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And stick around to hear how the president of an e-sports

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league seized the moment.

1:09

I'm Dana Stevens, and this

1:11

is the Slate Culture Gap Fest, Passages

1:22

is Not for the Prudes edition. It's Wednesday,

1:25

August 23rd, 2023. And on

1:27

today's show, Passages, the eighth film

1:29

from the independent writer-director, Ira Sachs,

1:31

has been the subject of some controversy in

1:33

the weeks since its release because of its NC-17

1:36

rating and its explicit gay

1:38

and straight sex scenes. The movie tells

1:40

the story of a complicated and ultimately toxic

1:43

love triangle unfolding in Paris. It

1:45

stars Franz Wachowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adele

1:48

Exarchopoulos,

1:48

we will discuss. Then the

1:50

FX series, Justified, based on an Elmore

1:53

Leonard novella and starring Timothy Olyphant

1:55

as a US marshal in Harlan County, Kentucky,

1:58

came to an end in 2015.

1:59

after six seasons. But now, Oliphant's

2:02

character, the laid-back yet hot-tempered

2:05

Raylan Givens, is back in a limited

2:07

series on Hulu called Justified City

2:09

Primeval. This time he's enforcing the

2:11

law not in the hollers of Appalachia

2:13

but in the streets of Detroit. We'll discuss

2:16

that show. And finally, the one-time

2:18

NFL star Michael Orr, whose life

2:20

story was the subject of the Oscar-winning 2009 movie

2:23

The Blind Side, has filed papers to

2:25

end the conservatorship that he says he was tricked

2:28

into signing at age 18 by Leanne

2:29

and Sean Toohey, the white Memphis

2:32

couple who took him into their home. His

2:34

case is a fascinating convergence of issues having

2:36

to do with race, adoption, exploitation,

2:38

and fame. We'll get into that at the end of the

2:40

show. But first, let me introduce this

2:42

week's co-host. Julie and Steve are both out

2:44

this week. But it's okay because we have two fantastic

2:47

people sitting in. First of all, Laura

2:49

Miller, Slate's books and culture columnist.

2:51

Laura, thanks so much for joining us.

2:53

It's great to be here. And also

2:56

on our panel is Rebecca Onion, senior editor

2:58

at Slate and longtime friend of our podcast.

3:00

Hey, Rebecca. Hi, thanks for having

3:02

me back.

3:03

All right, well, let's get into the show itself.

3:06

The filmmaker Ira Sacks has long specialized

3:09

in making small scale intimate indie

3:11

films about relationships, often gay relationships.

3:13

He's an out gay man himself. His latest

3:16

Passages tells the story of a love triangle

3:18

among three young people in Paris. There's

3:21

a gay male couple, Thomas and Martin,

3:23

who work respectively as a film director and

3:25

a printmaker and a young French school

3:27

teacher named Agat. Before

3:29

we get into our discussion of Passages, let's hear a clip

3:32

from early in the film. Here you'll hear the voices of

3:34

Franz Rogowski as Thomas and Ben Wishaw

3:36

as Martin. They're a longtime couple and

3:38

Thomas is just coming back from having spent the

3:41

night with a young woman he met at the wrap party

3:43

for his latest movie.

3:44

You know what I was doing last night? No,

3:49

but whatever it was, you sound very excited. I had

3:53

sex with a woman. Can

3:57

I tell you about it, please? Yes,

4:00

of course. I

4:05

felt something I hadn't felt in a very

4:07

long time. And I wanted to

4:09

hear this. It

4:12

was exciting. It was something different.

4:18

I think what's happening between us... for

4:22

real. You

4:26

hate me, don't you? All

4:29

right, Laura, I'm going to start with you. I think that, like

4:31

me, you were somewhat befuddled

4:34

by the movie Passages and what it was

4:36

trying to do. I'll give you some of my response

4:38

to it after I hear yours, but what

4:40

do you make of this complicated

4:43

love triangle in Passages? Well,

4:45

I have to say that I found it

4:48

difficult to sit through the whole movie because

4:50

I found the character of Thomas

4:53

so repellent from almost the

4:55

first scene.

4:56

The character is sort

4:59

of preening and needy at the same

5:01

time, and he has this sort of way

5:03

of holding his body that just...

5:06

maybe it triggers some past

5:09

narcissist I used to know, but

5:12

I really... I had to stop multiple

5:14

times because I just could

5:16

not bear the fact that he was on the screen. And

5:19

he's on the screen pretty much every moment, right?

5:22

I mean, if there's a main character, it's probably

5:24

Thomas. Right, and there's

5:26

one scene towards the end where

5:28

Martin and I got meat in

5:31

a café, and I felt

5:33

this incredible sense of relief

5:35

and then engagement just because

5:38

Thomas wasn't there, and the

5:40

two characters who I found really appealing and

5:42

also who are both really attractive, whereas

5:45

I just do not think Rogosky is attractive

5:47

at all, were finally

5:50

at the center, and I

5:52

did not have this horrible entity

5:55

just spoiling the whole

5:56

thing for me. So I

5:59

think I had a particularly... strong and I

6:01

guess idiosyncratic reaction to this

6:03

because of course while there are a lot of sex scenes in

6:05

it I didn't find them sexy because I found him

6:08

so as I said repellent.

6:11

I wonder if that's an idiosyncratic reaction

6:13

because I recognize my response in

6:15

it too and I feel somewhat relieved because

6:18

after seeing this movie my whole question was why would

6:21

an entire anguished love triangle

6:24

erupt around such an

6:25

unappealing figure as to my

6:28

good. Totally. But

6:30

then I started reading the reviews of this movie which is

6:32

at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and

6:34

I felt like everyone was responding to it as this

6:36

really mature interesting exploration

6:39

of relationships and you know sort

6:41

of alternate love

6:43

arrangements and anyway I

6:45

sort of felt like I must have missed the point of

6:48

passages because I just don't understand

6:50

why you would break your heart over someone as

6:53

unappealing not even necessarily physically

6:55

unappealing

6:55

to me as just morally repellent

6:59

as Tomás and I'm so glad to know that I'm not

7:01

the only judgy person who could

7:03

not get into him but what about you Rebecca what

7:05

did you feel about this movie and if you want to get into

7:08

as well the other two characters and sort of fill

7:10

out a bit the sense of the world of this movie.

7:13

Yeah I totally agree with you

7:15

guys so I think we're going to just

7:17

be an anti-Tomás podcast

7:20

today. But

7:22

I think part of the problem is I mean it's interesting like

7:25

we read the Richard

7:25

Brody review in The New Yorker which

7:28

is headline to passages and an art monsters

7:30

fierce purity which led

7:33

me to believe that Tomás's art

7:35

was going to be more at the center of this movie

7:37

like that he was going to become interesting

7:39

to me and sort of like compelling and I was going to understand

7:42

why oh maybe like you know

7:44

these two extremely attractive others his

7:47

long time partner who Ben

7:49

Wishaw plays you know as

7:51

a very attractive man and

7:54

a got who's a young

7:55

gorgeous school teacher why they would

7:58

want to be with him so badly but I didn't really

8:00

get a sense of his art or I couldn't

8:02

really,

8:04

I don't know, you see him directing at the

8:06

beginning, and you hear him talking

8:09

about it. But you get more

8:11

of a sense even actually of of

8:13

the husband's art, you see him in his print making

8:15

shop, and you see him sort of talking

8:17

about what what he's doing. Yeah, so

8:21

I totally agree with you guys on that. I think what

8:24

maybe could have like ameliorated

8:26

that response or kind of like smooth

8:28

a little bit, I actually feel like it's going

8:30

to be a weird thing to say, I wish there were more

8:33

sex scenes in some ways. I think that

8:36

the way that he is when he's having

8:38

sex is like,

8:39

we can talk about this, let's, let's get into the sex

8:41

part of it. But

8:43

there's really only, I think, three

8:47

interludes, maybe three or four interludes,

8:50

one pretty extensive one between him

8:52

and his husband, a few with a got,

8:55

and there's sort of like a

8:58

vibe that he admits in the scenes, Tomas,

9:00

I'm talking about the unappealing one that

9:04

makes me sort of understand it a

9:06

little bit more or feel like a little bit more.

9:09

Like I can see why these other two characters

9:11

who both seem like fairly

9:13

good people who want like a stability

9:16

out of life might be

9:18

momentarily sort of like

9:20

shifted off their axes by a person

9:23

like this.

9:24

But to me that this was not like a very sexy

9:26

movie at all, which was how it was sort

9:29

of like presented and painted for having an

9:31

NC 17 rating. Yeah,

9:33

I mean, the NC 17 rating is a whole separate

9:35

issue and away from the quality of the movie. I

9:37

think often when NC 17 ratings

9:40

happen as opposed to our ratings, and there's always

9:42

you know, this thin line in between the two, right?

9:44

Like what specific acts or what specific images

9:47

would push it over the edge. You

9:49

know, that the complaint is that it's often because you

9:51

know, the kind of sex being shown is

9:53

not sort of mainstream,

9:54

straight, white hetero

9:57

sex that those

9:59

restrictions get put on the movie. And

10:02

I think that critique could be made of this movie because the sex

10:04

scenes are not especially explicit.

10:06

They're fairly long, but they're relatively

10:09

modest, but they do often show, not always,

10:12

but often show two men going

10:14

at it, whether it's the two men

10:16

of this main couple or the lover

10:19

that Martin takes later after Tomas

10:21

leaves him for a gat. And

10:24

so I think I could object to those scenes

10:26

being condemned as NC-17 and say

10:29

that this movie should have been given an R rating so

10:31

as to make it accessible to more people without

10:33

saying that I think it's a great movie.

10:36

And I sort of agree with you, Rebecca, that I

10:38

could have used not just some more sex

10:40

scenes, but some more movie. This

10:43

is a pretty short movie, and I respect

10:45

that it tries to get things done in

10:47

a slim running time. I think it's under 90 minutes

10:50

long. But I just found

10:52

it incredibly underwritten, and some

10:54

of the things that I found other critics admiring

10:56

about it in their reviews, which is the kind of elliptical

10:59

structure of the

10:59

story, just wound up really

11:02

frustrating me because some of the key moments in the

11:04

movie, and I won't give away what they are so

11:06

as not to spoil some of the twists, but they

11:08

happen off screen, right? So you see

11:10

two people from this triangle, two

11:12

points at the triangle meeting up, talking about something

11:15

that happened in the other part of the triangle. That's

11:17

really key to moving the entire story forward,

11:20

but we never see the moment that that was first

11:22

revealed, right, we only hear sort of like

11:24

the secondhand aftermath of its

11:27

revelation. And I think the

11:29

point of that was

11:29

to keep us sort of off center and not to

11:32

be too beat by beat

11:35

in the way that the story unfurled, but

11:37

it ended up making me feel as if

11:39

we didn't get to know the most important things

11:41

about why these people mattered to

11:43

each other. I think you are right though, Rebecca,

11:46

that if Tomas is supposed to have one

11:48

redeeming quality, it must be that he's really good

11:50

in bed because it seems like as

11:53

soon as he sleeps with someone, they're

11:55

willing to rearrange their

11:57

entire life in order to either take

11:59

him in.

11:59

or take him back. But for example,

12:02

the moment that he decides to leave his husband,

12:05

basically his longtime partner, and move

12:08

in with this young woman seems

12:10

very unexpected

12:12

to the viewer because you never saw her

12:14

invite him to move in. You never saw

12:17

a moment when the relationship shifted in that way.

12:19

So it just seems like he goes from having

12:21

a one-night stand in what seems like it was kind

12:23

of an open relationship with his husband in the first

12:25

place to packing up

12:27

his books and moving out. Yeah, I

12:30

think that we're supposed

12:32

to see him as

12:35

just

12:35

acting completely on impulse. So he's

12:37

infatuated with this young woman. And so

12:40

he just decides that now he has to be with her.

12:42

I mean, that Richard Brody

12:44

piece that we read is probably

12:46

one of the most demented pieces of criticism I've

12:48

read in many a year.

12:51

And part of what he says is

12:54

that you know that the guy's a really good filmmaker.

12:58

We never see a

13:00

frame of film that he has made. But

13:02

we know he's good because he just goes crashing

13:05

around through other people's lives acting

13:07

on impulse. And he's the spirit of the cinema.

13:10

And he's breaking them out of their settled routines

13:12

and unleashing all this passion. And then you

13:14

watch it. And I have to admit

13:16

I read this first. And I was like, what movie

13:19

did this guy see? All he does

13:21

is go he's just

13:23

walk all over people and traumatize

13:26

them. And bizarrely, he

13:28

doesn't even mention the issue that that Dana

13:31

just referred to, which is really heartbreaking

13:34

and really

13:36

makes you recognize how completely

13:39

almost irredeemable Thomas is.

13:41

And I mean,

13:44

the movie does not have a huge amount

13:47

of narrative tension to it. But to the extent

13:49

that it did, the thing that kept me going back to

13:51

it, despite the fact that I hated looking at the guy,

13:54

was that I wanted to see these two

13:57

really pretty lovely people.

13:59

finally get to the point where they realized what

14:02

a bastard he was. And that is

14:04

delivered on. You get that

14:06

and it is satisfying.

14:09

I just don't know if it was worth all the stuff

14:11

that went before to me.

14:13

I'm also not sure that that's the narrative satisfaction

14:15

that the movie is setting out to provide. I

14:19

really wish that I had seen this with somebody who

14:21

loved it. I saw it actually with Chris

14:23

Melanphy, another friend of our podcast.

14:26

But I think that some viewers are reading the movie

14:28

really differently and some really smart critics who

14:30

I respect, like Richard Lawson at Vanity

14:32

Fair, has really praised

14:35

this movie and said something about it that I think is

14:37

true, which is that it doesn't feel like an American

14:39

film. Although Iris Axe

14:41

is an American director, this takes place in Paris.

14:43

And I do think that it has some of the

14:46

ambivalence and the willingness

14:49

to go to unlikable places with its

14:51

characters that a European

14:53

movie might have. I think that the texture

14:56

of the movie and the

14:58

world that it creates is believable

15:01

enough and exciting enough

15:03

that I want to enter into it. But then, as

15:05

you say, Laura, I just get repelled by

15:07

the fact that the main character who everybody is

15:10

buzzing around as if he's the most desirable

15:12

and important person

15:13

on screen is so unappealing.

15:16

I think I'd recommend people see

15:18

this despite the segment

15:21

that we just recorded that is pretty

15:24

negative about Tomás. I think I'd still recommend

15:26

that people see it, if only for the way that

15:29

the

15:30

sex is woven into the story

15:32

is something that is

15:34

thought provoking and interesting to me. And

15:37

I think that it's a little rare

15:40

now to be able to see a movie like

15:42

this that tries to do something with

15:44

the sex. The sex

15:46

is,

15:47

I don't want to say realistic, but

15:51

it's not gauzy, it's not filmed with

15:53

a filter, they're not even doing it

15:55

in dark rooms. It's very, I

15:58

don't know, you hear all the little gray, grunts and whimpers

16:00

and stuff. And

16:02

that to me is interesting and worth seeing and

16:04

not common. That's true. And

16:06

it's also narratively important. I mean, several

16:09

of the sex scenes advance the plot in an important

16:11

way, you know, sometimes because of who

16:13

is overhearing all the grunts and whimpers

16:15

as they're, you know, emerging. So yeah,

16:18

I mean, there's so much about this

16:20

movie that's unusual on

16:22

the on the current landscape, you know, so

16:24

if you want to see a movie that is adult and

16:26

honest and complicated, it

16:29

certainly is all three of those things.

16:31

And I know that some viewers have responded very differently

16:34

to Tomás. I mean, in fact, I've read quite

16:36

a few responses to the movie that say, you

16:38

know, while he is obviously this

16:40

really complicated, difficult person who

16:42

winds up being toxic to both of the other two

16:45

people in the triangle, that, you know, they

16:47

also come out of the movie with a sense of sympathy

16:49

for him and that his moments of humiliation

16:52

are, you know, are also painful

16:54

to watch for them. Whereas I just found them a

16:56

deserved comeuppance. Well earned. Exactly.

17:00

All right. Well, I sort of wish we had somebody

17:02

on the panel to stand up for passages. Maybe

17:04

somebody who's listening has seen it and wants to write

17:06

in their own passionate defense of Tomás

17:09

and of the movie. At any rate, I'm glad

17:12

that I saw it and I really enjoyed our conversation

17:14

about it. The movie is Passages. It's showing only

17:16

in theaters right now, but it will no doubt be streaming

17:19

on some platform in the near future. Let

17:21

us know what you think at culturefest at slate.com.

17:24

All right. Moving on.

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This podcast is brought to you by Slate Studios

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This episode is supported by About the Journey, an

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20:03

It's time to take a moment to tell our listeners about this

20:05

week's business. There is only one item of business

20:08

this week, and that's to tell you all about our Slate Plus

20:10

segment. I'm going to be talking with Laura and Rebecca

20:12

about an article in The New Yorker by the novelist

20:14

Jonathan Franzen. It's called The Problem of

20:17

Nature Writing, and in this piece, Franzen

20:19

basically talks about what good nature writing

20:21

should look like and why he feels like most

20:23

nature writing that he reads doesn't live up to

20:25

that standard and doesn't get people to start caring

20:28

about the environment the way he would like. We'll

20:30

talk about that piece and our own relationship to

20:32

nature writing in this week's Slate Plus segment,

20:34

so if you belong to Slate Plus, you will hear that at

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Plus, of course, you can sign up at slate.com

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21:08

Okay, back to the show.

21:10

The TV series Justified ran for six

21:12

seasons on FX from 2010 to 2015. It

21:15

was based on a character who had appeared in multiple

21:18

novels by the legendary crime writer Elmore

21:20

Leonard. It followed the U.S. Marshal

21:22

Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant,

21:25

fighting crime on his home turf of Harlan

21:27

County, Kentucky. Now it's eight

21:29

years after that series ended and Raylan Givens

21:32

is back. This time he's hot on the trail

21:34

of judicial corruption and organized crime

21:36

in Detroit in the new limited series Justified

21:39

City Primeval, also based on an Elmore

21:41

Leonard novel, which I believe did not have Raylan

21:44

Givens in it, so it's a kind of combination of

21:46

one of his books and one of his characters from

21:48

another book. Before we get into our discussion

21:50

of Justified City Primeval, let's

21:52

hear a clip from an episode early in the

21:55

season. Here you'll hear the voice of Timothy Olyphant

21:57

as Raylan Givens talking to his 15-year-old

22:00

daughter, Willa, who is played by Oliphant's

22:02

real-life daughter, Vivian Oliphant.

22:16

Rebecca,

22:30

I'm gonna start with you

22:32

because I know you were a young man, and you were

22:57

a

23:00

devotee of the original Justified series.

23:02

Before we get into this new incarnation

23:04

of Raylan Givens, can you talk about the original

23:06

show and why it was special to you? Oh

23:09

sure. So the

23:11

show

23:12

was so deeply

23:15

embedded in Harlan County,

23:17

despite the fact that I believe it was filled in California,

23:19

which always kind of took me back a little bit to see

23:21

the landscape looking so different. But the

23:25

central character of Raylan is both a person

23:27

who grew up there and a person who's been away

23:30

and come back. And the

23:33

deepest relationship in the show between

23:35

Raylan and Boyd

23:37

Crowder, who's played by a Walton Goggins,

23:39

who's wonderful in the original show,

23:42

is the central antagonist

23:44

who's sort of a guy who grew up there,

23:46

stayed there, and got into crime. So

23:48

you have these two guys, both of whom, you

23:52

know, come from the same place, who end up

23:54

sort of back in the same place

23:56

and circling around one another and

23:58

encountering all the people that they were. they knew, you know,

24:01

as they were growing up, different families that they

24:03

have had contact with in different ways

24:06

and have

24:07

reacted differently to the economic destruction

24:10

that is like shaping the world

24:13

of Harlan County.

24:14

And it's not sentimental,

24:17

it's not like poverty

24:20

porn, which is something that people accuse

24:23

representations of Appalachia being a lot. It's

24:25

like very dry and

24:27

funny and Timothy Allfant

24:29

as wonderful as Raylan and he's got

24:32

like this kind of like cool

24:35

irascibility affect

24:37

down quite perfectly. You guys,

24:40

did you guys watch the original show or no? I

24:42

did and I loved it too, yeah.

24:44

We talked about it on the podcast so I watched

24:46

part of the first season. That was back when we,

24:48

you know, in an earlier era of TV where

24:50

we often didn't revisit shows so

24:53

I don't think I've ever seen it past the first few episodes.

24:55

I'm not even sure that the Walton Goggins character

24:57

had entered or had become important anyway at

25:00

the point that I had seen the show. But

25:02

what I remember about it the most is certainly Timothy

25:04

Allfant and that style that you're talking about

25:06

that's this combination of, you know, he

25:09

seems at once very relaxed and incredibly

25:11

hot tempered, you know, and

25:13

I think that's brought

25:14

out pretty well in the new show. Well,

25:17

given that you, Rebecca, you cite place

25:19

and the sense of regionality as being

25:21

a big part of the appeal of the original Justified,

25:23

I wonder how you feel about Raylan Givens

25:25

and his cowboy hat being transplanted to

25:28

Detroit. How do you think it works in that context?

25:31

It actually worked really well for me as a reboot,

25:33

as a place for a reboot. Like I

25:35

would have been, I think I would have been more annoyed with

25:37

the reboot if they'd gone back to Harlan. But

25:40

I don't know, what do you think Laura? Because you also liked the original

25:42

series.

25:43

I did miss the sense

25:45

of place because I don't feel like

25:48

there's that much sense of Detroit

25:51

as a place, you know, it just feels like a

25:53

kind of randomly selected location.

25:56

But you know, I'm just always glad to

25:58

see more Raylan Gibbons and the

26:01

dialogue is written with

26:04

the same Pnash, the Leonard-esque

26:07

Pnash as the original series.

26:09

I mean, he's... The great thing I

26:11

like about Raylan is that he's amused

26:14

so much of the time by humanity

26:17

and its foibles and how dumb criminals

26:19

sometimes are and how perverse people

26:21

are, which is, I think,

26:24

a very Elmore Leonard trait

26:27

and that it's just really refreshing

26:29

because television detectives tend

26:31

to be these super broody,

26:34

self-righteous, self-serious characters

26:38

and his... And they don't

26:40

give you as much of a sense of

26:42

like the sort of run-of-the-mill

26:45

tasks of law enforcement, but

26:49

I felt like Justified really

26:51

gave you a sense of that, not just of of

26:54

Raylan as like a crusader against

26:57

the bad guys.

26:59

There are things that I

27:01

like about where the plot goes

27:03

and things that I... Devices that I

27:06

didn't appreciate as well, but

27:08

I think in general, I just enjoyed all

27:10

of the episodes I've seen so far.

27:12

Yeah, I appreciated that this show has a real

27:15

array of villains to choose from. I mean,

27:17

I guess this is an Elmore Leonard thing too, Laura. You

27:19

would know better than me. You know his fiction much

27:21

better, but there's kind of this... It's almost

27:23

like this deck of cards of different

27:26

villain types that are spread out. There's the

27:28

main villain who is something between

27:30

a kind of a psychopath,

27:33

a sort of a lone shark psychopath, but who also

27:35

seems to be wrapped up in the entire criminal

27:38

underworld of Detroit. And then there's his

27:40

kind of ditzy stoner girlfriend.

27:42

There's a bunch of Albanian gangsters

27:44

that get involved later in the season. There's

27:47

a judge who's assassinated. I mean, it is

27:49

definitely a dense novel's worth of

27:52

different crimes and criminals that are

27:54

being pursued. So it makes each

27:56

episode a little bit different. It doesn't just feel like

27:58

one guy and his nemesis who he...

27:59

he's chasing,

28:01

which I thought added to the interest. I think

28:03

my favorite character, besides the Rael

28:05

and Givens character, is probably the

28:07

lawyer, played by Anjanu Ellis, who,

28:10

as the season goes on, emerges

28:12

as both a kind of romantic foil and also

28:15

somebody who's possibly involved in the corruption

28:18

of the city of Detroit. She is a lawyer

28:20

for some of the main criminals on

28:22

the show. You have reason to suspect

28:24

my client is involved in the murder of Judge Guy?

28:27

And Rose Doyle, yes. And what

28:29

is that? Witnesses. Shit, he ain't got

28:31

no witnesses. He's blowing smoke up your

28:33

ass. Not another word unless I ask you a question.

28:36

She is an interestingly, a figure who's

28:38

suspended sort of between the

28:41

side of the law and the side of the criminals.

28:44

And I found her performance and that character really

28:46

fascinating. I think the weakest part of the show

28:48

is, unfortunately, Vivian Olafett. Yeah,

28:51

that sucks. And I hate to say, I'm not going to say

28:53

too much because I don't want to be mean to a young

28:55

actress. But she does not, at

28:57

the moment, really rise to the level

29:00

of somebody who should be acting opposite

29:02

her dad. And so the moment

29:04

that she gets packed off, as we heard in that clip,

29:06

was to me almost a sigh of relief that I

29:08

didn't have to have more awkward father-daughter

29:11

moments with that actress. Yeah,

29:14

in addition to her just having this little Betty

29:17

Boop voice where you really have to turn on

29:20

the closed captions in order to even see

29:22

what's being said, the

29:25

whole device of the bad guy going

29:27

after the family of the law

29:29

man is so tired

29:32

that I just was groaning when

29:34

it came up. So when she got sent away, I was like,

29:36

oh, we're not going to have the climactic

29:38

moment where he kidnaps

29:40

the daughter and drags her into some deserted

29:43

warehouse. And then they're chasing and shouting

29:46

things at each other. I'm so grateful

29:48

that that didn't happen, or hopefully

29:51

is not going to happen. I am a little confused, though,

29:53

as why he is in Detroit, because

29:56

don't they live in Miami?

29:59

Well, the whole plot, they're in Miami.

29:59

It relies on a lot of coincidences,

30:02

which maybe later in the season,

30:04

I'm now, I think, five episodes in, maybe

30:07

they'll be explained as not as coincidental as

30:09

they seemed, but I can think of, without spoiling

30:12

anything, at least two different times, including

30:14

the reason that he ends up in Detroit in the first place,

30:16

where essentially, just two

30:19

important characters in the world of crime and

30:21

crime fighting happen to coincide

30:24

on a highway, right? I mean,

30:26

basically, that you happen to be driving alongside

30:29

the very person that you will soon be pursuing

30:32

through the halls of justice. And yeah,

30:35

a lot of that, there just has to be some pretty heavy

30:38

suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer

30:40

to believe that these things are happening at all. What

30:43

did you guys think about

30:45

Boyd Holbrook's characterization

30:48

of Clement Mansell, who's the main villain?

30:50

I sort of, I actually really loved

30:52

it. I was prepared to be disappointed

30:55

because I really love

30:57

Boyd Crowder, played by Walton Goggins,

30:59

as previously described in the original

31:01

series. But this new main

31:04

antagonist is, he's kind of like

31:06

a sociopathic,

31:08

pathetic guy at the same time.

31:10

He's got this desire to have

31:13

a singing career, which is one of the only knobs

31:15

to the milieu of Detroit. But anyway,

31:18

Clement Mansell is the

31:20

stoner girlfriend at one

31:22

point, and Raylen asks her, why are you

31:24

with him? And she goes,

31:26

he's fun. And

31:29

which is a funny moment because he's

31:31

like just a absolute disaster. He's just

31:33

like shooting people through pillows constantly,

31:35

like at the least provocation.

31:38

And he just kind of gets away with everything in this, you

31:41

know, like I'm a sociopathic

31:43

villain in a Elmore Leonard

31:45

novel kind of a way.

31:48

But you know, I enjoyed him when he was on screen. I thought

31:50

he was fun too. What did you guys think?

31:52

Yeah, he was what I was thinking of when I said,

31:54

you know, there's an unusual array of villains. It's not

31:56

just him, but yeah, he reminds me,

31:58

he could be somebody from sort of an.

31:59

early Tarantino film or something as

32:02

well, just walking around in his tidy whiteys

32:04

and there's a moment that he sort of like scratches

32:06

his junk through his tidy whiteys with his

32:09

gun. It's just so gross

32:11

and funny. Yeah,

32:14

he's both ridiculous and

32:16

terrifying at the same time, which

32:19

is an accomplishment. Yeah. Yeah.

32:22

That's a really good way to put it. Well, I'm also

32:24

wondering how you guys feel about the

32:27

romance in this because I thought

32:29

is I really have enjoyed it.

32:32

I feel like

32:34

the Carolyn Wilder character is

32:36

the kind of character we see on television

32:39

a lot. She's like a middle-aged

32:42

black woman in a position of authority and

32:44

she's exasperated a lot of the time

32:46

by the trifling people that she has to deal with.

32:49

And that type of character usually

32:51

does not get laid. And

32:54

in this, she and Raylin have

32:56

all this chemistry and there's just

32:58

this way that the two of them are like, yeah,

33:00

I still got it. He's

33:03

a silver fox

33:04

and she

33:08

doesn't trust him and she's also like, yeah, I

33:10

nailed it. I

33:13

really enjoyed that relationship.

33:14

I totally agree. I also like

33:17

that what makes him turned on

33:19

by her initially is that

33:21

she cross-examines him in the trial

33:24

of this guy who tried to carjack

33:26

him and just kind

33:28

of wipes the floor with him. And

33:31

he's just like, that is what doesn't work.

33:33

He's like, I need more. You

33:36

were going to put

33:38

a black man in the

33:41

trunk of your car. If

33:43

necessary, I would have put a white man in there too. Your

33:45

honor, the Marshal is not

33:48

the one on trial here. Give me a minute. And

33:50

he will be. Yeah, Raylin is

33:52

like a person who keeps a lot of details in his

33:55

head and he's like, you keep more details in

33:57

your head. Yeah.

33:59

Yeah, you're making me realize.

33:59

as you guys talk about this show that, I mean, what's

34:02

really unusual about it, I think, is that each

34:04

of the characters has their own way of speaking.

34:07

And that so often is not true in TV procedurals,

34:09

right? There's sort of like the cop language

34:12

and the crime language and everybody

34:14

who's in that group, whether it's the cops or the

34:16

criminals or the victims, all speak

34:18

the same. Whereas, and I guess

34:20

this again is, you know, inherited from the world of Elmore

34:23

Leonard. I'm not sure how closely the dialogue he

34:25

used to actual dialogue from his books,

34:28

but everybody speaks

34:29

like themselves. That

34:32

in itself sets the show apart. All right.

34:35

Well, I don't know about the two of you, but I'm certainly

34:37

going to watch this through to the end. I think it's

34:39

now being released weekly. The first six episodes

34:42

are already streaming on Hulu and the show is Justified

34:45

City Primeval. So please, listeners, if you see

34:47

it and you have something to tell us about it, email us

34:49

at culturefestetslate.com. All right,

34:51

moving on.

34:53

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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36:47

The former NFL star Michael Orr, whose life

36:50

story became the subject of a nonfiction book

36:52

turned Oscar-winning movie called The Blind Side,

36:55

has filed a lawsuit against the Memphis family

36:57

that took him in as a high school athlete and

36:59

used their financial and social clout to help launch

37:01

his college and eventually professional football

37:03

career. Orr's lawsuit alleges

37:06

that this family, the twoies, benefited

37:08

financially from his success in football and

37:10

from the profits of the book and the movie based

37:12

on his life story. Orr has been estranged

37:15

from the two-way family for about ten years, but

37:17

he says it was only early this year that he realized

37:19

that the legal relationship he had with them was

37:21

not the equivalent of an adoption. Rather,

37:24

it was a conservatorship, a legal relationship

37:26

that generally only gets set up when one of the parties

37:28

has an intellectual or physical disability

37:31

that prevents them from acting on their own behalf,

37:33

which was of course not the case in this

37:35

situation. There is a lot going

37:37

on in this story. I probably haven't even touched

37:39

on all the basics of the lawsuit

37:42

yet, but given the familiarity of

37:44

most Americans with the movie The Blind Side, maybe

37:46

that's a place to start.

37:47

Rebecca, I'll start with you. As we

37:50

were choosing our topics for this week, you were very

37:52

interested in talking about this one in particular.

37:54

What was it about The Blind Side and Michael Orr's

37:56

story that made you want to take it on for the

37:58

podcast?

37:59

Yeah, well, I think

38:02

it was the fall of 2008. I

38:04

was teaching a rhetoric and composition class at

38:06

the University of Texas at Austin as a graduate

38:09

student. And we had that

38:11

university at the time did one of those, everyone

38:14

on campus reads this book kind of programs.

38:17

And the book was The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.

38:19

And so the rhetoric

38:22

and composition program had a thing where

38:24

they said, okay, we're gonna take the all-campus book

38:26

and make that the basis of the like

38:28

first year writing class. So

38:30

I taught a whole semester

38:33

of The Blind Side, basically

38:35

pulling out topics from it, trying to get

38:37

kids to think critically about it, trying to get

38:40

the students to, you know,

38:43

like figure out what it was about the different

38:45

topics that were in the book that they were interested in, et

38:47

cetera. And I found it extremely

38:50

difficult.

38:52

I don't know if you guys have read the Michael Lewis book, but

38:54

it's, there were a lot of

38:57

sort of dynamics that were in it that at

38:59

the time, people

39:02

that weren't in like higher

39:04

level academia didn't really talk

39:06

about that often. So sort of

39:08

like

39:09

the question of, you

39:12

know, when an interracial adoption happens,

39:14

or as the case was, this was not an adoption

39:16

as we now know, but the

39:18

two is called it an adoption. You

39:21

know, what are the, like

39:23

how the dynamics there work, let the white

39:25

savior complex, which is something

39:27

that now that everyone's so online, people

39:30

know as like a reference or

39:32

like a way to, like a theoretical tool

39:34

to kind of talk about

39:36

what can happen when

39:39

a story like this unfolds, where a

39:41

white family adopts

39:43

a non-white kid and

39:45

sort of like pumps themself up publicly for

39:47

having done it in various ways. You

39:51

know, all of those sort of things were very

39:53

hard to get the kids who admittedly

39:55

in my class were mostly white to

39:57

sort of articulate in satisfying ways.

40:00

They were very taken by the story.

40:02

They loved it. They

40:04

wanted to engage with the Michael Lewis book on

40:06

the Michael Lewis book's terms, which are

40:08

basically like,

40:10

look at this

40:11

heartwarming story of

40:13

a kid who is

40:15

basically plucked from obscurity and

40:17

from the way that Michael

40:19

Lewis tells it, he's sort of plucked from

40:22

ignorance, basically, and

40:25

sort of made into a person of the world

40:28

by this wealthy family, who we should

40:30

say were Michael Lewis's friends.

40:32

He went to, I believe, high school

40:35

with the father of the family. Anyway,

40:38

what's interesting to me is how much has changed between 2008

40:40

and now. The way that

40:42

people talk about it is so different.

40:46

The way this lawsuit has hit has

40:48

sort of, people have like a different

40:50

vocabulary to speak about it.

40:53

Do you think, Rebecca, that if you were teaching

40:55

that same class now, those

40:57

students would have a completely different response?

41:01

Gosh, I hope so. I

41:03

think so. I

41:05

mean, that was also before the movie came

41:07

out. And

41:08

it's interesting, because there's been

41:11

a lot since this lawsuit, like the news of this

41:13

lawsuit hit, there's been a lot of

41:15

ink spilled online about

41:18

both the movie and the book. And people have pointed

41:20

out that when the movie came out, there was sort of

41:23

like a nascent,

41:25

like critical strain around

41:27

it. There was, I remember

41:30

that, yeah. Yes. Did you

41:32

see the movie, Laura? No,

41:34

I mean, I am against football,

41:37

so I will never see a movie in which football is glorified.

41:41

I did see the movie back when it came out, but

41:43

I remember being relieved that I didn't have to review

41:46

it. I think it was Josh Levine that wrote on it for Slate,

41:48

which makes sense because he writes on sports

41:50

a lot and has a sports podcast. But

41:53

yeah, like Laura, I'm not a football person.

41:56

I don't watch it, don't really think that it should exist in the

41:58

form that it currently does exist.

41:59

and probably thought about the movie more negatively

42:02

because of that than, you know, really thinking

42:04

in depth about the story. But you're

42:06

right, Rebecca, that it shows how,

42:09

as far as we have to go, how far

42:11

we have come in our thinking about,

42:13

you know, white saviorism and transracial

42:16

adoption and things like that since 2009, because

42:19

I feel like that movie

42:21

would land a lot more unpleasantly

42:24

were it to be released now. Then again, if you look

42:26

at Green Book or other more recent Oscar

42:29

fave type movies that also

42:32

have fairly reactionary racial

42:34

setups, maybe not, you know, and

42:36

people love to feel inspired

42:38

by a feel good,

42:40

you know, hands across the aisle story about

42:43

race and maybe that those

42:45

strings still could be pulled. Well,

42:47

about race and also about football

42:49

and the whole idea of sports as being something

42:52

that brings

42:53

people from different walks of life

42:55

together in some positive way,

42:58

as opposed to something that gives them brain

43:00

damage. Oh, is a Laura,

43:03

we cared about brain damage for like three months

43:05

in 2018. And then

43:07

everyone started watching the NFL again. Remember

43:10

when everyone was like, Oh, the NFL is going to be over

43:12

because of the CTE story. And then now

43:14

it's just like just as powerful as it ever was.

43:18

If you know someone who suffered

43:20

from it, it's just like you can never really

43:24

look at football the same way again. Yeah.

43:26

And in a way, like I looked

43:28

at it as, you know, this family

43:31

adopted him and then just exploited

43:33

him by putting him in this incredibly

43:36

dangerous situation, instead

43:38

of giving him like a healthy,

43:41

viable way to make his living through

43:43

the future. I mean,

43:45

that would be that was my position back

43:47

then. And I don't think I feel that differently

43:49

about it now, although on the legal level,

43:51

it does seem to be an incredibly murky

43:54

situation.

43:55

Yeah, I mean, it's a bit early to talk

43:57

about, you know, exactly whose numbers are

43:59

But I mean, according to the lawyer

44:02

for the Tui family, the

44:04

profits from the book and the movie, which were not that

44:06

extensive, you know, after

44:09

agents' fees and taxes and so forth, were equally

44:11

shared among the members of the family, Michael

44:14

Lewis and Michael Orr. So

44:16

I'm not sure if whatever needs to be hashed out

44:19

is going to be hashed out in terms of the absolute numbers

44:22

of profit. You know, it seems like it does have

44:24

more to do with, well, a little bit, not

44:26

unrelated to the Britney Spears situation of being

44:28

under a conservatorship from her

44:29

father for all of those years. It's more of

44:32

a question of, you know, having your agency

44:34

taken away by someone else taking

44:37

over the legal rights to your life. In

44:40

the Tui's defense, it does not seem as though

44:42

they have enforced the conservatorship. I mean,

44:44

it sounds like he has proceeded

44:47

to act as his own agent in

44:49

the past 20 years. It's

44:53

not like they have swooped in and said, oh,

44:56

we have to sign off on the house you bought

44:58

or the contract you signed or,

45:01

you know, from what I can

45:03

tell, they're saying that

45:05

they made it a

45:07

conservatorship because they needed to

45:09

establish a legal relationship with him quickly

45:12

enough that he could enroll

45:14

in Ole Miss, which they

45:16

have some special connection to that

45:18

will enable their dependents to

45:21

have an in on getting into the university

45:24

and then play football. And

45:26

then after that, they never really

45:29

bothered to make it a legal

45:31

adoption. But it doesn't

45:33

sound as though throughout

45:36

his entire adult life, they've been running

45:38

his finances. It sounds like he only

45:40

just found out that that's the nature of

45:42

the legal relationship,

45:44

which you think you would find out as an adult

45:47

if they were actually forcing it. I

45:49

see what you mean. Like there would have been a time along the

45:52

way where he would have been like, wait a minute.

45:55

What's going on here? Yeah, but it sounds

45:57

like his I

45:59

think correct. or

46:01

I don't know who can say whose feelings are correct

46:03

or incorrect, but it

46:05

sounds like he was very hurt by this

46:07

revelation. Who can

46:10

blame him? I know. I mean,

46:12

it sounds like they have been representing

46:15

themselves as adoptive parents. So it's

46:17

interesting because adoption

46:20

itself has been,

46:22

I

46:22

hate this word so much, but problematized

46:25

so much. In recent

46:28

years, there have been a number of memoirs

46:30

from transracial adoptees

46:33

that have tried to complicate this

46:35

idea that they should be grateful or that

46:38

people who adopt kids from overseas are

46:40

like saints and saviors and

46:43

that the kids can never say anything bad

46:46

about their families. But

46:48

in a way, it's like

46:50

this dynamic is even more complicated

46:53

because he's saying, hey,

46:57

it's one layer deeper than that. They said they adopted

46:59

me, but they hadn't actually. So

47:02

one has to wonder, and the

47:05

fact that I just learned that they've been out

47:07

of touch for a decade

47:08

or more,

47:10

it complicates it as well. He's 37

47:14

or 38, I think, and

47:17

he's sort of,

47:18

maybe he's taking stock of his life and

47:21

thinking about what it was like to be a kid

47:23

in that circumstance, taken

47:26

from one world and put in another, and then

47:29

told that he had been taken from one world and put in

47:31

another by the entire world. And

47:34

the story of his taking and

47:36

making over, becoming

47:38

this Hollywood staple. And

47:41

then he says that he feels like

47:43

in his time negotiating contracts

47:46

with various NFL entities,

47:49

that he was undersold or that the

47:52

perception was that he was like the guy

47:54

in the movie, which is to say like slow

47:57

and not very smart.

48:00

And he feels like he made less money because of that

48:02

or like he and also like it also

48:04

just has to hurt your feelings to constantly be

48:07

Sort of represented that way. Yeah

48:10

Right. He's been vocal for years I think about not

48:13

liking the movie the blindside and not liking

48:15

the way he is Portrayed in it and some of

48:17

the I was reminded of some of the more insulting

48:19

moments in the blindside and reading about this I didn't

48:22

rewatch the movie for this But things

48:24

started to come back to me as I was reading about

48:26

it like a scene where the

48:28

son of the twoies So, you know a

48:31

middle school or so aged boy is is

48:33

showing him different football plays like

48:35

using condiments on a table No

48:38

See this just means that you're going to block

48:40

whoever's

48:40

in front of you or on your inside

48:42

shoulder if you're not covered by a defender

48:45

No, I'll be there running back and you

48:47

show me what you're supposed to do

48:49

ready? Hi, you know like

48:51

explaining football to him and just

48:53

really sort of making it look as if you

48:55

know It was not just a financial

48:57

hand that they extended to him But that they sort of you

49:00

know built him up into the player that he was

49:02

and and the adult Michael Or has looked

49:04

back on this saying look I was you know analyzing

49:07

plays on on

49:09

TV football replays since I was

49:11

a kid you know that he was bringing his analytical

49:13

intelligence as well as his Physical skill

49:16

to playing football and did not need to be tutored

49:19

by a child you know, I think the movie is probably

49:21

full of things like that that that now just

49:24

strike him as a Humiliating way

49:26

of framing his own history and

49:29

it's exactly those things that made

49:31

that movie

49:33

Popular among the green book liking audience.

49:35

I mean, you know, you can see

49:37

Hollywood does what Hollywood does and takes

49:40

the you know The outlines a complicated

49:42

like

49:42

relatively complicated story that Michael Lewis

49:45

tells although I would argue that the

49:47

book itself is still pretty

49:49

Like damning in some ways look looked back

49:51

at now And sort of

49:53

ups wants to up the contrast between

49:56

the or Michael or and the

49:59

two is Because that's a

50:01

movie, the more contrast there is, the

50:03

better the movie is.

50:05

But too bad it's also racist. I

50:07

don't know what else to say. Then

50:11

they made a ton of money from it.

50:14

I don't know if it's the two ways who are the

50:16

ones who can be sued for that, but

50:19

it sucks, it's a bad

50:21

outcome. Sometimes people

50:24

go to the legal system to

50:26

seek recourse against

50:30

somebody, and it isn't always necessarily

50:32

the person who is the most exploitative.

50:36

It sounds like Michael Lewis has

50:38

been straightforward about the finances,

50:42

the income that everyone received

50:45

for the rights to the book, and

50:47

those numbers look legit

50:49

to me. And I don't

50:51

think it would be very easy for him to lie about

50:53

them since other

50:55

people have those numbers.

50:56

But

50:58

you don't actually get that much money

51:00

for that sort of thing. You get money for working on

51:02

the movie, not for creating the material

51:05

that the movie is based on. And

51:07

if

51:08

there were a movie that depicted me

51:11

as sort of simple-minded out there,

51:13

I would be so furious. And who

51:15

are you going to sue? I

51:18

mean, this is...

51:20

Arguably, the twoies

51:23

could have defended him against this portrayal.

51:26

That's a good point. If they felt...

51:30

They were his guardians,

51:33

to some degree, and should have stood up for

51:35

him.

51:36

All right, well, all of this is still unfolding. This lawsuit

51:38

was only filed, I believe, last week. So

51:41

I'm sure that there will be further chapters

51:43

unfolding in the story of Michael

51:45

Oer versus the twoies and the blind

51:47

side. So we'll keep an eye on that.

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52:22

Wow, well, we've done it. We've reached the moment in the show

52:24

where we endorse our favorite cultural

52:27

item of the week. Laura, I'm gonna start with you.

52:29

What have you been reading, watching, experiencing

52:31

that you want to tell us about? Well,

52:34

it's gonna be watching. My

52:37

quest for new detective

52:39

series that aren't stupid or cliched

52:41

is never ending. And

52:44

I found a great one on Prime

52:46

called Deadlock, and that's spelled, it's

52:48

all one word, D-E-A-D-L-O-C-H.

52:52

It's set in Tasmania in

52:54

a little town that

52:57

is sort of in transition from having

53:00

a fishing economy to maybe

53:02

a little bit of a tourism

53:04

economy. And it's

53:06

a town that has had a big influx of new

53:09

residents who

53:12

are lesbians, and the main

53:15

character is,

53:17

she's a police officer, she's like a former

53:19

detective, but she

53:21

basically is the main detective in this

53:23

series, who

53:26

is herself a lesbian, is in a relationship with

53:30

a woman who wants them to buy a farm and

53:33

do the kind of whole crunchy, organic,

53:37

back to the land lesbian thing, and there's

53:39

a lesbian restaurateur.

53:42

And it's like there's a lot

53:44

of lesbians in this series, which

53:47

is

53:47

really refreshing. And it's

53:49

particularly pecan because the

53:52

series of murders that

53:54

sort of slowly evolve

53:56

and become the central mystery are all

53:59

of men.

53:59

But it's just really, really funny. And

54:02

as someone who lives in a small town, and

54:05

has a lot of lesbian friends, it

54:07

who live here as well, it is so

54:10

incredibly spot on and all

54:13

of the cultural stuff that I

54:15

just was just in stitches through

54:17

the whole thing. But it is also

54:20

a series that

54:21

has a genuine mystery, like it's

54:23

genuinely mysterious, you

54:26

it's complicated, you know, there's

54:29

a plot to follow that is just as good as any

54:31

detective series, but then it also has all

54:33

of this delicious sort of social satire

54:36

in it that that is

54:39

just a blast to watch. Oh, you

54:41

know, who's Ali? That sounds so completely up

54:43

is Steven Metcalf. I have to make sure he hears

54:46

if he doesn't listen to the show that he hears that endorsement

54:48

because between the down under angle and

54:50

the, you know, genre mystery bit,

54:52

I think he would he would flip for that. Yeah.

54:55

Rebecca, what about you? What have you got to endorse

54:57

this week? I just finished reading

54:59

a new memoir, it's called Holler

55:02

rats. And it's by a woman

55:04

named Anya Lifteg. And

55:07

it's a, it's a memoir about

55:10

being she's not from it, her

55:12

mother is from like a deep Appalachian

55:16

location. And her mother

55:19

basically sort of left

55:22

permanently as a young adult and met

55:25

a

55:25

Jewish man from the Northeast,

55:28

married him and ended up settling in Connecticut.

55:31

And so the writer is

55:34

spends every summer in the,

55:37

you know, in her mother's hometown

55:39

with her grandmother, who's like a wonderful

55:43

character as created by

55:45

this writer, like a

55:46

very fascinating person.

55:50

And so the writer is, you know, it's funny, because

55:52

I picked it up initially, because I

55:55

actually knew this writer undergrad,

55:58

but I didn't know anything.

55:59

about her life story at all.

56:02

She's one of those people that I sort of, you know,

56:04

was in some classes with or had intersected

56:06

with in various ways but never truly

56:09

befriended. And I just

56:11

am like, oh my gosh, were these kinds

56:13

of people walking around? Like her

56:16

story is so intense and interesting.

56:18

And I'm like, man, once again,

56:20

I had the thought my undergrad was wasted

56:22

on me. Like I didn't, I was not prepared

56:24

to sort of intersect

56:27

with people the way that I maybe should have. But anyway,

56:29

that aside, it's just fascinating. It's about her

56:32

sort of coming to terms with, you

56:34

know, she goes to the elite

56:36

school and then ends up a performance artist

56:39

in New York. And it's sort of about the

56:41

way that

56:42

this, it's not her upbringing, but

56:44

her mother's upbringing and her summers

56:47

in Appalachia kind

56:49

of influence her and leave her feeling

56:52

like she's always got half a foot in one place

56:54

and half a foot in another place. The

56:56

writing is incredibly vivid and beautiful.

57:00

Again, it's called Holler Rat by Anya

57:02

Lifting and I loved it.

57:04

Oh, that's fantastic. That sounds so good. And

57:06

it also flows so perfectly out of our justified

57:09

segment. Oh, yeah, exactly. You actually

57:11

have an Appalachian endorsement for the week. So

57:13

that's perfect. There you go. All

57:15

right, because you both endorse things that take a fair amount

57:18

of time, reading a whole book and watching a whole TV

57:20

show, I'm going to go short, simple

57:22

and somewhat dumb, but

57:24

incredibly pleasing for my endorsement,

57:27

which is to tell everyone that whether

57:29

or not you've seen Barbie, I'm sure you're familiar

57:31

with the song. I'm Just Ken, the Ryan Gosling

57:34

number that I believe is now broken onto

57:36

the hot 100. Chris Melinci could fill

57:39

us in more there, but I think it's actually

57:41

starting to climb the charts now as a potential

57:44

song of the summer. It's one of the high points of

57:46

the movie.

58:01

And the thing that I'm endorsing is not the song

58:03

I'm Just Ken itself, but a video that was just

58:05

released, I think yesterday, showing

58:08

Ryan Gosling rehearsing the numbers. So it's

58:10

basically, you know, a behind the scenes glimpse

58:12

of the making of Barbie. And you see a couple

58:14

shots from the movie, you know, the finished movie,

58:17

but mainly rehearsal footage with a bunch

58:19

of, you know, dancers in sweats rehearsing the

58:21

dance, which I always love to see as a fan

58:23

of the movie fame. Like I'll always

58:25

fall for watching dancers rehearse in their

58:27

their sweats. You see a little bit

58:30

of Greta Gerwig directing behind the monitor

58:32

and cracking up at Gosling's choices.

58:34

You see Mark Ronson, who is the

58:37

co-writer of the song, you know, on set watching

58:39

it. And Simu Liu, who plays another of the Kens,

58:42

dancing. It's just super, super fun

58:44

to see how it all sort of came together

58:46

backstage. And the song is just irresistible.

58:49

So we'll put a link on the show page, but it's it's

58:52

the backstage video to the

58:53

rehearsal of I'm Just Ken.

59:02

I'll see you on the Malibu

59:05

beach. Laura,

59:12

thanks so much for coming on this week. And at very

59:14

short notice at that, I really appreciate it. Always

59:17

a pleasure. And Rebecca, it's always fun

59:19

to have you on. It's been too long. I hope you'll

59:21

come back on again soon. Oh, for sure. Thanks

59:23

so much. Listeners, you can find links to

59:25

some of the things we talked about today on our show page,

59:28

including links to our endorsements. That's at

59:30

Slate.com slash Culture Fest. You

59:32

can always also email us at CultureFest

59:34

at Slate.com. Our intro music is

59:36

by the wonderful composer Nicholas Britell. Our

59:39

production assistant is Kat Hong. Our producer

59:41

is Cameron Drews. I'm Dana Stevens.

59:44

Thanks so much for listening. And we'll talk to you again next week.

59:58

Bye. Bye.

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