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0:59

Hi, I'm Steven Metcalf, and this is the Slate

1:01

Culture Gap Fest, Priscilla's Heartbreak Hotel

1:03

Edition. It's

1:06

Wednesday, November 1st, 2023. On

1:08

today's show, Priscilla is a feature film. It

1:10

stars Kaylee Spani as Priscilla Presley. It's

1:14

a retelling of the Elvis myth from the

1:16

entirely other point of view of his relationship

1:18

with his wife, Priscilla. Priscilla

1:21

is a woman who is a womanizer, and

1:23

she's a womanizer. She's a womanizer.

1:25

She's a womanizer. It's an entirely other point of view of

1:27

his way too young bride.

1:31

It's based on Priscilla Presley's memoir.

1:33

Otherwise, it's a Sofia Coppola joint, all

1:35

the way she wrote, directed, produced. And

1:37

then, Anatomy of a Fall is a

1:39

French film from director Justine Triette

1:42

about a woman who's accused of murdering her

1:44

husband who has died under supremely

1:47

ambiguous circumstances. It stars,

1:50

to my mind, the extraordinary Sandra Huler

1:52

as the accused. And finally,

1:55

the weird and very, I think, fetching

1:57

internet phenomenon, the miniature.

5:15

might,

6:00

like me, come out somewhat frustrated

6:02

by a sense that it's

6:05

all about surfaces and feelings

6:07

and momentary flights

6:10

of expression rather than

6:12

any kind of in-depth storytelling

6:15

or any real sense of either of these two characters'

6:17

psychology. And maybe that's not what the movie

6:19

sets out to do. And without delivering

6:22

a disquisition on the entire career

6:24

of Sofia Coppola, that to me is a recurring

6:26

problem in her movies, that they have this gorgeous

6:29

satiny sheen and beautiful art direction,

6:31

incredible taste, and that sometimes

6:34

they feel slight. And

6:36

this one, I think, very much falls victim

6:38

to that. Not to also

6:40

launch into a disquisition on the entire career

6:43

of Sofia Coppola, but the movie

6:45

kind of asks you to because of the

6:47

way that it uses this story to

6:49

remix so many of the themes that

6:51

she is interested in.

6:54

I left it thinking about

6:57

how I feel about

6:59

her being, I don't

7:02

know, is she our foremost female auteur

7:04

whose deal is that she puts an imprint

7:06

on everything she makes? I mean, I don't know

7:08

if she's as famous or revered as Ava DuVernay,

7:11

but there's a

7:13

different kind of range in Ava DuVernay's

7:16

work. I mean, Sofia Coppola is the person who's making

7:19

Sofia Coppola movies in a

7:21

way.

7:23

The thing I always

7:24

feel coming out of it is this mix

7:27

of admiration and disappointment

7:29

for what it is in a woman's

7:32

life that she is curious about. Like,

7:34

on the one hand, she's so smart, and

7:38

it makes perfect sense that this daughter of a director

7:41

would take as her preferred subject

7:46

the subjectivity within objectivity

7:48

of a certain kind of womanhood, right? Like, you

7:51

can be the object of desire,

7:54

and that's not an emotional dead end. That's

7:57

actually a thing that women feel, right? the

8:00

power that comes from being the object and

8:02

the power at the other end

8:04

of the male gaze, right? Like

8:07

it's a certain kind of power and it's a power with limits.

8:10

And like so many of her

8:12

women are kind of thinking about that and working through that.

8:14

And this is almost the simplest and most

8:16

direct version

8:17

of that. And that is like a totally

8:19

real and rich and interesting emotional terrain,

8:21

but it's also just such a small

8:24

slice of

8:26

womanhood. And anyway, it's just a problem with representation.

8:29

It's like not fair for Sofia Coppola to have to make

8:31

movies because she's, I think,

8:33

and Dana you'll correct me if I'm wrong, like

8:36

the big name brand lady who

8:38

makes movies that are ladies movies. I

8:42

don't know. I don't know. I actually

8:44

think I liked this more than a lot of Sofia Coppola's

8:46

other movies in its quietude. But

8:49

it also made me think about why I don't always, why

8:52

I wouldn't list her as one of my faves.

8:55

Yeah. I mean, let me say right off the bat

8:57

that I really, really admired this movie and

8:59

I don't always love her work. I mean, the part

9:02

I liked most of the movie was the early, maybe

9:04

third of it, which is really reminded

9:07

me of Lost in Translation for just

9:10

the sheer amount of like, kind

9:12

of, for lack of a better word, right? Like

9:14

a pregnant tension between a younger

9:17

woman and an older man like Lost in Translation,

9:20

right? And the relationship is defined for that

9:22

third by non-consummation, right? According

9:24

to this telling of the story, and it may well

9:27

be true, they didn't really consummate their

9:29

relationship until significantly after

9:31

the two met. And so it does feel

9:33

like a weird courtship. And that, however,

9:36

whatever you make of that, like maybe anachronistic

9:39

chivalric gesture, it

9:41

makes the relationship, it's like both unreal

9:44

and real at the same time in the weirdest possible

9:47

way. He doesn't treat her like she's a groupie

9:49

or a consumable and a disposable.

9:53

You know, he takes her in a weird way, kind

9:55

of seriously, though there are hints

9:57

of what's going to come, and then you

9:59

get... I thought actually a relatively subtle

10:03

demonstration of how power, like the

10:05

massive power discrepancy begins to express

10:07

itself over time and her struggle

10:09

to like just be minimally an adult

10:12

self within the confines of this relationship.

10:15

And the other thing I would just say is, I'll

10:17

throw it back to you Dana, but one of the things I really

10:21

genuinely admired about the movie is it was

10:23

so careful to, as

10:25

they say, is virtually

10:28

every shot of the movie and with

10:30

one, I think, very thematically important

10:33

exception, every shot of Elvis

10:35

through Priscilla, was like

10:38

there was this commitment

10:40

to telling her story and only

10:42

her story from the point of

10:44

view of someone who is

10:47

connected to a kind of

10:50

unprecedented form of celebrity. And

10:53

actually from a distance that would

10:55

seem to be horizon expanding

10:57

in a massive way for this woman, for

10:59

this girl. It turns out to be radically

11:02

horizon shrinking and the movie it seemed

11:04

to me was very in control of that as

11:07

a, both as an aesthetic and

11:09

as a theme. But anyway, so

11:13

I agree with you. There's the play between

11:15

surface and depth for Coppola

11:18

is so curious and can

11:20

be frustrating at the same time. I think there's

11:22

a high degree of self-awareness and control,

11:25

but behind the movie.

11:26

Oh, there absolutely is self-awareness and control.

11:29

I mean, this is not a floppy

11:31

tonally varying kind of movie. In

11:34

fact, it's arguably could use a little more

11:36

tonal variation, but I agree, especially after

11:39

the big Baz Luhrmann Elvis having just come

11:41

out and us getting this big, very deliberately

11:44

dazzling fireworks filled view of

11:47

his perspective and his life, that

11:49

it's wonderful that it quietly sits in

11:51

the perspective of Priscilla who, as you say,

11:54

I mean, when the movie starts out just has so little experience

11:56

of the world. Right? So we're seeing

11:58

all of this kind of glamour and glitter. for the first time

12:00

through her eyes and that gives

12:02

the movie this muted quality that's makes

12:05

it even if you are are a little bit like

12:07

me mad and that it doesn't do enough it makes

12:09

it an easy watch you know

12:11

i mean that the attention

12:13

to detail and costuming in production design

12:15

is is gorgeous and it's and it's low

12:18

key eat oats not calling attention to itself

12:20

and the way the basel are men will be dead they're very

12:22

different movies and and i even trying to make of of

12:25

point for point comparison but it feels

12:27

very different and very inside

12:29

of her world i wanted to say one thing

12:31

about the at the disallowing of

12:33

priscilla and the way the movie treats that

12:36

there's i'm gonna write about this for sli i think

12:38

in connection with another movie about

12:40

a relationship with an underage person

12:43

todd haynes his upcoming movie and

12:45

and and there's something about the way this movie treats

12:47

it's it's it's odd to me in that says

12:50

he couple of both doesn't want to do

12:52

you know stepped in as a so making voice

12:54

and deliver a judgment which i respect

12:56

in i i admired the she is not trying to

12:59

send a message like this is an abusive relationship

13:01

you're the markers of abuse you almost think about

13:03

that she does sort of leave that

13:06

open and have some ambiguity

13:08

as to you know what seems to be a real

13:10

bond between them even if it's a very unhealthy

13:13

in toxic one in the end but at

13:15

the same time too busy is obsessed with the scene

13:17

of her losing her virginity to him and

13:19

how it's eternally differed in part because

13:22

of her age at the beginning in part because of

13:24

his religiosity and his you know seeming

13:27

sexual squeamishness and stir scene after scene

13:29

where he refuses to have sex with her right was

13:31

he wants to and and

13:33

i think that the movie is doing that as he say to

13:36

sort of else to show that it was more complicated

13:38

than just a child being groomed and you

13:40

know delivered up to a rock star and in

13:42

what we might think of is the most a

13:45

voracious way but it's

13:47

him when it actually happens is this is when

13:49

is actually happens it's so muted

13:51

and almost witty the way that she frames

13:53

it there's this mantises long montage

13:55

at one point of the outside of elvis's

13:58

bedroom door graceland where they spent

20:00

the audio recording of a fight that sondra

20:02

had with her husband it's key piece of

20:04

evidence in the case against her but

20:06

she doesn't to get proves anything anyway

20:08

let's have a listen

20:10

to call

20:11

it and it's not

20:13

reality

20:15

it is a part of it maybe

20:17

a few has an extreme moment

20:19

in life and emotional peak you focus on it

20:21

is of course across is everything it

20:24

may seem like they were suitable prove but actually

20:26

wants everything it's not

20:28

reality is our voices said so that

20:30

it's not illegal

20:31

to disagree about what is reality

20:34

okay you you need to stop seeing

20:36

yourself the where are those are going to proceed

20:39

a trial is not about the truth is that it's about

20:41

know that the trump well there is

20:45

dana

20:46

let me let me or sister with you this time

20:49

my person is you loved this movie i haven't read

20:51

your view but from what you've said would

20:54

you make of anatomy reform

20:56

yeah i haven't reviewed it i hope to the i get

20:58

to write about it sometime before the into the air but

21:00

i really really liked it i think i endorsed

21:02

is on the cell a few weeks ago didn't i was one of my

21:04

discovery that the it's a new york film festival couple

21:06

months ago and yeah

21:09

i mean i don't want to say too much about it but is this is

21:11

so much a movie that reveals

21:13

it's own twists but as you can hear

21:15

from that and that conversation i mean this

21:17

is a movie it's it's it's a pretty talking movie

21:19

right it's a movie about a writer whose

21:22

whose recently dead husband is also a writer

21:25

and who they seem to live in a very

21:27

philosophical environment so the courtroom

21:30

scenes especially but also just a lot

21:32

of the scenes like we just heard that the conversation

21:35

between

21:35

sandra the main character and her lawyer

21:38

there's

21:38

a doesn't serve philosophical

21:40

bent to the movie right i don't give a fuck about

21:42

the truth this is how you are perceived by

21:45

others as julia the the film

21:47

critic for your great paper just in chiang

21:49

called this a who's been it rather than who done it and i

21:51

think that's that's perfect it sort of gets out the fact

21:53

that this is a movie all about perspective and who's

21:55

telling the story and the underside ability you

21:57

know how even in a court of law itself

33:59

show. I

34:01

mean, it's like hard as

34:04

a journalist to applaud

34:07

the fact that celebrities

34:09

no longer

34:09

need us. And so

34:11

they can be extremely withholding with

34:15

how it is that they choose to share themselves with

34:17

the public and they often just do it directly through

34:19

their social media. Or sometimes they

34:24

do it because somebody

34:26

comes up with a format that feels fun. And I think I spoke

34:28

about this a little bit when we talked about Strike Force Five,

34:30

but part of what was so interesting and revealing about that show

34:33

is that like weirdly

34:36

Jimmy Fallon is the best interviewer even

34:38

though he's not

34:41

the one I'd be most excited to have dinner

34:43

with, if that makes sense. Because what he

34:45

does is come up with these like bits

34:47

that force

34:49

invulnerable seeming famous people

34:51

to make themselves vulnerable

34:54

in public and thus reveal some

34:57

sense of the core, right? So if you see someone

35:00

doing karaoke or playing a dumb game show for

35:02

Jimmy Fallon, like it's often

35:04

one that actually calls on them to like you deploy their talent,

35:07

but in a kind of rough

35:10

and tumble way, you

35:12

feel like you're getting to know them, which is the

35:14

thing that you want from like a celebrity interview

35:17

or a celebrity profile.

35:18

And it's just harder and harder to

35:20

get that. So the genius of

35:22

Hot Ones is that it actually

35:25

is like asking these people to lie on a bed

35:27

of nails. Like what happens to a famous

35:29

person when they are in physical

35:32

distress? What will they reveal

35:34

about themselves, about their fortitude,

35:38

about their culinary upbringings?

35:40

And it

35:42

is often truly revealing. So

35:46

we watched a bunch with my children

35:48

and so we went for folks they know.

35:50

So we saw John Mulaney and Harry Kane,

35:52

the British soccer player. And

35:55

then we did the Jennifer Lawrence one just because it's

35:58

so famous.

37:26

I

38:00

thought each episode was going to be like five minutes long

38:02

because that's what you always see clips of floating

38:04

around. But they are, they tend to be, it seems

38:06

like by now, about 25 minutes or so. The

38:09

thing that surprised me the most was the quality of the questions.

38:12

And I saw that really consistently in the responses

38:15

of the interviewees, too. I mean, in our research

38:17

and also just in watching episodes,

38:20

I think, I know Viola Davis as she's leaving

38:23

the Hot Ones stage, who, by the way, has a very watchable,

38:25

very, very funny episode

38:27

of Hot Ones, says, fantastic questions.

38:30

Apparently, I'm reading here Josh Brolin said,

38:32

best questions I've ever been asked in interview. And Sean

38:35

Evans, this very unassuming guy who's eating

38:37

Hot Wings opposite the celebrity, apparently

38:40

is obsessed with research and spends a really

38:42

long time digging deep into the deep

38:44

cuts of people's careers. And they

38:46

love that. People love to sort of feel like

38:48

they're being seen. And I had expected exactly the

38:50

opposite because it's such a grabby premise.

38:53

I just thought, surely it's just going to be promote

38:55

your latest project while eating Hot Wings. And

38:57

it's going to feel sort of like an entertainment

39:00

tonight level interview. And that is not

39:02

the case at all. Like Viola Davis really gets

39:04

into Kraft and Juilliard

39:06

and, you know, says some very funny

39:08

and smart things about what it is to be an

39:10

actor and prepare for a role, all the while,

39:13

you know, sweating and gasping her way

39:15

through

39:15

various hot sauces. The thing about

39:17

law dramas is it

39:19

really challenges your process

39:22

as an actor. It's hard

39:24

to tap into emotion because.

39:30

Yeah, I know.

39:32

I'm surprised I'm not pissing in my pants right

39:34

now. I mean, I hate

39:36

the word relatable, but this is such an innocent

39:39

way to make a famous person vulnerable.

39:42

Like Julia, as you say, it's just so

39:44

it's so human and it's it's

39:46

like bed of nails is right. And yet, you

39:49

know, obviously you weren't being literal, but

39:51

there's something about this specific

39:53

thing, right, because it's it

39:56

is something most people do

39:58

to some degree for pleasure,

40:00

right, spice food, and make it hotter

40:03

very often. And yet, as

40:05

you go along the Scoville scale

40:07

or whatever it's called, you know, it's

40:10

like pleasure and pain. Like, it's the fact that you're

40:12

watching someone go from pleasure to

40:14

pain along a calibrated

40:16

spectrum. What that does to their

40:19

defenses, as you say, Julia, this

40:22

incredibly finely honed defenses,

40:25

you know, against unwanted revelation

40:27

and their ability

40:29

to always make themselves, you

40:32

know, a professional ability to always put

40:34

forward your

40:35

best

40:36

self, right, and just to watch

40:39

that sort of break as you span

40:41

that spectrum. It's just kind of great. And

40:43

then it works because the questions are really good,

40:45

right? They're incredibly thoughtful, well-researched

40:48

questions that you're, they're

40:51

qualitatively better questions getting like weirdly

40:53

qualitatively better answers because

40:55

of the oddity of the circumstances.

40:58

And the very worst thing a

41:00

famous person could do under these circumstances

41:03

is not be game in a way. And once

41:05

you're game for this, you know,

41:08

yeah, yeah, all kinds of things like demeanor,

41:11

clues, and actual sort

41:13

of substantive answers rise to the surface unexpectedly.

41:16

It's really just, it's just fun

41:18

and weird and like how they hit upon

41:20

this formula.

41:21

Yeah, I mean, look, the other thing I'll say

41:24

to feeling the like journalist

41:26

lament of like they don't need us anymore to both

41:29

days, the celebrities don't need us to reveal

41:31

themselves to their public and the public doesn't need

41:33

us to find

41:35

revelations about their celebrities.

41:36

Like some of that is

41:39

sad for my profession, but like

41:42

some of that is like the

41:44

classic outlets got beat. Like this is a straight

41:47

up

41:47

good concept for a conversation

41:49

show. And like the

41:51

innovation of it and the kind of combination

41:54

between a, you know, sort

41:56

of actor studio limited set and not

41:59

sus.

41:59

It's surprising and like

42:01

one of the good things that came out of the wild experimentation

42:04

of people trying to figure out what would get

42:06

video views on the internet in the twenty teens,

42:09

right? So I have to like

42:11

do off my cap to that. I do want

42:13

to push back a little

42:14

bit on the idea that these are like quote

42:17

the best questions that could be asked

42:19

because they are definitely

42:22

not idiotic and they

42:24

definitely

42:26

demonstrate

42:28

the research that has been done. But

42:30

they weirdly remind me of the questions

42:33

that like I used to ask at the very beginning

42:35

of my reporting career where you're like trying

42:38

to prove how much homework you did and the

42:41

question is almost like a little bit more about that

42:43

than about actually trying to elicit something

42:46

revealing. And like look I chose

42:49

that at their path. Like I don't think I

42:51

am like a great interviewer

42:54

or that kind of deft questioning

42:56

is my top journalistic skill set

42:59

but I have so much admiration for the people who do

43:01

it. And what good questioning

43:03

does is get people to reveal things they

43:05

don't want to reveal or get them

43:07

to explain things that they wouldn't

43:10

have otherwise explained. And I think you hear

43:12

in that Jennifer Lawrence clip like actually what

43:14

she says about health is really interesting and like

43:17

helps, does help. Like that one I think does go to

43:19

an interesting place and does help you understand

43:21

kind of what

43:24

she admires and how she thinks about like the risk

43:26

and fear in a performance and how much you have to

43:28

commit before you know what you're committing

43:30

to. So it's not that they never go anywhere but they

43:33

only go places that are safe.

43:35

Like Josh Brolin loved the question

43:37

because the question was like tell

43:39

us about the little teeny tiny theater where you

43:41

got your start and gave

43:44

him a chance to talk about this time of life that

43:47

probably people don't ask me about that much. So like that is

43:50

good but it's again

43:52

this is coming back to the journalistic limit. It's

43:55

safe. It's safe. Like none of the questions are dangerous

43:57

for them. The danger lies in the hot sauce

43:59

and the question.

45:59

That's a... Genghis

46:02

Khan just rode through my consoles. What's

46:06

going on? Okay, well it's hot ones and it's

46:09

easy to find on the internet, on

46:11

YouTube, various other places. It's

46:13

very fun. Check it out. Let us know what you think. Let's

46:15

move on.

46:18

Don't miss the Marvels in theaters

46:20

on November 10th. And see where the Marvel stories

46:23

all began when you watched Captain Marvel, One

46:25

Division, and Miss Marvel. Only

46:27

on Disney Plus. Get Disney Plus

46:29

with Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star

46:31

Wars, and National Geographic. Clamp

46:34

starting at $7.99.

46:37

All right. Well now is the moment in our podcast when we

46:40

endorsed them. What do you have? You

46:42

know, Steve, last week we talked about audiobooks on the

46:44

show and our relationship to listening to them. And

46:46

one of the things I said is that lately I've become such

46:48

an audiobook listener that podcasts have been

46:50

somewhat displaced. But I want to stand

46:52

up for podcasts, our own medium,

46:55

because I also discovered a good podcast

46:58

during the past couple months that I've been dipping

47:00

into on and off, not trying to

47:02

listen in order because there's really a lot of

47:04

it and it's quite dense. But there's a really

47:06

excellent podcast called the French History

47:08

Podcast. Have either of you heard of or about

47:11

this one at all? No. No, I like

47:13

the literalism of the name though, assuming it's about

47:15

French history. I mean, it very

47:17

much is a square sort of podcast.

47:19

You know, it's not a hot one version of French

47:22

history. But

47:25

it's extremely well done and

47:28

chooses really interesting angles on French

47:30

history that aren't always just about France. They're often

47:32

global, trans-historical, international.

47:35

So there's episodes about Roman ruins

47:37

across the country. There's an

47:39

episode which I was going to mention as a starter. It

47:42

was the first one that I heard. It's from this September

47:44

called Thomas Jefferson's Paris. It's just

47:46

about what Paris was like in the years that

47:48

he was there and his sort of really

47:51

hit the way that he brought French culture to the US.

47:53

That's a fascinating one. Anyway,

47:56

I mean, it's a pretty dense listen. The episodes

47:58

are usually over half an hour. sometimes

48:00

more, but I like that each one

48:02

is freestanding. It's not chronological. It's

48:04

not building on previous things. So if you just feel

48:06

like learning some stuff about French history

48:09

and world history, put the French History Podcast

48:12

on your podcast queue.

48:13

Oh, that sounds cool. Julia,

48:15

what do you have?

48:16

All right. I have an endorsement

48:18

and an aspiration and an esprit de

48:20

scallier, not

48:22

in that order. So I've

48:25

spent a lot of time thinking

48:26

about Killers of the Flower Moon since our conversation

48:28

last week and Owen Gleiberman,

48:31

who I think is now a variety, wrote

48:33

a review that really helped

48:37

me put my finger further on what

48:39

bothered me about the Leo DiCaprio

48:42

character and the kind of confusing

48:46

cipher that he is in the film. So my

48:48

endorsement is the Owen Gleiberman essay

48:51

about that character.

48:54

And my esprit de scallier is just,

48:56

I think the reason, the thing I didn't

48:58

quite get around

48:59

to understanding last week, the

49:01

reason that bothered me so much in the movie

49:05

is because I feel like by

49:08

making the evil so characterologically

49:11

incomprehensible, like why would you be

49:13

like that? Why would you

49:15

do that? Why would you treat her that way? Why would you listen to the guy?

49:18

It kind of lets the audience off the

49:20

hook because it lets you watch the movie

49:22

and be like, well, I wouldn't

49:24

be an idiot like that dude. And

49:27

I think what's much more interesting about the darkness

49:29

of this story is how much this

49:32

happened, how many people did some version of

49:34

this. So anyway,

49:37

Owen Gleiberman's essay, very much worth

49:39

reading.

49:39

And then my aspiration,

49:42

you know,

49:42

so much has

49:44

been said already about the awful death

49:47

of Matthew Perry, which I think has hit so

49:50

many hard, both those folks

49:52

who loved friends and also people

49:54

who've known people in their lives with addiction. I

49:57

have not yet read the memoir, but by all accounts, it's

49:59

worth it. really great

50:02

and really brave recounting

50:04

of what a struggle with addiction can be

50:07

even for someone with incredible

50:09

resources. And so

50:11

I'm bumping that up my list to

50:13

read in Matthew Perry's Honor.

50:16

Yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned

50:19

Perry and it would be

50:21

hard to call anybody on

50:23

such an ensemble show, the straw that

50:26

stirred the drink as it were, and you

50:28

could probably make an argument for the other five

50:30

cast members as well on any given day.

50:32

But very often it felt to

50:35

me as a moderate fan of the show early on

50:37

that Perry was

50:40

that one. Anyway,

50:42

my endorsement this week is the book Naples 44. That's 44,

50:44

is in the year 1944. Naples 24, an intelligence officer

50:50

in the Italian labyrinth. It's

50:52

a military memoir by

50:55

the British travel writer and also sometimes

50:58

novelist Norman Lewis. It was

51:00

published in the late 70s, but it details

51:02

his, he's in this

51:04

little sort of intelligent British intelligence

51:06

unit that's going to quote unquote liberate the

51:08

city of Naples. And what

51:11

drew me to it is that I was reading this

51:13

Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, who may

51:15

or may not have been a fascist in unknowable

51:17

degrees. In real

51:19

life, Malaparte accompanied the American

51:22

general and the troops into the city of Naples

51:24

to help liberate it and act as a go-between. And

51:26

Naples, of course, is the city of Ferrante. I

51:28

mean, this then as now,

51:31

like very, very mob controlled city,

51:33

the Camorra is in control

51:35

of it. It's like, it's one of the most

51:37

deeply itself places in the world.

51:40

It's its own folkways and culture

51:42

are its own and nobody else's in

51:44

some deep and inscrutable

51:47

way. And so Malaparte as an Italian

51:49

was dealing with that and the relationship between these

51:51

American would be liberators

51:54

and that the fabric of that culture.

51:56

And Lewis is dealing with the same subject but from a

51:59

very ingl this is

52:01

it an unbelievably gifted

52:03

travel writer and and dry

52:06

wit with that appreciation for

52:08

the weirdness of humanity and the

52:10

possibilities and depths of human suffering

52:13

i mean it's a widely considered

52:15

to be one of the greatest nonfiction books

52:17

of the twentieth century and a cumberbatch

52:19

tub made a documentary about

52:22

it a number of years ago about six seven

52:24

years ago it's just one of those books

52:26

that deserves to be read it's like a deeply humane

52:29

documents and though this isn't that

52:31

trump card at all i don't think you really i

52:33

i really believe loose doesn't quote unquote other

52:36

the of the neapolitan

52:39

and in fact he married as a sicilian

52:41

woman and lived i ended up living

52:43

and i know naples is not in sicily but he ended up but

52:46

it be sort of half a citizen of italy and

52:48

very deeply embedded in the culture of sicily

52:51

about what you also wrote beautifully i

52:53

just think it's an extraordinary book i cannot

52:56

believe how fucking good it is and i wish i had read it

52:58

sooner naples forty four or

53:00

norman last

53:12

two summers thinking ah

53:15

dana thank you so much another really

53:17

fun so you'll

53:19

find links to some of the things we talked about to or

53:21

ship had sleep dot coms less culture

53:23

first and you can email us at culture fests

53:26

at slate dot com are

53:29

interacting music is by the composer nipples patel

53:31

or production assistant his calf hong or producer

53:34

his camera druze for dan stevens

53:36

and julia turner and be the mecca

53:38

thank you so much

54:09

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