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400 local branches to learn more. I'm

1:11

Stephen Metcalf and this is the Slate

1:13

Culture Gap. The Beehive Swarms, the box

1:15

office edition. It's Wednesday, December

1:17

6th, 2023 on today's show, Renaissance. The

1:21

concert film produced, starring and everything

1:24

else. Queen Diva Beyonce,

1:26

but she's so much more

1:28

than a diva. This is so much

1:30

more than a concert movie. And anyway, it

1:32

won the weekend and we'll discuss. We're

1:35

joined by Slate's own Nadera Gough for that

1:37

segment. And then the

1:39

director Todd Haynes returns with May,

1:41

December, the story of the extended

1:44

afterlife of a wildly inappropriate and

1:46

age-discrepent relationship that resulted in A

1:48

Marriage and Children. It

1:50

stars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.

1:52

And finally, how much Grinch is

1:55

too much Grinch? We will discuss

1:57

a new Grinch book, Apostomist Grinch.

2:00

sequel with Slade Zone Dan Cois,

2:02

but joining me first is Julia

2:04

Turner of the LA Times. Hey,

2:06

Julia. Hello, hello. And

2:08

of course, Dana Stevens, Face to

2:10

Face. Hey, Steve. Good to see you, face to

2:12

face. All right, let's make

2:15

a show. Beyonce, she is no stranger to

2:17

making documentaries about herself. She's after all a

2:19

diva, and a diva is her own muse,

2:21

QED. This is her third

2:23

though in about a decade, but Renaissance,

2:25

a film by Beyonce, feels somehow definitive

2:27

in a way that its predecessors maybe

2:30

did not. It is to begin with

2:32

a three-hour concert film-ish, roughly

2:35

three-hour concert film, but it's really

2:37

much, much more. It's also a

2:40

backstage arena tour procedural, a

2:42

verite peekaboo behind the scaffolding and

2:44

into her life and creative processes.

2:47

Something of a personal diary. We'll get into whether

2:50

that's real or not real. Anyway,

2:52

she unsurprisingly sums up the movie best,

2:54

I think. Being a black woman, everything

2:56

is a fight, she says. Eventually, they

2:58

realize this bitch will not give up.

3:01

All right, what we have for a clip is

3:04

a piece of the trailer. Let's have a listen.

3:07

Time is my biggest obstacle. It's

3:12

impossible to not realize how fast it's going

3:14

when you are looking through the eyes of

3:16

your children. I

3:21

think about all of my heroes and

3:23

all that they endure. I

3:28

know that all of my struggle and sacrifice

3:30

is opening the door for the next. They

3:39

are the new beginning. I

3:50

have nothing to prove to anyone at this

3:52

point. We are creating

3:54

our own world. Okay,

4:01

well, for the segment, we're joined by

4:03

Slate's culture writer, Nadira Goss, and very,

4:05

very good and close friend of this

4:08

program. Nadira, welcome back. Oh, thanks

4:10

for having me. I'm really excited to talk about this

4:12

movie. I'm really excited to talk about it with you.

4:14

Where do you even begin, Nadira? I'm going to let

4:16

you pick. This is a Beyonce-Schmorgas

4:19

board, and there's a lot to choose from.

4:21

I mean, as someone who

4:23

has studied and in some ways

4:25

exalted while critically in her career

4:27

and persona, where did this

4:29

bring you, maybe hadn't been before with

4:32

her and her work? Yeah,

4:34

I think that this movie is really

4:37

surprising in a lot of ways

4:39

in terms of a lot of

4:41

things, but specifically the way that Beyonce

4:43

is presenting herself and her

4:45

craft and her life. And

4:48

so for the majority of

4:50

her career, she's really been someone who

4:53

has prided herself on this idea

4:56

of perfection. She strives

4:58

for perfection. She achieves perfection. All

5:01

of her shows sort of run like, as she

5:03

says in the movie, a well-oiled machine. And

5:06

in this film, she's breaking

5:08

down that idea of perfection.

5:10

Now, mind you, it's still

5:13

her creation. It's still this idea

5:15

of imperfection in her specific lens.

5:18

But it's interesting to me that the tone

5:20

and theme of this film is I want

5:22

to actually show you the process. I want

5:24

to actually show you what life is like

5:26

when things go wrong. I want to actually

5:28

show you what happens when I mess

5:30

up or when a family member messes

5:32

up or when something just goes awry.

5:34

And I don't want you to come

5:36

away thinking that I'm perfect or that

5:38

this is just effortless. I want you

5:40

to come away thinking that this is

5:42

hard work, that it involved a lot

5:44

of people, and that I am actually

5:46

a very flawed human being who's just trying

5:49

my best. And again, some

5:51

of the ways that she depicts

5:53

that can be a little bit,

5:55

you know, hagiographic, a

5:57

little bit eye-rolly. For

6:00

the most part, I think it's

6:02

a really interesting shift in how

6:04

she's presenting herself and her idea

6:07

as what Beyonce is as a

6:09

persona or an icon. Right.

6:11

I mean, there's kind of like the

6:13

jumbotron self that a pop star operating

6:16

at this scale has to perfect. There's

6:18

an illusion, at least, of intimacy that they

6:21

also have to perfect. And

6:24

there's a natural tendency

6:26

to cultish hagiography when someone

6:28

does master life at

6:30

that kind of global pleasing

6:32

scale. But that can be

6:35

alienating, so you also have to come off

6:37

as human. Dana, I'm interested in this as a

6:39

work of cinema, and easy contrast is with the

6:41

Taylor Swift movie. We don't have to blabber

6:43

it, but this is, given

6:45

the jump cuts that you

6:47

can talk about maybe a little bit, this

6:49

is clearly a work of cinema. It's not

6:52

just a filmed concert. Yeah,

6:54

I'm glad you asked me that specific question,

6:56

because that's exactly how I wanted to address

6:58

it. As I was making notes, it was

7:00

almost like I wanted to acknowledge

7:02

and set aside Beyonce as a performer

7:04

and her self-presentation as one thing to

7:06

talk about, which Nadira just opened with

7:08

and we'll talk about more. And then

7:10

this nearly three-hour-long thing that's

7:12

showing in movie theaters, which I think

7:15

of the films that she's made, it's the first

7:17

one that's had that kind of theatrical projection, as

7:21

a work of cinema. And I have to

7:23

say that while I found her

7:25

a jaw-dropping performer, and I was really glad to

7:27

have seen the movie just to get some sense

7:29

of what it would be like to be at

7:31

a Beyonce concert, I don't think this totally

7:34

works as a piece of cinema, and it

7:36

felt nearly three hours long to me for

7:38

reasons that had nothing to do with the

7:40

concert clips that were all spellbinding, that had

7:43

more to do with aesthetic

7:45

choices that were made. Okay, the editing, since you mentioned

7:47

it, something that this movie does

7:49

very deliberately that's very different from a movie

7:51

like the Taylor Swift documentary or Stop Making

7:53

Sense, right, the classic Talking Heads concert doc

7:56

that we just discussed, is that it doesn't

7:58

try to create the illusion that you're at

8:00

one concert. In fact, it deliberately plays with

8:02

that idea by cutting

8:04

from, describe it this

8:06

way, within a single performance, you'll suddenly see after

8:08

one cut, wait, Beyonce's in a different costume and

8:11

all her background dances are in different costumes. This

8:13

has to be a different night and then it'll

8:15

go back to the original one and then go

8:17

to some other one. And part of the effect

8:19

of that is to show you the mind-bending array

8:21

of incredible couture costumes that she has on, which

8:23

I hope Julia will touch on later. But

8:26

another thing that it does is tell you

8:28

this is not the same concert. This is

8:30

a movie showing off its editing precision, right,

8:32

so that somehow she and her background dancers

8:34

are all in the exact same position so

8:36

that this cut seems seamless even though they're dressed

8:38

differently so it has to be a different night.

8:41

And I guess that's kind of a

8:43

virtuosic tour de force of editing, but to

8:45

me it also underlined the mechanistic

8:48

angle of this show, right? I mean, you

8:50

would have to, and many reviews of the

8:52

movie have observed this, you would have to

8:54

choreograph something so precisely to be sure that

8:56

the angles would work in the cut. And

8:58

to me that almost, it

9:01

serves to undercut the kind of spontaneity

9:03

and authenticity that Beyonce is trying to

9:05

telegraph, right? And so that to me, there's

9:07

this cognitive dissonance in this movie where she's working

9:09

so hard to show you, look, I'm showing you

9:12

all my flaws, right? The song Flaws and All

9:14

is one of the first songs in

9:16

the movie, but that lack

9:18

of virtuosity is being shown to you

9:20

with incredible virtuosity. So I never kind

9:22

of felt that I was really glimpsing

9:25

anything more real

9:27

than you would glimpse if you were at the show itself.

9:29

Interesting. And this gives me, Dana, a

9:32

great double pivot to Julia because it's

9:34

both, Julia, it reminds me of something

9:36

you once said about her that has stayed with me

9:39

ever since, which is that if

9:41

nothing else blows you away about

9:43

this performer, she always hits her

9:46

mark. To the

9:48

degree that every performance would be seamlessly the

9:50

same if that's what she so

9:52

choose. And so I'd love

9:54

to hear you talk about the relationship

9:56

between this person's cyborg-like

9:59

perfectionism. which some of

10:01

the costumes really get at. There's a

10:03

kind of weird Donna Haraway, I am

10:05

a hybrid creature, I am

10:07

both human and digital and

10:09

metallic all at once, that's

10:12

weirdly seductive but

10:14

also alienating, mixed

10:17

in with all of the couture. I'm just curious

10:19

to hear you talk about both the marketing and

10:21

the costumes. Well I'll try to come at

10:23

that from both angles, Steve. I mean first, I loved

10:26

this movie. I wept

10:30

during this movie because I felt

10:32

so moved by her

10:37

brilliance and by her growth. So

10:39

I like fell for it completely

10:41

that this was

10:44

a more mature sharing

10:47

of herself and like comfort with

10:50

beginning to reveal the person

10:53

behind all that technique. I mean I remember

10:55

on this show we discussed the documentaries she

10:57

made for I think HBO ten

10:59

years ago that was like so it was

11:03

sort of the dawn of famous people producing

11:06

their own documentaries and I remember us being

11:08

like well this trend sucks,

11:10

like this is the most boring

11:12

possible documentary. You could see,

11:15

I've learned nothing and I so

11:18

on an emotional level I felt like

11:20

deep catharsis, I felt inspired,

11:22

I felt like I wanted to be

11:24

a better person. I like

11:27

it really really got to

11:30

my viscera in a

11:32

way that I've like experienced with Beyonce on

11:34

the dance floor obviously but like I don't

11:36

know that I've experienced watching

11:38

her as a kind of cultural figure

11:41

in the same way. At the

11:44

same time I also had a kind

11:47

of intellectual response to it which is about

11:50

just the hyper evolution of celebrity

11:52

and we had this thought about the

11:55

Beckham doc too like we're

11:57

ten years into two celebrities producing their

11:59

own documentaries. and they've gotten smarter about

12:01

it, and they know that if I make something

12:03

completely boring and sanitized that doesn't answer and address

12:05

the obvious questions that we have about them, we

12:08

will smell it and hate it and

12:11

move on. On a pure

12:13

mechanical level, Dana, when I first walked into the

12:15

theater and saw those quick changes between the costumes,

12:17

I was like, what the hell is this? I'm

12:19

so confused. And then it pulled

12:22

me in and the kind of,

12:25

I don't know, like riotous precision? Is that

12:27

a thing that can be? It

12:29

seemed like what it was to me, and

12:31

it was, I'm so

12:33

glad I got to see all those costumes. They

12:35

were fucking incredible. And

12:38

so I loved the kind of

12:41

just sheer inventiveness that

12:44

was on display, and I just went for

12:46

it, Oakland and Sinker. I

12:48

loved it too. I was completely

12:51

floored by it. I've been immune

12:54

to this performer's

12:56

charisma, charm, talents,

12:59

while knowing they're there. They don't

13:01

affect me at all. This altered

13:03

completely within about five minutes. Not even

13:06

five minutes, first of all, she

13:08

begins, Nadir, she opens with

13:10

two numbers standing perfectly still at a

13:12

microphone. I mean, she's extraordinarily

13:15

dressed and an extraordinary presence.

13:17

She doesn't move to be

13:20

captivating, but it just

13:22

emphasizes her status as a singer for

13:24

two full songs. I mean, maybe the

13:26

second one goes into a larger break

13:28

and then there's movement. But effectively, she

13:30

begins with her voice foregrounded, and

13:33

unlike certain other performers who will go

13:35

unnamed, I think she actually has the

13:37

voice to carry a three-hour concert as

13:39

a concert. And then the cinematics

13:42

of it, the stagecraft of it, the

13:45

extent to which she showed you that this is not

13:48

one city traveling

13:51

around the globe en masse

13:53

complete with nurses, seamstresses, and

13:56

every other kind of specialized labor there is.

13:58

It's actually, in a sense, three,

14:00

that there are two entirely

14:02

separate sets that are at

14:04

the following two cities that

14:06

she's going to go to

14:08

setting up in order to make the timing

14:10

of the tour work, just the sheer gigantism

14:13

of it and the kind

14:15

of the Steve Jobs-like

14:18

X-factor that it takes to have a central

14:20

personality driving the whole thing, aka her,

14:23

I thought was very powerful and very

14:25

moving. I'm, like Julia, I'm very skeptical

14:27

of celebrities getting good

14:30

at the illusion of intimacy, and

14:32

that stops me short a little bit, but by

14:35

and large I was one over, I

14:37

cannot describe how completely I was not

14:39

bored for one second in the course

14:41

of the three hours. I'm

14:44

so glad to hear that, and I just want

14:46

to say one thing. I was

14:49

at the show. I went to the

14:52

Renaissance tour this summer, and

14:54

I think for me

14:56

with a concert film, my favorite

14:58

concert film of all time, is Stop Making

15:00

Sense. The most important thing to

15:03

me is if you can convey the energy

15:05

of what it's like to be in

15:07

that room through a screen,

15:09

which is really hard to do. And

15:12

I have to say I've

15:14

never been to a show that

15:17

felt so euphoric, where

15:19

every single person there, I mean even

15:21

the people running the concession stands, were

15:23

smiling and happy to be there and

15:26

enjoying everybody else's specialty costumes that they

15:28

had planned months to make, and

15:31

were just reveling in this beauty of

15:33

this special moment that an artist could

15:35

give us. And I know that that

15:38

sounds super cheesy, but it was real.

15:40

It was really, really real. Like it

15:42

is. It makes me emotional to think about

15:44

it, to be honest. And I feel like

15:46

this movie did such a good job of

15:48

bringing you there and portraying

15:51

that, and then also sort of incorporating

15:53

the history of the queer ballroom culture

15:55

and all the things that sort of built

15:58

this sound of this Renaissance. album

16:00

and then this show and this tour. And

16:03

I just find that to be

16:05

so revelatory in a

16:07

way that's even a step up from

16:09

Beyonce's previous concert film Homecoming, which I

16:11

think is amazing. It's great. I'm pretty sure

16:13

that I have a blurb about it in

16:16

Slate's Black Foam Cannon, but to me

16:18

this is even, you know, one

16:20

step above that in terms of

16:22

just showcasing that pure, really

16:25

free energy that everyone in

16:27

the room had that she

16:29

facilitated for everyone at those

16:31

shows on those nights. I'm

16:33

going to be an outlier and say that I think

16:35

that my favorite film that she's produced so far is

16:37

Homecoming. For me, Homecoming telegraphed

16:40

that feeling of what it would have been like

16:42

to be at that Coachella set. Maybe

16:44

more than this, of course I wasn't at the

16:46

concert, but this felt a little bit more like,

16:48

it felt like an artifact. I mean it wanted

16:51

to make itself feel like an artifact of an

16:53

entire tour. And so while it was sort of

16:55

a stunning object to behold on

16:57

the screen, I didn't feel as much like I

16:59

was being caught up in the energy of a

17:01

live show. But yeah, I feel like

17:03

I'm the outlier on being utterly, utterly blown

17:05

away by this movie, but I still think

17:07

people should go see it whether or not

17:10

they consider themselves Beyonce fans, as Steve, you

17:12

just demonstrated. All right,

17:14

the movie is Renaissance, a film by

17:16

Beyonce. It's in theaters. It's worth

17:18

checking out. To put

17:20

it mildly, Nadir Gargoff, thank you so much

17:22

for coming back on the show. It's always

17:24

just a total pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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18:31

right, before we go any further, this

18:33

is typically where we discuss business. Dana,

18:35

what do we have? Steve, we've

18:37

got two items of business this week. First of

18:39

all, we are getting ready right now for our

18:41

annual listener call-in episode. This is the end-of-year tradition

18:45

where we take call-ins from listeners that we have

18:47

a voicemail number to receive. They can be about

18:49

culture, or they can be about anything at all.

18:51

Ask us our favorite Greek tragedy.

18:53

I don't know. Ask us our skincare routine.

18:55

Whatever you can think of, we will try

18:58

to answer it, as long as it's not

19:00

so personal that we would be exposing our

19:02

inner lives on mic. Well, I guess we

19:04

kind of do that willy-nilly

19:07

every week. Also, you've just given them an

19:09

invitation to probe. Some

19:12

incredibly disturbing personal questions. What's Dana

19:14

hiding? Anyway,

19:17

if you want to ask us one of these terrifyingly

19:20

personal questions, give us a call and leave a message

19:22

at 260-337-8260. That's

19:26

260, FESS 260. I

19:29

feel like a drive-time DJ. Or

19:31

you can email us at culturefestetslate.com. And

19:34

who knows, we might pick your question to answer on

19:36

our call-in episode, which tapes later this month. We want

19:39

to put an end date on these questions so that

19:41

they don't start rolling in when it's too late for

19:43

us to choose among them and use them. So let's

19:45

say a week from the day that this podcast is

19:47

dropping, which is to say Wednesday, December 13th. Get us

19:49

your questions by that date, and we'll be able to

19:52

go over them and have time to sift through them

19:54

and pick some to answer on the show. Our

19:57

second item of business is to tell you about today's Slate

19:59

Plus segment this week. we're going to answer a listener

20:01

question from a listener named Tim who wanted to

20:03

know how we decide what to read next when

20:05

we're reading for pleasure. I like this question. I'm

20:07

very curious to hear what Julie and Steve have

20:09

to say about it because I feel like my

20:11

own reading choices follow some kind

20:13

of internal logic that is very specific to me and I'm

20:15

sure that's the same with you guys. If

20:18

you're a Slate Plus member, you'll hear that segment

20:20

at the end of this show and if you're

20:22

not a Slate Plus member, you can sign up

20:24

at slate.com/culture plus. What does it mean to be

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a Slate Plus member? Well, you get ad-free podcasts,

20:28

you get bonus segments on many, many Slate

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20:51

All right. Well, the film director Todd

20:53

Haynes has been making courageously weird

20:55

bewitching films ever since Superstar, the

20:57

Karen Carpenter story, went on

20:59

to make Safe, Far From Heaven, Carol, so many

21:01

great movies. If he makes it, I

21:03

want to see it. The formula is very simple. He

21:06

returns with May, December, the story about

21:08

two women. One played by

21:10

Natalie Portman is a famous actress who travels

21:12

to Savannah to research her role in an

21:15

upcoming film. The object of

21:17

her close study in Georgia is

21:19

Grace played by Julianne Moore, who

21:22

23 years earlier seduced a seventh

21:24

grade boy, then while serving a prison

21:27

term for statutory rape, gave birth to

21:29

his baby and then on release, married

21:32

him. Only superficially is

21:34

the movie based on the Mary Kay

21:36

Literno story. The film is really a

21:39

study of love, subordination, denial, and even

21:41

Hollywood cynicism as they come

21:43

to mingle in the grayest of

21:45

imaginable gray areas. It also

21:48

stars Charles Melton as the now grown up

21:51

man boy who's the father of her children and

21:53

husband. In the clip, you're going to hear the

21:55

voices of Natalie Portman as Elizabeth, Julianne

21:58

Moore as Grace. characters

22:00

working hard on the scene to try to get to know

22:02

Grace better. Let's listen. When

22:06

they sent me the script, I just thought, now

22:10

here is a woman with

22:12

a lot more to her than I

22:15

remember from the tabloids and our

22:18

cultural memory. I don't

22:22

really think about all that. You

22:26

don't ever dwell on the path? I

22:30

have my plate pretty full. I

22:35

know that for me personally, the

22:39

past weighs on me, decisions

22:42

I've made or relationships. You

22:47

just sit there and you think about

22:49

your history and your behavior. Sometimes.

22:57

Dana, let me start with you. I'm

22:59

curious what your history is with Haynes as

23:01

a filmmaker. I imagine you admire what you

23:03

made of this one. Just

23:06

briefly on Haynes as a filmmaker. Yeah, I'm a

23:08

total fangirl. I feel with him like I got

23:10

in on the ground floor because I was lucky

23:12

enough in college when Superstar

23:14

came out, but it never really came

23:17

out. It was very hard to find. It was

23:19

some as that. It's because of

23:22

IP, whatever legal reasons, Superstar,

23:24

his first film, which was sort of a short film,

23:26

it was in between a short and a feature, was

23:29

this crazy telling of the Karen

23:31

Carpenter story with Barbie dolls. Because

23:33

Mattel had never approved it, and I think it also had

23:35

music stuff that hadn't been approved, it was

23:37

an underground movie that you could only see in Haynes'

23:39

presence if it was being shown in an educational institution

23:42

or something for years and years and years. We

23:45

had a great college film society that happened to get

23:47

a hold of Todd Haynes and Superstar, and so I

23:49

got to see it when it really was an underground

23:51

object. He was this

23:53

brand new, handsome, smart,

23:55

exciting filmmaker. Ever

23:58

since then, I've had this feeling like whatever he does,

24:00

same as that. you. Whatever he does, I want to

24:02

see it. I haven't loved every movie equally, but I

24:04

so love that he's always changing and experimenting. You know,

24:06

the Velvet Underground documentary that he made a few years

24:08

ago. Just gorgeous, right? And

24:10

the first thing I would say about May-December, which I

24:13

will say is not in my top niche of Todd

24:15

Haynes movies, but is, you know, a sort

24:17

of thrillingly weird watch, is

24:19

that it has one of the

24:22

strangest tones of any movie that I've seen

24:24

in several years. And so it's actually very

24:26

pleasing to me that it's kind of hitting

24:28

with audiences. I mean, critics liked it at

24:30

festivals, you know, as it opened over

24:32

the past year. But when I saw it

24:34

at the New York Film Festival, I thought, I

24:36

cannot imagine that this is going to land very

24:38

well with your average audience member, because it's so

24:40

impossible to know how to respond to it emotionally,

24:42

right? It's about this really queasy subject matter, but

24:45

it opens almost as a comedy. You know, it's

24:47

sort of a dark comedy. It

24:49

has these elements of melodrama mixed

24:51

into it. It's really hard to

24:53

figure out who to identify with. I mean, both

24:56

of these two women, Natalie Portman's character and Jillianne

24:58

Moores, are pretty awful even from

25:00

the beginning and reveal themselves to be more and

25:02

more awful as the movie goes on. Late

25:04

in the movie, we sort of settle on Charles

25:07

Melton's character, Joe, as not

25:09

the hero of the movie exactly, because he's so passive

25:11

and so active upon by everyone else, but you know,

25:13

someone that you feel enormous sympathy for

25:15

and fear for. There's a moment, not to

25:17

spoil anything, but there's a moment that you

25:19

think something physically dangerous is going to happen

25:21

to Joe, to Charles Melton's character.

25:23

To me, that was the moment that I realized,

25:26

wait, I am invested in this movie, because if

25:28

something happened to him, it would be absolutely

25:30

terrible. Anyway, I want to hear, Julia,

25:32

how you responded to the tonal and emotional tenor

25:35

of the movie. I know that Haynes has not

25:37

liked the fact that people are calling it camp.

25:39

You know, a lot of reviews have identified the

25:41

movie as campy, and he has kind of responded

25:43

to that in a somewhat prickly way, saying that

25:46

he didn't intend it as camp, which made me

25:48

relieved that I didn't use that word in my

25:50

review. But I can see why it's being used,

25:52

because it is really hard to tell whether we're

25:55

supposed to laugh, cry, shudder, run

25:57

out of the room screaming or what upon

25:59

watching May, December. Yeah, I'm

26:01

so excited to talk about this film and

26:03

I should disclose here that I know some folks

26:06

involved in making the film so you should

26:08

take my comments here with a bit of

26:10

a green assault but

26:13

I really really loved it. I'm

26:16

not the biggest fan of Todd

26:18

Haynes's and not that I'm not a fan,

26:20

I'm an admirer who is not, who

26:24

never watches his films and feels like, ooh, that

26:26

one really twanged my internal guitar string,

26:29

you know, like I mostly have thought

26:31

about Carol, I would like all of

26:33

those coats. And

26:36

in this one I just thought

26:38

it was so nervy and strange

26:40

and I liked that the cinematography

26:42

was looser

26:44

and lighter, it didn't have

26:46

that like lacquered jewel box

26:48

feeling of Far From Heaven

26:50

or Carol and what interesting

26:55

about the tone to me and the reason why Camp feels

26:57

like the wrong word is that I

27:02

think it's quite sincerely emotionally

27:05

curious about

27:07

how humans operate and

27:09

the stories and lives that they tell

27:11

themselves to justify their behavior and I

27:13

don't think of Camp as a mode

27:17

that's about the

27:19

sincere exploration of human

27:21

emotion, you know, despite

27:24

the fact that these women

27:28

are both operating in

27:30

the public eye, one through her

27:33

awful behavior

27:35

that resulted reasonably

27:37

in a national scandal and the other

27:39

through just being a famous, you

27:41

know, TV actress who's turning

27:44

heads when she walks through rooms, they're

27:48

both trying to kind of find

27:50

the underlying human reality in justifying

27:52

their behaviors and I

27:55

found that to be really resonant

27:57

and interesting and then I found the film to be really

27:59

interesting be so

28:02

compelling in exploring that

28:04

kind of pedestrian

28:06

self-justification in the

28:08

confines of these very extreme situations. So

28:12

it really, it moved me. I

28:14

think this may be. It's up there

28:16

with my favorite movies of the year and one of my,

28:18

I mean, there's so many to

28:20

choose from, but one of

28:22

my favorite Todd Haynes movies. I

28:24

think Melton is amazing in the

28:26

film as this man boy who has

28:29

never been fully allowed to develop

28:32

as a human being and the way he

28:34

as an actor physicalizes it is so subtle

28:36

and yet so totally expressive and it comes

28:38

home to you. I mean,

28:40

he's kind of, he's a physically large

28:43

man who's kind of tightened and

28:45

shrunken into himself because of the

28:47

low level manipulations and torments of

28:49

being married to this woman who's

28:51

always going to be the senior

28:53

partner in the relationship, but then

28:55

there's an extraordinary moment where he's

28:57

driving his children who's had with

28:59

her, I think just the two daughters who are

29:02

in the back seat and

29:04

his body is suddenly expansive and open

29:06

and free because he's just out of

29:08

her orbit and he's a good father.

29:10

I mean, it's such a complex movie

29:12

with so much economy in

29:14

some sense. I mean, you learn what you

29:16

need to know about him in that moment.

29:19

To me, it's fundamentally a

29:21

movie centered around

29:23

two women in a mirror in some

29:26

sense. There are at least

29:28

two, to me, central

29:30

scenes in the film where Natalie Portman and

29:32

Julianne Moore are looking into a mirror, but

29:35

the mirror is itself the lens of the

29:37

camera and the

29:40

kind of peculiar

29:42

subterranean romance

29:44

that they've developed with one another as they...

29:49

We're each using the

29:51

other in ways that's

29:53

highly complex but deeply

29:55

seductive, especially Portman, right? Because

29:57

this movie is in

29:59

many ways... ways, a study of an actress

30:02

Janet Malcolm-ing a person, right? So Malcolm

30:05

is famous, Janet Malcolm the journalist is

30:07

famous for saying every journalist who's not

30:09

too stupid or too full of himself

30:11

to notice what's going on knows what

30:14

he does is morally indefensible. He's

30:16

a kind of confidence man, preying

30:18

upon people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness,

30:20

gaining their trust and betraying them

30:22

without remorse. The movie is both

30:24

a study in the kind of

30:26

damage this woman

30:29

who seduced a boy has wrought not

30:31

only on him but on her children,

30:33

right? Which comes out also very economically

30:36

but is deeply sinister and heartbreaking. But

30:38

it's also the story of this Portman character,

30:41

Janet Malcolm-ing in the most

30:44

cynical, manipulative, cold-hearted way, this

30:46

woman's vanity in order

30:49

to ultimately betray her, to

30:52

portray her in a way that won't honor

30:54

what this narcissist thinks her own

30:57

story is. The layers of complication

30:59

conveyed with very little dialogue and

31:02

exposition. I just think it's a

31:04

brilliant movie. I wonder

31:06

in relation to that what you both thought

31:08

of Natalie Portman's performance. There's a great piece

31:10

in Inslate by Sam Adams about how this

31:12

is the ideal role for Natalie Portman because

31:14

she's such a technical actress, which she is

31:16

I think often critiqued for, for being somebody

31:18

who can sort of nail

31:20

every note but

31:22

doesn't seem to connect warmly with other

31:25

actors. That's perfect for this character, right?

31:27

She's literally playing a kind of chilly,

31:29

technical actress. Do you

31:31

see Sam's point that this is kind of Natalie Portman

31:33

at her apex? Absolutely. And what's so

31:36

weird about it is that you begin

31:38

the movie thinking, what kind of a performance

31:40

is she giving? There's something a little

31:43

brittle and dissociative about this person

31:45

and then you realize

31:48

that's a mask and then you

31:50

see beyond the mask and then the

31:52

film becomes this dual portrait of two

31:54

hearts of darkness in a way

31:57

each equally compelling. extraordinary

32:01

actresses. I mean, you know,

32:03

Julianne Moore, an exquisitely, classically beautiful

32:05

woman whose face can become this

32:07

forbidding rictus at the drop of

32:09

a hat, something that she's been

32:11

totally unreluctant, willing, game

32:13

to do throughout her career, especially in

32:15

the Haynes movies, like Safe being one

32:18

of the great examples. Enormous vulnerability there.

32:20

And then Natalie Portman, who suffered the

32:22

awful fate of Elizabeth Taylor, is being

32:24

construed as the most beautiful woman in

32:27

the world before she was a woman

32:29

who's somehow taken

32:32

that and, like Taylor, turned it into

32:34

the career of an actress of serious

32:36

depth and honesty.

32:39

I thought this was both of them at

32:41

the top of their game. And then in relation to one another,

32:43

it was, to me, it was just a joy to watch from

32:45

beginning to end. Yeah, it's

32:47

really watching them together is

32:49

incredible. And I

32:52

also just want to shout out the screenplay by

32:54

Sammy Birch. I think it's her first produced feature.

32:56

And I think so much of the richness

32:59

of performance is allowed by

33:02

just the depth and intelligence of the screenplay.

33:05

Like what an interesting movie. You know, if

33:07

you, if you said, hey, a

33:09

newcomer screenwriter wants to make a movie about

33:11

Mary Kayla Torno, is this the movie you

33:14

would imagine? Like, no, and

33:16

it's so original and so well

33:19

done. So I'm excited to see what's next

33:21

from Sammy Birch as well.

33:24

It's a great movie. It's on Netflix. You really

33:26

ought to watch it and shoot us an email

33:28

really curious to know what people think about it.

33:30

May, December, Todd Haynes film. All right, let's move

33:32

on. This

33:34

episode is brought to you by Wondery. Hey,

33:37

grownups, do you love the holidays? Because

33:39

if so, oh boy, we do not

33:41

have the perfect show for you. From

33:43

Wondery and Dr. Seuss comes a holiday

33:45

podcast for the whole family that's about

33:47

as enjoyable as icicles in your hot

33:49

cocoa. It's tis the Grinch

33:51

holiday talk show. We all

33:54

know he hates the Christmas season, but can you

33:56

listen along and find out the reason each

33:58

week? One of your favorite celebrities. It's

36:00

not, it's new. It's written by Alistair

36:02

High. I'm illustrated by Aristides Ruiz. It's

36:05

called Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch

36:08

Lost Christmas Exclamation Point. Here to

36:10

talk about it is Dan Cois,

36:13

writer, it's late, and author of the

36:15

novel Vintage Contemporaries. Dan, welcome back to

36:17

the show. So glad to be here. So

36:20

where to begin? I mean, what was it

36:22

like just reading this book?

36:25

Well, you know, when you read a sequel

36:27

to a book that you yourself have

36:29

read to your kids 10 trillion times,

36:32

you read it with that eye, you read

36:34

it with, oh, what would the response be

36:37

if I broke this one out to

36:40

my once small children

36:43

and tried to get them to go to sleep

36:45

one night the way that I did many, many

36:47

years ago with How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And,

36:50

you know, I regret

36:52

to inform that this

36:54

book, the new book, the sequel can't match

36:57

that feeling of total

37:00

astonishment with which small

37:02

children greet Dr. Seuss's

37:04

original genius idea of a monster

37:06

coming down from a fucking mountain.

37:09

Feeling Christmas out of your house.

37:11

Right. It's like making the inside

37:14

involved, like the Eureka inside

37:16

involved in making a

37:19

creature out of whole cloth, non-human

37:21

creature out of whole cloth, that

37:23

is the spirit of anti-Christmas, so

37:26

in excess of the prior

37:28

holder of that title Scrooge. I

37:31

mean, it's just, it is eternal. And then having,

37:33

you know, having it be

37:35

unbelievably witty, clever, somehow getting at

37:38

the essence of Christmas from a

37:40

completely unexpected angle. And

37:42

then to have Boris Karloff voice

37:45

it in a definitive

37:48

Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss approved

37:50

cartoon. And they're

37:52

hanging their stockings, de-snarled for

37:55

the sneer. Tomorrow

37:57

is Christmas. It's

37:59

practically... here. Just

38:01

talk a little bit more about the genius of

38:04

the first book. Dr.

38:06

Seuss Theatre Guys all came up with it the

38:08

Christmas before 1957 he says, or at least according

38:11

to his biography, and

38:14

he came up with it based on his

38:16

own grinchiness. He says

38:18

he looked in the mirror the

38:20

day after Christmas, he saw the

38:22

scowling face totally irritated by the

38:24

whole holiday and thought, oh, oh

38:27

that's a book. That's Dr. Seuss right there. He

38:30

worked in advertising for

38:33

years. He was responsible for a number

38:35

of unbelievably successful ad campaigns

38:37

in the 30s and 40s long

38:39

before he was a successful children's author.

38:42

And yet

38:44

he despised the commercialization

38:47

of Christmas. It drove him nuts. And

38:49

so he says he wrote How the

38:51

Grinch Stole Christmas as a way to

38:54

try to, you know,

38:56

reinstall in himself the

38:59

actual joy of the season. What gives

39:01

the book its power though, I think,

39:04

is the way that parents recognize

39:06

that grinchiness when they're reading it

39:08

to their kids. We recognize the

39:11

parts of us that are driven

39:13

insane by how

39:15

acquisitive and greedy

39:17

Christmas makes our children.

39:21

There's that, you know, that two-page

39:23

spread in the original book of all

39:25

the who girls and boys playing

39:27

with their toys and making insane noise

39:29

down in Whoville. And it's

39:32

like a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare

39:34

that spread. And

39:36

so then to have that reading experience with

39:38

your kids and to see their pure and

39:41

honest horror at the idea of

39:44

someone doing this thing to truly

39:46

the greatest holiday mankind ever invented

39:48

is like

39:50

is pretty bracing as a parent. And

39:53

you know, that's where I think the book's elemental power

39:55

comes from. And that's why it was a gigantic

39:58

instant hit the complete transformed

40:00

his life. You know, a couple years before

40:03

those two books were published, The Grinch and the Cat

40:05

in the Hat, he was writing his editor, you know,

40:08

at Random House, being like, do you think maybe I'll make

40:10

$5,000 this year? Because we

40:12

really need money. And then

40:14

after this, every book he'd ever written

40:16

was selling in the scores of thousands

40:18

every single year. So,

40:20

first of all, I love

40:23

your analysis of the original Grinch.

40:27

He's totally right. He's

40:30

right. That's why the book is good. I mean,

40:32

not that, like, he's right, and then when

40:34

he gets his come up and stats writer, but it's

40:37

like, if the holiday is all about getting

40:39

and getting, it sucks. And then if

40:41

you remember that the whole point of presence is that

40:43

you're trying to connect with

40:45

the humans you love and kind

40:47

of encapsulate the empathy

40:49

and generosity that you want

40:52

to extend

40:54

towards them all year long, you know,

40:56

like, physical manifestation on one day, you're like, oh,

40:58

right, right, you know, like, my children, my older

41:00

children are at the age where they've just discovered

41:02

that giving gifts is fun and not just getting

41:04

them. And it's very sweet, and that is part

41:07

of what the whole thing is about. So, hard

41:09

and dorst to that. I guess I

41:13

will say that in general, when beloved

41:16

children's books

41:19

and children's book authors

41:21

get reanimated from the dead

41:23

for sequels, I

41:26

hate it generally. I'm

41:29

Grinchier about that, about

41:31

the consumerification

41:33

of Christmas, because

41:36

it's awful, and

41:39

it suggests that they

41:41

think the kids can't tell, which they

41:44

sometimes can't, and that the parents stuck

41:46

reading this shit can't tell, which we

41:48

definitely fucking can. And I would just

41:51

like you to rank in order of

41:53

cruddiness, Zombie

41:55

Seuss, who seems decently represented here. There's

41:57

also like a whole series of books,

42:00

of kind of Cat in the

42:02

Hat. I think they're like maybe TV explanatory

42:04

lesson-giving TV shows turned into the books where

42:06

the Cat in the Hat is

42:09

no longer a maniacal force

42:11

of chaos like Loki in animated

42:14

form and instead is just like

42:16

a kind of friendly teacher who

42:18

tells you in deeply unceaseworthy rhyme

42:21

about like protozoa's or whatever. So

42:25

those are horrible but even worse than

42:27

those are zombie curious

42:29

George where you can

42:31

really tell in like the heft

42:34

of the work what

42:36

is an original curious George and what is

42:38

a pedantic, simpering,

42:41

idiotic follow-up.

42:43

So I just I would extend to

42:45

the group broadly like why there's just

42:50

like a lack of seriousness extended to the

42:52

picture book reader I will say

42:54

now that I'm back in that

42:56

chair that drives me bananas like

42:58

why does this book need to exist this

43:01

this Grinch follow-up. It's

43:03

a perfect book there's plenty of soothes. I'm

43:05

sure the soothes state is making plenty

43:07

of money like leave the Grinch alone. Yeah

43:10

I totally hear you Julia I feel like

43:12

I don't even consider the Babar books written

43:15

by Laurent de Bruinhoff the

43:17

son of the original author Jean de Bruinhoff to

43:19

be real I don't even want to talk about

43:21

the ones that are like Babar does yoga or

43:23

something like that that are just written by some

43:25

random team of consultants but but

43:27

but Dan I wanted to ask you for that

43:29

effect to talk about the the poetry the writing

43:32

in this new well for one thing just the

43:34

story the basic story because since Julia is talking

43:36

about moralizing I think this new story is more

43:38

of a kind of morality play in a less

43:40

convincing one than the first book so I

43:42

would like you to just outline what the

43:44

story of this book is and talk a

43:46

little bit about the writing by Alistair Heim

43:48

which is written it looks to me like

43:50

it's written in Sucien prosody right it scans

43:53

like a sooth but it doesn't sound like

43:55

a sooth so can you talk about that the story and the

43:57

way it's told sure so that you know Alistair

44:00

Heim had a big problem, which is

44:02

that not only is how the Grinch

44:04

stole Christmas a more or less perfect book and

44:07

also has a perfect ending and

44:09

an ending that eliminates from possibility

44:12

all future conflict between the Grinch and

44:14

the Hoos of Whoville. But

44:17

so you have this conundrum, which is all right,

44:19

the Grinch now loves Christmas. His heart has grown

44:22

whatever, seven sizes, and now he's just like a

44:24

good guy. So how do you make drama out

44:27

of that? And the way the book handles that

44:30

is by having the Grinch be determined

44:32

this year, it is now the year

44:34

after the year that he stole and

44:36

then discovered the meaning of Christmas, this

44:39

year he's going to prove to all the

44:41

Hoos that no one loves Christmas more than

44:43

he. So he

44:45

enters the Hooville Christmas tree

44:47

decorating contest, a contest

44:50

so important. It is front page news,

44:53

the A1 story in the Hooville times. And

44:56

he enters the contest, he decorates his tree, he

44:58

brings it down with the help of his dog

45:00

Max. And then he loses

45:03

the contest to Cindy Lou Who,

45:05

you know, little tot Cindy Lou,

45:07

who was no more than two last year. And

45:10

he pitches a fit. He's a sore loser.

45:12

He gets really angry that he lost. He

45:15

storms back up to his mountain, his

45:17

heart shrinking in his chest, and

45:20

then Cindy Lou tells him, Mr.

45:22

Grinch, I put ornaments from

45:24

everyone in Hooville on this tree who loves

45:26

Christmas, but there's one ornament I haven't put

45:28

on yet. And it's yours. Can you please

45:30

come back? And then his heart grows again.

45:32

And he goes down and he accepts that

45:34

Cindy Lou, a child, is allowed to win

45:36

the Christmas tree decorating contest. And then he

45:38

loves Christmas again. The problem, you know, there's

45:40

a lot of problems with this plot, but

45:43

the most basic one is that there's like

45:45

nothing elementally evil and amazing

45:47

about it. It's just that he doesn't

45:49

like losing, which I'll grant you is

45:52

like very recognizable to the children to

45:54

whom you might be reading this book.

45:57

But it doesn't have any

45:59

actual power. It's so. recognizable

46:01

that it doesn't have that

46:03

like alien impossible monster nightmare

46:06

force of the original book. The

46:09

poetry is like fine and it's meant

46:11

to ape Zeus to

46:13

the extent that it

46:15

even recreates certain moments

46:17

in the original book. You know the

46:19

moment in the original when

46:22

the Grinch has his wonderful awful

46:24

idea is now recreated in

46:26

this book as the Grinch getting an

46:29

awfully crafty idea to make

46:31

a beautiful Christmas tree. And

46:33

so it's I think it's perfectly

46:35

pleasant to read aloud but the thing

46:38

it doesn't deliver is what is so great

46:40

about the original book which is the the

46:43

sense in your audience that

46:45

something impossible is happening. You

46:49

know that's not there anymore and that's what

46:51

I think you really miss. All right well

46:53

Dan you are an efop you're just an

46:55

exceedingly exceptional friend of this program it's always

46:58

great to talk to you. Your piece is

47:00

up on slate now it's Dr. Seuss's How

47:02

the Grinch Lost Christmas in Defense of the

47:04

Grinch by Dan Coyst. Dan thanks for coming

47:07

back on the show just so fun. I'll

47:09

Merry Christmas to all. This

47:15

is a holiday ad from

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the Glenlivett. They don't do expected

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York. All

47:45

right now is the moment in our podcast when

47:47

we endorse Dana what do you what do you

47:49

have? Steve I'm going to endorse

47:52

this is sort of a two-part endorsement but

47:54

they go together like wine and cheese so

47:56

I'm gonna endorse the pokes album If I

47:58

Should Fall from Grace with God. in

48:00

honor of the passing of Shane McGowan.

48:02

Incredible songwriter and frontman for that band.

48:05

Along with it, this is the tease to

48:07

go with that wine, is Amanda Petrusik from

48:10

The New Yorker wrote a really beautiful little

48:12

tribute to Shane McGowan. That was one

48:15

of many things, including his music that

48:17

made me cry last week, knowing

48:19

that he had left us at the age of 65. He

48:22

is too big of a figure with too big of

48:24

a career to get into it all now. I think

48:26

we've even talked about the pokes before on the show

48:28

maybe, at least in an endorsement segment. I'm sure.

48:30

You were there. And the reason

48:32

I wanted to choose one of his early albums is

48:34

just because something that really struck me on reading that

48:36

he had died at 65 is

48:39

that he was so young when he

48:41

wrote these songs that have this incredible

48:43

world wisdom and this sense of this

48:45

hard-won truth to them. And

48:47

it's a little bit like Tom Waits, where it's sort

48:50

of like this person is such an old soul, you

48:52

can't believe that they wrote the songs that they wrote

48:54

when he was, I guess, probably in his early 30s

48:56

when that album came out, and was

48:58

always someone who seemed, I never saw them

49:00

play live, but every story of the

49:03

pokes playing live was sort of people couldn't believe

49:05

that Shane McGowan, who was an alcoholic and I

49:07

think at one point a drug addict and just

49:09

like someone who took such horrible, horrible care of

49:11

his physical self, they couldn't believe that he had

49:13

made it to the stage for another show. And

49:16

so really for him, making it to 65 was

49:19

quite an incredible feat. Anyway,

49:21

I mean, what I'm really recommending is that people just

49:24

go on their own deep dive and listen to the

49:26

pokes in whatever way they want to, but

49:28

that seems like a good album to

49:30

break into listening to them with, although it's not their

49:33

first. Okay, favorite poke song, pick

49:35

one. Oh my gosh, I'll

49:38

say Rainy Night and Soho, that's a

49:40

poke song, seriously? Is that

49:42

your lullaby of London probably? I mean,

49:44

those both, Rainy Night and Soho's the

49:46

one that's over and over again, inexhaustibly.

49:50

I'm a shower, I'm a shower. I'm

49:52

a shower. I'm

49:57

not a shower. And

50:06

that's

50:13

one

50:17

that's not even on the album I just mentioned. That is

50:20

on their first album. Yeah, that's on the

50:22

album. Rumsodomy and the Lush. Yeah. Dana, thank

50:24

you so much for doing that. That's

50:26

really wonderful to hear you talk about Shane McGowan.

50:28

Both in peace. Julia, what do you have?

50:31

I've got a two-part endorsement based off

50:33

of our segment about

50:35

the Grinch and wavering towards

50:37

children's books. The first

50:40

is I want to endorse the

50:42

Little Blue Truck books, which are

50:44

written by Alice Schrodl and were

50:46

originated in their illustration by Jill

50:49

McElmurry, who was a listener

50:51

to this show until her death in

50:53

2017. And

50:56

her estate gave permission to continue

50:59

the Little Blue Truck books with an

51:02

illustrator working in her style. And her

51:04

name is still in the front

51:06

of them with a note about the

51:08

illustration style. And I have the illustration

51:10

style is perceptibly different

51:13

for sure. But

51:15

somehow that seemed like

51:18

a respectful extension of the work

51:20

she'd created to me. And

51:24

I just wanted to, I always appreciated

51:26

knowing that she was a listener when

51:28

I was reading those books to my

51:31

older kids and thinking of her again,

51:33

reading them to my youngest one. So

51:35

just wanted to shout that out. And

51:38

then I also have to name my favorite,

51:41

Seuss, which is a lesser known Seuss, which

51:44

is Hunches and Bunches. It may

51:46

have endorsed it before because I know we've talked about Seuss on this

51:48

show. But the

51:51

thing I love about Theatre Greisel's

51:53

work is the, it's Beyonce-like in

51:56

its excellence because

51:58

the illustrations are are incredible and

52:00

vivid and of their own brilliance.

52:03

The things

52:05

he is doing with meter

52:07

are insane and

52:10

so consistent and so inimitable.

52:15

And then the themes are

52:18

often inventive and worthwhile.

52:23

Like so often in children's book, you get

52:25

two of the three, you get

52:28

beautiful illustrations and an interesting point, but

52:30

the language isn't sippid or you get

52:32

rollicking language and an interesting

52:34

point, but the thing is stupid to look

52:36

at. Like it's really hard

52:38

to nail that trifecta and Hunches and

52:41

Bunches is one of my favorites because it's lesser known

52:43

and it's about that feeling

52:45

of childhood boredom and not quite knowing

52:47

what you wanna do. It's

52:49

essentially a children's book about malaise and

52:52

it's brilliant. So if you don't know that

52:54

one, pick it up. Julia, you're so

52:56

right, all three elements and then to do

52:58

it over and over and over again, right?

53:00

Iconically, Green Eggs and Ham, the Lorax, One

53:03

Fish, Two Fish, Horton Hears the Hoot, Sneetches.

53:05

Like it's the consistency

53:07

in addition to the singularity

53:09

and eccentricity of the genius.

53:12

I love him being the Beyonce of children's books.

53:14

It's so true. So crazy, so good. Okay,

53:16

so this is up there with like, I

53:18

just discovered this guy is blue and the

53:20

Beatles are like this really good band, you

53:22

should check them out. But

53:24

I finally belatedly, really

53:27

shamefully belatedly saw the documentary Paris

53:29

is Burning. And I saw

53:32

it without prior

53:34

to even knowing that we were gonna

53:36

do the Beyonce documentary but they pair

53:38

beautifully if you've never seen Paris is Burning. For

53:40

those who don't know, it's a 1990 documentary about

53:45

the ball scene, the drag ball scene in

53:47

New York City over the course of the

53:50

80s. It took the filmmaker Jenny Livingston years

53:52

to make it. I think she was Yale

53:54

affiliated. I can't remember, she was very

53:56

young and it... It's

54:00

just truly one of the greatest documentaries ever

54:02

made, absolutely pioneering

54:05

for its totally

54:07

sympathetic portrayal of the

54:09

drag subculture of New York City. It

54:12

brings you back to the city that those of

54:14

us who knew it then remember

54:16

the 1980s. It's

54:20

an amazing decade in the history of the city

54:22

because you're beyond the taxi driver apocalypse of the

54:24

70s, right? Ford to New

54:26

York, drop dead. Ford to the city, drop

54:28

dead. You're beyond that, right? You've walked

54:31

away from the brink, but you aren't in the

54:33

Giuliani city of the 90s, the Disneyfication

54:35

and then the, not to

54:37

mention the fucking plutocratic sellout of what's

54:41

his face, Bloomberg. You're in

54:43

this kind of weird zone in

54:45

between both cities where it's gritty

54:48

and tough and the rents are

54:50

still cheap and subcultures

54:53

and bohemias can really still thrive.

54:56

This one was as

54:58

autonomously self-generated as any subculture

55:00

this country's ever seen and

55:03

in the face of so

55:05

much hatred and AIDS. AIDS

55:10

not only destroying this

55:12

community in some respects, though not

55:14

totally. I mean, the resilience was

55:16

incredible, but the hatred surrounding queer

55:19

culture because of AIDS, it's just

55:21

so powerfully moving and it's a

55:23

monument to the incorrigibility of the

55:25

human personality and spontaneity of the

55:28

human personality. You

55:31

could argue it culminates, I mean,

55:33

it has integrity totally all its own and

55:35

it didn't need mainstream culture or pop superstar

55:38

divas to dignify it, but to

55:40

the extent that Beyonce is drawing

55:42

upon that tradition in her work

55:45

in an honorable way, it's amazing to

55:47

go back and watch this movie and

55:49

see it in its original form. Anyway,

55:52

Paris is burning, what can

55:55

I say? It's like one of the most moving things I've

55:57

ever seen. Julia,

56:10

thank you so much. Thank you. Dana,

56:13

thank you. Thanks to you. Really

56:15

fun show. Excellent. I really enjoyed it. You'll

56:17

find links to some of the things we talked

56:20

about today at our show page, that's slate.com/culturefest. You

56:22

can email us at culturefest at

56:25

slate.com. Our introductory music is by

56:27

the composer Nicholas Pertell. Our

56:29

production assistant is Kat Hong. Our

56:32

producer is Cameron Drews. For Dana

56:34

Stevens and Julia Turner, I'm Steven

56:36

Metcalf. Thank you so much for joining us. We

56:38

will see you soon. If

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