261: On Love Story, Wuthering Heights, Pillion

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We just shoot the shit. I have never had so many notes for an episode. I don't think I've ever done so much research for an episode before. So much research short of actually reading Wuthering Heights. No, let's not get crazy now. Did we both have months in preparation to watch all 11 adaptations of Withering Heights and read the book? Yes. But we didn't. You know why? We were too busy on the r slash John and Carolyn Bessette subreddit. Oh, just me? Oh, I thought you were going to say r slash John Bidet. And I was like, yes, actually, that is where my time went. I did feel like you this week because I did discover the John and Carolyn subreddit. And I can't exactly say I'm a truther because there's no real conspiracy about them. There's just a lot of information. Yeah, I've been on the John and Carolyn Reddit for a while now. Oh, really? That Candace article is what got me there to begin with, but we'll get into that. So we have, of course, watched the first three episodes of Non-American Love Story. It's been retitled Love Story, I guess because perhaps maybe next season they want to take an international. True. What do you think? What do I think of the show? I'm obsessed with the show. I could have cried when the third episode ended. And just for clarity, we've only seen the first three episodes. The fourth one comes out today. But I just want to live in this world because this is the New York that I fell in love with via magazines, via shows like Sex and the City. And if there was some sort of like VR experience where I could just live inside this show, I would. I would be like one of those Ready Player One people. Yeah, this tweet really got me from at Sub Shaharan. Love story. How does it feel to be aggressively pandered to with a show that resurrects a pair of corpses to make them act out the collective fantasy of their romance in 90s New York with Cocteau Twins Needle Drops and Naomi Watts' Jackie O? It feels amazing. The Cocteau Twins drop got my ass. I think the music supervisor is killing it. And seemingly has endless money. Yeah, no expense was spared with this production, which I appreciate. Because especially when you're telling a story about these very fancy, wealthy people, you can tell when the budget isn't good. It doesn't look correct. And this looks correct. Well, do we want to jump into the fact that the internet successfully bullied the show into firing the costume designer and getting a new costume designer? I believe that we did talk about that when it happened, but yes, thank God. And the costume designer is great. The costume designer is Rudy Mance, who worked on the Capote Swans series. I couldn't find who the original costume designer is. I think it's probably pretty mean to out them. Totally. But I'm not sure why they didn't go with Rudy Mance to begin with. And Rudy Mance had no time. Like you usually have months, if not weeks, probably six weeks of pre-production. They shut down for the July 4th weekend and he had a long weekend to get this shit together. That gives me so much anxiety. There's a Vandy Fair article that discusses this, but he was able to find a collector who is a Carolyn Bessette fanatic. And while they couldn't authenticate if the pieces this collector had were the ones actually worn by Carolyn Bessette, I doubted, but she got those pieces that Carolyn was photographed in. Right. So Prada pieces, Yoji pieces, and then some of the stuff they just recreated. Yeah, I saw they had to recreate that one ruffled Yoji jacket. It seems like they did a pretty decent job. But also those initial paparazzi shots that people lost their minds over, they went back and refilmed all of that stuff with the new costumes. Well, thank God they course corrected. Because imagine we would be sitting here hating on this show. I do feel like it bears mentioning why a lot of people went in ready to hate this show and have come out of the first three episodes being like, I love it? While this is a Ryan Murphy produced show, he is not the showrunner. A guy by the name of Connor Hines is the showrunner. Thus far, he's written all the episodes. I'm not sure how many of the episodes he wrote. But you can tell the difference between a Ryan Murphy authored show, like an All's Fair and a The Beauty versus... I mean, a lot of the American dot dot dot offshoots, American Crime Story and now American, no longer American, but Love Story are authored by other people. And they're just under his production company banner. Honestly, I feel like the most Ryan Murphy thing about this show is Naomi Watts as Jackie O. That's true, although she's not mean enough for it to be like fully campy. She needs to be meaner to Daryl Hannah? I think she was pretty mean to Daryl Hannah, but I'm just saying the character isn't exactly a caricature like I would expect from a normal Ryan Murphy show. Yeah, you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't portraying Jackie O. I say this as if I'm someone who has portrayed Jackie O. the voice is inherent to portraying her, but the voice is so unnatural. Jackie O's natural way of speaking. Totally. And there's not that many, to my knowledge, portrayals of Jackie O at this age, like in the last years of her life. Totally. But I do think they make her look sadder and more pathetic than she actually was. Like she also had a full boyfriend when she died. Who I think is just shown in the background unspeaking in the first few episodes. Yeah, at the wake. I think that the way that she's portrayed is very opposite from how we see her in our heads. How do you see her? Well, I think of her as someone that's the definition of strength, for example. Okay. And that's just based on sort of how important and symbolic she is in American culture. That's very true. I wonder if the way they're portraying Jackie O is because while this show was in development, Connor Hines and Ryan Murphy were developing the series since 2021. They did take a break because they didn't really understand Carolyn Bessette because she hardly gave public interviews. I mean, she posed for a few photo shoots, but she was an incredibly private person. And it wasn't until... Did she give interviews at all? I don't think she did. I don't think she gave one. I think basically, and Sarah Pidgeon, who plays Carolyn Bessette, which we'll get into in a second, has said, I mean, the only clip you really see of her pre-JFK is that fashion file video of her backstage at a Calvin Klein show with a Polaroid camera. Right. It wasn't until 2024 when Elizabeth Beller released a biography called Once Upon a Time, The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, that they felt like they had a window into who she was as a person and they continued developing the show, which Jackie O is spoken about in the book. But I wonder if because that is their point of view is through Carolyn's eyes. That is why we see Naomi Watts portray Jacqueline Kennedy in a very particular way. I mean, I guess I have no idea what she's actually like. I think of her as being like her Warhol. You don't think that she's before her death was smoking, burning letters, listening to the Camelot soundtrack dancing? I hope she wasn't listening to that. 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So while I didn't read Wuthering Heights for the podcast, I did listen to the audiobook, or I started to listen to the audiobook of Elizabeth Beller's biography of Carolyn Bessette. I actually stopped listening when I had gotten to a place where the episodes hadn't gotten, and in my head I was like, I don't want to spoil it. So I can get into the discrepancies even in these first few episodes, but before I do that, I just wanted to get your opinion on how the series begins, which it does that streaming series trope where we start at the very end and then go backwards. It doesn't bother me. We know how they died. Well, we know how they died. I wonder how many people are watching this show blind who don't really have an understanding of who these people are. I feel like that's probably the one thing they do know about them. I'm of two minds about that because usually for regular streaming shows, they do it so they don't lose your attention, where it's like something shocking happens, like someone's murdered, and then it's like nine months earlier. but I think that this is used effectively because you're seeing Carolyn Bessette on the last day of her life as it turns out but just the self-assuredness of her has been worn away from the paparazzi as shown in that scene where she's getting her nails done and they're her signature red and she at the last second wants it to be nude right we also don't see the plane going down So it's not that dramatic. You just see it taking off in the sky. I am going to hope and I believe that they have enough restraint to not show them in that little single engine airplane at night in the fog and then they feel a bump. Like, I hope we don't get that scene. Yeah, I wonder. I think they probably will avoid that. I also wasn't aware until very recently that they were separated at the time that they had boarded the flight for the wedding that they were going to. Babes, there's so much Kennedy lore for you to catch up on. See, I was a Kennedy freak at the time. And I remember when the plane was first missing, I found out about this because it was my friend's birthday and I was 15 and I'd stayed up all night smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka. And we decided to finally go to sleep. and whatever was on TV was like interrupted by the search for the plane, which lasted for a couple hours before they found the plane. And it was just one of those things that I will remember for the rest of my life. Oh, yeah. I remember waking up. My parents' bedroom was next to mine. And I remember hearing my mother gasp because she had turned on the TV. It was CNN or something. And it was their plane was reported missing. It also wasn't that long after Princess Diana. Right. And there's a photo that has since resurfaced, especially this week, that Carolyn Bessette was in the same pew as Princess Diana at Gianni Versace's funeral. Yeah, she was the row behind David Furnish and Elton John. Can you imagine not even being in the A seat at Gianni's funeral? I don't think second row is too bad. You could do worse at Gianni's funeral. But yeah, I remember, obviously, Princess Diana's death and the death of JFK Jr. And I imagine in the episodes to come, they're going to get into this. And it's already been shown through JFK Jr.'s life on the series. But how omnipresent the paparazzi was in a way that doesn't exist anymore. I think that because everyone has cell phones, the relationship that paparazzi have with celebrities is quite different. like they were abusive i remember towards celebrities in the 90s tripping celebrities taunting them to get a bad reaction like you don't see celebrities punching paparazzi as much as you did in the 90s for sure but also jfk and carolyn were just on a different fame level but it felt hand in hand not that the paparazzi killed jfk jr and carolyn beset although one of the reasons that he enjoyed flying a plane was that he could avoid public airports and being photographed there, of course. But that was certainly a conversation after Princess Diana's death that the paparazzi killed her. Right. Well, they did kill her, quite literally. We've discussed Naomi Watts, but we're really burying the lead in the star-making performances of Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette and Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr., a man who was cast three weeks before the series was set to go into production. They could not find JFK Jr. so much that they were contemplating shutting down production to be able to just recast. And was it this guy like a male model? He's Canadian, which I think explains a lot. What does that explain? Just a handsome, good-natured. He can play American. We'll allow it. He was a model, but he was trying to be an actor and could not get cast and was often told like, hey, you look like JFK Jr. And the weirder thing is he did a self-tape for this series that they discarded. And when they could not find their JFK Jr., Connor Hines was discussing, he goes, I was just walking up to people being like, would you audition for this show? It was Ryan Murphy was like, go back to the tapes, go back to the beginning, see who came in. And that's how they found Paul Anthony Kelly. He's great. And I like that he's unknown. I like that we don't have to see a known actor transform into this person that we're all so familiar with. Same with Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette. She's certainly more known than him going into this, but this is, of course, her breakthrough role. Although she was in a Broadway show called Stereophonic, where she basically played Stevie Nicks. And everyone that saw that is like, she's a genius. Well, she was nominated for a Tony. What I was amazed by, well, one, I thought she was British. She just has British face to me. Yeah, she looks British. and I did not realize a dark dark brunette. The blonde suits her. I think she should keep the blonde. I don't know if you've noticed but there's a lot of behind the scenes videos I think because the initial criticism of those first paparazzi images were of course the costumes but also the color of her hair. Like there's a whole behind the scenes video that you can watch about them dyeing her hair and getting the right shade and how the shade changes over the course of her life. Well, the hair was completely wrong in those initial paparazzi photos. Again, thank God they course corrected because the last thing we need is budget versions of these people. And the fact that we don't have to deal with that on any level is incredible. It's what makes this feel like a luxurious upscale television experience. Absolutely. That and the production design, which honestly is my favorite part of this show. The production designer is Alex DiGiolando, and he said that he based the look basically on Calvin Klein's whole aesthetic, like from the office to JFK Jr.'s apartment. He was like, you know what? We're just going to pull in the Calvin early to mid-90s minimalist aesthetic in everything. And I think that was a bold choice, but a great choice. Yeah, I just want to live in his loft and in those Calvin Klein offices, never go anywhere else. But also even just like the smaller production design things, like when they're walking down the street and they see the wheat pasted posters of the Calvin Klein campaign, like everything looks so gorgeous. And they also shot at all of the correct New York locations, restaurants that are still there, like Pana and Michael's, what have you. I hear they shot at Indochine, like this is the old New York that still exists in New York today. And it's fun to see those places. And that's, again, kind of what I wanted from And Just Like That was those really iconic New York institutions. Yes, unfortunately, we had to go to a show set in the 90s to get that again. But I don't know what to make of Paul Anthony Kelly, just because I think it's very difficult to play JFK Jr., especially at this time in his life. But I realized that actually, because I was like, is he doing a good job? Is he boring? And then I was like, oh, no, he's actually capturing this naivete but also hubris that growing up with that much privilege would have and i think that is exemplified in the sequence where he one is late for his first date with carolyn but leaves his bike unlocked which is something that jfk jr did all the time yeah which that is someone who is a prince like who thinks that his bike will never get stolen Yet it does, but it's fine because he's got the money to replace it. But like never the self-awareness to ever lock up his bike, even though it keeps getting stolen. Yeah, I don't think he thinks it's not going to get stolen. It's just he doesn't care if it gets stolen or not, which is honestly kind of iconic. But also I can't imagine just like walking down the street being that man where like every single woman and gay wants to fuck you. And it's like, please marry me. But I think in these initial episodes, it's Sarah Pidgeon that has more to work with than Paul Anthony Kelly as JFK Jr. That's why I think I initially was like, is he boring? And it's like, oh, no, this is kind of the character. Like, she is just cool from the jump. She is someone you want to be, someone you want to be friends with, which, according to everyone that knew Carolyn Bessette, that was her vibe. She's so cool. And I'm just so impressed because I never see a fashion girl. captured accurately there many movies with fashion girls but they do not look like legit women that work in fashion Look or act This is like so incredibly legit and frankly inspiring to watch Guys, I learned something truly spooky recently, which is that the average person eats a credit card's worth of plastic every single week. This grosses me out to no end, and this is what I'm doing about it. 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It's nothing about her portrayal. it is 100% about how she is written because when Daryl Hannah comes on screen, the show suddenly becomes fatal attraction. Totally. But actually, for me, she reminds me of a Woody Allen love interest in that she is highly neurotic, a bit sort of woo-woo, wishy-washy actress type. That would be like a Carol Kane character in a Woody Allen movie. Absolutely. And I think that in these initial episodes it does a good job of demonstrating going back to our thoughts about Naomi Watts's Jackie O and Daryl Hannah it just shows that JFK Jr. was kind of a pushover like he and Daryl Hannah were in an on-again off-again relationship for five years and Connor Hines has explained like it went on for longer and there were more incidents and there's actually more overlap between him dating Daryl Hannah and Carolyn Bessette than is shown on the show. But Connor Hines was like, we just had to condense it. Now, one of the things I thought that was invented for the show that actually did happen is he did lose control of the leash of Daryl Hannah's dog and it did get hit by a car in Central Park. Which also feels very Woody Allen. That and her showing up uninvited at the wake, like it hits all of those beats for me. So what I learned in this Carolyn Bessette biography is, and these are just details where I'm like, why didn't they put it in the show? It happened and it's funnier, which is, right, we see JFK Jr. get on a flight to bring the ashes back to LA to Daryl Hannah. But I guess what happened is he just brought them in a plain box that he was given by the crematorium and she was mad at him for not bringing it in a nicer urn. Also, Daryl Hannah evidently did show up to Jackie O's wake and just kept going up to people and being like, you know, I met Jackson Brown, which is weird because she dated Jackson Brown in between dating JFK Jr. Well, she sounds like a weird vibe. And if I was Daryl Hannah, I would be suing them for defamation. Because what could be worse than being portrayed as this fucking annoying? Well, I've subsequently learned from the Internet that Daryl Hannah is autistic. Okay, well, if that is the case, this is a much different portrayal of female autism than we've ever seen in media before. And I don't think being autistic necessarily makes you this fucking annoying. I will say, I doubt this scene ever really happened, but that scene where Jackie won't come to dinner with Daryl at JFK Jr. And we have not even mentioned Grace Gummer playing Caroline Kennedy. She's great. I love the Nepo baby casting, right? You have Dree Hemingway as Daryl Hannah. You've got Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy. But there's a scene where Daryl Hannah runs out and JFK Jr. runs after her. And Daryl Hannah has this whole thing of like, do you ever think why your mom doesn't like me? A blonde actress, does that sound familiar to you? Sort of hinting at JFK, not hinting at, basically being like- Yeah, I think they did more than hint. Your mother doesn't like me because your dad fucked Marilyn Monroe. I don't think that scene ever happened, but she does read him well, and it's the only scene she's not a full-tilt psycho. Totally. Can I get into some of the differences of the series and the book, at least according to this Elizabeth Beller biography? Sure. So in the show, it is portrayed that they meet at this benefit, but according to the Carolyn Bessette biography, he did first come in as a vip client for a suit fitting and gave his number to carolyn he invited her to a benefit not the save the forest benefit that we see in the show it is a different benefit where i guess carolyn beset didn't know if she was jfk jr's date or not because at the table he was seated next to another woman he then invites her to another benefit the one that we see in the series. And after that, he invites her to his beach house for the weekend, where she meets his cousin, Anthony Radzowell, and his girlfriend at the time, future wife, Carol, who would be a future real housewife of New York. And unfortunately, as we've learned through the Epstein files, friends with Ghislaine Maxwell. Also the woman who wrote What Remains, which I actually did read years ago. Oh, well, then you probably know this part of it, which is after this weekend, JFK Jr. invites Carolyn Bessette to a restaurant in Tribeca and hands her a letter. And it's a letter from a prep school friend that's like, oh, you're seeing Carolyn Bessette? She's a user. And she dates around and he breaks up with her there. And in Carol Radswell's memoir, she basically corroborates that story by saying like, I had this great weekend with Carolyn and then I didn't see her for two years. So I find it weird that they did not include that but it does seem if you watch the preview for this week's episode there seems to be a scene where he says my friends have told me some things about you i think it makes sense that they would want to streamline things a bit can we get into the sex in the city of it all yeah i mean i think every single pop culture podcast is talking about their feelings about this show and we have given our thoughts which is we love it but as people have done their 10 000 hours in sex in the city We are uniquely qualified to discuss the overlaps of this show with one Miss Carrie Bradshaw. I have seen so many memes this past week of like, Carolyn is so Carrie coded. I also saw a tweet that was like, you know what? Come to think of it. I think Candace Bushnell based Carrie on Carolyn Bessette and Mr. Big on JFK Jr. And I sent that tweet to you and I just wrote, open the schools. I know. horrifying. Candace and Carolyn both hung out at the same clubs and restaurants, I'm assuming. They both smoked. I think that Carolyn's apartment, as portrayed in the show, is like the most Carrie thing about her. Other than that, to me, she's the polar opposite of Carrie. To me, she is Natasha, not Carrie. Right. And you believe the Natasha character is probably based on Carolyn Bessette. For sure. It's not as if they copied Carolyn's style exactly, but they went out of their way to make her a minimalist. They gave her this very impressive corporate job at Ralph Lauren, which is the closest thing that you could do to Calvin Klein, essentially. And they paired her with Mr. Big, who, like JFK Jr., was supposed to be this unattainable bachelor, the most eligible man in New York. So to me, I find it really hard to believe that she was not, at least in part, inspired by Carolyn. For sure. But Carrie needed to have a rival, and it makes sense that it would be a woman like that. And you could make the argument that Candace Bushnell felt that Carolyn Bessette was her rival because it has been resurfaced. I mean, you found this article a year ago of this very mean-spirited, I put in quotes, satire article about Carolyn Bessette. I'm never going to speak ill of Mother Candace, but it is something that would not be written today, certainly. We'll link to it in our show notes. It doesn't make a ton of sense. Well, if you've ever read My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it reminds me of that because it's told in the first person, but from the perspective of someone who is incredibly funny, cruel, and mentally ill. And a lot of this is about her being a pill popper and having an eating disorder. Like there's literally a line where she says, like, I was watching the Karen Carpenter story for something like the 57th time. Which, again, in the 90s, making anorexia jokes like that was, I don't know if I would say acceptable, but certainly more commonplace. And now people just like would not touch that shit for obvious reasons. It was written for a magazine called Manhattan File. It was called Spoiled in the City. She married the world's most eligible bachelor and inherited way more than a nasty habit for popping pills. Is something rotten in Soho? And it also talked about how JFK Jr. cheated on her. So what would prompt someone like Candace to write such a thing? It couldn't have been, you know, being paid perhaps $4 a word from, what is this, Manhattan file. It is probably because there was a little bit of jealousy between them because they both slept with the same guy, Michael Bergen. Michael Bergen is featured in the second and third episode of Love Story. He's a real person. He is also in Candace's articles. Well, that's speculation that there was jealousy. He was a situation ship for both of them. So I don't think Candace would necessarily give a shit that they fucked the same guy. And this guy was written about in Candace's column, which was then fictionalized on Sex in the City in the Models and Mortals episode. And ironically, if you look at the trivia, that actor, Michael Bergen, that model Michael Bergen, he ended up becoming an actor. He was on Baywatch for many years. He auditioned for the role of Derek, the model, and didn't get it. That's so rude. But also, I would not be surprised if these women either knew each other or had mutual friends. I would be shocked if they didn't. So they could have just not fucked with each other for whatever reason. Yeah, you're right. Like the social world in Manhattan is small if you are an in-the-know fashion girl. You're only going to certain restaurants and clubs and parties. You're right. It is my conjecture that Candace Bushnell was jealous of Carolyn Bessette. However, I'm trying to find a reason why she would write such a catty article. We don't know. We could ask her, though. Another weird Carolyn Bessette, Sex and the City connection that I discovered in listening to this biography is in the early 90s, before Michael Bergen, Carolyn Bessette was dating an actor by the name of Scott William Winters, who you might remember as the smart guy from Harvard that Matt Damon fights with in Good Will Hunting. The do you like apples? Well, I got her number. How about them apples? Okay. Yeah, I got that. I just like you reenacting the scene. I think you could have done a better delivery of the them apples though. Oh, you want me to fully commit? I'll fully commit. Hey, do you like apples? Well, I got a number. How about them apples? Thank you. Much better. I knew you had it in you. Okay. Anyway, she was dating that guy when he was a bartender. and an aspiring actor at the time. I bring this all up to say he has a brother named Dean Winters. Dean Winters was on an episode of Sex and the City called the fuck buddy. He was Carrie's fuck buddy. Right. Okay. Yes. So many connections. Sorry, right now I'm erecting a message board with red strings. It's all connected, Chelsea. No, that's literally what I was imagining in my head as I was watching you talk just now. And also, it seems forgotten slightly that JFK Jr. dated Sarah Jessica Parker. Right. Although there are no photos of this that exist, unfortunately. And from my understanding, it seems like they went on a few dates. It wasn't that serious. He broke up with her over the phone. She doesn't have any ill will towards him. She's always talked positively of him. But imagine what could have been. It's just when it comes to sex in the city and Carolyn Bessette and JFK, it's just time is a flat circle. It's all connected. We probably wouldn't have got sex in the city, actually. If Sarah Jessica Parker married JFK Jr.? Well, because remember how risque the idea of her going on that show was? Right. So she might have just said no to it just because it has sex in the title and she's married to a Kennedy. I think for that reason, there is a possibility that she may have passed. Well, I mean, at one point, going back to the Daryl Hannah portrayal, at one point she's like, I'll give up acting for you. My roles are drying up. But it is clear that JFK Jr., at least in this portrayal and other things that I've read about him, was a bit of a mommy's boy. and one of his passions early on was acting and his mother was like, no. I mean, it's discussed in the series where he's like, I did this off-Broadway play and my mother forbade the press to ever come to it so no one saw it. Yeah, not the greatest parenting. I was recently talking to a fellow new mom who was dealing with hair thinning and shedding postpartum and I told her that I had been using Nutrafol's postpartum formula since I gave birth to baby Morty and how much it has helped me. 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See thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter promo code outfit. Find out why Nutrafol is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutrafol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com, promo code outfit. That's Nutrafol.com, promo code outfit. it. Can we do some fashion fact checking for the first three episodes before we move on? Sure. Okay. Did Carolyn Bessette really dress Annette Bening for the Bugsy premiere? I have no idea, but she did wear that. Yes. It's hard to say. There's an article about Carolyn Bessette from the 90s that lists one of her VIP clients as Annette Bening. Did you also have a moment where you were like, did they get real Annette Bening and use de-aging technology? Because that casting was pitch perfect. No, I did not have that thought. I was just impressed by the casting. But to show Carolyn's fashion bona fides in the beginning of the show, there is a styling session with Annette Bening. She's in this black dress. And Carolyn is like, what if you wore this male blazer that we tailored? Which, if you go to the Bugsy premiere, she did wear a beige men's blazer, or what looks to be, could be oversized blazer. What is not captured in the series is Annette Bening was heavily pregnant at the Bugsy premiere. Right. Okay, what else? Did Carolyn Bessette pick Kate Moss's headshot out of... That I would like to know. I'm going to guess that didn't happen. Not exactly. Again, according to this Carolyn Bessette biography, it was Calvin Klein whose initial impulse was to pick Kate Moss for a new campaign. He was recently out of rehab. the company was they say this in the episode you know was not doing well it was in the red he knew he had to reinvent somehow and he was going to use Kate Moss then he got cold feet and was like no let's get a more traditional model and that's when Carolyn Bessette came in and was like no no no she's it she's cool let's go with her and also at one point Carolyn Bessette moved apartments to a place on Waverly where Johnny Depp was living in the back garden apartment with Kate Moss. So they probably became friendly during that time period as well. Well, as a waif who also didn't like to brush her hair, it makes sense that she would be into Kate Moss. Like, that's not surprising at all. I like to imagine they probably smoked cigarettes together in Johnny Depp's backyard garden. I'm sure they did. Okay. The briefly mentioned Mark Wahlberg, Calvin Klein controversy. I wasn't even familiar with that. In the scheme of Mark Wahlberg scandals, I don't remember this at all. This is not in reference to the hate crime that he did jail time for. This is referring to an incident that happened in 1993 at the House of Talent Manager Gary Harrington. It was to celebrate the 29th birthday of Alec Kirshian. Kirshian is the director of Madonna's Truth or Dare. And somehow, this is from an old People magazine, a brawl took place between Madonna's people and Wahlberg that, I quote, resembled the hip-hop version of the OK Chorale per witnesses at the time. Madonna spokesperson told People that Wahlberg called one of the singer's group members a homo. Then others claimed Madonna started it because she heard Wahlberg had been dissing her in the press. Then they started hurling sexually explicit insults at each other. No idea what that could be. And then things got physical when Wahlberg punched out Guy Ossiri. Guy Ossiri ran Madonna's record company, Maverick Records. And is an icon in his own right. And not a homo. Just going to put that out there. It's funny. Mark Wahlberg has talked about this incident because he almost lost a role in a movie that Penny Marshall was doing because of this. And where he does admit like, yeah, I got in a fight in LA with three guys and I broke someone's nose. And it was Madonna's people. So she called the cops on me and made up this bullshit story and said a bunch of shit that I didn't do. It's like, no, you have a history of violence and brushes with the law. He claims that Penny Marshall called him and was like, I'm not going to do a Penny Marshall impression, although I'm tempted. Honestly, why not? What the fuck did you do, Mark? Is that a good Penny Marshall? No. I don't think so. The only reason I getting into this is that in an interview that Mark Wahlberg gave he claims that Penny Marshall was like what the fuck did you do He told her that story and she was like you know what Fuck it I going to give you the role anyway Well, she didn't think it was that bad, clearly. He also talked about this in 2011 in a Vanity Fair article where he claims that Madonna still owes him an apology. I think he's going to be waiting a long time for that. I also want to discuss, there's a moment in this scene, they are choosing to deal with Calvin Klein's sexuality in such an interesting way. Well, they're taking the open secret route, which to my understanding is kind of how it was. Right. Calvin Klein was married to a woman, Kelly Klein, for a very long time. He is now with a man, has many male partners over the last 10 or 15 years. But there's this moment where he identifies as bisexual now. There you go. But it was probably a strategic choice at the time in fashion for him to marry a woman in the 80s and 90s, whatever. This is all to say Alessandra Novello, who is playing Calvin Klein, which my favorite subgenre is Alessandra Novello playing fashion designers because he's the best thing about Neon Demon. He is playing a version of Tom Ford in that movie. oh right i completely forgot about that i blocked that movie out i've never seen you more upset after a film than when we saw neon demon together never need to see that again absolutely not but there's this moment as calvin klein where he's like well we have to release a statement and then his wife kelly klein played by leela george who we love from that awful cape blanchett series the hottest woman alive goes you want the statement to come from you and he goes no i love it and kelly klein apparently loves this show she's been posting about it a lot well i mean her book pools is featured prominently in a scene i know and i remember that book from the 90s like i remember seeing it at bookstores and stuff so i was like fuck i wonder how much it is now it's like 200 bucks i'm not doing that but i bet it's fab i think it's a worthwhile business purchase for the office anyway we should move on we have other things to talk about I continue to be thrilled that this podcast is sponsored by The RealReal, which is the best place to shop authenticated luxury handbags, clothing, watches, and so much more. I think that when a lot of people think about The RealReal, they're like, this is where I'll go to find a Louis Vuitton handbag or a party dress or something. And it's great for those things, but it's also great for classic, simple separates. So you're Carolyn Bissette-pilled. I'm not even going to deny that. Obviously, I am. And on the RealReal, you could input your size and then search for something basic like long black skirt, which is what I've been doing this week. I found three that I liked, all returnable. I ordered them and we'll see what actually fits me. Because usually when you shop for vintage online, you can't return anything. And no brick and mortar vintage store has like three long black skirts in my size. So truly there's nowhere else that I can shop like this. Anyway, what have you been buying? Well, I do have some credit from selling. so I wanted to get your opinion on this Yoji I think very Carolyn Bessette inspired skirt I was about to say if you say yes I'm adding it to my cart and buying it now what do you think of this that's great yes definitely buy I approve see that's all the encouragement I needed it was on my obsession list forever boom it's in the cart let's finish this ad so I can actually purchase it selling things on the real real that is the real hack Chelsea because when you sell with the real Reel, they do everything for you from photography and copywriting to shipping, pricing, and customer service. So you can just sit back and get paid. Plus, with over 40 million fashion lovers on the Reel Reel, your items will sell fast. I can guarantee that. After three weeks, basically everything that I had sold was gone. The Reel Reel just makes it so easy. Resale is what they do, so you have the time to do you. Like buying Carolyn Bessette influence pieces. The RealReal is the most trusted name and authenticated luxury resale. With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal. And now get $25 off your first purchase when you go to therealreal.com slash outfit. That's therealreal.com slash outfit to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at therealreal.com slash outfit. On to Wuthering Heights. Sure. Well, what did you think? Because we haven't talked about this at all. I think that I was uniquely suited to enjoy this film as someone that grew up reading fan fiction and has no relationship to the source material. I also, like Emerald Fennell as a middle-aged to elder millennial, grew up on movies like Romy and Michelle and Clueless and Josie and the Pussycats, which were movies that had heightened costume and production design that did not make sense for the world that the movie was taking place in. So for all of those reasons, I fucked with the movie. Oh, I'm totally with you. Like, this is a blockbuster for women. I'm glad that movies like this are being made, and I'm choosing to appreciate this for what it is and not hold it to the same standards as an arthouse film. I'd rather watch this than Deadpool or Spider-Man, all the other shit that they make. And yeah, I'm sure that we would prefer the Sofia Coppola or the Catherine Brea version of Wuthering Heights, but I'll take this. Yeah, I mean, those are the movie's buy-ins Because the more I have now come to understand this week of what the plot of Wuthering Heights is, it is very clear that Emerald Fennell just wrote what seems to be her memory as a teenager reading that book as a screenplay because there are so many departures from the book. Right, but I feel like this adaptation seems to be more aligned with Disney retellings of classic fairy tales, right? They're not true to the source material because the source material is extremely fucking dark. And we don't want to see the ugly stepsisters cut off their toes to fit in the glass slipper. We want to see mice that are fashion designers. Yeah, but the thing is that Emerald Fennell would want someone to cut their foot off to fit into a shoe. Maybe that's true. I don't know. For me, while I enjoyed this film, I actually feel like I'm the one person that doesn't have a strong opinion about it. And I think that that is because I'm completely unfamiliar with the source material also. So I don't have any expectations going in. And because I had no awareness of the plot, I was interested in where the story was going. I do agree with you. What I'm more fascinated by is the fact that it seems as a culture, everyone has decided that they just hate Emerald Fennell as a filmmaker. And as a natural born hater, the fact that I have neutral feelings about this person kind of fascinates me. Like something that everyone hates that I'm like, I actually don't have an opinion on this. Well, for me, I didn't love Promising Young Woman. Oh, no, I disliked Promising Young Woman. But I liked Salt Burn a lot. And I think with Emerald Fennell, it's like these aren't necessarily movies for cinephiles. Like they are very, very mainstream accessible films despite having these dark themes, right? Yeah, the best that I can glean from what people don't like about her is that they feel that she mistakes provocative elements in her film for profundery. And I just have never taken her film seriously. I don't think they're meant to be taken seriously. I think they're definitely meant to be taken seriously, but we don't take them that seriously because we more just view them as entertainment than something that has like a ton of depth to it. Even though her films touch upon very deep issues, especially in the case of Promising Young Woman. I guess people feel that it's dealt with at a very surface level. Which is a fair criticism. And then with something like Salt Burn, it's a muddled meditation about class. But to me, she wanted to make a millennial version of Talented Mr. Ripley, set in the mid-aughts. I don't have an issue with that. Well, I think her intent is, like, really good. Because we don't get these sort of like big budget romance blockbuster movies anymore. And that is another criticism that I've noticed is like, well, she's this, again, surface level provocateur and she doesn't really go there. And it's like, guys, this is about as transgressive as you can get in a studio level film. Like, what do you want? Todd Solons to do his interpretation of Wuthering Heights? I mean, that I would love to see. also these people don't fuck that's the other thing i don't understand about this film but we'll get into it in a second no let's get into it now because i feel completely deceived by the trailer i was promised fucking and kinky sex i got none of that shit okay well there's two ways to discuss this one is the fact that in the book they don't fuck they do not have sex and as i've gone down the rabbit hole of the literary community discussing this book, I guess there is a way of reading the book that they are actually half-siblings. That Heathcliff is not just a boy the father picked up out of the goodness of his heart, it's because it's his bastard son. That would make a little more sense, don't you think? It would make a little more sense and it would also be way kinkier that these half-siblings are fucking which is my other issue with this film and I felt like this was my initial feeling when I watched it I was like I don't know if this shows my limitation when it comes to reading classic literature but I'm like this just more feels like Romeo and Juliet meets Dangerous Liaisons but now that I understand the plot of the book more I'm like no I think she was just jamming this doomed love story into a movie where the source material doesn't have that shit at all it is about generational trauma. Of course, I completely understand the criticisms that I'm seeing online by people that are fans of the book, by people that understand the book, and by people who feel that this film is a complete misread of what the book is actually about. I get it. But for me, I'm like, oh, I have no idea what this book is about. So great. Although hearing you say that she wrote this film for her, what did you say, her 14-year-old self? That's what I think. She has been on record in saying oh i cast jacob alordi as heathcliff because that's how heathcliff looked on my teenage paperback of withering heights but like it just feels like someone's memory from 20 years ago of a book like if i was forced to write an adaptation of the great gatsby right now from memory totally but also that would explain the sex scenes because that's what like a 14-year-old thinks that sex scenes are. This is the thing I will knock her for. So there's a montage of them having an affair and they are both clothed multiple times and she's on top multiple times. Yeah, same position. I mean, there's like one scene where we see him eating her out. I was like, why would you have a montage of all the same position? That was my thought as well. It's like, let's get some different shit going on. Because we just recorded that VIP episode it's like we've just watched like 40 great freaky sex scenes so I think we came into this having seen some of the greats so I was expecting something fucking weird and also if you're gonna change the source material which I guess here at the every outfit podcast we're giving our stamp of like we're fine for you to change the source material especially if we've never read the source material but if you're going to do something where it's like kathy and heathcliff are having sex and having this affair behind everyone's backs really go there do something with it well also like can you imagine the pent-up desire that they would feel towards each other after having this attraction for so long like when they first fucked i didn't even feel that release really well can we also discuss the fact which is something we got into in the VIP episode we did about great movie sex scenes is a lot of the great movie sex scenes that we talked about are yes two very attractive people but they also have incredible chemistry with each other and a symptom of why films feel so sexless or lack eroticism is they're just putting two popular hot actors together who don't have any chemistry and Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie don't really have chemistry. I believe them as siblings. They have sibling energy. See, I've read some reviews where people have talked about the lack of chemistry, and I didn't totally feel that. I just feel like they didn't have anything that sexy to do. Yeah, like the kinkiest, sexiest scene, which I'm gonna guess wasn't in the book, is when two people who work at Wuthering Heights are having some freaky barnyard sex. Right. And Heathcliff lays his entire body on Kathy and covers her mouth. They're like, that was hotter than any of the times they actually had sex. Oh, for sure. Do you want me to tell you the differences between the book and the movie? I think most people probably know, but give the CliffsNotes version to those that have not been on the internet this week. To the Heathcliffs, give the HeathcliffsNotes. The biggest thing is that I do feel like it's worth mentioning because oftentimes when you're adapting a book, especially into a movie, you have to streamline some things. You can't have every character, but she just gets rid of the brother character. Kathy has an actual brother. Remember, she says, I'm going to name you after my dead brother. Yeah. She has an actual ass brother named Hindley, and he's actually the abusive one towards Heathcliff. Right. Emerald Fennell just decided to make the father of that character get rid of the brother. Now, a lot of people have gone on Emerald Fennell's case that it's like, you didn't even do the second part of the book because there's a whole second generation of Lintons and Earnshaws that Heathcliff terrorizes. And also, Kathy is a ghost and haunts them, which by the way, sounds much cooler. Kathy is a ghost does sound cool. Yeah, the movie just becomes the others. but in emerald finnell's defense which i don't even like her that much as a film director but almost none of the adaptations movie adaptations especially do that part of the book so there's that but kathy does end up having a child which is the big departure of this film okay didn't need that did you cry at the end of the film yes interesting i did cry at the end tat was like openly weeping in the lobby afterwards. I was like, damn, people were really sad. There was lots of girls crying in the bathroom after. I think it really got my audience like in a Titanic capacity. That's fascinating. I saw it with my mom. We went to the 10 a.m. screening at the Grove so that she could be home in time for Majan. And I needed to see it in the morning because that's when I had a babysitter. My mom was crying and I was looking at her and I'm like, why? These are toxic people who were terrible to each other and ruined everyone's lives around them. Okay, but I'm team Heathcliff. See, Kathy, I kind of didn't fuck with and I was like, why is this bitch so annoying? And then I was like, oh, she's like a 30 something year old woman that's playing a teenage girl character. So obviously I can see how like an annoying teenage age girl might be like that but it's just genuinely weird coming from like an adult woman yeah that's another criticism i've seen is like why are these people so old or like why is emerald finnell get to make this film why is margot robbie playing an 18 year old and i'll explain why margot robbie's production company has produced each of emerald finnell's movies if you remember emerald finnell was Midge, the pregnant Barbie, and Barbie. Margot Robbie made a movie that made a billion dollars. She wanted to work with Emerald Fennell. Emerald Fennell wanted to make Wuthering Heights for reasons I don't understand. As someone that has never read the book or watched any of the other films. I watched the Andrea Arnold one. It is on Tubi. Tubi's on it, man. We don't even do ads for them, but they are on it because you can find a lot of the adaptations of Wuthering Heights on Tubi right now. Someone in their licensing department was like, you know what? let's get let's get the 1939 one let's get the andre arnold one no what i don't understand is this if you wanted to do a film that's such a departure from the source material you've won an oscar you paired with an actress who made a studio a billion dollars you're at that studio making this film why does it have to be an adaptation of this book why couldn't it just be an original story inspired by, you know, I want to do a gothic romance book. Because it's this beloved story and people would want to go see it because it's another Wuthering Heights movie. Like there wouldn't be so many of them if people weren't interested. So many films, I mean. This is true. And if you want a straight up adaptation, there are plenty of them. There is even one with a POC Heathcliff. That's the Andrea Arnold one. This is not me co-signing on her casting Jacob Elordi and whitewashing Heathcliff, but she is interested in artificiality. Like when I was leaving the theater, there weren't so many crying women. There was a group of women who clearly loved the book because in the bathroom, they were talking massive shit. They hated this movie. They were like, what's with the pink dress? Which I think they're referring to the iridescent dress that she has on. And it's like, you gotta buy into that. Okay, well, I also have my criticisms of that particular choice. But for me, I didn't mind that the costumes weren't historically accurate. Although sometimes I feel like it veered in a weird direction, like with the iridescent dress, which I just felt looked kind of cheap. Right. Like my problem is cheapness, not the sort of futuristic aspect. I felt the same way about the face gems. Kathy doesn't need face gems. And if she's going to have face gems, they should look like Pat McGrath put them there and not some random YouTuber. The face gems were distracting. And again, I'm going to sound like an Emerald Fennell defender, but I will defend her vision in the sense that we talk a lot about this in the realm of people that are on the worst dress list or people who are considered fashion victims. It's not like Emerald Fennell fucked up on the way to making a straight adaptation of Withering Heights. Like she very intentionally made this movie to look the way that it did. Like, there's that shot where Jacob Elordia's Heathcliff leaves on a horse that looks straight out of Gone with the Wind. Like, I mean, just a bright red, unnatural sky. Well, and that I liked. I liked how artificial Kathy's world felt, especially when she went to her new house. Because that was a fully constructed set. The exterior garden was also on a soundstage. And I feel like that level of artifice made it look really major and reminded us of all of those epic technicolor movies from the 40s and 50s. And I feel like that was the coolest thing about Wuthering Heights. And those sets looked like sets. Sometimes sets can, even as fantastical as they can be, look like they maybe are in a real world or a heightened real world, but you could tell those were sets. And I have to imagine that was on purpose. Oh, for sure. And again, more of this, please. They also did that with Barbie. They built those sets. They did it old school. I want blockbusters like this. But in regards to the whitewashing, I thought that Kathleen Newman-Breming raised a very good point in her article for Refinery29 about this, which was that while she doesn't support the practice of whitewashing, she also doesn't think that an Emerald Fennell adaptation with that POC Heathcliff would be a better movie necessarily. And I'm oversimplifying her argument and I will link to her article in the show notes, but she argues that Emerald Fennell is not the correct director to tackle the racial dynamics of this story and that a story where a POC man is obsessing over a white woman who goes on to abuse and degrade another white woman, that would be a difficult story for even the most clued-in skilled director to tackle. And it shouldn't necessarily be this woman that's doing that, which I agree with. And Emerald Fennell practiced blind casting in other roles because you have Hong Chao as Nellie and Shahzad Latif as Edgar, which I guess you're not supposed to be attracted to Edgar because he's like stuffy or something. But it's like, well, this is an attractive man. Like fall in love with Edgar, Catherine. It's fine. Yeah, he was just pretty boring, though, I have to say. Can we talk about my favorite character and my favorite portrayal which is Alice and Oliver as Isabella. Yeah. Who is Edgar's ward. I guess in the book, he's actually her daughter. Yeah, because I was like, who is this bitch and why is she there? In this world, we're just taken in children. But there is that scene. I mean, how you're introduced to her is she is explaining in excruciatingly boring fashion the plot of Romeo and Juliet to Edgar. See, I just assumed she was like his child bride at first or something. Evidently not. also I feel like people don't appreciate Emerald Fennell's humor in her movies her darkly comic humor because there's that scene where Isabella gives Catherine a gift she says it's flowers but they just look like vaginas right and the mushroom the 3d mushroom that looks like a dick I liked all that stuff but again where was the actual sex you want to be subversive where was Isabella and Catherine having sex with each other. I like all the sexual motifs in this film, but they just remind me that there's not a lot of actual sex happening. We were promised a horny, horny movie, and it was tepid. Yeah. Although I would say the real winner is the art director who designed the gothic lace title treatment for Wuthering Heights, which tragically wasn't in the actual film. I was like, what the fuck? No, instead it's hair. The hair was not an improvement. Yeah. Shout out to the art director as well because this movie was very gooey and ooey lots of hands going into gelatinous egg yolks and dead fish that are somehow in some clear gelatinous mold again there was kind of visual surfacy stuff like that that was giving weirdness but there weren't actually a ton of weird like broader choices that were made she edged us she did but i guess she ultimately got our ass, you know? Yeah, but the whole thing of edging is that to use the film's tagline, you come undone at the end. All right. Shall we move on to another far sexier film? A film that actually did get us off? A film that actually does fuck, which is Pillian. Last week, we went to a Q&A with the cast and the director. It was directed by this guy named Harry Leighton. It stars Alexander Skarsgård, Harry Melling, who you may know if you're a Harry Potter freak. We are not. It was moderated by Francois Arnaud from Heated Rivalry, who is the out hockey player, the very hunky man. And normally, like, a Q&A hosted by an actor, like, it gives me anxiety just thinking about it. But he was so smart. He was prepared. He asked interesting questions. I was so relieved. And thankfully, the questions in the audience were very curated and not weird at all. Yeah. You and I were clutching each other and we were like, should we go? I know. When they start like passing a microphone around, I always start to get scared. Like, I don't know how people like them who are promoting a film are constantly faced with Q&As. I don't know how they handle the anxiety of it. If we can't even sit there comfortably for 10 minutes. Maybe it's because we've only lived in Los Angeles and New York and we know that invariably if the longer the Q&A goes on the more likely it is that someone's going to be like will you read my script which we actually saw someone ask that at that Nicolas Cage Q&A that we went to genius movie anyway I'm so glad we got to go to that shout out to our friend Ryan from Prada Ryan Weaving who hooked us up Wow. I feel like Carrie Bradshaw. I know. I don't know if he likes being referred to as Ryan from Prada, but he does work at Prada. In a Carolyn Bissette type role at that. If he doesn't, we'll be apologizing for it next week. So yes, the movie Pillion. It fucks. I was calling it a rom-dom. I guess Harry Lighton, the writer-director, has called it a dom-com. It works as both. It's romantic. It's comedic at times. It is heavy on the BDSM and Dom Sub lifestyle. It is based on a 2020 novel called Box Hill, which we learned during the Q&A was handed to the writer-director by a BBC executive. It is about the British gay biker scene of the 1970s. So the idea that a BBC executive was like, I think you'd like this and want to adapt it. Another thing we got from the Q&A is that originally he had adapted it to be set in the Roman gladiator times. Oh, yeah. And then finally a friend was like, why don't you just set it for today? And he was like, okay. And I think it's much stronger for it. Yeah, I had really high expectations after watching the trailer. And I wasn't disappointed. I really loved this film. To me, it felt deeply human. It was also executed with a great deal of consideration and taste. And it's also different from a lot of other BDSM movies, which often kind of are more overtly about abuse, you know, like The Night Porter or Elle or what have you. Yeah, I think the success of this film obviously is the casting of Alexander Skarsgård as the Dom and Harry Melling as the sub. But it really has the same structure of a film of someone who hasn't found their passion. Like in another movie, it would be like they start volunteering or they learn they're a good cook. In this movie, he finds out he's just a really good sub and that brings him a lot of joy and contentment in his life. Yeah, it's more like a coming-of-age movie, but for someone that's a little bit older and hasn't figured their shit out necessarily. I think it also avoids a lot of tropes that I think other independent films recently have indulged in, which I was happy at how singular the movie was in the sense that you are just following the Harry Mellon character the entire time. I feel like other movies, the impulse would be like, you know, we follow Alexander Skarsgård for a little bit and learn about his life or we get more into a subplot with Harry Melling's parents or something. But it really is through his point of view, his experience. Totally. And I would last like not even 24 hours in a subdom relationship, or at least this one that is depicted. Because it's not like they just have this sort of like subdom dynamic in a sexual context. It's like this man has to clean Alexander Skarsgård's depressing apartment for most of the movie. Yes, I think what makes it different from other BDSM or subdom movies is it's about a 24-7 lifestyle. It's not like some nine and a half weeks shit where he's like taking her shopping and taking her to nice dinners. It's like this man is literally trapped doing domestic labor in this man's apartment. And he doesn't even get to sleep in the bed. At least Kim Basinger got to sleep in that bed. Not even that. I get it. The first night he sleeps on the floor and he has no pillow or blanket because he didn't think that that's how this hookup was going to end. But I don't know how long this relationship goes on for weeks, months, however long it is. He never gets a pillow or a blanket. That's when I would rebel. I know. And he ultimately does. Because guys, if you think that Mr. Big is emotionally withholding, like, wait until you see this Alexander Skarsgård character. Can I admit something? What? I don't think I would be very good in a dominant, submissive relationship, let alone a 24-7 dominant, submissive relationship. but I have been in love with Alexander Skarsgård since the second season of True Blood. This man could make me bark. I would do awful things if he wanted me to. Well, especially in this movie because he looks so hot because on top of just being a naturally extremely attractive guy with a ton of riz, he also has these fabulous biker outfits. I think the choice to have him be an outlier amongst his biker gang by wearing all white was a very effective choice. Yeah, because he's wearing more like motocross stuff. It's not like he's just wearing like the classic denim biker jacket or whatever. Although his character is interesting because the Harry Mellon character is more overtly nerdy. He's socially awkward. He lives with his parents. Well, yeah, you get that from moment one. It's not a very long film and it has a great economy of story because when you meet the Harry Melling character, he is performing with his father in a barbershop quartet at trivia night at a pub on Christmas Eve. Like, that's what he has going on in his life. And so from like minute one, you're like, oh, he's pathetic. I get it. And then he goes home to his parents. You're like, oh, so he's double pathetic. But Alexander Skarsgård is just as weird, if not weirder, in terms of his personality. He's just hot so he can hide behind that. Like he is also awkward and can't really clearly can't connect with society on some level. For sure. The glasses cover up a lot. Yeah. Also, there is so much like capital A acting in this film, especially that scene when Alexander Skarsgård is meeting the parents was really amazing. And you sort of see the tension of like, you know, their freaky, freaky little relationship sort of butting up against the reality of the real world. But this is what I enjoyed about the film because I feel like another film, even an independent film, wouldn't have the restraint to have the parents be okay with their dynamic. Do you know what I mean? Like, the parents aren't like, what? Dominant, submissive, what's going on here? It's more from an emotional truth that the mother is like, I don't think you're good for my son. I think that's what makes the film actually more universal is we've all been with a person that you want more from, who's been withholding, that you feel like mistreats you and maybe you're doing all the domestic labor. This is just literally that. And I think we can all relate to just a parent who wants the best for their child. It doesn't fall into that like you have this freaky lifestyle and you need to stop. totally and it's not as simple as the fact that alexander skarsgård doesn't care and is being a dick to him it's like he is on some level incapable of being normal in that way i don't get the sense that he totally doesn't give a shit i think he just cannot be a normal civilized member of society for whatever reason and that's what makes him even more attractive again the i could fix him was really activated while watching the film. Well, that and his like pierced prosthetic dick, which was iconic. I mean, not to keep hyping our VIP episode we did about movie sex scenes, but we did have a category about best male full frontal nudity and we had to discuss his dick in Pillian. The way the dick is introduced is a completely unique way of showing a dick. Because they show the head of his Prince Albert? They don't even show the head at first. They just show the side of the shaft in his hand as he's like pulling it out of his pants. Well, I have been on record that this is the only way that you can show male nudity. Because if it's an erect penis, it's rated X. So it has to be flaccid. And the only way I think effectively to show male nudity is just pieces of a penis and from the side. Give me a little shaft. Maybe give me a hint of pubes. Show me the head with a Prince Albert in it. Yeah. So, so good. Also, we should note that Alexander Skarsgård is part of this BDSM biker gang, essentially. And all of the guys in the biker gang are actually people from the London kink scene, so they look completely correct. They have the right clothes, they have the right piercings. It's so legit. That was my favorite thing as we were leaving the Q&A and in the Q&A, the director revealed that Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling were surrounded by actual gay bikers. And you were like, oh, that's why it looks so legit. It's like, yeah, there's no way that you could make an actor be that authentic. No, it's true. And that's also what they did in Cruising and why that film looks real too. Although Jake Shears from The Scissor Sisters makes his acting debut in this film. I thought he was good. I also, what I love about this movie is I think Harry Lighton deals with, in juxtaposition to Wuthering Heights, what is just on the surface a very transgressive idea about a 24-7 dom-sub gay relationship and just deals with it so matter-of-factly and earnestly. Like when they all go on a camping trip, you're like, yeah. Wholesome. You're like, this is lovely. And they're carrying these tables and you're like, oh, they're all going to have lunch together. And then you realize that all of the subs are laying on the tables waiting to get fucked by their doms when they feel like it. So good. I loved that. And I loved the way that that was shot also. But yeah, Jake Shears. If you guys miss the Scissor Sisters, they were a indie sleaze era pop rock band that was very ubiquitous in New York for a period of time. But because all roads lead back to sex in the city, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that this is the band that sang the song called Let's Have a Kiki. And that is the song that Sarah Jessica Parker performed on her episode of Glee. I was unaware of this and you sent me that clip and I... You've never seen that before? No, I avoided Glee my entire life. Obviously, I avoided Glee too. I'm not a monster. But like, I just can't believe you've never seen Sarah Jessica Parker singing Let's Have a Kiki. Let's just drop in some of the audio. Let's have a kiki. I wanna have a kiki. Lock the door. Tight. Let's have a kiki. Mother. I'm gonna let you have it. Let's have a kiki. I wanna have a kiki. Die. Turn. Work. Let's have a kiki. We're gonna serve. And work. And turn. And hop hop, honey. I love how psycho the energy is. What's going on? It's Thanksgiving and everyone is an orphan and so they end up at an apartment. How does Sarah Jessica Parker factor into this? Is she a teacher as well? A substitute teacher? I have no fucking clue. I've never watched the episode. I've just seen this one clip of her singing Let's Have a Kiki and then Lea Michele like starts singing about turkeys and shit. I don't get it. I don't know what's happening. It's Thanksgiving. I at least got that much from the clip. I'm just like, I don't understand. Are they at a teacher's house for Thanksgiving? think this seems inappropriate it's just funny because it's such a product of its time like this would never happen today because because i think it would be accepted that sarah jessica parker singing let's have a kiki is like deeply cringe oh sorry i'm still focused on the are these underage high school students having thanksgiving at their teacher's house no i wasn't talking about that you're correct i don't know it has like the energy like it makes me feel like i'm on a tj max pride float yeah second term obama was crazy yeah anyway watch pillion watch pillion is better than wuthering heights it just is or i guess do a double feature yeah honestly do a double feature and convince your parents to go with you to both what order though a wuthering heights and then pillion yeah that's what i thought too wuthering heights is like the foreplay and then you'll actually get the sex you're looking for in Pillion. Also, the one thing these two movies have in common is that they both feature incredible makeovers. Jacob Elordi's makeover, of course, in Wuthering Heights and Harry Mellon's makeover in Pillion is like one of the great movie makeovers of all time. Like it is up there with like Judy Greer in Jawbreaker kind of makeover. Now, to be fair, we don't see the process of this makeover. We just see the after results. And it's a quick cut of him with his shaggy hair to suddenly he's got a shaved head. He's got the locked necklace that shows that he's Alexander Skarsgård. He's got his own motocross suit. Sometimes shaving your head is just like the best thing to do. It's the chain and the lock and the shaved head. And the biker clothes, the motocross clothes, which like fit him exquisitely. Well, that's a good costume designer. I've seen some people make the point that it's like Harry Melling is too unattractive for that role. And it is kind of a plot point. At one point, his co-worker, he's showing Alexander Skarsgård to his co-worker. And she's like, you're with him? Like, what does he see in you? But it's like the casting of Harry Melling is the whole point. No, it's perfect. We don't need this to be red, white, and royal blue. Yeah, you can't have Timothee Chalamet as this character. You need someone who is awkward and unconventional looking. And therefore, to your point about the makeover, it's even more extreme when he shaves his head. Yeah. Don't take a job away from a character actor and then give that character actor a makeover midway through the film. That's how you do it. Sorry. All I'm thinking about is the tweet that I can't unsee where they put Richard Kine's face next to Colin Farrell as the penguin. and it's like we used to give character actors these roles, but now we just make attractive actors look like character actors. It's horrifying. You haven't seen The Housemaid yet, but the Amanda Seyfried character is not supposed to be hot. They took that role away from a character actor. Excuse me now? In the book, it's not a hot character. I thought it was a single white female thing because Cindy Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried look very similar. No, it's not like that. Or it's not supposed to be like that. I don't know. I haven't read the book. Tat has read the book and she had some thoughts about the film, which I quite enjoyed. Again, is someone coming into it with zero understanding of the book. Well, there you go. We've said it all. Or have we? Well, normally we would have something to apologize for, but I don't really think we fucked up anything last week. Although the audio from that episode was fucked up, we did fix it and re-upload it. So sorry to anyone that listened to the first iteration of that. Well, I guess we preemptively have something to apologize for, which is if you're wondering when we're going to talk about New York Fashion Week, Marc Jacobs' latest show, our thoughts about the America's Next Top Model documentary on Netflix, we will be having that conversation shortly, but it will be on our VIP channels. So if you would like to hear our thoughts and listen to the episode that we have referenced several times in this episode our favorite sex scenes in cinema history join our patreon or apple subscriptions shall we have sir jessica parker play us off today if we must all right guys bye bye let's have a kiki a kiki is a party for calming all your nerves we're spilling tea and dishing just Desserts when they deserve And though the sun is rising Few may choose to leave So shave that lid and we'll all bid adieu to your ennui Let's have a kiki I wanna have a kiki Lock the doors Tight Let's have a kiki Mother I'm gonna let you have it Let's have a kiki I wanna have a kiki Dive Turn Work Let's have a kiki We're gonna turn And work And turn