 1: a psychological thriller that made the audience feel like this
Speaker 1: could really happen. It was realism. It was filming realism.
Speaker 1: This could happen. Definitely, like a lot of horror films,
Speaker 1: you see that that's that's scary as hell, but that
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly happen. This was in the realm of possibility
Speaker 1: because they didn't show the monster, They didn't show any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. I mean, you saw some eyes right
Speaker 1: a little bit, um, but you never really saw the baby.
Speaker 1: And Polansky himself said that that would have been a
Speaker 1: colossal error to show the baby. Um. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: Polanski is an interesting background. I mean he survived the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: His father and mother were taken away as mother died
Speaker 1: in the camps and they were in crack All, Poland,
Speaker 1: and it became a ghetto. And uh, the father survived
Speaker 1: and uh you know, yeah, I think I think I
Speaker 1: think Roman was taken in by neighbors and he survived.
Speaker 1: He moved to Paris, he went to film school, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was just like this awful time. He was
Speaker 1: born in thirty three, I think it was. Um, so
Speaker 1: he had this really horrible childhood. I mean it was
Speaker 1: just filled with just angst and and and you know,
Speaker 1: he put her on film. He became he became a great,
Speaker 1: great director of our times. And no matter what you
Speaker 1: think about him personally, and I know there's a case
Speaker 1: against him and uh in California and uh, but I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking about his his ability to make films,
Speaker 1: his ability as a writer, as a screenwriter and a director. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean, even watch something you know what you
Speaker 1: should watch? You should you should watch The ghost Writer. Um.
Speaker 1: I actually fired a manager. Uh, I don't know. Ten
Speaker 1: years ago, because when I saw The Ghostwriter, I was
Speaker 1: so impressed, and I didn't know who directed it, but
Speaker 1: I was captivated from the first image and I love
Speaker 1: Whowan McGregor, and I watched the entire film and it
Speaker 1: was it was just I mean, the actors and and
Speaker 1: every scene was just perfectly shot and had the look
Speaker 1: of the film and the field of film and the
Speaker 1: build of the of the suspense and the build and
Speaker 1: the build and the build and the mystery and the
Speaker 1: suspense and the terror and the whole thing. And it
Speaker 1: was just about a guy rewriting UH of replacing a
Speaker 1: writer on uh Prime Minister ex Prime Ministers of England's autobiography.
Speaker 1: Oh that's with Pierce Brosnan, right correct. Brilliant film, brilliant film, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 1: And I was talking about it my manager and she
Speaker 1: said at the time and she says, that's terrible film.
Speaker 1: And I thought, boy, I can't have this person. Imagine
Speaker 1: have no taste. They have no taste. We mean The Ghostwriters,
Speaker 1: the terrible film. It's a brilliant film, um made by
Speaker 1: a guy who understands film. One of the few people
Speaker 1: that really understands film. And the and the power of film.
Speaker 1: Um but Pulaski is a giant. I mean, he's just
Speaker 1: an absolute giant in the world. Um uh. And but anyway,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean that's that's the power of the
Speaker 1: film as it builds over time and and it keeps
Speaker 1: you in the moment, it keeps you in her p
Speaker 1: o V. And it and it there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of cutting back and forth and scenes, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, I mean, what a perfect
Speaker 1: It's a perfect film. And it did inspire The Exorcist
Speaker 1: and it and the power of the Exorcist. The true
Speaker 1: horror in that film is because the audience is it's
Speaker 1: so relatable, because the audience is so terrified that the
Speaker 1: mother the loss of love between a mother and a daughter,
Speaker 1: and that's really what it is. It's like, I'm losing
Speaker 1: my daughter to the devil, and that's the pain and
Speaker 1: the horror for her. That's that's that comes out at
Speaker 1: the audience, and that's what really hooks people. It's about people.
Speaker 1: It's not about blood or stunts or crazy stuff. It's
Speaker 1: about the connections between people, the love between people. And
Speaker 1: that's what Rosemary's Baby had. Buddy I enjoyed it. Can't
Speaker 1: wait for the next one. Thank you, Appreciate you. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be we're gonna we're gonna be doing these we're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing these films. All right, I'm in, I'm in,
Speaker 1: i'm in.