Speaker 1: This all comes back to show. No, it doesn't know,
Speaker 1: it really does because Charlie and the Hugle Lot enough
Speaker 1: starring Jennifer Lopez. You are not doing this. This is Halloween.
Speaker 1: This is Halloween. I'm good screaming at night. It's only Halloween.
Speaker 1: Because you've insisted that it is Halloween. It is Halloween.
Speaker 1: You're recording this at the end of September. It's not
Speaker 1: Halloween yet. Yeah, but it is officially spooky season. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's pumpkin spice season. It's spooky season. It's here, babe.
Speaker 1: Last night we watched two of the movies that I
Speaker 1: watched every Halloween. The vibe has begun. It I better
Speaker 1: catch it, um. And for the virgins who don't know,
Speaker 1: we are continuing our oooky spooky series with the kind
Speaker 1: the King of Ook and Spook. Yes, well, the King
Speaker 1: and the King of sort of like contemporary like consumerist
Speaker 1: scarity vibes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly for kids. A creator
Speaker 1: who has had quite a journey, um in a range
Speaker 1: of films that people love and then films that people
Speaker 1: don't love so much. Tim Burton is Today's discussion. As
Speaker 1: Lydia Diets aka Winona writer once said I myself am
Speaker 1: strange and unusual, That's correct. She also said that her
Speaker 1: whole life was a dark room and she had really
Speaker 1: spiky bangs, which I at one point wanted. You should
Speaker 1: be her for Halloween. Honestly, I have thought about it.
Speaker 1: You've never done that before. No, I've never done it.
Speaker 1: You should never done it, never done Lydia diets and
Speaker 1: I'll be beetlejuice and I'll marry you. Okay, just kidding.
Speaker 1: I would hate that, would never be juice, but I
Speaker 1: bet you could be sexy beetle juice. Let's look up
Speaker 1: sexy beetle Justice for it anyway. We need it like
Speaker 1: a virgin. This is like a virgin. The show we
Speaker 1: give yesterday's pop culture, today's takes and Toronto, and I
Speaker 1: found some beetlejuice. Hello virgins, Hello virgins. We are coming
Speaker 1: to you from um a different coast or different time zone,
Speaker 1: a different state of mind, a New York state of mind,
Speaker 1: one might say. Definitely, I will say something that is
Speaker 1: really amazing about you right now, being in New York
Speaker 1: as you are. You're booked and busy, you are out,
Speaker 1: you have plans, you are seeing people, you are doing things. Yes,
Speaker 1: I I do have to say I did enjoy getting
Speaker 1: to say to you twice this weekend. Oh sorry, Well
Speaker 1: I didn't apologize because I would never do that. Um,
Speaker 1: I did say I have plans, and you know what,
Speaker 1: I think it was ugly of you to assume that
Speaker 1: I didn't. Sure. I'm just kidding. I was definitely isn't
Speaker 1: in accordance with the years that I've known you. Well, no,
Speaker 1: but hey, you're only speaking from the experience of me
Speaker 1: being a friendless loser in Los Angeles and in New York.
Speaker 1: I am a loser with friends. Look, it takes one
Speaker 1: to know, one says. And the reason I'm here in
Speaker 1: New York a week early is because I realized all
Speaker 1: my friends left l A and I was like, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: I need to get myself to New York's. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: one thing you need to understand was that on Friday
Speaker 1: when you texted me and asked if I wanted to
Speaker 1: go out that night, and I said, oh, I have plans,
Speaker 1: and he said, oh, well, the party doesn't start till eleven.
Speaker 1: That's not going Just because baby, baby, listen, just because
Speaker 1: you're on a different coast does not mean I'm a
Speaker 1: different woman. And at eleven. At eleven o'clock, the only
Speaker 1: place I want to be is leaving a movie, leaving dinner,
Speaker 1: or already in bed, just because i might be a
Speaker 1: New York City, but I'm not going out to like
Speaker 1: a party that starts at eleven. Those days are behind me.
Speaker 1: You just got here and I was thinking, look, the
Speaker 1: time zones are in your favor. Maybe you know jet
Speaker 1: lags keeping you up a little bit later. It's a
Speaker 1: good time to go out. Um, I'm glad you didn't go.
Speaker 1: You would have hated the show. Now the only thing
Speaker 1: that's happened on the L train is me listening to
Speaker 1: Thoroughfare by e fl Cane on a loop and attempting
Speaker 1: not to have a public breakdown. Can we talk about
Speaker 1: how that song is so like the new autumnal anthem,
Speaker 1: like it is so like ethel Cane is so fall music,
Speaker 1: and it also is summer music because it's like hot, sticky, sweaty,
Speaker 1: But yes it is. It is very much helping me
Speaker 1: feel the sad girl fall vibes. I've been doing the thing,
Speaker 1: but just walking around the Upper east Side seeing places
Speaker 1: where parts of You've Got Mail were shot and listening
Speaker 1: to listen into ethel Caine seeing places where You've Got
Speaker 1: Mail shot because you're on a personalized You've Got Mail
Speaker 1: walking tour. It that that you pulled up, but like
Speaker 1: there's like five different shooting locations from You've Got Mail
Speaker 1: within like a five bluck radius. At my brother's apartment,
Speaker 1: there's also there's also my brother when when you walk
Speaker 1: out of his building, the Lincoln Center AMC is within eyesight.
Speaker 1: It's right across the street. Whoas that's so convenient. I
Speaker 1: do have to admit something though, which is that this
Speaker 1: weekend this is really hard to say, I went to
Speaker 1: a non AMC theater for the first time since I
Speaker 1: became a Stubb Any stuff? No, which one? Did you
Speaker 1: go to? Regal Union Square, which has now even to
Speaker 1: go to like one of like the Art House Cinema
Speaker 1: was even go to like fucking Nighthawk or something, and
Speaker 1: the Metro Regal well Metric. You know, the last movie
Speaker 1: I saw before COVID was a screening of Melancholia at Metrograph.
Speaker 1: What did they know? What did they know? Um? They
Speaker 1: a lot? No, but the Regal Union Square has been
Speaker 1: totally redone inside it's very like dark and clubby and
Speaker 1: that is where I saw Smile on Friday. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like smoke machines. My friend Ryan and I were gonna
Speaker 1: go see a Triangle of Sadness. Yeah, we were gonna
Speaker 1: look bad. No, I'm really excited to see it, but
Speaker 1: it was it was sold out, so we ended up
Speaker 1: seeing Smile instead. And let me tell you, after seeing
Speaker 1: a trailer for that movie, every time I saw a
Speaker 1: movie for the past six months, I was not expecting
Speaker 1: it to be very good. But it was surprisingly good
Speaker 1: and scary. I would have expected all the good scenes
Speaker 1: to be spoiled by the trailer. Was that we were
Speaker 1: there a lot of other scenes as well. Were there
Speaker 1: other scenes? There were other scenes. I will say, if
Speaker 1: you've seen the trailer, like the full trailer, one of
Speaker 1: the biggest jump scares in the movie is in the trailer.
Speaker 1: It's the scene where she's sitting in the car and
Speaker 1: the woman walks up to her and swings down. But
Speaker 1: there's plenty of other good jump scares and I screamed
Speaker 1: a lot. The main actress, Soci Bacon, who's Kevin Bacon's daughter, Um,
Speaker 1: was very good. She was also kind of giving Flkane
Speaker 1: a little bit. And yeah, it was a good movie
Speaker 1: the theater as much as I love seeing a horror
Speaker 1: movie with an audience full of people, and it becomes
Speaker 1: very like communal and you know, everyone's screaming. It was
Speaker 1: very noisy, and people were talking during the entire film.
Speaker 1: But God, people talking during movies. That's so and yeah,
Speaker 1: but but not but not like but not like you know,
Speaker 1: little snippets of conversation every once in a while, which
Speaker 1: my friend Ron and I were doing. At one point
Speaker 1: we stopped, like like paying attention to the movie to
Speaker 1: talk about partner track the Netflix show. Um, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: but there were but everyone else was talking. No, but
Speaker 1: everyone everyone else was talking throughout the entire year movie
Speaker 1: and not really trying to keep it at a low volume.
Speaker 1: You know, I will say, if it's like a scary movie,
Speaker 1: I endorse that, like I you know, if we've all,
Speaker 1: if well, if we've all come to the theater and
Speaker 1: we're a green, that this is like a kind of
Speaker 1: fine scary movie that we've seen the trailer for a
Speaker 1: seven hundred times and so like we don't so we
Speaker 1: can like act like we're gonna watch it at home.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be trash and say that, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll participate in that, but like I try to catch
Speaker 1: the vibe of like what the theater is on, right,
Speaker 1: I mean not all the time. Like sometimes you and
Speaker 1: I are just fully talking, but we're still like we're
Speaker 1: still like whispering and respectful. This was like running commentary.
Speaker 1: This was like more talking than our Hocus Pocus DVD
Speaker 1: commentary track. So we now have tried multiple times to
Speaker 1: talk about the new Interview with the Vampire show, and
Speaker 1: it has I worked out for one reason or not.
Speaker 1: So I think now it's a good time to discuss. So, um,
Speaker 1: I think we should have that conversation. Yes, and I
Speaker 1: will preface it for you virgins by saying we are
Speaker 1: going to dive a little deeper into interview with the
Speaker 1: Vampire in our vampire centric episode. But when we recorded that,
Speaker 1: we had not yet seen the new show. So I
Speaker 1: think it's it's fine for us to just talk about
Speaker 1: it now. And I've seen all three episodes that are
Speaker 1: out for and you've seen the first two. I've seen
Speaker 1: the first, so I have to say, you know, it
Speaker 1: is now part of my must watch Sunday night TV
Speaker 1: alongside House of the Dragon. Um. So some interesting things
Speaker 1: about this this new adaptation of Anne Rice's you know,
Speaker 1: I think most famous work is this new show, which
Speaker 1: is on AMC Plus, has updated the source material, which
Speaker 1: you know, is about a vampire giving an interview, and
Speaker 1: the sort of framing device of this is that that
Speaker 1: interview happened, but it wasn't like really true to life.
Speaker 1: And so now the vampire and the journalists aart revisiting
Speaker 1: their interview fifty years later, and Louis the titular vampires,
Speaker 1: giving a more honest version of his story. And in
Speaker 1: this updated version, Louis, rather than being you know, a
Speaker 1: seventeenth century plantation owner, is now a black queer man
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds in New Orleans who runs
Speaker 1: a string of brothels after his family fortune, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like crumbles to dust when his father dies.
Speaker 1: And he meets listat Lion Court, who Listed Delenne, who
Speaker 1: is so hot in this new version, so French, and
Speaker 1: they fall in love. And the thing about interview with
Speaker 1: the vampire, and you know, we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about this in our Vampire episode, but like to give
Speaker 1: you a preview. You know, Ann Rice's novel was very gay.
Speaker 1: It was explicitly gay. It was, and the film, as
Speaker 1: much as I love it, it made all of that
Speaker 1: explicit queerness into subtexts and it's very homo erotic, but
Speaker 1: it's not out not gay, so subtextual that when I
Speaker 1: watched it, and again you'll hear this an episode, but
Speaker 1: when I watched it and Rose told me that there
Speaker 1: were that it was gay in the book, I was shook.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, what it's like actually gay because
Speaker 1: it's really just harmerotic subtexts. In the movie, it's like
Speaker 1: really neutered. I'm not gonna But in Anne Rice's novel
Speaker 1: and in all of her novels, it's very clear that
Speaker 1: Listat and Louis are lovers, and in this new show
Speaker 1: they are also lovers. It is gay. It is It
Speaker 1: is so gay, and you know, the whole first episode
Speaker 1: is Listat, you know, seducing Louis, who is already because
Speaker 1: of the changes that have been made to his character,
Speaker 1: is already an other um, you know, because he's a
Speaker 1: black queer man in the early nine hundreds, and then
Speaker 1: like that gets further exacerbated when he has turned into
Speaker 1: a vampire. He's like the ultimate other. But in that
Speaker 1: first episode, you know, they have this incredible love scene
Speaker 1: before Lestat turns him into a vampire, he tells him
Speaker 1: he loves him. It's just so good and sexy. And
Speaker 1: in this new episode when you watch it, there's like
Speaker 1: a discussion of open relationships and like polyamory, oh sexuality,
Speaker 1: And you know, I just love that it's so explicit
Speaker 1: but still like really sexy and romantic and all the
Speaker 1: things that an and Rice adaptation should be. I love
Speaker 1: the adaptation. It's I'm gonna keep watching. I am, you know,
Speaker 1: definitely gonna finish out my AMCs free trial for that
Speaker 1: can to you to give a m C plus my
Speaker 1: money or whatever. And uh, just as you said, like,
Speaker 1: I am just really enthralled by the raw sexuality of
Speaker 1: the show, like sex shuality like with capital s or
Speaker 1: non sensuality sexuality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. I love how like horny it is. It's
Speaker 1: very pulpy, right, like it leans into the kind of
Speaker 1: graphic novel e also you know, Southern gothic kind of
Speaker 1: edge of it. Um. I love that there's this kind
Speaker 1: of new spin on this trope that you have pointed
Speaker 1: out to me over and over again that like a
Speaker 1: lot of like vampires fight in the Confederate War or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's not an interview with the Hire, but that
Speaker 1: is in UM True Blood, in Twilight, UM, in the
Speaker 1: Vampire Diaries, those are all things. Were there vampires who
Speaker 1: at one that we're Confederate soldiers? Literally all of them
Speaker 1: were Confederate soldiers. So why so, Like what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is like I feel because I'm the interview with Vampire
Speaker 1: Reboot is a period drama. I'm like I feel this, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's already very racialized. They have conversations about
Speaker 1: race that I think are really interesting, and I think
Speaker 1: my one company is I do think Louis is like
Speaker 1: can be occasionally like a little fart facey, Like sometimes
Speaker 1: I wish that he was just a little less soap
Speaker 1: and a little more like acting. I just like don't
Speaker 1: really see that. I think he's really good. I just
Speaker 1: think I'm sometimes I'm watching and I get a little
Speaker 1: bit of like gladrill and rings of power, like I'm
Speaker 1: not really getting the emotion that I want. But he
Speaker 1: is also really he's not as bad as glad you.
Speaker 1: Glad you literally cannot make an emotion to save her life,
Speaker 1: Like still literally okay, sorry, can I spoiler alert something
Speaker 1: really quick? Sure? Sure? I for for all the virgins listening. Um,
Speaker 1: I have kind of stopped watching Rings of Power. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wait till all the episodes are out and just
Speaker 1: binge it because I just got really bored. I actually
Speaker 1: won't even spoil it that hard. All I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: is that something happens. We're in a huge part of
Speaker 1: the world literally explodes, and and glad Reel still cannot
Speaker 1: make a facial expression, like the world is collapsing on
Speaker 1: top of her and around her, smoke, fire, brimstone, and
Speaker 1: she cannot raise an eyebrow. I was like, girl, like,
Speaker 1: your botox is not like that restrictive, Like, I know
Speaker 1: you can do this. It's actually comical at this point.
Speaker 1: But when all the episodes are out and you do watch,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to debrief. Well, I'm not excited to
Speaker 1: debrief because it's not an exciting show, but I still
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about anyways. Interview with the
Speaker 1: Vampire great much better than Rings of Power. Please watch it.
Speaker 1: It's so good. You haven't you you've watched some of
Speaker 1: last night's House of the Dragon. Yes, oh, yes, we
Speaker 1: need to catch up on Okay, but you haven't watched
Speaker 1: the whole thing, so we can't really catch up. No,
Speaker 1: so we can't get Maybe for the for the Virsion's benefit,
Speaker 1: we won't get into spoilers for last week's episode. But
Speaker 1: as we are coming up on the end of the season,
Speaker 1: because I believe there's only two episodes left, what are
Speaker 1: you most excited about? What are you most excited to see?
Speaker 1: Where do you think this how do you think the
Speaker 1: season is going to wrap up? Obviously? Okay, So Rania
Speaker 1: Damon are going to have like a wild fox sesh.
Speaker 1: They're gonna kill everyone. Rania is gonna walk up to
Speaker 1: the bar. She's gonna say, can I have a groaning?
Speaker 1: Smuggliante not really just came out of nowhere this weekend.
Speaker 1: Payton Dicks really put in the word should be paying
Speaker 1: her honestly, But like I have to say, just to
Speaker 1: be annoying as an online area, I have been ordering
Speaker 1: the gronies at dive bars for like years, okay years.
Speaker 1: I love ordering a groaning at like literally any bar
Speaker 1: because it's really hard to funk up, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Um, So I don't know like what all this,
Speaker 1: like you know why everyone's going crazy over Emma because
Speaker 1: of the way so hot. God, they are so hot
Speaker 1: and they're so good like the acting and last night's episode.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say last night's episode was not
Speaker 1: one of my favorites of the season. I thought it
Speaker 1: was a bit clunky. Um, but the performances across the
Speaker 1: board are just so good. Yeah. This so I'm a
Speaker 1: part way through this most recent episode. It's really choppy
Speaker 1: right there there, trying because they do another time jump,
Speaker 1: but this is the last six years? Oh is it really? Okay?
Speaker 1: That's great. So it's a six year time jump, allegedly
Speaker 1: the last one. And um, it's like they are just
Speaker 1: planting plot points in teeny tiny scenes scattered through the
Speaker 1: whole episode to propel you forward and to kind of
Speaker 1: get you up to speed, so to speak. And again,
Speaker 1: like like we said last time, it doesn't feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, poorly done or like I'm not getting what
Speaker 1: I want, but I just I want more. So many eggs,
Speaker 1: so many eggs. People really in medieval times or whatever
Speaker 1: just kind of reuse the same five names over and
Speaker 1: over again. But do you have do you have a
Speaker 1: favorite character? Yeah, I mean Rania. I love also Rain
Speaker 1: Rain rainis the who never was um. She she got
Speaker 1: a lot to do in this episode, which was great.
Speaker 1: She did, and she's becoming more of like a player,
Speaker 1: like a real or she always has been, but it
Speaker 1: is even more so like a player. I also like Helena,
Speaker 1: who is the daughter of Allison, who seems to have
Speaker 1: some kind of prophetic vision thing happening. She might have
Speaker 1: the dragon dreams that some targe Arians have because she's
Speaker 1: now predicted a couple of things over the course of
Speaker 1: these episodes. And she has a sweet little moment in
Speaker 1: this episode as well that you'll see. But you know,
Speaker 1: the thing about the show is, as we've said, it's
Speaker 1: everyone's bad, even the people that I'm rooting for, Like
Speaker 1: obviously I'm Team Black, I'm on r near a side
Speaker 1: at Team Inside, And I think the show is being
Speaker 1: a little a little heavy handed with wanting you to
Speaker 1: root for Rani a side by making Allison and the
Speaker 1: Greens kind of like more obviously and almost cartoonishly villainous,
Speaker 1: because I think, as we've said, when it comes down
Speaker 1: to it, like these are all bad people doing bad
Speaker 1: things for like the goal of what power. Like that's
Speaker 1: kind of it, and so I'm not rooting for anyone
Speaker 1: so much as I'm just enjoying the ride, because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, these are all bad people,
Speaker 1: and I like I already we all we all already
Speaker 1: know how it ends because we've all watched Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: so we know it's going to end badly. But it's
Speaker 1: just so much fun to see how badly it's gonna end.
Speaker 1: It is and I think, just like in the container
Speaker 1: of the story is still so compelling. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I hate how much I've grown to like the show,
Speaker 1: but I think it's kind of my favorite thing on
Speaker 1: right now. I'm going to be devastated with the vampire,
Speaker 1: devastated when it ends. Maybe I should be something from
Speaker 1: House of the Dragon for Halloween. Um, if you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for what I should be for Halloween, please slide
Speaker 1: into our d M s at like a Virgin four
Speaker 1: twenty sixty nine to let me know, because I still
Speaker 1: have no clue as someone who hasn't seen quite as
Speaker 1: much of the Tim Burton cannon as I have. What
Speaker 1: do you think defines a Tim Burton film? Well, he
Speaker 1: is a bit than ookie spooky girl. I think like
Speaker 1: an oogie spooky aesthetic. I think everyone in the movie
Speaker 1: needs to look blue in the face, just like like
Speaker 1: so white that they are blue. Like that actually is
Speaker 1: the palette that he's working with. And I actually think
Speaker 1: that palette and like escape of color is is really
Speaker 1: big in his films, Like there is an aesthetic that
Speaker 1: draws everything together. And then would you say, would you
Speaker 1: say that above all Tim Burton movies are defined by
Speaker 1: their aesthetic Unfortunately, yeah, um, and I you know it's
Speaker 1: so funny is as someone who has on the pod said,
Speaker 1: I'm like much more style over substance sometimes when we
Speaker 1: were talking about like bas Learman, I do think that
Speaker 1: Tim Burton is kind of that girl too. Yes, I
Speaker 1: I will say that I think he has some themes
Speaker 1: that he does return to that are not just stylistic.
Speaker 1: Among them what death, death, the afterlife, um, you know, magic, darkness.
Speaker 1: He also really likes um murder ghosts. Yes. Also, um,
Speaker 1: he is very into revisiting sort of older pieces of
Speaker 1: pop culture. I think he's very much stuck in his
Speaker 1: childhood and looking back at those things through his lens.
Speaker 1: So things like Batman, Alice in Wonderland, dark Shadows, Charlie
Speaker 1: and the Chocolate Factory, and he is obsessed with youth
Speaker 1: and innocence for a big chunk of his career. And
Speaker 1: I would say like from the nineties to now, he
Speaker 1: has primarily made ookie, spooky, family friendly films and entertainment.
Speaker 1: And these are a lot of these are reboots, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of these are adaptations of particularly dark stories
Speaker 1: from the yore of children's storytelling. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that darkness is something that you can say ends up
Speaker 1: in every single one of his films, is some capacity
Speaker 1: both literal and metaphorical darkness. But I also he is
Speaker 1: thought of as an auteur, and I think there is
Speaker 1: a cultural perception that with his films he is writing, directing,
Speaker 1: doing all of the stylistic work, and in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases that's not always true. You know, something like Beetlejuice,
Speaker 1: which I think is a really good place for us
Speaker 1: to start, because I do believe it his his best work,
Speaker 1: and we watched it last night. Fran saw it for
Speaker 1: the first time. Um, he didn't write the script to Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1: Beetlejuice was a script that was kind of shuffling around
Speaker 1: the studio system trying to find the right director and
Speaker 1: went through a bunch of rewrites until it eventually made
Speaker 1: its way to Tim Burton. It was a newly much
Speaker 1: darker and was you know, through his work on it
Speaker 1: became sort of a lighter. I mean obviously still very
Speaker 1: you know, tongue in cheek and there are things now
Speaker 1: that I don't think you'd get away with, and a
Speaker 1: sort of like family comedy today. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's still like palatable for a PG thirteen audience, even
Speaker 1: though Beetlejuice does say fuck at least once. Oh, I
Speaker 1: think in PG thirteen movies you actually can only say
Speaker 1: fuck once and then if you say at a second time,
Speaker 1: if you say a second time, it's radar ar. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I know that because my family, because of how I
Speaker 1: grew up. Um, but how so you grew up not
Speaker 1: really watching a lot of Tim Burton. No, Well, what
Speaker 1: happened was, um, you know Tim Burton is the Devil. Yes,
Speaker 1: the encapsulation of the devil and the Devil's presence in
Speaker 1: mainstream media and was huge at the time of our
Speaker 1: like growing up. And so I don't know if my
Speaker 1: parents really knew explicitly like who Tim Burton was, and
Speaker 1: then I couldn't watch his movies. But if they were
Speaker 1: to see a trailer of literally any of his movies,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, you're you're not watching that, that's like
Speaker 1: the Devil, And like I didn't see, you know, things
Speaker 1: like Nightmare before Christmas until I was like a late teen.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a lot of those movies until I
Speaker 1: was older, but I did. By the time I was
Speaker 1: a teen and entering my hot topic era, I was
Speaker 1: becoming obsessed quote unquote with Tim Burton, which really just
Speaker 1: meant that, like I bought Tim Burton T shirts and
Speaker 1: paraphernalia but actually didn't know that much about his Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think that the transformation of Tim Burton is
Speaker 1: from someone who made very strange cult films to someone
Speaker 1: who is kind of synonymous with the type of genre
Speaker 1: fandom consumerism that exists at hot topic like Tim Burton
Speaker 1: in is hot topic. Yeah, he is, literally, I mean
Speaker 1: he was paying Hot Topics light bill, Like that's really
Speaker 1: what was happening. If you walk into a hot topic,
Speaker 1: you can get your Jack Skellington costume. You can get
Speaker 1: your like dress that's like a shitty polyester that is like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, going to spread my grol plastics in this
Speaker 1: earth for then two years and it's printed with Sally's
Speaker 1: dress on it. Yeah, and for some reason you can
Speaker 1: still buy you know, a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Speaker 1: t shirt or and Alison Wonderland t shirt. God knows
Speaker 1: why because those are like among his worst films. So, like,
Speaker 1: so you didn't spend a lot of time with his
Speaker 1: work when you were a kid. Unsurprisingly, I did. I
Speaker 1: actually did. I mean I did spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time like not as a kid kid, but by the
Speaker 1: time I was a teen, It's just like I did
Speaker 1: become obsessed and I would tell people that Corpse Bride
Speaker 1: was my favorite movie. Okay, yeah, Like that's like I
Speaker 1: think pretending to like Tim Burton was a part of
Speaker 1: how I was as a kid. But I do think
Speaker 1: teenager is still different from kid because if we're talking
Speaker 1: about the formative power of media, you know, Nightmare Before Christmas,
Speaker 1: that was that was me as a child, because I
Speaker 1: remember Before Christmas came out when I was five years old,
Speaker 1: and I vividly remember the day that my parents got
Speaker 1: it on VHS and brought it home. My dad also
Speaker 1: bought me all the action figures. It was my entire world. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think because I got it so early and
Speaker 1: along with that also was into really into beetlejuice. Um,
Speaker 1: it absolutely informed and formed my tastes and aesthetic and
Speaker 1: me me being a spooky bitch. And I think if
Speaker 1: I had gotten it even a little later in life
Speaker 1: the way that you did, that might not have been true.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I always would have been drawn to those
Speaker 1: kinds of things. But I think tim Burton was really
Speaker 1: the only person who was putting that kind of spook
Speaker 1: into things specifically that kids could watch. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean to go back to the initial question, like what
Speaker 1: are the other things that make a Tim Burton film
Speaker 1: that you were like maybe attracted to as a kid,
Speaker 1: Because I think for me, it's like there's the oooky
Speaker 1: spooky factor. There's the Danny Elfman's score, there's like his
Speaker 1: use usually a musical number, yes, usually several, if not several,
Speaker 1: that's right. You have this kind of emo sensibility, I think,
Speaker 1: and everything like in all of his films, there's always
Speaker 1: some sad boy protagonists, yes, And and at the crux
Speaker 1: of like pretty much every protagonist is an existential question
Speaker 1: about like love and death honestly like and and how
Speaker 1: those things are usually at odds, but also kind of
Speaker 1: um self fulfillment because he does get pretty existential because
Speaker 1: you look at like Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas?
Speaker 1: His whole thing is what what am I doing? What
Speaker 1: is my purpose? What am I here? For? Edwards scissor Hands,
Speaker 1: It's it's about why do I am? I? Why do
Speaker 1: I exist? Even Beetlejuice, it's like, what do I do
Speaker 1: with my life now that I'm dead? Yeah, now that
Speaker 1: I'm dead? I think you have a version of that
Speaker 1: even in Corpse Bride, which a movie that gets a
Speaker 1: lot of flak, but like, I actually think perfectly distills
Speaker 1: a lot like of his, of Tim Burton's like philosophical ideas.
Speaker 1: It is not very good, No, it's not. I definitely
Speaker 1: bought it in like the Blockbuster dollar bin. Like you know,
Speaker 1: remember how Blockbuster used to have those like bins of
Speaker 1: movies where it was like, when the movie comes out,
Speaker 1: they buy like ten copies to rent, and then by
Speaker 1: the time it's like no longer relevant, they don't need
Speaker 1: ten copies of it, so they sell like nine of
Speaker 1: for like two dollars I bought Corporate Bride probably for
Speaker 1: two dollars, like that is like the vibe. But I
Speaker 1: but I loved that movie because it was so melodramatic
Speaker 1: and because as a child, I was attached to a
Speaker 1: very adult idea of what it means to live the
Speaker 1: same as like Jack Skellington. Right. And I think that
Speaker 1: it makes sense that Tim Burton's movies primarily appeal to
Speaker 1: children because his ideas about human existence are actually pretty shallow,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like they are childlike, they're
Speaker 1: they're very there's something that a child can understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of depth there. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's a regression in a way, because his early
Speaker 1: work is much more adult. You know, you have Edwood,
Speaker 1: which neither of us have seen, but it's a biopic
Speaker 1: about some flop director. And then he does things like
Speaker 1: Peewee's Big Adventure or which you know ostensibly is still
Speaker 1: a kids movie but is very adult and used to
Speaker 1: terrify me as a child, Batman and Batman Returns, which
Speaker 1: are very adult and sexy. Um, thank god for Tim
Speaker 1: Burton giving us some shellfie first Catwoman. I think out
Speaker 1: of all of these films that that is my favorite
Speaker 1: Timburton film. I'm pretty gosh darn sure. Do you think
Speaker 1: you have a favorite Timburton film. Yeah, it's this is tough,
Speaker 1: It's tough. It's definitely between the night Remember Before Christmas
Speaker 1: and Beetlejuice. I do think, as I have grown up,
Speaker 1: it's Beetlejuice that just I will always have a place
Speaker 1: in my heart for the night Remember Before Christmas. And
Speaker 1: I think part of why I pulled away from it
Speaker 1: is sort of the disnification of the Nightmare Before Christmas
Speaker 1: and just how it's like every emo scene. Girl in
Speaker 1: high school had a you know, a Jack Skellington patch
Speaker 1: on her backpack from Hot Topic. Um, I still love it.
Speaker 1: It's still amazing. It's not a Halloween movie. It's not
Speaker 1: a Christmas movie. It's a Thanksgiving movie. It's it's not
Speaker 1: it's not that's just fun. That's just fun. Mentally not true.
Speaker 1: I Phoebe's in here in the studio laughing at you
Speaker 1: because that is such an inaccurate take. But the older
Speaker 1: I have grown, I do think of everything he's made,
Speaker 1: Beetlejuice is the most perfectly aligned to my taste. Um,
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's spooky, it's a little gross, it's adult,
Speaker 1: it's adult. It's horny, it's very horny, inappropriately horny, inappropriately horny. Um.
Speaker 1: I actually, so are you aware of all of the
Speaker 1: Beetlejuice musical? Um? I actually am, yeah, but I've never
Speaker 1: I I know that it was a hit, right, it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a hit. And actually, so this is the
Speaker 1: story of the Beetlejuice Musical is that it wasn't really
Speaker 1: a hit, but it gained a huge cult following in
Speaker 1: the way that a lot of contemporary musicals that appeal
Speaker 1: to like people on Tumblr do. Um. But another show,
Speaker 1: I think it was The Music Man, was moving in
Speaker 1: to the theater where it was supposed to be. So
Speaker 1: it closed two huge fan outcry and there was a
Speaker 1: campaign to bring it back, and it is now back
Speaker 1: on Broadway once again. Wait really and actually shook by
Speaker 1: that because one thing you do not see in this
Speaker 1: day and age is Tim Burton coming back to relevance
Speaker 1: in any capacity. Like it's just doesn't He's not really there.
Speaker 1: The musical is very different from the movie in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and the music was I saw it
Speaker 1: when it was still in previews, Um, and was not
Speaker 1: expecting what it was. Um, but it's really good and
Speaker 1: the song dead Mom slaps so hard. But anyway, you
Speaker 1: watched Beetle Juice for the first time last now that
Speaker 1: you know that it's my favorite Tim Burton movie and
Speaker 1: it did come out the year I was born, So, um,
Speaker 1: what did you think? I have such a This really
Speaker 1: should be a very simple question. Um, but I have
Speaker 1: a hard time answering it because I think I think
Speaker 1: the more I think about it, I don't think I
Speaker 1: necessarily personally enjoyed it as a movie. And I think
Speaker 1: that as a kid, I would have really disliked it
Speaker 1: because I just hadn't grown an affinity for the grotesque yet. Um,
Speaker 1: it was something that I was still scared of. But
Speaker 1: watching it now where I can see a movie like
Speaker 1: Getle Juice and know that it is like objectively beautiful,
Speaker 1: that it is objectively like cinematic invention in something that
Speaker 1: other directors and creators were just not doing at the time,
Speaker 1: right like for the Virgins, Like by this point tim
Speaker 1: Burton had quit being being a Disney animator, right Like
Speaker 1: when he quit being an animator, he was like, no
Speaker 1: one's letting me do the kooky, spooky ship that I
Speaker 1: want to do. Then he did frankn Weenie, and I
Speaker 1: think another thing that caught the you know, attention of
Speaker 1: Hollywood people. And then in came Beetlejuice, Peewee and Batman,
Speaker 1: which I think are an amazing triad to show off
Speaker 1: like what he does as a director, because there are
Speaker 1: three very different kind of takes on Tim Burton Suoki
Speaker 1: Spookies that Day. But it's also like very much um
Speaker 1: the standard trajectory for directors that still exist today, which
Speaker 1: is you make the small passion project that gets people's attention. Um,
Speaker 1: then you make the somewhat larger movie the studio gives
Speaker 1: you some money it turns out to be a big
Speaker 1: hit than you do a superhero movie. Yeah, exam. And
Speaker 1: after that you get to make whatever you want. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting about Beetle Juice specifically is like, of these
Speaker 1: three movies, Beetlejuice is the closest to Imburton's current and
Speaker 1: ever president aesthetic, right Like it is this like the
Speaker 1: most spooky, has the most claimation, has the most like
Speaker 1: kind of like haunted house, dead diva goth superpower kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um. On the on the service level. I mean,
Speaker 1: you and I were having a great time, like an
Speaker 1: O'Hara of it all. Watching you watch the dinner party
Speaker 1: d O scene for the first time was very satisfying
Speaker 1: for me. I didn't you were gagged. You were gagged.
Speaker 1: I was gagged. But I didn't like. I didn't like
Speaker 1: that scene. I didn't like. I think that's a lie.
Speaker 1: I think you're revising history. You liked it? Well, can
Speaker 1: you do what? What were my mannerisms that would describe
Speaker 1: that you were my job? You were wrapped with attention.
Speaker 1: Your job was on the floor, My job was open.
Speaker 1: But did I say anything? No, because you were so transfixed,
Speaker 1: because I was so transfixed. Okay, so if I'm being
Speaker 1: really real with you, I don't really want to go
Speaker 1: there right away. But I actually was really distract and
Speaker 1: by the fact that they're singing like a Jamaican song
Speaker 1: and it's like an all white cast, and I'm like
Speaker 1: thinking about how Tim Burton thinks about these songs and
Speaker 1: how his movies through this whole era were like all
Speaker 1: white casts, and in his you know, defense of that,
Speaker 1: he talks about how like people of color just don't
Speaker 1: fit into a asthetic or whatever his words were, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, but actually they do like their sensibilities and
Speaker 1: their culture and like where and like well yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's happy to steal from that, but not to at that,
Speaker 1: and he's happy to have a bunch of white people
Speaker 1: like lip sync songs that are like sung by white people,
Speaker 1: but like are like literally historically like black songs are
Speaker 1: like songs that like say shake shake, Senora or whatever.
Speaker 1: And it's like, I don't know this, this is I'm like, honestly,
Speaker 1: like I I the reason I don't want to I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go into it is because it's such
Speaker 1: a not fun reaction to a movie that is ultimately
Speaker 1: actually very entertaining and inventive and good. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I like about Tim Burton.
Speaker 1: And yet because I guess this is what I'm taking
Speaker 1: responsibility for for the Virgins, I think I went into
Speaker 1: the viewing experience of Beetlejuice already feeling like I didn't
Speaker 1: like Tim Burton. Well, because when we started watching the movie,
Speaker 1: you were literally reading an article about Tim Burton being racist.
Speaker 1: I would not look up from it to watch the movie.
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, that was just in the first five minutes.
Speaker 1: I was just the first five minutes I did watch
Speaker 1: you did you did kind of set yourself up there. No,
Speaker 1: But the thing is that would have been the case
Speaker 1: even even if I hadn't read that article. I know
Speaker 1: that I was coming into that experience with a net
Speaker 1: distaste for Timber and as someone who used to be
Speaker 1: obsessed with him. And I think that, you know, and
Speaker 1: I understand the distaste. I think all of the things
Speaker 1: that you're saying are true, and that I am biased
Speaker 1: because I mean am white, So I'm like, I'm always
Speaker 1: biased by that and be his movies were extremely important
Speaker 1: to my understanding of my own, you know, sensibilities as
Speaker 1: a child. Yeah, And I don't necessarily feel like me
Speaker 1: bringing up my reaction to that scene is like, is
Speaker 1: what makes this movie like problematic or cancelable or whatever?
Speaker 1: That's like not really what I'm trying to say. It
Speaker 1: was just like my pure naked reaction. And I kind
Speaker 1: of just tried. I tried to like go back and think, like,
Speaker 1: what would you be thinking about this if you had
Speaker 1: watched it in the early nineties instead, Like what would
Speaker 1: your reaction? I think they would have just been scared.
Speaker 1: I think I would have been scared. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think I would have latched onto maybe Gina Davis's
Speaker 1: character went on a writer's character. But Catherine O'Hara, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have No, that's true, that's true. I would
Speaker 1: have loved Katherine Slay of the Millennium. Yeah, she really
Speaker 1: did that. She really did that. But um, this was
Speaker 1: not the only Tim Burton film that Katherine O'Hara did. Also,
Speaker 1: she is the voice of Sally in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I forgot that she did that, that
Speaker 1: was her moment. But yeah, um, but I don't think
Speaker 1: she's been in any of his other films. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of people obviously that Tim Burton has
Speaker 1: worked with again and again there's some people who are
Speaker 1: only in a few films. And then well there's kind
Speaker 1: of really only one person, which is Helena Bottom Carter,
Speaker 1: who's been in everything he's ever made because because they know,
Speaker 1: because Johnny Depp has done Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Edward
Speaker 1: Scissor Hands, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, Okay Dark, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think yeah, and Helena was married to him. Also,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard the story that they um lived
Speaker 1: in houses next story to each other and there was
Speaker 1: a tunnel that went underneath the ground that connected them.
Speaker 1: I've heard that we should probably fact check that, but
Speaker 1: it is my ideal relation. It is also my ideal relationship.
Speaker 1: But then, yeah, there are some people like Winona only
Speaker 1: did two movies. She did Beetle Juice and Edwards is
Speaker 1: her hands. And I feel like maybe unless you are
Speaker 1: Tim Burton's partner, if you're a woman, you age out
Speaker 1: of being his muse rather quickly, because as we've seen,
Speaker 1: Tim Burton is obsessed with this ingenue figure. There's always
Speaker 1: some bitch in his movie with big gass eyes, anywaist,
Speaker 1: she's usually blonde or very dark hair. No, she's definitely
Speaker 1: always They're actually like archetypes where it is the same
Speaker 1: length long blonde like wavy curly hair. But then you
Speaker 1: have Winona and Beetle Juice and she has dark hair.
Speaker 1: But then she does have the blonde hair and Edwards
Speaker 1: is her hand. That's what I'm Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: that Winona and Beetle Juice fits the moment, but she does.
Speaker 1: I think that throughout all of his films, we have
Speaker 1: this supple virgin, all innocent, just on the cusp of adolescence. Girl.
Speaker 1: And you noticed you noticed this when we were watching
Speaker 1: last night, because we were watching Sleepy Hollow, which Christina
Speaker 1: Ricci plays this character, but miawasa Kasa Kazakowski or whatever.
Speaker 1: And Alison Wonderland is that girl, the girl from Sweeney This,
Speaker 1: you know the Songbird Greenvench showeber Joanna is that in
Speaker 1: Sweeney Todd Um And then there is um Spella heath
Speaker 1: Coat and Dark Shadows. Yeah, and it's just like it's
Speaker 1: amazing that Timberton's like I mean, it's just I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just like kind of um creepy. It's kind of creepy,
Speaker 1: isn't ye the same? It's like it's t it's creepy,
Speaker 1: but it's not surprising. It's almost boring. It's like creepy
Speaker 1: on the level that like Quentin Tarantino always has these
Speaker 1: scenes about like feet, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: that is like what it makes me think of um.
Speaker 1: But but you know what, I am grateful that it
Speaker 1: launched Winona's career because then because of because we have Wona.
Speaker 1: It was so funny. We were watching um as we
Speaker 1: were watching Beetle Juice from some angles. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, who looks exactly like
Speaker 1: Millie Bobby Brown? And you were like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Millie Bobby Brown looks like Winona. Like she was the
Speaker 1: blueprint for the ooky spooky girl, which I think is
Speaker 1: so smart. Um, she is all I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: I also thought it was very funny last night when
Speaker 1: you were trying to figure out why Lydia Diets is
Speaker 1: the only one in Beetle Juice who can see the
Speaker 1: ghosts and you decided it's just because she's I mean,
Speaker 1: she literally says she is looking in the handbook and says,
Speaker 1: don't see the strange and unusual. And she famously says,
Speaker 1: I myself am strange and unusual. So yeah, she's just
Speaker 1: a golf Also, I love our producer Phoebe pointed out
Speaker 1: that Beetlejuice is at its core film about gentrification and displaced.
Speaker 1: The displacement. Yeah, honestly, I wish that we as ghosts
Speaker 1: could go back and haunt the gent frying populations of
Speaker 1: like you know, four Green or whatever. But like I
Speaker 1: was the gentrifier. Yeah, I know, I know, Yeah I was,
Speaker 1: I was as well, when we're talking about like other
Speaker 1: things that are recurring themes in like Timberton movies, I
Speaker 1: feel like we saw a lot of those between the
Speaker 1: double feature that we had last night in Sleepy Hollow
Speaker 1: and Beetlejuice. Sleepy Hollow is one of my favorites. It
Speaker 1: came out so I was eleven years old. I was like,
Speaker 1: it was exactly the right time for me for that movie.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little bit more adult than the
Speaker 1: other stuff he was making at the time. Um spooky vibes.
Speaker 1: There's witches in it. As I told you last night,
Speaker 1: I used to have an action figure of the Witch character,
Speaker 1: which so stupid. When you squeezed her, the snakes would
Speaker 1: pop out of her eyes and her mouth, and I
Speaker 1: just she was my most prized possession. She was your
Speaker 1: most prized Like. I also got an action figure of
Speaker 1: Ichabod Crane and I was like, what am I Johnny
Speaker 1: Depp version or a disnal version or the Johnny version.
Speaker 1: I was like, what the fund am I going to
Speaker 1: do with him? Yeah? His his eyes don't pop out.
Speaker 1: And I also got the headless horseman who came with
Speaker 1: a horse, and I was like, I want the horse.
Speaker 1: I don't really care. Well, here's just want the witch
Speaker 1: and the horse. That's it. Wait, let's get into it.
Speaker 1: The headless Horseman, unbeknownst to me, was played by Christopher
Speaker 1: walking And I said, and I have to say, Christopher
Speaker 1: Watkins character selection across time and space is untouchable, is
Speaker 1: so perfect, And it is so Christopher walk In and
Speaker 1: like there what he what? The characters he chooses to
Speaker 1: play are simultaneously predictable and yet perfectly in his ether. Also,
Speaker 1: I revealed to you last night that he may or
Speaker 1: may not have killed Natalie Wood, which I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Did you know this, Phoebe, that Christopher Walkin has maybe
Speaker 1: killed Natalie Wood? Okay, will you explain this? Yes, Natalie
Speaker 1: Wood drowned on a boat and no one knows how
Speaker 1: she died. And Christopher Walkin was on the boat, one
Speaker 1: of three people on this boat. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many people, not that many people on the boat. But
Speaker 1: Christopher Walkin was another thing that you didn't know, was you?
Speaker 1: It took you an hour until I mentioned it for
Speaker 1: you to realize that that was a young Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: in Beetlejuice. I had no idea and let me say
Speaker 1: he has a fat ass. He does. He has a
Speaker 1: juicy as a juicy juicy ass. Listen, we don't support
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin or his wife or his wife and they're
Speaker 1: like twenty five children about the woman that he killed
Speaker 1: on the set of that movie. Um, but that is
Speaker 1: really really hot in Beetle Juice. But honestly, actually, now
Speaker 1: that we're like panning out a little bit, like the
Speaker 1: fact that Timber is so comfortable working with like an
Speaker 1: Alec bald Went or a Johnny Depp, I think it's
Speaker 1: very telling of the people he might find in his circle.
Speaker 1: And the fact that these a lot of I think
Speaker 1: a lot of his films are produced by Scott Rudan.
Speaker 1: I think there are some there are some connections here
Speaker 1: Tim Burton in Hollywood suck. Yeah. Wow, I really cracked
Speaker 1: the case on that one. This is what the people got,
Speaker 1: the people. Someone please clip this out and the peabodies please. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it must be okay, shut up, Okay, I need
Speaker 1: to want Okay, Yes I did. I did fall asleep
Speaker 1: halfway through the movie. And when I woke you up
Speaker 1: to tell you I was leaving, you went that was
Speaker 1: so good? Did I really would you always would you
Speaker 1: always do. And when we watch something and you fall asleep,
Speaker 1: you go, that was so good, and then you and
Speaker 1: then you're and then yeah, and then you try to
Speaker 1: get me to stay and hang out and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're sleeping. I was like saying, hang please, let's hang out,
Speaker 1: let's sing out. Um okay. But here's what I do
Speaker 1: remember actually that I do remember thinking that it was
Speaker 1: pretty flawlessly gorgeous, like I remember beautiful. I remember thinking
Speaker 1: it was beautiful. I thought it costumes, my god, Christina's
Speaker 1: waste and her wigs and for Nanda Richardson. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: many Harry Potter actors for one movie and for nine
Speaker 1: did not feel dated at all, Like felt like fully
Speaker 1: it's a very classic story, very classic story, like I
Speaker 1: one of the oldest American myths. Yeah, and we were attracted.
Speaker 1: We were attracted to Christopher Lee, who plays one of
Speaker 1: the judges, because he is and when he came on screen,
Speaker 1: I was like, look theself. He also plays an angry
Speaker 1: priest in The Corpse Bride. I think and I love
Speaker 1: actually that priests are like um uh villains in his
Speaker 1: his films and stuff. That's dad in um Sleepy Hollow
Speaker 1: is a priest who put it, finds out his wife
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp's mother is a witch, and puts her in
Speaker 1: an iron maiden and kills her. Yeah, I I thought
Speaker 1: that was pretty pretty disgusting but beautiful. Like I guess
Speaker 1: the first time I ever understood when an iron maiden was.
Speaker 1: It was also the first time I understood what an
Speaker 1: iron maiden was. Um, last night that is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: watching Sleepy Hollow like I did, I was kind of like, Um,
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop thinking about the thing that you noticed
Speaker 1: about this, like long haired, blonde virgin archetype and the
Speaker 1: fact that Johnny Depp is thirty six in this movie
Speaker 1: and Christina Reggi is the actors actors, but the actress
Speaker 1: thirty six and Christina Reriggi is eighteen. And I was
Speaker 1: like Tim Burton when of his way to cast like this,
Speaker 1: you know what also is And I'm not defending it again,
Speaker 1: but also that's Hollywood. That's Hollywood. Sure, it's like old
Speaker 1: decrepit man and baby girl. He didn't look decrepit. I
Speaker 1: literally thought he was in his twenties. I literally thought
Speaker 1: he was in his twenties. He looks really young. But
Speaker 1: he um, you know, just just just to get it
Speaker 1: out of the way, I must say that though he
Speaker 1: is very Though Johnny Depp is very um cute in
Speaker 1: in Sleepy Hollow, he is his hottest in the movie
Speaker 1: Choke a Lot, which I did finally watch over the
Speaker 1: talking no no, no no, no, we're we're not We're gonna
Speaker 1: a lot is a Tim Burton felm shock a lot
Speaker 1: must be this is not an episode about Johnny deppell
Speaker 1: it's no. But I have to say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: let me say let me say this yes and no no,
Speaker 1: but I must say Johnny Depp was excruciatingly fine in
Speaker 1: Chook a Lot. Like he was. I dare anyone, anyone
Speaker 1: with a with a feminist perspective to watch Choko a
Speaker 1: Lot and tell me that Johnny Depp is not fine. No,
Speaker 1: I don't want to tell Amber heard that. But he
Speaker 1: is so sexy and okay, great, are you one of
Speaker 1: his bots? Now about you know about like Amber heard?
Speaker 1: My body tells, wait wait wait wait wait wait, Actually
Speaker 1: this is a really good this is a really good tangent,
Speaker 1: because not if it's about Choke a Lot, Come on,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is um I do think that, um,
Speaker 1: there is something to be said about a cultural attachment
Speaker 1: in the present day to Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's
Speaker 1: part to play in that right, because he's he's looped
Speaker 1: into our childhoods in this way that is very hard
Speaker 1: to extricate ourselves from. Because he was both because of
Speaker 1: this and because of Pirates of the Carabee, in which
Speaker 1: we talked about a couple of episodes ago. Um, he
Speaker 1: was everywhere and I was, um, you know, admittedly like
Speaker 1: a bandwagon Timberton fan, because I didn't have access to culture,
Speaker 1: you know, when he came out so to so to speak,
Speaker 1: and so of the closet of the when I when
Speaker 1: I can't, when I when he whatever, when I started
Speaker 1: conducing timbers ever sucked and fucked. No, I think he's
Speaker 1: really homophobic. Yeah, I think he's really I'm not joking.
Speaker 1: I think that he is really retro retro homophobic, like
Speaker 1: fire and Brimstone homophobics, not like not not not even
Speaker 1: like I don't care what they do. I just don't
Speaker 1: want to see it. It's like he's actively like I
Speaker 1: don't want to see it, and you're going to hell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think he thinks I think his kind of
Speaker 1: issue is really the poop poo in the butthole thing,
Speaker 1: because like I've never been it's not he's all like,
Speaker 1: there's never been any queerness and anything He's ever well,
Speaker 1: let's be clear, there has been rampant queerness and gayness
Speaker 1: in his films, but not of his design. Yes, and
Speaker 1: and and that's the thing is, like we were watching
Speaker 1: Beetle Juice and there's this faggot character who is almost
Speaker 1: almost explicitly fag faget. Yeah, oh no, they like they
Speaker 1: say it it coded like something about your kind or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like again, it's like a homophobic remark. Like I
Speaker 1: think that Timberton is like explicitly you know in the
Speaker 1: musical Beetle Juice. So you know how in the movie
Speaker 1: Beetle Juice keeps trying to hook up with Gina Davis.
Speaker 1: In the musical they have it be the Alec Baldwin character.
Speaker 1: Oh I love that. That's a nice little subversion. I
Speaker 1: love that. Um. So, like on that note, as I
Speaker 1: was saying, like I was a Bandwagon fan, so by
Speaker 1: the time I started to love Timberton, he was starting
Speaker 1: to sell out. So um, and what do you define
Speaker 1: as him selling out. Well, it's funny because his career
Speaker 1: started because he felt there was no place for him
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. And when Hollywood started to give him vehicles
Speaker 1: for his ookie spooky um aesthetic, and they understood how
Speaker 1: that was like marketable and that there was like, you know,
Speaker 1: an audience for this. He was making films that, like
Speaker 1: I think a lot of timber and stance. He as
Speaker 1: really amazing and untouchable, like Beetlejuice or Batman. And then
Speaker 1: as he got more and more successful and created UM
Speaker 1: things that were more truly just for commercial success and
Speaker 1: not for the art that UM people saw the quality
Speaker 1: of us work declins, like Alison wonder For me, that
Speaker 1: was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 1: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was two thousand five, Alison
Speaker 1: Wonderland was two thousand and ten, so they weren't that close.
Speaker 1: But um, I saw both of those movies in theaters.
Speaker 1: I thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factor was actually pretty
Speaker 1: good when I watched it, like I thought, I remember
Speaker 1: really enjoying it. Unfortunately, I will always be a Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Truther. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: don't think they. I think Jean Wilder Forever. Obviously they're
Speaker 1: going to be compared. But I do think Tim Burton
Speaker 1: made something that was uniquely his own. I remember really
Speaker 1: like by that time, I was a full blown stand
Speaker 1: so I think my experience of the film was maybe
Speaker 1: a little tainted. But I do think it um is
Speaker 1: em nomatic of something that he does really well, which
Speaker 1: is um show us how much he can push a
Speaker 1: really dark edge UM into a children's film, like this
Speaker 1: is a textual children's firm. But like Rolled Dahl, you know,
Speaker 1: was um. His source material was always sanitized for movies, right,
Speaker 1: Like his books were way darker than what the movies
Speaker 1: made them out to me not always look at the Witches.
Speaker 1: The Witches is one of the movies that scared me
Speaker 1: the most when I was a kid. I but the
Speaker 1: but the book is even I would say, yeah, that
Speaker 1: the movie is a tried and true, very dark adaptation,
Speaker 1: but I still think the book is darker. It is
Speaker 1: darker in the way it ends because the in the
Speaker 1: end of the book The Witches, Um, they talked about
Speaker 1: how the boy is going to die in a couple
Speaker 1: of years because he's a mouse, um, and the movie
Speaker 1: ends with a happy ending with him getting turned back
Speaker 1: into a human. Yeah. I honestly, Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: why my brain is jumping to this, but I'm thinking
Speaker 1: a lot just about like childhood and how like there
Speaker 1: is this weird kind of childhood corruption and childhood trauma
Speaker 1: narrative that flows through a lot of his movies, right,
Speaker 1: like what happened to Tim Burton as a kid, Like
Speaker 1: because when you think about his dog died with Alison
Speaker 1: Wonderland Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But I think Alison
Speaker 1: Wonderland is like Frankie wanted to make it and they
Speaker 1: hired him to do Sweeney Todd. Yeah, that's true. That's
Speaker 1: true with Sweeney Todd, with that movie, Perelli's Helper and
Speaker 1: also um, Joanna are these like archetypes that come in
Speaker 1: and out of Tim Burton's movies where we have a
Speaker 1: child that is being corrupted by people in their life
Speaker 1: that are sometimes pedophilic, which I think is the case
Speaker 1: of Joanna's dad. Well, Joanna's dad who is you know,
Speaker 1: um the judge wants to marry her, right yeah, and
Speaker 1: then we all and then also just like this child
Speaker 1: who has been pushed over the edge and then murders someone.
Speaker 1: I what do you think that is? Like? I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of like what what like? I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know that that that that exactly? Well, I guess
Speaker 1: there's a pervy kind of through line in some of
Speaker 1: his films. Yeah, well, I think when you have a
Speaker 1: male director, and this is something that I think about
Speaker 1: a lot with people like Ryan Murphy, When you have
Speaker 1: someone who only makes art about youth and young people,
Speaker 1: what's that about? What trauma are you working through? When
Speaker 1: is Ryan Murphy going to get over high school? When
Speaker 1: is Tim Burton going to get over his childhood? Is
Speaker 1: such a good way of putting it, because I do
Speaker 1: think that in this era of Tim Burton, why didn't
Speaker 1: he at some point go make an adult movie? Like
Speaker 1: he had all of the blank checks that he like
Speaker 1: available to cash, that he could have done that. But
Speaker 1: clearly this is just what he's interested in doing, is
Speaker 1: making movies about childhood and you know, adolescence and you
Speaker 1: know these kming of age stories. Why is he so
Speaker 1: stuck on it? And We're Sweet Todd is an adult movie?
Speaker 1: I would say that his film's got progressively more child life.
Speaker 1: He's only done a few things like Mars Attacks, you know,
Speaker 1: is an adult movie. Yeah, but it also there are
Speaker 1: several character point of view characters who were children, and
Speaker 1: I think he's always in anything he does is going
Speaker 1: to find that point of view to look from. Even
Speaker 1: the next thing that he's doing is he's um executive
Speaker 1: producing the New Wednesday Show for Netflix, which about Wednesday Adams,
Speaker 1: which looks which looks really fun. I'm excited about it. Um,
Speaker 1: But again he just I think this when he's dead
Speaker 1: one day and we look back at the entirety of
Speaker 1: his career, this will be one of the things we
Speaker 1: pulled out is that this was a man who made
Speaker 1: movies about youth and how scary being young could be.
Speaker 1: And maybe the horror and the spookiness that he was
Speaker 1: drawn to was a way of making literal how terrifying
Speaker 1: it is to be a child. Yeah, which I appreciate, right,
Speaker 1: Like we've discussed James and the Giant Peach before, which
Speaker 1: I think he was only like a tangential producer on
Speaker 1: or directed by Henry Selick who worked on the Nightmare
Speaker 1: before Christmas. Okay, okay, so that all the connection the
Speaker 1: connections are there, and I think James and the Giant
Speaker 1: Peach is another film that really exemplifies the thing you
Speaker 1: just kind of crystallized about childhood and what that may
Speaker 1: be meant to Tim Burton. But I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that when we to your to your point, like
Speaker 1: when he dies, I'll be curious to know what we
Speaker 1: still think of him as a director and if he
Speaker 1: still has a chance to contribute something to the culture
Speaker 1: that is as impactful as what he released in the
Speaker 1: you know, nineties. There are a lot of detractions to
Speaker 1: be made about his work, Like, as we already touched
Speaker 1: on briefly, he is a person who only makes movies
Speaker 1: about white people. Yeah, which is UM kind of kind
Speaker 1: of funny sometimes, Like I think that UM for the
Speaker 1: Virgins if you don't know, Like a Bustle interview like
Speaker 1: five six years ago, UM interviewed him and asked him
Speaker 1: specifically about how his films only have white people in them,
Speaker 1: and he said, um, nowadays, he's like, nowadays people are
Speaker 1: talking more about it, but he said, um, things either
Speaker 1: call for things or they don't. I remember back when
Speaker 1: I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they
Speaker 1: started to get all politically correct, which is a term
Speaker 1: politically correct is something that Tim Burton says frequently, which
Speaker 1: I think is very telling about the type of person
Speaker 1: he is. UM. And then he says, like, okay, they
Speaker 1: have let's have an Asian child and a black a
Speaker 1: black UM. I used to get more offended by that
Speaker 1: than just I grew up watching black sploitation movies and
Speaker 1: I didn't say there should be more white people in
Speaker 1: these movies, which is and and it just ins He's
Speaker 1: like the reverse racism, you know, literally yeah, and like
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a false equivalent. I mean, we
Speaker 1: don't have to explain why it's wrong, but it is
Speaker 1: like a false equivalency. Right. Like black exploitation films were
Speaker 1: created as like a political statement to combat the eraser
Speaker 1: of black people from films, Tim Burton's movies are not
Speaker 1: a political statement to provide more whiteness into the culture,
Speaker 1: right he What he's trying to say, I think is
Speaker 1: that this is his aesthetic. Right. Aesthetic is a word
Speaker 1: that comes up a lot and describing the whiteness of
Speaker 1: his film. And because this is what he's comfortable in,
Speaker 1: He's saying, this is the world that I live in,
Speaker 1: which is honestly, Like if he wants to say this
Speaker 1: is the world that I live in, which I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he said that, but like, this
Speaker 1: is the world that I want to live in. This
Speaker 1: is the world that I do live in. It's clearly
Speaker 1: the world that he sees, the world he's imagined. It
Speaker 1: is clearly his perfect world. Yes, that's what you do
Speaker 1: as a director is create this like idealized version of
Speaker 1: the world to make your little stories in. Yes. And
Speaker 1: it's like your films are not reclamation of white culture.
Speaker 1: Your films are like retention of white comfort, right like
Speaker 1: you are if you're saying this is the real world
Speaker 1: you live in, what you are telling us is that
Speaker 1: you don't have any friends of color or like queer friends.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I mean, I was watching
Speaker 1: the end of um Sleepy Hollow, which you were asleep
Speaker 1: during last night, and Christina Ricci's character, who's supposed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, so pure, but she is so white, she's
Speaker 1: glowing and per lessons. You know, he loves she she is.
Speaker 1: It's just so clear what he considers to be, you know,
Speaker 1: the um, the archetype, the ideal version of woman of
Speaker 1: womanhood of white womanhood, of whiteness, of just what it
Speaker 1: is to be a person. Look at like the self
Speaker 1: insert he puts in all of his movies, which is
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp, who is like the whitest man possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I and hit and almost like a a
Speaker 1: perversion of whiteness, right, Like, because there are reports that
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka was inspired by Michael Jackson. Have
Speaker 1: you heard this? Um? No, but that makes sense. It
Speaker 1: makes too much gross. It's really gross, but also feels
Speaker 1: in the line of what we were saying earlier about
Speaker 1: like childhood corruption, like things like that. It's like why
Speaker 1: it's like something that timber and keeps like latching onto
Speaker 1: I don't know. And then we um, there's the oggy
Speaker 1: boggie of it all. You were reading about last night,
Speaker 1: something I had you were describing to me. I had
Speaker 1: never heard about that, like oggie boogie was essentially like
Speaker 1: a slur used to describe jazz musician Cab Callaway, and
Speaker 1: that the ugg boogie man is kind of a a
Speaker 1: Cab Calloway reference. Right. He's a very he's a very racist. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Caricature, Yeah, caricature and I think that it's
Speaker 1: I think that him and then Samuel L. Jackson in Um,
Speaker 1: the Miss Peregrine's Like Orphanage whatever the funk movie that was,
Speaker 1: are the only two black people to have ever had
Speaker 1: roles in a Timberton film, which is not great, but
Speaker 1: it does have a great Florence and the machine song
Speaker 1: on the soundtrack. Oh does it really? Um? I okay,
Speaker 1: so like I on it. But anyways, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to harp on like the timber and main
Speaker 1: problematic of it all because we've heard it all before.
Speaker 1: But I do think that his failure to see, truly
Speaker 1: see the world around him is part of the reason
Speaker 1: he's no longer relevant as a creator, Like he truly
Speaker 1: has not made anything relevant since Charlie and the Chalk Factory.
Speaker 1: I think because I think Alice in the wonder Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland, where I think it is his highest grossest
Speaker 1: grossing film, was a critical flop, right or like, at
Speaker 1: the very least all of his stands did not like it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think kind of what the thing is is that
Speaker 1: now we live in a world old, we live in
Speaker 1: a post tim Burton world where there are a lot
Speaker 1: of creators who were influenced by him and went on
Speaker 1: to make things in the same kind of you know,
Speaker 1: aesthetic vain or with the same tone, but they were
Speaker 1: people of color, queer people who created their work with
Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion in mind because that was their worldview.
Speaker 1: So now we we don't need this one man in
Speaker 1: his singular vision because the vision is kind of outdated,
Speaker 1: and the next generation of people that who he inspired,
Speaker 1: who like they definitely owe a debt to Um, are
Speaker 1: making the work that he just never could make, and
Speaker 1: they're doing it better, doing it better than he is currently. Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly in that same vein of what you were just
Speaker 1: talking about, Um, Jordan Peel's making this kind of Tim
Speaker 1: Burton esque claimation called Wendel and wild Um that I
Speaker 1: think is going to be a part of this legacy
Speaker 1: of creators that you're talking about about. It there's there's
Speaker 1: a trans character who's played by a transactor in it.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, that's awesome. And I also know that like this,
Speaker 1: I think this Wednesday series honestly, even though Tim Burton
Speaker 1: is a part of it, um, he's not like the
Speaker 1: person behind it, am I right about? Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a Tim Burton presents. Yeah, but it's an
Speaker 1: all Latin story, so I'll be interested to see, you know,
Speaker 1: how far that's get that gets pushed and if this
Speaker 1: is something that is you know, inspired by timber and
Speaker 1: but not like created by Tim Burton. Um, but I'm
Speaker 1: probably He's probably the executive producer, so I'm sure his
Speaker 1: handprints are all over it stylistically, especially because it seems
Speaker 1: like it's more in the y A genre space. Um,
Speaker 1: it'll be pretty you know, diverse YEA and inclusive. And
Speaker 1: the trailer looks good. It looks like, Yeah, it looks fun.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to watch it. Yeah. Um. I like Jenna Ortiga,
Speaker 1: who is in literally everything, Wait, what else is she in?
Speaker 1: She was in the Babysitter movie, she was in the
Speaker 1: New Scream, she was in X, she was in the
Speaker 1: second season of You. She's just popping up everywhere. But
Speaker 1: this is her first big starring role. Should we talk
Speaker 1: about like our Timber and Blind spots, like the movies
Speaker 1: we haven't seen, like just to like acknowledge for the
Speaker 1: versions that we like we haven't seen Edwood, which we
Speaker 1: haven't seen Edward, one of us more critically acclaimed movies.
Speaker 1: Question Mark. I think it's one of his more serious movies.
Speaker 1: Sara Jessica Parker's in it, I believe what. And she's
Speaker 1: also in Mars Attacks, which I love. She she's in
Speaker 1: Mars Attacks. In Mars Attacks and she gets her head
Speaker 1: put on a dog's body. Oh my god, I've seen
Speaker 1: that on the cover of Mars Attacks. Her head is
Speaker 1: like literally on the covers. I have like an imprinted
Speaker 1: memory of being in Blackbuster. I think other than those
Speaker 1: and big guys, I've seen everything you've we haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen Frank and Weene or Dumbo. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen Dumbo Dumbo, or you've seen Miss Peregrine's
Speaker 1: Home for a Peculiar Children. Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 1: I don't really remember. I'm sure Eva Green was great
Speaker 1: because Ava Green is great and everything. She's so fun.
Speaker 1: In Dark Shadows, Um, Chloe Grace Morette is a werewolf
Speaker 1: in it. That's all I need to know. Have you
Speaker 1: seen her carry? I have with Julianne Moore. I think
Speaker 1: it would maybe ruined carry for me. You wouldn't. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't like it because maybe a traditionalist. But for our
Speaker 1: Stephen King episode, it's good. I think you have you
Speaker 1: seen the original carry Okay, so you can't talk to
Speaker 1: me about that. We we've never have you ever seen
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes? No, I've never seen Planet of
Speaker 1: the Apes. But you know what, I have seen a
Speaker 1: lot of Jack Skellington Sally porn. Oh my god, why
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's Jack Skellington gay porn. Let's see,
Speaker 1: there has to be, Okay, Jack Skellington getting sucked by
Speaker 1: Uggie Boogie. Oh no, Jack Skellington. Okay, there's he's Oh
Speaker 1: look look at the hot Jack O lantern. Wow, his
Speaker 1: dick is huge. That's very hot. There's Jack Skellington. I
Speaker 1: think he's with the slender Man. He's fucking the slender Man.
Speaker 1: Who's the slender Man? It's an urban legend. Oh, here's
Speaker 1: one where he's got Santa tied up and is tickling
Speaker 1: his feet. Oh my god, sort of non consensually, but
Speaker 1: also Santa seems to be into Maybe the non consensual
Speaker 1: part is part of the kank um. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of Jack and Sally porn. Oh, and
Speaker 1: then here's thick Jack Skellington. I like that. I'm into it.
Speaker 1: What fuck. We'll be back next week with two episodes,
Speaker 1: you know, continuing our October double Slam weekly um whatever,
Speaker 1: Double penetration UM. On Tuesday we have a special episode
Speaker 1: all about the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and then on
Speaker 1: Thursday an episode devoted to the Master of Murder Mystery Mayhem,
Speaker 1: Stephen King herself. So, um, tell us what your favorite
Speaker 1: Tim Burton movie is or if you have any hot
Speaker 1: takes about him. Tell us what you're being for Halloween.
Speaker 1: Tag us and all your spooky content. You can leave
Speaker 1: us a review on Apple Podcasts or rating on Spotify.
Speaker 1: It really helps us a lot. I am your co
Speaker 1: host Rose Damn You. You can find me anywhere on
Speaker 1: social at Rose Damn You. And I'm Fran Toronto. You
Speaker 1: can find me at Frands Squish Co anywhere you want.
Speaker 1: Also d m us at Like a Virgin nine. You
Speaker 1: can subscribe to Like a Virgin anywhere you listen. Like
Speaker 1: a Virgin is an I Heeart radio production our producers
Speaker 1: Phoebe Unter, with support from Lindsay Hoffman, Julian Weller, Jess
Speaker 1: Crane Chitch and Nikki Eatur. Until next week. This is Halloween,
Speaker 1: This Halloween, Oh my god, Okay, we have to go.
Speaker 1: That is this is Halloween.