0:00

Hey listeners, Dana Stevens here. This

0:02

week, in addition to our regular Wednesday episode

0:04

of the Slate Culture Gab Fest, we wanted

0:06

to present another podcast we thought you would

0:09

enjoy, especially if you're craving more cultural coverage.

0:11

It's called Life and Art from FT Weekend,

0:13

and it's the flagship culture podcast of the

0:15

Financial Times. Life and Art comes

0:17

out twice a week. On Mondays, host Lila

0:20

Raptopoulis has a guest on the show to

0:22

explore everything from food and travel to creativity

0:24

and how to live a good life. And

0:27

then on Fridays, three guests from the

0:29

FT Universe discuss a new cultural release from

0:31

the legacy of Hayao Miyazaki to whether the

0:33

new Mean Girls movie should have been made.

0:36

In the episode we're sharing today, they revisit an

0:38

old classic, the 2003 rom-com,

0:40

Something's Gotta Give. If you

0:42

like what you hear, search Life and Art from

0:44

FT Weekend, wherever you get your podcasts and follow

0:47

the show there. And we'll see you

0:49

next Wednesday with another episode of the Culture Gab Fest.

0:53

Welcome to Life and Art from FT

0:55

Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulis, and this is

0:57

our Friday chat show. It's

1:00

winter, the season of cold weather,

1:02

dark days, and very few

1:04

new releases. So today we're going

1:06

to do something a little different and bring a

1:08

classic film into the studio. And

1:11

not just any classic. We have

1:13

chosen a rom-com, a cinematic masterpiece,

1:15

the 2003 Nancy Myers original,

1:18

Something's Gotta Give. So

1:20

Something's Gotta Give, you probably remember it.

1:22

It stars Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.

1:25

She is Erika, a successful divorced

1:27

playwright. He is Harry, also known

1:29

as old, old, old hair, a

1:32

successful record exec. And

1:34

the twist of the film, which you may remember,

1:36

is that he's not young and neither is she.

1:39

It's a movie about a romance between a man

1:41

in his sixties and a woman in her fifties.

1:44

When the film starts, Harry's actually dating Erika's daughter,

1:46

played by Amanda Peat, who is in her twenties.

1:48

And then of course, drama and self-discovery in

1:50

still. So let's get into

1:52

it. I am here with two wonderful guests in

1:55

the New York studio. I of course am Lila,

1:57

old, old, old lie. With

2:00

me is comedian and actress Nagin Farzad.

2:02

Nagin is our very first guest on

2:05

the chat show from outside the FT

2:07

universe She is the host of the

2:09

fake the nation podcast, which is really

2:11

an excellent fun for interesting show And

2:14

in the words of the film she is a woman to

2:16

love Hello,

2:19

thanks so much for having me and I have

2:21

a pair of scissors here if at any point

2:23

I need to rip off my own clothes We

2:27

have a no turtlenecks in the room today We

2:30

did not come prepared Welcome

2:32

to my right is the great

2:34

Eric Platt the FT's senior corporate

2:36

finance Correspondent and I have

2:38

to say Eric was an inspiration for this episode

2:40

because he is a huge fan of this film

2:43

and the Nancy Myers universe so kind

2:48

Welcome Eric I watch it once a quarter

2:51

at least Which

2:53

is probably says more about me than anything else. I

2:56

also love that you That

2:59

by fiscal quarter Corporate

3:04

reporter So

3:08

before we start Eric just to jump further

3:10

into that every couple maybe every quarter you

3:12

will post a scene on your Instagram

3:14

From something's got to give Like

3:17

it'll be dying Keaton crying and typing

3:20

And you will write I don't know like me

3:23

filing a scoop from vacation How did you get

3:25

into this film? Like what is your love for

3:27

it about? I think it hits so many of

3:29

these beautiful themes right one about loneliness and relationships.

3:31

It's also this fantastic comedy Yeah, like um the

3:34

scene where she's crying. I don't know someone could

3:36

make those noises with their mouth I mean

3:38

that kind of guttural pain And

3:42

yet you're laughing through this sadness and

3:44

I think there's something about that. That's

3:47

Kind of uplifting. It's also I'm a huge fan of

3:50

a rom-com like you've got mail and This

3:52

one just it's so dry like it's it's sumptuous

3:54

almost right it gives you so much time with

3:56

these characters to really fall in love with them

3:58

and something about that's so

4:00

familial and why I keep coming back to it. Cool.

4:04

Nakeem, we are thrilled to have you here. When

4:06

I asked you to watch this film, had

4:08

you seen it before? Had you not? Did

4:10

you remember it fondly? Did you think I

4:12

was nuts? I had totally seen it. When

4:15

did it come out again? I

4:18

had totally seen it before. It's entirely possible that I

4:20

saw it in the theater. And

4:22

I also, it's also, I think one of those movies that

4:24

was just sort of on the TV. So

4:27

if you were flipping like you could catch

4:29

Diane Keaton wailing. Totally. I

4:31

must have seen it during some sort of

4:34

like hallmark breakup in my life or

4:36

something. Where you

4:38

cry so much that it does

4:40

become comical. You make yourself laugh

4:42

because you're like, what am I

4:44

even doing? Like ultimately this guy

4:46

was dumb. Like it's funny too

4:48

because you're just like, she's crying

4:50

over Jack Nicholson. I know. And I

4:53

mean, I gotta be honest. I'm not

4:55

sleeping with him like in that movie.

4:57

You know what I mean? And

5:00

so. Looks like he's about to pop a little

5:02

bit. It doesn't look healthy. But like he starts

5:04

with his heart attack. Right.

5:08

Let's recap the plot for listeners who may not

5:10

know. So Something's Gotta Give is

5:13

written and directed by the great Nancy

5:15

Meyers who also did The Holiday, The

5:17

Parent Trap, What Women Want.

5:20

It's complicated. Lots of

5:22

films about very successful women with very

5:24

nice kitchens. First

5:26

thing to know about this film, everybody's rich. Everybody's

5:30

white. Everybody's white.

5:32

In the first 10 minutes, Harry Jack

5:35

Nicholson is driving to his young girlfriend's

5:37

house in the Hamptons for this sexy

5:39

weekend. And

5:41

immediately they are surprised by

5:43

her mother, Erica, who's Diane Keaton

5:46

and props to her

5:48

aunt, who's Frances McDormand, who I did not

5:51

remember was a part of this movie. Me

5:53

neither. I was surprised. I

5:55

know. Okay. Then just as Harry

5:57

and the daughter, Marin, retired. to

6:00

bed, ready to consummate their

6:02

relationship. Harry has a heart attack,

6:04

he gets rushed to the hospital, and the only

6:07

place that he can stay to recover is Diane

6:09

Keaton's home just with her.

6:11

So there's like days and days where

6:13

the two of them are together, pitter-pattering

6:16

around the house, bantering, until they

6:18

start to develop feelings. Wearing...they just

6:21

develop feelings wearing all white, both

6:23

of them, on the shores of

6:27

the Hamptons. And she's wearing, as Jack Nicholson

6:29

points out, like why do you wear a

6:32

turtleneck in the middle of summer? She wears

6:34

a turtleneck every day. Because, you

6:36

guys, her neck is disgusting. The woman is 56

6:38

years old. I mean, she's practically

6:41

dead. There's really a whole

6:43

thing about women and age and necks

6:45

and what you will get into.

6:47

I took all this as a metaphor, right? Like,

6:49

I need to protect myself. I can't show any

6:52

skin. I need to be like, everything

6:54

must be covered or else I'm letting someone

6:56

in. Mmm. Yeah. Vulnerability

6:58

shield. Exactly. May

7:00

I add the twist, which is that

7:02

Erica, Diane Keaton, is simultaneously being pursued

7:05

by a hot, younger man. Harry's

7:08

doctor, played by 30-something-year-old Keanu

7:11

Reeves. Spectacular. Yeah. So

7:14

Erica thinks she's sexually retired and is

7:16

now in this love triangle. And the

7:19

question on all of our minds is,

7:22

does she go for the dirty old man

7:24

or does she go for this sexy, young,

7:27

feminist king who idolizes her? And

7:29

the answer surprises no one. Like,

7:34

can we say who she ends up with at

7:36

this point? I think it's been about 21 years,

7:39

so I think it's allowed. Yeah. Spoiler.

7:41

Yeah. So even though she

7:43

ends up with Keanu Reeves in

7:45

Paris and blah, blah, blah, Jack

7:47

Nicholson comes to find her. When

7:50

Keanu sees her with Jack Nicholson,

7:52

he realizes that they're in love

7:54

and he bows out offscreen. And

7:57

she goes back and, you know, they may.

8:00

ever after. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, would

8:02

you would you guys choose Jack over

8:04

Keanu in this situation?

8:07

I would choose Jack over Keanu? No. I

8:11

would choose Keanu. Okay. Okay.

8:14

Like it's funny because my parents said

8:16

something to me recently, which was like,

8:19

you know, obviously we love our children and our

8:22

you know, our grandkids and all that

8:24

stuff. But like, ultimately, we enjoyed the

8:26

company of our peers a lot more.

8:28

They just like said that to my

8:31

face. And I was like,

8:33

I guess Merry Christmas. Yeah.

8:35

And I was like, Oh,

8:38

but I get it. And

8:41

so I think there's something about being

8:43

a generationally bound, you know,

8:45

I think there's something about,

8:47

Oh my God, that's, those are

8:49

my reading glasses. You

8:53

know what I mean? Like, I think that stuff is somehow

8:56

comforting. So

9:01

what transpires feelings wise

9:04

between these three people in this love triangle?

9:06

I mean, I think there's like this sort

9:08

of classic thing that happens with

9:11

Jack Nicholson. And he's

9:13

how old in this movie? 63. 53. Right. Okay.

9:15

The character 63.

9:18

And he's got this

9:20

like total arrested development. He's acting like he's

9:23

a young bachelor in New York City. And

9:26

he's, he's truly behaving like every man

9:28

I dated in my 20s. Like he just doesn't

9:31

want to commit. He goes from woman

9:33

to woman to woman, never been married.

9:36

Right. So he's playing a really

9:38

archetypal character in that sense. And

9:40

in the heart attack is this like, sea

9:43

change event, because when the vessel

9:46

starts to fray, it's

9:49

sad that this guy is still doing

9:51

that. Right. Suddenly like, Oh, and you

9:53

have no one to lean

9:55

on except for a total stranger who

9:58

happens to be Diane Keith. Who

10:00

hates you? Who hates you? Yeah. I

10:03

think that's perfect. When

10:05

I look at Erica, I think

10:07

the arc she's going on is

10:11

she's this neurotic people pleaser, right?

10:13

A successful playwright, clearly well educated,

10:15

but she's close herself off. She's

10:18

also unwilling to kind of step into the gap

10:20

of new relationships, right? She's filling her life with

10:22

hobbies. I'm going to learn French. I'm going to

10:24

write a new play. And

10:27

so this film is just, you're slowly seeing

10:29

those barriers pulled down and what happens when

10:31

she just left with that raw emotion of

10:34

actually letting someone act, letting two people in.

10:36

Yeah. And the joy she finds, right? What,

10:40

in a weekend where she just falls in love with Jack

10:42

Nicholson, she says, right, I

10:44

didn't know I like sex, right? I haven't done it in 20

10:46

years. Yeah, yeah.

10:48

And you just think, wow,

10:51

yeah, you've closed yourself off because

10:53

of the potential pain or the hurt that you might

10:55

experience. Yeah. And so I

10:57

think through her, I see this kind of transformation of like,

11:00

oh, I do want to put myself out there. I do want to

11:02

experience the world. Yeah, absolutely. And

11:04

I think the sex was for her was

11:07

that like sea change event where she realized

11:09

also the scissors. Yeah.

11:11

Take a moment. So literal.

11:14

Yeah. I mean, over

11:16

the course of her changing her sort of

11:18

like outlook on life, she goes from wearing

11:20

turtlenecks to wearing open neck sweaters. Yeah,

11:22

yeah, yeah. Yeah. And

11:25

her turtlenecks are so commented

11:27

on, right? And the

11:29

other hilarious thing was how much attention

11:32

was devoted to her physicality and like

11:34

nothing to his physicality, which was, again,

11:36

maybe he's a nice man, whatever, and

11:39

I hope the best for him and

11:41

all that. But he was gross. Like

11:43

just straight up gross. And

11:46

the fact that nobody talked about it, they're

11:48

just like, oh, he has a thing. What

11:50

thing? What is the thing that he

11:52

supposedly has? I don't see it. It's

11:54

the wink, wink, Jack Nicholson thing. That

11:57

verb, right? I don't know. I don't

11:59

know. I think that's what

12:01

was so special about this movie. It was like,

12:03

look at these two characters who are not your

12:05

like, it's not Meg Ryan and Tom Haney. This

12:08

is your real life. This is something or maybe

12:10

something in your mind that you can approximate as

12:12

a future. Yeah. Yeah. Do

12:15

you want to be sexual in your 50s or 60s? I

12:17

think that's the question, right? Like, well, I've

12:19

got 30 years to go. So we'll find out.

12:21

But like, yeah, I think that's what Nancy's kind

12:23

of pulling apart in all this. Yeah, I hope.

12:29

I'd like to dig a little deeper into like kind of

12:31

what the film is saying and some

12:33

of the themes that we're talking about. One,

12:36

what did we make of the fact that

12:38

everybody was rich and white? Like looking back

12:40

on it now, 21 years

12:42

later, how did it hand

12:44

like, I don't know, how

12:47

that is something about

12:49

it that felt dated,

12:51

dated, it felt like it's no longer part

12:53

of the rom com fantasy. I

12:56

think that's one of the things that age so

12:58

poorly, right? Yeah. When

13:00

Jack is actually giving his background and he says I'm

13:02

in the hip hop industry and her

13:05

response is just, oh, rap, how many words

13:07

can you rhyme with bitch? Right. Right.

13:11

And I think it's meant to be this feminist overture, but really it's just kind

13:13

of completely diminishing.

13:15

Yeah. I

13:17

also just think it's hilarious, you

13:20

know, knowing now like playwrights

13:22

do not earn enough money.

13:26

They just don't. You don't, you're not, it's like

13:28

if they were like, oh, she's a playwright and

13:30

also she writes some episodes of lawn or we're

13:32

talking, then we can talk. Totally.

13:36

But she's not buying a Hampton's house

13:39

on playwright money. Yeah. Yeah.

13:42

There's no way right. That's on time had a

13:44

$10 million house in the Hampton's that wasn't happening.

13:46

But somehow that is the basis for this movie.

13:50

Exactly. Exactly. What

13:53

about the dynamic of men and women, like

13:55

what men are supposed to want and what women are supposed

13:57

to want? Our producer Lulu thinks

13:59

that this movie was more

14:01

progressive than Barbie. Like actually a little

14:04

less obvious that it's about like social conditioning and

14:06

how you fight against gender roles after you get

14:08

to a certain age and that sort of thing

14:10

when Barbie was a little more about

14:12

like girl. It was a little

14:15

bit that like Diane Keaton did

14:17

a full frontal nudity. Like

14:20

Diane Keaton walked so that JLo could

14:22

run. Is there a little bit of

14:24

that going on? Because like,

14:27

you know, I just watched The Mother which is

14:29

why JLo is so heavily on my mind. JLo

14:32

is 54 years old right now. In

14:35

the movie, Diane Keaton is 56. And

14:38

it's funny because it's just like Diane

14:41

Keaton is playing this sort of like

14:43

very much post-menopausal, a little frail, you

14:45

know what I mean? A little like,

14:47

ooh, I might show my wrist. You

14:49

know what I mean? Like a little

14:51

bit of that. And JLo is not

14:54

at all that. She's like basically,

14:56

she's playing a spy. She's kicking

14:58

down doors. She's got abs, lots

15:00

and lots of abs. And

15:03

it's like, oh, that's now the woman

15:06

that's a lot, you know, it's a

15:08

problem as well as, you know, it's

15:11

awesome and bad at the same time. So what

15:13

you're saying is like Diane Keaton in that

15:15

film, the role was women in their

15:18

50s can have desire. It's like kind of that's it.

15:20

Yeah. We're opening the door to

15:23

that. And now it's like, oh. Like a

15:25

little crack in the door. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

15:28

But they did talk about her like she was 75 and

15:30

she had this like, oh, who me? No, no,

15:33

no, not me. But

15:35

yeah, Halle Berry is 57. And

15:38

hot. And hot. But you're

15:40

right, there's like something there where something

15:42

stays the same. And then

15:44

something has changed so much that now

15:48

we all have to have abs

15:50

in our 50s. I

15:54

think this movie, like to that point of what

15:56

you women want or kind of where it was

15:58

in time, it was just like. you don't

16:00

have the agency to actually ask for what you want. In

16:03

that opening scene when she

16:05

clearly doesn't want this stranger in her house, but

16:07

she has to say, I can handle it, I'm

16:09

good. Or she like- Like that

16:12

was her form of feminism is I can handle it. I can

16:14

give for my daughter. I can take as

16:16

many punches as necessary. I can get through this.

16:18

It was very like head down, but I'm gonna

16:20

get through it. But it also went to this

16:22

like, you know, trying to be

16:25

this perfect mother giving whatever

16:27

my kids want or my husband needs

16:30

or like the fact that her daughter

16:32

leaves that weekend. What? I

16:34

mean- How insane

16:36

is that? Like your boyfriend is gonna stay with your

16:39

mom and you're just gonna go back to the city

16:41

to Christie's to work? There was

16:43

a period, the time that this film came

16:45

out is a period of time where there

16:47

were a lot of movies about

16:49

older people and older women and older couples.

16:52

It was the time of it's complicated with

16:54

Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. I think that was

16:56

later though, right? That was a little bit later.

16:59

As good as the guests came out around that time. Also was

17:01

that- Was that was Helen Hunt? Helen Hunt and Jack

17:03

Nicholson. Right. Yes. Yeah.

17:06

And First Wives Club was around that time. Oh wow.

17:08

Yeah. And I kind of- That was

17:10

VOG. That was VOG. That was VOG.

17:12

And I kind of wonder like why that was

17:14

such a big topic then and why it

17:17

doesn't seem to be explored as much now.

17:20

You know, what's interesting, I have a theory about

17:22

that, which is just that it follows divorce

17:24

rates because like,

17:26

so my kid is five and they're

17:28

very, I mean,

17:31

very, very few divorced parents in

17:33

her kindergarten class. But

17:35

when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, there

17:37

was a ton of divorce. So if you

17:39

look at screenplays as like a thing you write

17:41

about that you knew, it's like you, if you

17:43

were a child of divorce or you saw a

17:45

lot of divorces in the 80s and 90s, you're

17:47

sort of like writing about that and then writing

17:49

about the aftermath. And so there's just

17:52

like this bevy of movies that comes out

17:54

in the 2000s that reflect the divorce rate

17:56

from the 80s and 90s. And now just,

17:58

it's like- something else

18:01

is going on. Also,

18:03

people are marrying so much later

18:05

that their divorce

18:07

rates are lower because people are marrying at

18:10

a more mature age. And

18:12

so it's like we're not making

18:14

those, you know, practical decisions for marriage

18:16

that happen in like my mom's generation

18:18

where it's like, well, I'm 19 and

18:21

so is this guy, which is as good a

18:23

reason as any to get married, you know? I

18:25

think there was such a stigma around divorce, right? Yeah, that

18:28

he's getting on. He's just dissipated

18:30

with time. Yeah. Oh, God, people didn't go

18:32

to therapy at that point, right? So it

18:34

was like, yeah, so you have to, in

18:36

First Wives Club, right, like, kidnap your husbands

18:38

and take over the businesses and make a

18:40

point to

18:42

survive. And that's, you don't

18:44

have to do that anymore. Yeah. I also

18:46

think that like, there is like a cutification

18:48

of old people that happened in this movie

18:51

where it's like, oh, look how cute they

18:53

are. Look how cute Diane Keaton is. That

18:56

had to happen in films back then. And now I

18:58

feel like the audience for that is just

19:00

going to TikTok and watching old people who

19:02

have become sort of influencers on TikTok, like

19:04

people sort of interviewing their grandmothers and saying,

19:07

oh, that's so cute that you, you know,

19:09

still remember that recipe or you're giving me

19:11

advice about dating in my 20s. I don't

19:14

know. I feel like I'm, the place that

19:16

I'm seeing old people now is not, the

19:18

old people in movies are hot, so they

19:20

don't seem like old people. And the

19:22

old people that I'm really watching are

19:24

on the internet.

19:26

I like kind of are, are on

19:28

social media. Well, the other interesting thing

19:30

about old people

19:33

now is how many of

19:35

them are online dating. Yeah.

19:38

You know, or like the golden bachelor.

19:40

I mean, that was a phenomenon. We

19:42

want, we're in this space where we sort

19:44

of like want to

19:46

see old people fall in

19:48

love. Yeah. I mean,

19:50

that was, that was a juggernaut in the

19:52

golden bachelor. So that's like a, that's

19:55

some kind of sign of the times.

19:57

And I wonder how it squares with

19:59

something. like something's got to give.

20:01

You know what I mean? I'm not sure.

20:03

Well, one of the interesting things to me

20:06

about Golden Bachelor is that it's also that

20:08

those women were not like your quintessential 75

20:11

year old woman. They were like a

20:14

yoga instructor. One

20:17

of them was a former

20:19

dancer for Prince. Yeah. It

20:21

was sort of an idealization of

20:24

aging. But also it's weird

20:26

because you look at like a lot

20:28

of women, you know, just to

20:30

compare photos of, you

20:32

know, my grandmother at my then

20:34

and to my mother at the

20:36

same age. And my grandmother looked

20:39

so much older. I just think

20:41

like people take care of

20:43

themselves in a different way. We have

20:45

a different concept of nutrition. We have,

20:48

you know, medical science. It'll just keep

20:50

people alive forever. So the,

20:52

you know, the idea that you

20:55

age, that you age

20:57

is in question. Yeah. Like act

20:59

how you or dress how you age. Right.

21:01

What does that mean anymore? Exactly. Yeah.

21:04

No, it's true. I do. I

21:06

look at my dad

21:08

who's just turned 80 and

21:10

he looks better than Jack Nicholson.

21:13

Right. Oh, I mean, that's exactly. Yeah.

21:17

Yeah. I feel like you don't

21:19

the conservatives that used to

21:22

be enforced as you got

21:24

older and feel like that's totally been pulled

21:26

back. Yeah. I feel like maybe there's a

21:28

discomfort now of because I'm older,

21:30

right? Seeing my parents and thinking about myself when I

21:32

get to that age, actually wanting to

21:35

still have a life. And

21:38

I talked to friends down somewhere so uncomfortable talking

21:40

about sex with their parents. I'm like, why?

21:43

When you are in your sixties, aren't

21:45

you going to want to have the

21:47

same active lifestyle? I'm going to want

21:49

to feel this love and devotion and

21:51

everything that actually this movie tries to

21:54

depict. And your seventies and your

21:56

eighties. Right. Why does it have to, why does it stop?

21:58

Why does that go away? so

22:00

devastating. Yeah. Oh,

22:09

man. Okay, so this is great

22:11

fun. I want to ask as

22:13

our my last question. What

22:16

are our final takeaways? Like, what did we learn

22:18

from watching this that we're

22:20

thinking about now going into watching movies

22:23

in this great year of 2024? For me, it's

22:27

I mean, the theme that I come back to where

22:29

the thing that like my final take on it is

22:31

like, it's that love makes you unglued, right? You do

22:33

crazy things in a good rom com. That's yeah, yeah,

22:35

it's meant to make you be yourself,

22:38

but not yourself. That's why I'm like praying someone

22:40

at Warner Brothers is like, picking

22:42

up the phone and calling Nancy Meyer after

22:44

the Netflix deal got dropped because like, I

22:47

want to see that next great rom com again. Can

22:49

you explain what happened with Nancy Meyers? Yeah,

22:51

my understanding is she had a

22:53

deal to take was it a

22:56

not a biopic of herself, but like a rom

22:59

com centered on herself. Yeah, Netflix. And

23:02

she asked for another $20 million. And because this isn't this

23:04

is gonna go straight to streaming. Netflix,

23:06

they canceled the deal. Yeah. And

23:09

so my hope is a Warner

23:11

Brothers Universal who would actually give us a

23:13

proper box office moment, right, would come in

23:16

and actually invest in this. Right. I mean,

23:18

it makes it like, okay, Martin Scorsese and

23:21

everybody's making these like very, very expensive movies

23:23

that they know are gonna get paid back.

23:26

Her movies make money. Her movies make money.

23:29

People come out to see her movies. Yeah.

23:32

But those movies aren't going

23:34

to the theaters anymore. I don't think

23:36

that there are many rom coms that are going

23:38

to the theaters anymore. Well, I mean, I

23:40

think this is also part of my big

23:43

takeaway is that we sort

23:45

of like, look at filmmakers

23:47

like Martin Scorsese, we give them carte

23:49

blanche to spend whatever they want. And

23:51

I think that's great. But

23:53

then we sort of don't put people

23:55

like Nancy in that same category. Whereas

23:57

I think she's had just as

23:59

much to the cultural impact. She just had

24:01

it on the lighter side of things. And

24:04

so we somehow don't like prize that as

24:06

much. And I

24:08

think that like, these

24:10

films are part of the canon of cinema,

24:13

you know, and I know the canon of

24:15

cinema is more highfalutin

24:17

than all that. But like, this

24:19

has really had an impact, I

24:22

think culturally on and like

24:24

you said, it's made a lot of money. This

24:27

was a very popular movie. A lot of her

24:29

movies were very popular. So the idea

24:31

that like, we shouldn't have the

24:33

same respect for her as like

24:36

an elder states woman of filmmaking,

24:38

to me feels sad. So I

24:40

feel like, give her

24:42

the money, let her do it. Also though,

24:45

Nancy, you could probably still make it for

24:47

130 million. You don't need

24:50

150, right? Like you're only making it work. Uh,

24:54

Nicky and Eric, thank you so much. We will be

24:56

back in just a moment for more or less. From

25:10

the special investigations team at

25:12

the Financial Times, this is the

25:15

retreat. The retreat. The retreat. The

25:17

retreat. I went into what I would

25:20

consider a psychotic break. It was like being in

25:22

a torture chamber for my mind for six months.

25:24

The retreat. The final

25:26

goal is to beautify

25:28

the mind. The

25:31

retreat is the first series

25:33

from Untold, the new Financial

25:35

Times investigative podcast, coming

25:38

this January. Welcome

25:40

back to more or less the part of the show where

25:43

each guest says something that they want more of

25:45

or less of culturally. Eric,

25:47

what do you got? So this is something I sent you,

25:49

God, months ago maybe. Culturally,

25:52

on the fashion side of things, the thing that

25:54

I want more this year is crop tops and

25:57

adventure for men in fashion. I'm really bored of

25:59

like... the stayed boring

26:01

suit. I want to see fun. I

26:04

want some vibrance. I want to show that like

26:06

we're all going to the gym again. Right. Everybody's

26:08

working out post pandemic. Like we're getting those abs.

26:11

Show them off. Right. Like who cares? But yeah, that's what I

26:13

would like to see more of in 2024. More

26:16

crop tops, more crop tops, more adventurous

26:18

fashion from the men

26:20

I'm seeing both in the office and on the

26:22

street. OK. And again, what about you? Well, my

26:25

recommendation is very much inspired by

26:27

the conversation we had because this

26:29

is a rom com that we

26:31

watched. But I want just a

26:33

com com. I want more comedy.

26:36

I feel like drama is just taken just

26:39

center position in culture.

26:41

We value them and prize them

26:43

so much. We get so ensconced

26:46

in these shows. And

26:48

I love them, too. However,

26:51

God, why don't we have more comedies? And I

26:53

just want more 30 minute actual

26:55

comedies. I feel like the people

26:58

of America deserve it. We do.

27:01

I want those are both amazing. Thank you.

27:04

I want an exercise to sweep

27:06

the this great nation of ours.

27:09

I'm tired of Peloton. That happened.

27:11

It's over. And I want to

27:13

jump on a bandwagon. I decided

27:15

as a way to create an exercise that for

27:17

myself, I would sign up for the New York

27:19

City marathon and ran at

27:21

most 16 miles. And then

27:23

my I.T. Bandsky about and I

27:25

couldn't read it. And so now I just like

27:28

I want I'm we're walking into the void of winter.

27:31

I'm feeling lethargic. I

27:34

want the sort of like everyone's baking sourdough of

27:37

the fitness world. I'll do it. I'll do whatever. That's

27:40

fun. Yeah. I mean, maybe you should resurrect

27:42

like a zoom bar or something. Nagini,

27:46

Eric, thank you so much. This was

27:49

so much fun. And you've

27:51

made me think a lot about comedy

27:53

and romance and the future for the

27:55

old people of America. Thanks

27:58

for being on the show. Thanks so much for having me.

28:00

Thanks for having me, my love. That's the show. Thank

28:03

you for listening to Life and Art from ST Weekend.

28:05

I highly recommend that you check out Nageen's podcast, Fake

28:09

the Nation. I have a link to it in the

28:11

show notes, alongside a piece that she wrote recently ongoing on

28:13

a mushroom retreat. The show notes also have links to where

28:15

you can follow Eric, where you can keep in touch with

28:18

me on Instagram, and how to email this to me on

28:20

Facebook. I'm going to be doing a little bit of

28:22

a video on that. I'm going

28:24

to be doing a little bit of a video on that. Where

28:27

you can keep in touch with me on Instagram, and

28:29

how to email this show, because we love hearing from

28:31

you. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and

28:33

here is my talented team. Tatya Kamkova

28:35

is our senior producer. Lulu Smith is

28:37

our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen

28:39

Turner and Sam Jovinko, with original music

28:42

by Metaphor Music. Topher Forehaz

28:44

is our executive producer, and our global

28:46

head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have

28:48

a lovely weekend, and we'll find each other again

28:51

on Monday. Thank

28:57

you.