0:00

Yeah, Welcome

0:29

back to Lolita Podcast. I

0:31

am your host, Jamie Loftus. This

0:33

is part two of our episode about the adaptation

0:37

of Lolita by Adrian Line.

0:39

So if you haven't listened to part one, I would recommend

0:42

going back. We covered in

0:44

our last episode some of the production

0:47

of the movie, a few

0:49

movies of the seventies and eighties that attempted

0:51

to address child sex abuse with mixed

0:54

results, as well as real

0:56

life cases of c s A and

0:58

the stranger danger culture of the nineteen

1:00

eighties. And in part two, we're

1:03

going to start out in the early nineties,

1:05

when the friction between the messaging of

1:08

we must protect the children and a

1:10

pop culture landscape that is very

1:12

willing to sexualize the underage then

1:14

blame them for it continues to

1:16

escalate. Friction between protecting

1:19

the children and over sexualizing

1:21

the children reaches its fever pitch

1:23

by the early nineteen nineties, shortly

1:25

before Adrian Lines Lolita went

1:28

into production. Keep in mind, erotic

1:30

thrillers were what Line was famous for before

1:33

he made Lolita, particularly Fatal

1:35

Attraction from nineteen eighty seven. There is

1:37

a distinct trend in the early nineties

1:40

of vindictive, sexually

1:42

evil teenage girls. There's

1:44

countless movies with this theme, but the

1:46

best remembered one is probably a movie

1:49

from nineteen ninety three called The

1:51

Crush, starring Alicia Silverstone

1:53

in her first movie, when she is only

1:55

sixteen. She plays the part of Adrian,

1:58

a conniving young woman man who seduces

2:00

an older man who's played by Carrie

2:03

els Elves. I

2:06

never know how to say his name. He was in The Princess

2:08

Bride and she ruins his

2:10

life. The Crush was written and directed

2:12

by a man named Alan Shapiro, who

2:15

claims that this movie is based on his

2:17

life, so keep that in mind when

2:19

hearing the events that take place in this movie.

2:21

Well. Alicia Silverstone, the actor, is

2:24

sixteen when this is filmed. The character

2:26

Darien, whose name is later changed to

2:29

Adrian, is only fourteen.

2:31

The genre of The Crush is firmly

2:33

erotic thriller, and while the movie

2:35

was probably the most successful to feature

2:38

an over sexed teenager as an antagonist,

2:41

there are at least fifty thousand

2:43

movies with this exact theme released

2:45

in the early nineties. This media

2:48

is overwhelmingly angled to make it seem

2:50

like white heterosexual men with

2:52

good careers are being actively

2:55

seduced into ruin by teenage

2:57

girls. And it's no coincidence

2:59

that all of the high profile child sex

3:01

abuse cases in Hollywood of this era

3:04

involve men of this exact

3:06

description. Everyone everyone,

3:09

Okay, let's talk about the crash, must

3:12

paying to watch me? Just

3:15

running the guest house. From the moment she

3:17

met Nick, you the harshest for me

3:19

to make friends, So everybody thinks

3:21

of some kind of freak or something. I'll

3:23

be your friend. She was crazy about

3:25

him. Carrie always plays

3:28

Nick Elliott, a reporter for Peak magazine

3:30

who rents a guesthouse from a wealthy couple

3:33

who have a fourteen year old daughter named Adrian.

3:35

Adrian takes an interest in Nick, and

3:37

many of the early scenes and plot points

3:40

reflect adaptations of Lolita, particularly

3:43

the portion where Humbert Humbert is living

3:45

as a lodger in Charlotte Hayes's home

3:47

and is obsessing over Dolores. In

3:50

the Crush, the sexualization of Adrian

3:52

is made very clear. Are you sure

3:55

you're fourteen? Almost?

4:06

Isn't it make fast your bedtime? Yes?

4:12

Adrian pursues Nick relentlessly,

4:15

and Nick possibly receives the attention

4:18

even when his coworker slash adult

4:20

love interest warns him that Adrian

4:22

is bad news. She's got a crush

4:24

on you. Don't be silly

4:27

saying I did something to provoke this, well,

4:30

did you? Of course

4:32

not. Adrian and Nick kiss

4:35

early on in the movie, a kiss that is

4:37

initiated by Adrian. Nick,

4:40

who is twenty eight to her fourteen

4:42

very much kisses her back, but then says

4:45

it's wrong and they can't be together. I mean,

4:47

let's face it, your that's

4:51

a big difference whenever

4:54

you say no,

4:56

no seriously,

4:58

Adrian, like night up to the lighthouse

5:01

till we kissed. Now,

5:05

that was a mistake, Adrian. When this happens,

5:08

Adrian, who by the way, is also a

5:10

super genius, of course, makes it

5:12

her mission in life to punish Nick

5:14

for not being her boyfriend. These

5:17

supervillain qualities are juxtaposed

5:19

with the little girl aesthetics

5:21

that most fourteen year old grow out of. In

5:24

a scene where Nick sneaks into her room,

5:26

then hides in a closet and watches her

5:28

undress seriously, we see

5:30

that Adrian's room is full of horse

5:33

trophies and pink and lace.

5:35

This is set up as classic nymphete

5:38

imagery depicting girlhood, while

5:40

also featuring long, lingering

5:43

shots of Lethia Silverstone in a

5:45

bikini gazing up into Nick's

5:47

window. Adrian stocks Nick,

5:50

interferes with articles that he's writing

5:52

for his job, she defaces his car,

5:54

she deletes his work, she spies

5:56

on him having sex with the adult love

5:58

interest, and then, in I Ship

6:01

You Not, locks Nick's love interest

6:03

in a photography dark room and fills

6:05

the dark room with bees. Alan

6:08

Shapiro presents this in the movie as

6:10

if these are all things that have actually

6:12

happened to him. Here's how Variety

6:15

characterizes it in their review of The

6:17

Crush At the Time, writer director

6:19

Alan Shapiro says in the production notes

6:21

that the idea was inspired by an incident

6:23

in his own life where a brilliant young

6:26

woman developed a crush on him and refused

6:28

to take no for an answer. So

6:30

before Adrian can get in trouble for

6:32

this whole be crime, Adrian

6:35

falsely accuses Nick of sexual

6:37

assault by stealing a used condom

6:40

from his trash, and Nick is arrested

6:42

by the police. After getting bailed out,

6:44

Adrian's friend tells Nick that she

6:47

knows that Nick is innocent and that Adrian

6:49

has had a history of this obsessive behavior,

6:52

going so far as to say that a camp counselor

6:54

that Adrian had been fixated on had

6:57

once accidentally been

6:59

poisoned to f Adrian then

7:01

appears out of nowhere with a weapon,

7:03

and she and Nick have a fight on an antique

7:06

carousel I don't even know, and the

7:08

fight concludes with Nick punching

7:10

Adrian across

7:13

the room. Nick's girlfriend, who

7:15

almost died from bees lives.

7:17

Adrian is locked up the end.

7:21

So, yeah, this is obviously not a true

7:23

story. But here's the kicker. When

7:25

you watch The Crush back now, which I would

7:27

not recommend that you do, Alicia Silverstone's

7:29

character is called Adrian Forrester,

7:32

but it's pretty obvious that when it was filmed, everyone

7:35

is calling her something different. No one's

7:37

mouth is forming the name Adrian.

7:40

Here's why Silverstone's character was

7:42

originally named Dairy and Forrester,

7:45

which is a woman's real name, the

7:47

real name of the person. Alan Shapiro

7:50

claims Alicia Silverstone's character is

7:52

based on I repeat, Alan

7:54

Shapiro used a real person's

7:57

name in a movie that suggests

7:59

that fourteen year old someone unable

8:02

to consent was a vindictive

8:04

seductress, an evil super genius,

8:06

and an executioner via Bees.

8:10

So when the real Darien Forrester saw

8:12

The Crush had been released with her real

8:14

name, she sued them and she won.

8:17

So while Silverstone was referred to as

8:19

Darien in the original theatrical

8:21

release of the movie, the Crush had to be

8:23

re dubbed and she's referred to as

8:26

Adrian Forrester by the time

8:28

the movie is re aired on TV and

8:30

even now. But if you go back and listen

8:33

to the trailer, Nick Elliott was

8:35

looking for a nice, quiet place

8:37

to write Darien

8:43

just unbucking believable.

8:46

This teen seductress trope is very

8:48

prevalent around this time and is equally

8:50

insidious, poorly written as she

8:52

is. Adrian slash Darien

8:55

is a solid example of how these underage

8:57

characters are written very deliberately

9:00

to remove any blame from

9:02

the older man in the equation. Adrian

9:05

is not just competent, she is hyper

9:07

competent. She is a genius.

9:10

Writing like this tries to sell us the idea

9:12

that it's easier to believe that a sixteen

9:15

year old who does well in school would

9:17

be a vindictive murderer than

9:19

the idea that a twenty eight year old man

9:21

might hit on an underage girl when

9:23

he thought no one was paying attention. Alicia

9:26

Silverstone, in spite of being pretty

9:28

press shy as a teenager, is

9:30

sexualized heavily in interviews

9:33

from this era, especially after she started

9:35

in the Aerosmith music video for

9:37

Crying at age seventeen and

9:39

another very sexy music

9:41

video girl Role. Here's John Stewart

9:45

being an absolute creep to a seventeen

9:47

year old Alicia Silverstone. I'm

9:49

crushed, absolutely crushed.

9:52

How old are you? Cool

9:59

man? I feel like but all of a sudden,

10:03

thank you my first reference

10:07

and hold the phone there. Who's Joey

10:09

Buttafuco. It's actually but a

10:11

Fuco. I have Italian family who

10:13

will hand my ass back to me if I don't say it

10:15

right. But I honestly didn't know

10:18

who Joey Buttafuca was before

10:20

researching for this episode. His

10:22

was the name heard around the world

10:24

in the mid nineties and is unfortunately

10:27

very relevant to what we're talking about, because

10:29

Joey Buttafuco is a statutory

10:32

rapist. Around the time of

10:34

the Crush, the name Lolita

10:36

was synonymized with a teenage girl

10:39

who was framed as vengeful

10:41

and vindictive. I'm talking about

10:43

the saga of Amy Fisher, who

10:46

had seventeen shot and wounded

10:48

Mary Joe Buttafuco, who was

10:50

the wife of Amy Fisher's boyfriend,

10:53

a thirty five year old auto body mechanic

10:55

named Joey Buttafuco, who had knowingly

10:57

had sex with Fisher while she was under

11:00

range. Fisher was dubbed the Long

11:02

Island Lolita by the tabloid

11:04

media, and throughout nine two, when

11:06

her crime was committed, Fisher's image

11:09

was everywhere. Mary Joe thankfully

11:11

recovered, but Fisher became one of the earliest

11:14

examples of a young woman absolutely

11:16

devoured by the twenty four hour news media,

11:18

and she was sent to jail in late Here's

11:21

an idea of how the press was treating

11:23

her at this time. You are a tragedy

11:26

and disgrace to yourself,

11:28

to your family, to your friends,

11:31

and to society. Look

11:33

into her eyes and decide for yourself.

11:36

Is she a little girl lost for

11:39

a hateful creature who was willing

11:41

to kill to get what she wanted.

11:43

What all of this leaves out are the actions

11:46

of Joey Buttafuco. He was a thirty

11:48

five year old who had been having sex with a

11:50

minor on multiple occasions, completely

11:52

knowingly, and in addition, had

11:54

recruited and made money off of Amy

11:57

Fisher by prostituting her to a Long

11:59

Island s court service. And Amy

12:01

Fisher was not the only young girl he was doing

12:03

this with. So here's a man who has been bringing

12:06

a teenage girl to a motel to

12:08

have sex with her, encouraging her to

12:10

become a sex worker, profiting

12:12

off of that, telling her repeatedly

12:14

it sure would be great if my wife were dead. And

12:16

then when Amy Fisher does commit

12:18

the crime of her own volition, Joey Buttafuco

12:21

rats her out immediately and says

12:24

that he didn't even know Amy Fisher,

12:26

she was sexually obsessed with him.

12:28

This was, of course a complete lie,

12:31

by the public would learn

12:33

that he didn't just know her, but was a

12:35

statutory rapist and a sex trafficker,

12:37

and that Amy was a victim of both of

12:39

these crimes. But by that point it almost

12:42

didn't matter. Amy Fisher had already

12:44

been chewed up and spit out and

12:46

was sitting in jail. By the nineteen nineties,

12:49

demonizing young women was a common

12:51

practice in the twenty four hour news cycle.

12:54

The year after Amy Fisher is put

12:56

in jail for assaulting Mary Joe Buttafuco,

12:59

the Tanya Harding story kicks up, and

13:01

later in the decade there's more famous

13:03

public shaming and blaming of figures

13:06

like Monica Lewinsky and Anita

13:08

Hill. Each and every one of these women

13:10

were characterized as obsessive, as

13:13

jealous. They were judged on their looks,

13:15

and it was assumed that they were courting

13:17

the massive public scrutiny that none

13:20

of them seemed to benefit from, and in

13:22

Amy Fisher's case, she was underage.

13:24

Keep in mind that all these stories were being exploited

13:27

and rehashed over and over while

13:29

actual issues in the US, the

13:31

ever increasing mass incarceration of

13:34

Black Americans in particular, were being

13:36

completely ignored in favor of focusing

13:38

on one white eighteen year old

13:40

girl going to prison. Interestingly

13:43

enough, the piece of media besides Lolita,

13:45

most often brought up in conversations

13:47

about Amy Fisher in the early nineties

13:50

was Glenn closest character in Adrian

13:52

Lyne's fatal Attraction Help. The Nassau

13:55

homicide detective described her in those

13:57

terms right after she was arrested. If

14:00

she couldn't have him, no one else

14:02

could. She was obsessed with

14:04

him. It was a near fatal attraction.

14:07

And so less than two years before Adrian

14:10

Lins Lolita would go into production,

14:12

we as a culture were buying

14:14

what Joey fucking but a Fuco

14:16

was selling. The first adaptation

14:19

of the story of the Long Island Lolita

14:21

was released three weeks after Amy

14:23

Fisher was sentenced five to fifteen years

14:25

in prison. It was called Amy Fisher

14:28

My Story. Amy Fisher had sold her

14:30

life rights for this movie, partially

14:32

in order to make bail brought

14:35

even more. A TV movie called The Amy

14:37

Fisher Story starred Drew Barrymore as

14:40

Fisher, and Casualties of Love

14:42

The Long Island Lolita Story starred

14:44

Alissa Milano. All of these were panned

14:46

critically and millions of people watched

14:49

them, and just as most high profile

14:51

nineties women of the tabloids, Fisher's character

14:54

in these movies was over sexed, demonized,

14:57

and made to seem like the main person at

14:59

fault. So at the height of this case, Amy

15:02

Fisher said in one of her only interviews

15:04

at the time, one done with Inside

15:06

edition that she was also raped

15:08

by a friend of the family at age thirteen

15:10

and had intentionally overdosed twice

15:13

after another older boyfriend sold

15:15

footage of her to a tabloid press

15:17

called hard Copy ahead of her sentencing.

15:20

Here's another clip from one of these movies. When

15:23

I was twelve years old, my parents

15:26

had a titleman to an Italian marble in

15:28

the house and he was

15:30

the first guy I ever did it with. Yeah,

15:40

You're sex from This

15:45

clip is from the Elissa Milano movie

15:47

where Amy Fisher is written particularly

15:49

cruelly. But it's the Drew Barrymore

15:51

casting that I find most interesting here, and

15:54

we could get deep into why Drew Barrymore

15:57

would be considered ideal for the role

15:59

of Amy, as she had become regular

16:01

tabloid fodder as a teenager herself

16:04

in a way that very much framed her as a villain

16:07

and a cautionary tale all will

16:09

Profiting off of her image, Barrymore

16:11

started a movie called Poison IVY

16:14

that shares a lot of similarities with

16:17

The Crush. She's featured multiple

16:19

times as a killer teen in this

16:21

era of her career, and is only eighteen

16:23

when playing Amy Fisher. When it comes

16:25

to child stars who were overexposed

16:28

while still under age. Drew Barrymore

16:30

always comes into the conversation and

16:33

look, I'm not going to relitigate the Fisher but

16:35

a Fuco case here. It's a long story,

16:37

and it's recapped in an excellent episode

16:40

of the podcast You're Wrong About with

16:42

Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall that I'll linkol

16:44

in the description, Amy Fisher's crime

16:46

resulted in an innocent woman, Mary

16:48

joe but Afuco suffering permanent

16:50

physical damage, although I'm happy

16:52

to say she's fine now. Finally divorced

16:55

Joey but A Feuco years later, and most

16:57

recently released a memoir about

16:59

the whole experience called Getting

17:01

It Through My Thick Skull. What there's

17:03

no question about in my mind is

17:05

that Amy Fisher's crime was connected

17:07

to Lolita to characterize her

17:10

as a sexually promiscuous and

17:12

vengeful teenage girl, a girl

17:15

who is to blame. One element

17:17

of the story I found really interesting

17:19

was the conversation around Amy Fisher's

17:22

eventual release from prison, in she

17:25

served seven out of fifteen potential

17:27

years in prison, benefiting from some clear

17:29

privilege there. But what I didn't know was

17:32

that Mary Joe, but a Fuco, the woman

17:34

that Amy Fisher shot, was critical in

17:36

allowing her to get released. But Ifuko

17:38

spoke at the hearing to have Amy Fisher

17:41

released, she'd been in contact with Fisher's

17:43

mother from up until

17:45

her release in ninety nine, and said

17:47

the following she needed to

17:49

be punished. She tried to kill

17:51

me. But Amy Fisher is

17:53

not a Lolita. This is

17:55

a sick girl. This is not a

17:57

Seductresses

18:00

in nineteen nineties were full of

18:02

splashy overexposed

18:04

stories like this that closely connected

18:07

to the rise of the twenty four hour news cycle.

18:09

Amy Fisher was eighteen by the time she

18:11

was convicted and was very much treated

18:14

like an adult seductress. During these

18:16

same years, there was also an increase

18:18

in awareness of violence towards children,

18:20

as well as the existence of child pornography.

18:23

So that's America in the nineties. There

18:25

is nothing more lethal than a teenage

18:28

girl's sexuality. But also

18:30

we must protect the children. And

18:32

here we are a listener right back at

18:35

Adrian Lines Lolita. Lolita,

18:37

starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain,

18:39

was shot in It

18:42

features a haunting, dissonant

18:44

soundtrack from Ennio Morriconi, and

18:46

the vibe on set for Elizabeth

18:48

Kay's Esquire article is unique.

18:51

The shoot began in North Carolina, and

18:53

Dominique Swain had been there rehearsing

18:55

with Adrian Line and a guardian for

18:58

a month before Jeremy Irons showed

19:00

up. Irons was annoyed to find that Dominique

19:02

had already bonded with Line and said

19:04

so, Line replied to him with this, that's

19:07

totally crazy. I never thought about it. It's

19:09

just that I have to nurture her because

19:11

she's never done it before. By all

19:13

accounts, Line treated his actors and

19:15

crew kindly in spite of a grueling

19:18

shoot. Unlike Kubrick, who

19:20

downplayed the American road trip of his

19:22

nineteen sixty two adaptation and

19:24

filmed the entire movie in England,

19:27

Line was very focused on the details

19:29

and literally brought his cast and crew

19:31

across the country on a road trip as they

19:34

shot, going from North Carolina

19:36

to New Orleans, to Texas to

19:38

New Mexico. Something I found particularly

19:40

interesting was Kay's descriptions

19:43

of the crew grappling with the story that

19:45

they were bringing to life. She writes

19:47

this, at times, people

19:49

working on the movie felt compelled to defend its subject,

19:52

often for the oddest of reasons, among

19:55

them that since girls must cease to be virgins,

19:58

they may as well be deflowered by their f others, who

20:00

can at least be said to love them.

20:03

One principal figure in the action, denying

20:05

Humbert's calamitous effect on Lolita

20:08

invoked a female friend who had been sexually abused

20:10

as a child, yet had emerged miraculously

20:12

unscathed. Another anecdote

20:15

comes from the scene where we first meet Dominique

20:17

Swain's Lolita, a scene in which her

20:19

sheer dress is soaked as she lays

20:22

beneath a sprinkler. Elizabeth Kay

20:24

writes this, Their camera

20:26

focused on lines redheaded Lolita,

20:28

a fifteen year old in a red bathing suit,

20:31

sprawling beneath a lawn sprayer that drenched

20:33

her with spouting water as she frolicked with a

20:35

panting male dog in a manner markedly

20:37

erotic. While puzzled passers

20:39

by looked on, what's

20:42

this movie about? One asked some

20:45

middle aged guy. A grip answered, who

20:48

falls in love with a young girl based

20:50

on a literary classic? Said

20:52

the unit pr woman. Don't forget

20:54

that, Jeremy Irons gets in on the fund

20:57

saying making a movie about something

20:59

isn't doning it true enough,

21:02

jare but this depends very much on

21:04

how the creatives at the top of that movie

21:06

view the subject matter. Adrian Lions

21:08

comments make this difficult. One quote

21:11

that stands out. If I were doing a movie

21:13

about a thirteen year old getting chopped up by

21:15

cannibals, there'd be no problem.

21:18

There is no other intuitive place to put

21:20

this in this episode, So I just wanted to

21:22

mention here that while I think that Jeremy

21:24

Irons turns in a pretty solid performance

21:27

in this movie, he

21:29

has a pretty notable track record

21:31

of making misogynistic and homophobic

21:34

comments at literally every opportunity

21:37

that simply need to be googled to be believed.

21:39

These are comments that he only began to distance

21:42

himself from beginning in February

21:44

twenty twenty, where he gave a

21:46

very weird preface to a talk in Berlin

21:48

by saying that he actually didn't mean every

21:51

funked up thing he's ever said, so please stop

21:53

asking. These problematic comments are mostly

21:55

taking place in the two thousand tens, not back

21:57

in the late nineties when Lolita was made,

22:00

but he does slip up a little bit in the Lolita

22:03

Press junket here saying this, we

22:06

were living in a sort of strange fantasy world

22:08

whereby Dominique was fourteen, and apparently

22:12

UM had to be protected that fourteen

22:14

year fourteen year old California knows

22:16

about everything. You know, Come

22:19

on, UM,

22:21

So on one hand, we were

22:23

trying to be legal and and

22:26

really treating her as this porcelain

22:28

child who I didn't know where

22:30

she came from or

22:32

how all that occurred. On

22:35

the other hand, we were dealing with an actress who had read the book,

22:37

understood the book, quite liked the book, UM,

22:41

who lived the life of any California in fourteen

22:43

year old and knew all about it. Yeah,

22:47

what a bunch of babies protecting a fourteen

22:49

year old on the set of a movie where your

22:51

character, Jeremy Irons is repeatedly

22:54

assaulting her. Those prudes.

22:57

Irons also to repeat sign that partition,

23:00

and we discussed in part one saying that

23:02

Roman Polanski, a convicted

23:04

child sex abuser, should be released.

23:07

I mean, the man plays the most famous child

23:09

sex abuser of all time and reads

23:11

the audio book that we all listened to, and

23:13

he still defends Roman Polanski.

23:16

So we here at the pod, me

23:19

here at the pod, are not fans

23:21

of Jeremy Irons. We just have to talk about

23:23

him a lot. In this episode, Dominique

23:26

Swain was described as being generally

23:28

outgoing on the set and worked closely

23:31

with Lyne, who would described to her when to pause

23:33

and went to react within a scene. She

23:35

was also said to have held up production for

23:38

a full day with her anxiety of

23:40

having to play a seventeen year old pregnant

23:42

Lolita k speculates that

23:45

because the movie was filmed in sequence,

23:47

this anxiety came from it being her last

23:49

scene in the movie. There's also a few

23:51

accounts of Jeremy Irons being overly

23:54

harsh with Dominique Swain. At one

23:56

point during the shoot, she made a suggestion on

23:58

how he might approach a scene, and he replied,

24:01

don't tell me what to do, and she burst into

24:03

tears. Dominique's mother was on set

24:05

when sex scenes with Swain and Irons

24:07

were filmed for her safety, and Irons

24:09

was said to once being nearly in tears

24:12

with the stress of doing it, saying

24:14

I can't do this and covering his face.

24:16

As Kay remembers it. Dominique removed

24:19

Jeremy Irons's hands from his face

24:21

and said, kindly, yes you can.

24:24

We hear this production dissonance in how

24:26

different people viewed the story in

24:28

the behind the scenes video from the low

24:30

lated DVD as well. This

24:33

featurette also has six hundred

24:35

fifty thousand views in its current

24:37

YouTube upload Incarnation and

24:39

I find it especially interesting how Adrian

24:42

Lyne's opinions on what the story is about

24:44

seemed to constantly be in conflict

24:47

with what his leads think it's about, especially

24:50

Melanie Griffith and Dominique Swain. This

24:52

dissonance comes up multiple times in

24:54

this eight minute behind the scenes video. Line

24:57

will say something like this, Charlotte

24:59

sees that Lolita

25:01

is kind of attracted to Humbled

25:03

as well, so they're both really rivals

25:06

for the affection of Humbled. Immediately

25:09

after he says this, Melanie Griffith

25:11

has the opposite opinion. She

25:13

just sees Humbert, who's

25:15

very handsome and very elegant

25:18

and different, and and she

25:20

doesn't see any of these stuff it's

25:22

going on between him and Lolita. Jeremy

25:24

Irons says this of his thoughts

25:27

on making a movie with a child sex abuser

25:29

as its protagonist. As it is something

25:31

that happens in society. It's

25:33

not something that should be condoned

25:36

or encouraged, but it's something that is.

25:39

And the arts have to shed

25:42

light upon question um

25:46

cover everything that happens in life.

25:48

Meanwhile, Adrian Line is over here saying

25:51

ship like this. It makes you laugh,

25:54

it makes you cry, it makes

25:56

you horrified, and

25:59

that's all you can want for a movie. So

26:01

filming completes in February nine six,

26:04

and the movie still does not have a

26:06

distributor. This becomes a popular

26:09

subject of ridicule in snooty

26:11

Hollywood circles. Did Adrian Line really

26:13

make a fifty eight million dollar art

26:16

house movie? And over a year passes

26:18

without a distributor being found. Dominique

26:20

Swain returns to school and does school

26:22

plays and lifeguard training, and she gets

26:25

a small part in the movie Face Off. And

26:27

for all the difficulty that took place

26:29

on the set of Lolita, it's once the movie

26:31

is in edits that things really

26:34

start to fall apart. That is because

26:36

of the Child Pornography Prevention Act

26:38

of nine. We're about to get

26:41

a little constitutional, so bear

26:43

with me. The child pornography Prevention

26:45

Act of nine was put on

26:47

the House floor in September of ninety

26:49

six and proposed to add two

26:51

categories of speech to the legal

26:53

definition of what child pornography

26:56

is. Here's the first edition, any

26:59

visual depiction, including any photograph,

27:01

film, video picture, or computer

27:03

or computer generated image, or a picture that

27:06

is or appears to be of a minor

27:08

engaging and sexually explicit conduct. Here

27:11

is the second edition. That the Act

27:14

introduces any sexually explicit

27:16

image that was advertised, promoted, presented,

27:18

described, or distributed in such a manner

27:20

that conveys the impression that it depicts a

27:23

minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

27:25

What this meant as it pertained

27:27

to Adrian Lines Lolita, is that

27:29

all portrayals of a minor engaging

27:32

in sexual activity, and this included

27:35

the impression of a minor, which

27:38

means that Adrian Lines, nineteen year

27:40

old stand in for Dominique Swain was moot.

27:42

So long as she was portraying a fourteen

27:44

year old character was illegal.

27:47

This Act was not put into law in a

27:49

vacuum. I am, by no means an expert

27:51

on this area of the law, but my understanding

27:54

is that President Clinton, who famously

27:56

never committed a sex crime, had

27:58

made cracking down on possessing child

28:01

pornography a personal priority

28:03

throughout his first term as president, starting

28:05

in late when he wrote

28:07

this and a personal letter to Attorney

28:10

General Janet Reno. I find

28:12

all forms of child pornography offensive

28:14

and harmful, as I know you do, and

28:16

I want the federal government to lead aggressively

28:19

in the attack against the scourge of child

28:22

pornography. Here's a quick summary

28:24

of what child pornography laws were

28:27

prior to this letter being written. According

28:29

to a paper published by Stobbs Law, child

28:32

pornography laws barely existed

28:34

before nineteen seventy, and the first

28:36

major law didn't come into play until

28:39

four's Child Protection Act, the

28:41

same year that the Milk Carton campaign

28:43

begins. The Child Protection Act

28:46

prohibited the distribution of materials

28:48

that concerned the sexual exploitation

28:50

of miners, whether the material was

28:53

deemed obscene or not. In

28:55

Layman's terms, what this means is that

28:57

it removes all First Amendment

29:00

Freedom of expression protections

29:02

from child pornography.

29:05

Child Pornography Prevention Act was

29:07

made in response to the rise of the Internet

29:10

and increase in digital distribution

29:12

of pornography. Of all kinds

29:15

is around the time where the Internet was becoming

29:18

widely accessible, whether it was at

29:20

libraries, in schools, or

29:22

in some homes. So what does law

29:24

meant for Adrian Line? While editing

29:26

his Lolita was that any implication

29:29

of sex with a minor, regardless

29:31

of whether it was performed by an underage

29:33

actor or an of age

29:35

body double, needed to be evaluated

29:38

by a lawyer down the line.

29:40

In two thousand one, the Child Pornography

29:42

Prevention Act is deemed unconstitutional,

29:46

and Lines adaptation of Lolita comes

29:48

up on the floor of the Supreme Court

29:51

just before the Act is struck down in two thousand

29:53

and two for being too broad and potentially

29:56

interfering with First Amendment free

29:58

speech. Here's an excerpt from the Green Borrow

30:00

News and Record from October two thousand

30:02

one. Lolita came up

30:04

in Supreme Court debate on Tuesday, as

30:06

it often seems to do in discussions

30:09

of child pornography. At issue

30:11

was the Child Pornography Prevention Act,

30:13

passed by Congress in nineteen ninety

30:15

six. The law was vigorously defended

30:18

by the Clinton administration and now

30:20

by the Bush administration. Three

30:22

out of four federal courts of appeals have

30:24

upheld it, but the Ninth Circuit

30:26

on the West Coast held its basic

30:28

provision unconstitutional. On

30:31

Tuesday, as skeptical Justice Anon in

30:33

Scalia inquired from the bench, what

30:35

great works of art would be taken away from

30:37

us if we couldn't see miners copulating.

30:40

After some hesitation, the Adult Entertainment

30:43

Association's lawyer replied Lolita.

30:46

He was clearly talking about a movie version

30:48

of Vladimir Nobokov's novel. A

30:51

great work of art, exclaimed Scalia

30:53

Anton in Skalia, What an amazing person.

30:56

Just kidding. But in the spring of nine, when

31:00

Adrian Line was editing and trying to find

31:02

a distributor, this law posed

31:04

an understandably gigantic

31:06

block to his vision of the story getting

31:08

released. So this basically

31:11

destroys Lolita's chance of getting

31:13

distributed widely in the United States.

31:16

International distribution is more

31:18

or less uninterrupted. It boils

31:20

down to this, Adrian Lines Lolita, which

31:23

was his play to get into the Oscars

31:25

echelon of filmmaking after a decade

31:27

of erotic thriller's debuted in

31:29

the US on TV on

31:32

Showtime. So

31:35

let's take a look at this damn thing I have seen

31:37

this movie many many

31:39

times over the years, always on whichever

31:42

illegal YouTube upload is currently up.

31:44

But to prepare for this show, I got

31:46

an official DVD release of the movie.

31:49

Now, the plot of Adrian Lines Lolita is

31:51

pretty close to Nabokov's book

31:53

sort of. But I am going to zip you through

31:56

the plot because if you have any doubts

31:58

at this point in the episode on how

32:00

director Adrian Line you nabokov

32:02

story and his own movie, I'm going to include

32:05

excerpts from the director's commentary

32:07

that appears on the DVD. I'll let Adrian

32:10

Line speak to his own work.

32:13

Yea.

32:28

So here it is Humbert Humbert's

32:32

I mean Vladimir Nabokov's

32:34

Lolita Again. This movie

32:36

begins at the end Humbert is driving

32:38

away from the murder scene where he kills

32:41

Quality, but this time it's sexy Jeremy

32:43

Irons dramatic Humbert. In this version,

32:46

we do see a flashback to some

32:48

of Humbert's past. We learn about Annabelle

32:50

Lee, the girl he fell in love with as a

32:52

child, but they're aged up their

32:55

fourteen, not twelve as in the book.

32:57

Here's what Adrian Line says about the flashback

33:02

because I think our story really is about a

33:05

man who who never grows

33:07

up really as a man who stay

33:10

as a child essentially, And

33:12

the cinematography of this early

33:15

loved scene is full on Abercrombie

33:18

ad. These teenagers are falling

33:20

in love in this very seductive way.

33:22

It's not at all the clumsy romance

33:25

that Humbert describes in the book. Humbert

33:27

goes to America to teach at Beardsley,

33:30

but first stops in New England, where

33:32

as you know, he becomes the lodger of

33:34

Charlotte Hayes. There are a lot of small

33:37

details here that aren't any other adaptations.

33:39

There's the mention that Charlotte loves

33:42

Mexican art but is pretty racist

33:44

about it. And then we see Dominique

33:46

Swain's Lolita for the first time.

33:48

She looks closer to Nabokov's description

33:51

with pigtails and sandy hair,

33:53

and Swain the actress has braces

33:55

at this time, as well as period appropriate

33:58

clothes, closer to nobal Gov's

34:00

descriptions. But again I'm going to refer to that kind

34:02

of a late nineties Abercrombie add

34:05

over sexed presentation. When

34:07

we meet Lolita. She is soaking

34:09

wet, wearing a bikini underneath

34:12

a sheer dress as she reads a magazine

34:14

beneath a sprinkler, which you

34:16

may know is not generally how people

34:19

read magazines. The Lolita of this

34:21

movie is aged up, as usual, to

34:23

fourteen from twelve. Adrian

34:25

Lyne says this, I

34:28

like the braces there. I think it's important really

34:30

to keep on remembering that that he's

34:32

fascinated by a child. You know, she's

34:35

essentially part She's at that point,

34:38

you know, when she's part child part woman,

34:41

And I think that's

34:44

what dominic Swain really

34:47

managed to to portray.

34:49

She really had a foot in both camps.

34:51

I thought it was very

34:53

important that really, and ironically,

34:55

by the end of the of the

34:58

movie, I don't think she could have played the hooks

35:00

she had grown up. The

35:03

camera lingers on Dominique Swain's

35:05

body, something that obviously isn't

35:07

in the book, Nor is the long piercing

35:10

gaze and brush of Lolita's foot

35:12

against Humbert's leg that we see right

35:14

after she carries laundry past him shortly

35:16

after. What's important to note here is

35:19

that the camera is taking on Humbert's

35:21

perspective in a way that isn't really

35:23

challenging the grossness of

35:25

how Humbert is viewing this child. So

35:28

Humbert is moved in and Adrian

35:30

Lyne says this, when Humbert puts

35:32

a ribbon in his journal as a bookmark,

35:37

I don't know when anybody gets this. There's a kind of

35:39

a link with the with the piece

35:41

of lace there from the

35:44

underwear that Annabelle

35:47

war. I didn't know whether or not people pick up

35:49

on that, but I like the fact that he kept

35:51

it from all of those years.

35:54

That's not a detail from the book and it's not

35:56

necessary. So in this adaptation Humbert

35:59

and Loli does flirtation is far

36:01

more direct. She comes into his

36:03

room and sits on his lap. That footmotif

36:06

of her foot brushing against his body

36:08

comes up again and again, and she

36:11

leans on him as they swing on

36:13

the outdoor porch swing with

36:15

Charlotte. She teases him in moments

36:18

like this, still do anything you

36:20

say? She's getting a thing about

36:23

this scene is a lot Dominique

36:25

swains. Lolita is holding a doll, she

36:27

grabs Humbert's thigh, she rubs up

36:29

against him, So we see a lot of her

36:32

touching him, but we don't see

36:34

any of the rough touching that

36:36

humber does in the book that, according

36:38

to nabuk Off, results in her body becoming

36:41

bruised. So again a far more

36:43

romantic, gauzy presentation

36:45

of this flirtation between an adult

36:47

and a child. Lolita is sent to camp,

36:50

but not before there is another full

36:52

fantasy of a kissing sequence. Lolita

36:55

runs up to Humbert's room to say goodbye,

36:57

and the scene becomes slow motion

37:00

romantic. There's a dramatic close

37:02

up. It's essentially a Hollister bag. There's

37:04

a shot of Dominique Swain flying into

37:06

Jeremy Irons's arms. The shots focused

37:09

on her crotch meeting his as he catches

37:11

her. She kisses him for a while,

37:14

and after she runs away, Jeremy Irons

37:16

clutches his heart beaming. It

37:19

is framed as romantic. Line

37:21

says this, it's funny.

37:23

The first time that she kissed him, we were all a little terrified.

37:26

We knew that she had kissed boyfriend

37:29

before, but nobody quite knew what to

37:31

expect. And once Lolita

37:34

is gone, Humbert comically tumbles

37:36

into her closet. After she leaves This

37:41

was a tricky moment. I think when he plunges into

37:43

a Lolita's clothes there, it had to be funny

37:46

or otherwise it would have been I

37:48

think grotesque.

37:51

But it is grotesque, Adrian. He's

37:53

a sexual predator, okay, as

37:56

usual. Charlotte leaves the letter confessing

37:58

her love for humbered They get married, and

38:00

he experiments by drugging her all

38:03

summer long. There's an extended scene

38:05

here where Jeremy Irons is trying to

38:07

effectively tranquilize Melanie

38:09

Griffith, only for her to wake up and

38:11

start kissing him. This is framed like a

38:13

comedy scene. Eventually, Charlotte

38:16

finds Humbert's journals, revealing that he

38:18

is sexually obsessed with her daughter.

38:20

She gets hit by a car and Humbert leaves

38:23

to go pick up Lowly to at camp. Lolita

38:26

is picked up and upon getting into the car,

38:28

she strips in the backseat to change her clothes

38:30

not in the book, and they kiss again.

38:33

Adrian Lyne says, this it's

38:36

funny. This was the first time that she

38:39

kissed Jeremy sort of passionately,

38:42

if you like. And the whole crew, including

38:44

myself waiting with bated breath to see

38:46

what was going to happen. I mean, we just didn't know, really,

38:48

And when she finally did

38:51

kiss him with such gusto, I

38:53

remember the crew going but

38:57

she It's funny, I was more worried, and

39:00

I think her mother was more worried about how

39:02

in the movie than she was herself. Really.

39:06

Humbert and Lolita arrive at the Enchanted

39:08

Hunter's Hotel, and we see Lolita and

39:10

Quilty meet for the first time. This

39:13

interaction takes place. Who can smell

39:15

when people are sweet? Do

39:18

you like sweet people? Nice

39:22

young people. Quilty

39:25

is seen mainly in the shadows in this

39:27

adaptation, which is a little closer to how

39:30

he appears in the book, but in the movie

39:32

he's almost always presented at this kind

39:34

of dramatic Dutch angle that is

39:37

for me a bit much. Humbert takes

39:39

Lolita to a romantic, candlelit

39:41

dinner at the Enchanted Hunters Hotel, and

39:43

Lolita tells Humbert who Quilty is.

39:46

In this version, she already knows that he's a

39:48

famous playwright. Up in the room, Lolita

39:50

delivers this famous line from

39:52

the book. Two people sharing the same

39:54

hotel room abound to enter

39:57

into a how

39:59

can I put it in to it into a kind of incest

40:03

unlike the book. She kind of giggles

40:05

afterwards, almost as if she didn't fully

40:07

mean it. Instead of drugging her. Humber brings

40:10

Lolita up to bed and she gives him

40:12

a number of seductively

40:14

framed gazes. He removes her shoes

40:16

and socks. Another foot shot, and

40:19

the whole sequence is kind of framed more

40:21

like this is her agency

40:23

and that she's in on this quote

40:26

unquote seduction when we know this couldn't

40:28

possibly be the case. Humbert goes

40:30

downstairs, has a very Dutch angle

40:33

scene meeting Quilty for the first time,

40:35

then comes back upstairs to see

40:37

Lolita sleeping fitfully. He again

40:40

stares at her feet, and there's a tight shot

40:42

of Lolita's butt beneath the sheets in

40:44

the moonlight. Lolita wakes up

40:46

and asks for a glass of water, wipes

40:48

her mouth on his sleeve and slow motion,

40:51

and goes back to bed. Lions commentary

40:53

during this scene is extremely

40:55

telling. First, he says, this will

40:58

show me what's very

41:01

interesting with Jeremy's

41:03

performance really is that you really sense the struggle

41:06

of the man. You know this is a man with a conscience.

41:09

I mean, what he does is awful, obviously,

41:12

but you sense

41:14

that he's struggling with

41:17

in a sense, being a parent but also being

41:20

a lover. He

41:23

keeps on saying things like this. I

41:26

think this sequence is interesting here because it's

41:29

really a bewildering mix of sensuality

41:32

and and parent

41:35

and the conflict of the But

41:39

Humbut has listener.

41:41

He literally cannot stop saying

41:44

things like this. It's interesting because you sense the

41:46

sexuality in the sensuality from her side,

41:49

and at this stage he backs

41:51

off line repeatedly

41:54

talks about his low leader as

41:56

if she is acting knowingly and

41:58

isn't just asleep. For the entire

42:00

scene, these

42:02

two shots and the sheets here with

42:05

a leg and a were

42:07

end. I think it's um

42:10

it's nice suggesting what

42:12

is there rather than seeing

42:15

it. He's more for his

42:17

imagination, more

42:19

to torturing m

42:22

The next morning at the Enchanted Hunter's hotel

42:25

is in the book when Humbert first

42:27

rapes Lolita. Humbert says that

42:29

she seduced him in the book, but makes

42:32

it clear that he's making this argument

42:34

to a jury. In the movie, he

42:37

says that she seduced him and

42:39

that's simply how the scene is presented.

42:42

There is no creative choice made

42:44

reminding us that this could be an

42:46

unreliable account. It's just shown.

42:49

Lolita kisses Humbert confidently

42:52

and says, I guess I'm just going to have to show

42:54

you everything. She undoes his pants,

42:56

removes her retainer, and the scene

42:59

fades to black. The way that this

43:01

scene implies both seduction

43:04

and consent is enough to spike

43:06

the entire thing in the dumpster as far as I'm

43:08

concerned. But they leave the enchanted Hunter's

43:10

Hotel, and as in the book, Lolita

43:13

begins to feel physical pain later

43:15

in the day, and she says this, well,

43:18

what do you expect? It

43:21

was a daisy fresh girl, and look what you've done

43:23

to me. It should

43:25

call the police and tell them that you raped me, you dirty

43:27

old man. This

43:29

is a very memorable and telling line from

43:31

the book, But like when Dominique Swain

43:34

delivers the It's called incest

43:36

line, her character always giggles

43:38

or smiles at Humbert afterward, almost

43:40

as if to imply that she's actually

43:42

kidding. After saying she should call the police

43:45

and say that Humbert raped her, she smiles

43:47

and gazes out the window. She's joking.

43:50

When she turns, we can see that she has

43:52

a Hickey Jeremy irons as Humbert

43:55

smiles. Then a bit later tells

43:57

her that her mother is dead, and we hear

43:59

Lolita cry all night in the hotel.

44:02

Just as in the book, she comes to Humbert's

44:04

bed crying and he holds her line

44:06

says this again,

44:11

this moment when she comes into bed with him is really

44:14

the moment of

44:14

a of

44:17

a parent really looking after his child.

44:22

There was this strange, conflicted things

44:25

throughout the movie.

44:28

At this point, the road trip portion of

44:30

the movie begins. Lolita rarely

44:32

expresses grief about her mother again,

44:35

and we see a series of joyful

44:37

scenes of her kicking him in the face

44:39

with her feet as he drives. This whole

44:41

romantic montage that has become

44:44

very influential in online communities.

44:46

In one particularly memorable scene,

44:49

Lolita and Humbert stop at a motel

44:51

with a bed that has a magic fingers vibrator

44:53

attached. This happens, give

44:56

me accord in a dime for

45:00

the magic fingers, my

45:03

magic. Lolita

45:05

scowls and gets her quarter, and we see

45:07

her writhe all over the vibrating bed

45:09

in a montage before she flushes the toilet

45:12

while Humbert is in the shower, making

45:14

the water of the shower go cold. Line

45:16

comments this in

45:20

this scene kind of sense that the balance

45:22

of power is changing a little bit. When

45:26

he was manipulating her and now she's beginning

45:28

to manipulate him. Another

45:31

romantic montage as they travel across

45:34

the country, a slow motion tennis sequence,

45:36

Humbert removing Lolita's straps

45:39

as she's falling asleep. Foot shots,

45:41

foot shots, foot shots, and what I

45:43

feel is the most unpleasant addition

45:45

in the entire movie, a scene where Lolita

45:48

is reading a comic book while sitting

45:50

on Humbert's lap and he begins

45:52

to have sex with her. This is

45:54

not in the book and is better

45:56

matched with the first two minutes of an actual

45:59

pornographic video Dominique Swain

46:01

as Lolita orgasms holding

46:04

the comic book in her hand. It

46:06

is a difficult scene to watch. Adrian

46:09

Line offers this explanation, This

46:13

was a scene that was very troubling for people,

46:15

and again,

46:17

I think it kind of reinforced

46:20

the idea of child and woman. Really

46:23

child is reading the comic

46:26

and getting pleasure from that and

46:28

also the

46:31

the adult side as well.

46:36

No. In the scene immediately after this,

46:38

we see another example of Lolita

46:40

crying, presumably right after

46:42

sex with Humbert. Then the two

46:44

of them go to Beardsley and Humbert braids

46:47

Lolita's hair. Before school, Lolita

46:49

brings up being in the school play and Humbert

46:51

says no. She replies, like this,

46:54

you're depriving me of the civil rights.

47:00

H I'm intelligent. Instead

47:03

of being convinced by the headmistress

47:05

that low leaders should be in the play as in the book, Lolita

47:08

convinces Humbert, and another scene

47:10

presented as very seductive, she

47:12

caresses his leg while demanding that

47:14

she be allowed to do the play. Humbert

47:17

starts to get turned on, and Lolita

47:19

demands that her allowance increase from

47:21

one to two dollars, and he

47:23

agrees. She smiles at him deviously.

47:26

Adrian Lyne says this, I

47:30

like this shot of her

47:33

foot rocking him

47:35

A right to be in a player if I want kind

47:37

of starts off this scene of sensuality,

47:40

and and it suggests that more

47:43

and more she's

47:45

in charge. If you like, she's

47:49

starting to manipulate him,

47:52

right I should mention there's another

47:54

foot shot in that scene as well. So Lolita

47:56

gets to do the play and Humbert is aware

47:59

that Claire Quialty is watching the rehearsals.

48:01

We then see a scene of a naked

48:04

Lolita played by the nineteen year old body

48:06

double we talked about earlier, but a naked

48:08

Lolita who is frustrated with Humbered

48:11

in bed. She's snatching coined

48:13

from him, biting him, pulling his hair in

48:15

anger, almost animalistic in how

48:17

she's behaving. Humbered in this scene

48:19

is very much framed as the victim.

48:22

Line says, this where

48:25

she hit the money. I never knew we

48:28

used the body double in in

48:30

this scene for some of the

48:33

whitest shots. It's amazing

48:36

what you get away with. Really, Dominic

48:38

was wearing a body suit, as

48:40

I remember, and because the shelts are so quick

48:42

don't see. Humbert then has a meeting

48:45

with the headmistress of Lolita's school,

48:47

and the headmistress mentioned that Lolita

48:49

is still fourteen. This means the

48:51

timeline of the movie is much shorter than

48:53

that of the book. After realizing Lolita

48:56

is not going to piano lessons, she and Humbert

48:58

get into an argument, Humbert slaps

49:01

her, and in that same scene we saw

49:03

in the original Jeremy Irons Dominique

49:05

Swain chemistry test, she screams,

49:08

murder me like you murdered my mother. It's

49:10

a very intense scene. Go ahead,

49:12

murder me, murder me like you murder murder

49:16

me like you murdered my mother.

49:18

Going murder me, murder me like you

49:20

murdered my mother. Lolita

49:22

runs away. Humbert finds her later

49:24

and she's changed her mind for mysterious

49:27

reasons. She says, take me to bed,

49:29

and then they hit the road again. Lolita swaps

49:31

out her chewing gum for a banana in

49:33

the car. While Quality follows, Lolita

49:36

puts on ruby red lipstick. By

49:38

this point in the movie, Humbert is portrayed as

49:40

paranoid and bumbling. As Qualthy

49:42

continues to follow them, Humbert again

49:45

slaps Lolita to scare her. This

49:47

is how Line describes this. I

49:51

think this kind of sexuality of the way

49:53

she's he's the banana I thought was important

49:56

in this scene because he's becoming

49:58

more and more unhinged, more and more ragged,

50:01

more and more convinced that he's being followed by

50:03

the police, and I think

50:06

the fact that he's being tortured sexually

50:08

at the same time, I think it's important and

50:11

it gets mixed up together a feline.

50:14

It's iconically subtle filmmaking. Adrian

50:17

really good stuff. So this next sequence

50:19

is unique in Lolita adaptations

50:21

and that it really focuses on Lolita's

50:24

conspiring with clare Quality to escape

50:26

Humbert's clutches more so than

50:28

any other adaptation. At one

50:30

motel, when Humbert comes back from

50:32

getting Lolita her bananas,

50:35

get it bananas. When he comes

50:37

back with the symbolic bananas, Lolita

50:39

is sitting on the bed with smudged lipstick.

50:42

It's implied that she's been out kissing

50:44

someone else. We then get a full body

50:46

shot of Lolita seductively holding

50:49

the bananas in slow motion before

50:51

Humbert violently slams her to the bed

50:54

and demands to know who she's with. He

50:56

tears at her clothes, and instead

50:58

of being afraid, Lolita is

51:01

laughing maniacally and seems to

51:03

be getting turned on by Humbert.

51:05

Fear and anger again, just a wildly

51:08

irresponsible way to frame an assault

51:10

like this. Adrian Line has this

51:12

to say, I

51:15

like the kind of imagery of these bananas

51:17

in this scene. It's

51:19

some kind of pathetic

51:21

really in other ways, I've

51:24

been sent out to get them, and then

51:26

it becomes obviously a kind of a sexual imagery

51:29

doing doing this scene, he

51:32

can't stop talking about these bananas.

51:35

There's literally an assault of a child

51:37

taking place on the screen and Adrian Line

51:39

is talking about the bananas.

51:42

After this scene, Jeremy Irons is Humbert

51:44

is so paranoid now that every angle

51:46

is a Dutch angle. As in the book, Lolita

51:48

gets sick, she runs away. Humbert

51:51

searches for her with no luck, and three

51:53

years later Humbert only learned of her

51:55

location when she reaches out to him

51:57

asking for money. He, of course she'll

52:00

up and finds Lolita, now

52:02

pregnant and living in a shack

52:04

with her husband, and as in the book, Humbert

52:07

begs her to tell him who

52:09

she had left with all those years ago. Lolita

52:11

says, my god, dad,

52:14

it was quilty. It was clear quilty.

52:17

This was one of the only scenes in the movie where I

52:19

felt like the additions made were pretty

52:22

effective. Humbert gives Lolita

52:24

the money. She tells him that she is

52:26

not going to go with him, in a scene that still

52:28

breaks my heart, And before he leaves,

52:31

this exchange is added, can

52:34

you ever forget what I've done to say

52:36

goodbye Molly, say

52:39

goodbye to my dad? I

52:43

actually do like this edition, immediately

52:45

followed by one that I hate. After getting

52:47

in his car, Humbert looks at the shack and

52:49

sees a pregnant seventeen year old Lolita.

52:52

He blinks a few times and suddenly

52:54

there's the fourteen year old Lolita from

52:56

the day they kissed back in the Ramsdell

52:59

house down who the costume? He

53:01

smiles nostalgic. Then,

53:03

as always he goes. He kills clare Quality

53:06

in a scene that is way too long that does

53:08

feature frankl Angela's penis, something

53:10

that made frankl Angela very upset because

53:12

Adrian Line said he wasn't going to include

53:14

the shot of frankl Angela's penis.

53:16

Anyways, that's the end of the movie, And

53:18

upon the first rewatch of many that I was

53:21

doing for this episode, I thought

53:23

that they had spared Dominique Swain,

53:25

the scene from the book where Humbert

53:27

licks Dolores's eyeball, or

53:29

the scene early on, where Humbert

53:31

describes a time that he bounced Lolita

53:34

on his lap and ejaculated,

53:36

but claims that she didn't notice. But

53:38

these scenes absolutely were shot between

53:40

Irons and Swain. They appear as

53:43

deleted scenes on the DVD and

53:45

have hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.

53:47

Well, you know what, I'm troubled. So, as

53:50

we discussed, this movie does not get wide distribution

53:52

in the US, which does end up getting

53:54

it quite a bit of press. And what did

53:56

the critics have to say? In ninety

53:59

eight? The new version of

54:01

Lolita, released at Last, turns

54:04

out to be a beautifully made, melancholy

54:07

and rather touching account of a doomed

54:09

love affair between a full grown man

54:12

and a very young woman. But

54:14

that, of course, is not what Vladimir

54:17

Nobokov's masterpiece is about.

54:20

The film's masterstroke is its understanding

54:22

that this is Humbert's story, told

54:25

in his own lyrical voice, from his own

54:27

passionate, sad, tortured perspective.

54:31

There are flashes of seduction from Lolita that

54:33

are intentionally hard to distinguish

54:35

from a schoolgirl crush. The better

54:37

for Humbert to misinterpret. Ms

54:40

Swain walks this incredibly narrow

54:42

line between innocent playfulness and adult

54:44

knowledge without a misstep. Yes,

54:47

the subject matter can be considered

54:49

offensive, but the director Adrian Lyon

54:51

has filmed the material in such a way that one

54:53

would have to be awfully sensitive to be offended

54:56

by anything in the movie. The scenes of intimacy

54:58

between Humbert and Lolita are done shadows

55:00

and in a manner that generally

55:02

keeps their affection private. Lynn's

55:05

efforts to be both passionate and autistic

55:08

are generally successful, although

55:11

a few sex scenes are disturbing

55:14

and arguably close to silasious.

55:17

Critics generally liked this movie

55:20

and objected to the reasons that

55:22

many found it to be controversial. I

55:24

found these reviews to all be very late nineties

55:26

in their tone, so I really do try to

55:29

keep my opinions out of this show as much

55:31

as I can. But I really don't like this

55:33

movie as far as I'm concerned. It belongs

55:35

to a very particular category

55:37

of movie where the books have been carefully

55:40

adapted down to the smallest detail,

55:42

and yet the movie somehow manages to miss

55:45

the entire point of what it's adapting.

55:47

Because lines movie pays an extraordinary

55:50

amount of attention to the details of

55:53

the book. There are these little moments,

55:55

color choices, characters who only

55:57

appear for a line or two in the text

56:00

that make it very clear that all

56:02

of the critical players in this movie have

56:04

read Nabokov's book many, many

56:06

times. And the visuals that this attention

56:09

to detail produces can often be really

56:11

beautiful. There is one critical

56:13

thing missing, however, and that is

56:16

any reminder or indication

56:19

that Humbert Humbert, who is a child sex

56:21

abuser, is an unreliable

56:23

narrator. But they missed the point of the entire

56:26

book. We don't have Vladimir Nabokov's

56:28

Lolita. What we have here is

56:30

Humbert Humbert the fifty eight million

56:32

dollar movie. How could they possibly have?

56:35

I mean, they present Humbert's

56:37

entire story as if it's just the

56:39

truth. It's just a story being told. You

56:41

don't even find out he's gone to jail until

56:44

the last slide of the movie, the

56:46

same slide that tells us that Dolores Hayes

56:48

has died in childbirth, and you're not

56:51

told that his vested interest maybe

56:53

in winning your favor over making

56:55

you dislike Charlotte, demonizing

56:57

Dolores at any opportunity. No

57:00

one did. No One notice that I

57:02

wouldn't be as bothered if this movie hadn't

57:05

endured as much as it has, and

57:07

I am not alone in feeling this way.

57:09

I was interested to learn that many Nabokovian's

57:13

throw back to a past episode that means Vladimir

57:15

Nabakov's scholars Navakovyan's

57:17

also tend to really dislike

57:19

this movie and find it to completely

57:22

miss the core message of Nabakov's

57:24

text. Some in particular, are deeply

57:26

disappointed and frustrated with the

57:28

bulkhov Son Dmitri for signing

57:31

off on and actively participating

57:33

in this production. Here's a conversation

57:36

I had with Nabokov's biographer

57:38

Brian Boyd about an early screening

57:41

he saw of this movie where Dmitry

57:43

Nabokov was speaking alongside

57:45

Adrian Line, and I asked him about some

57:47

of his thoughts on the adaptation. I

57:50

watched it for the first time at Cornell

57:53

in a large audience of students,

57:57

and the myth is that people

57:59

who would count for an apok of centenary celebration,

58:02

and then in the Q and A, there are all these

58:05

adoring questions from the student audience,

58:07

and none of the the conference

58:09

attendees said anything. But I

58:11

hated the movie so much that

58:14

I wanted to say something, and I thought, shall

58:16

I spoil the party, spoil

58:18

this atmosphere? And I thought, well,

58:21

I'll keep myself forever if I

58:23

don't say something right.

58:26

Because again Parlian

58:28

renaction to the Kubrick where they had to make a look

58:30

older, the emphasis here is very

58:33

much on her youth, so the braces,

58:35

the bubble gum and so on,

58:39

and yeah,

58:44

I just don't think he that they

58:46

do it in the right way. And

58:48

they said last question. Stephen

58:51

Schiff said, I think Brian Boyd was going to ask

58:53

a question, so so I put

58:55

it to him, what would you say to the

58:58

the comment that what you've

59:00

filmed is not the pocups low leader

59:02

but Hummed Slader And

59:05

he didn't know what the question. He

59:07

didn't understand the question. But Hummed

59:10

is very engaging and

59:12

witty, and they felt the

59:14

need for for the film to work to make

59:17

him appealing. And

59:19

I don't understand why on earth they felt

59:21

that, but that was the decision that

59:23

that Adrian Line made and that

59:25

was the brief given to the screen. Various

59:28

screenplay writers. And

59:30

if you look at the first scene between

59:32

the book of between Humbert

59:34

and Lolita in the screenplay

59:38

hummed, it's just such a slee

59:41

spool and you know, he imagines

59:43

that he manages to make

59:45

himself witty as a narrator

59:47

of the novel, but here when you see this

59:49

dialogue of him sort of trying

59:53

to make verbal advances,

59:55

and it's

59:57

just so repellent. It was sinating

1:00:00

for me to go through. You know, Okay, there there is

1:00:02

more cultural freedom to show things. Although

1:00:05

you know it was there. I

1:00:07

guess you could shoot more, um,

1:00:10

but it just was so in the other direction

1:00:12

of like the you know, Vladimir and book I was

1:00:14

great love story is like used again

1:00:16

and again in the trailers. But even the way

1:00:19

the cinematography is encouraging

1:00:22

you to kind of be on Humbert's

1:00:25

side, as it were, it's just very um

1:00:28

it's very strange, and especially for a

1:00:31

movie that seems to have a big, you

1:00:34

know, agenda with with staying faithful

1:00:36

to very minute details

1:00:38

of the book, but then kind of

1:00:41

missing the theme. It's just it's it's

1:00:44

frustrating. I I

1:00:50

it is an extraordinary example of how

1:00:52

you can attend to the

1:00:55

letter of the details and get the spirit absolutely

1:00:57

wrong. And yeah,

1:01:01

Nebaco would have been utterly a pooled I

1:01:03

think, thank you so

1:01:05

much to Brian Boyd, and he describes

1:01:07

this more at length in a book of his I

1:01:09

Really enjoyed called Stalking nabokov

1:01:14

Ye,

1:01:29

so Adrian lines, Lolita romanticizes

1:01:32

the relationship between Dolores Hayes

1:01:34

and Humbert Humbert while generally

1:01:36

still portraying more of the trauma and

1:01:38

unhappiness that Dolores experiences

1:01:41

than any other adaptation does, and

1:01:43

while seeing Dominique Swain as

1:01:46

Lolita express this anger

1:01:48

and sadness and remorse. As Brian

1:01:50

said, this movie is still an adaptation

1:01:53

of an abuser's account. In that

1:01:56

Lolita was sort of released into

1:01:59

in the u S generally seemed

1:02:01

to take away the message that this relationship

1:02:04

was to be viewed as a romance. Don't

1:02:06

believe me. Check this out, So

1:02:09

lady, you're

1:02:12

about the nominee. Kiss best

1:02:15

cheers when it's Paltrow, When

1:02:17

Joseph finds

1:02:19

Shakespeare, Jeremy

1:02:22

Irons and Dominique sway.

1:02:27

But I'd be happy as to you. Ben

1:02:30

Stiller and Cameron Diaz what

1:02:32

you just heard is Dolores Hayes

1:02:35

and Humbert Humbert being nominated

1:02:37

for Best Kiss at the MTV

1:02:39

Movie Awards. In they

1:02:42

did lose to Shakespeare in Love. But

1:02:44

that is the level to which Atrian Line

1:02:47

presents this relationship as a

1:02:49

romance. So what is it about

1:02:51

this movie outside of the dangerous

1:02:53

lack of adequate framing of the story

1:02:55

that convinced us that this was a love

1:02:58

story. I would also like to implicate cinematographer

1:03:01

Howard Atherton here, because Adrian

1:03:03

Line harps on the framing of

1:03:05

his characters in the director's commentary

1:03:07

of the movie as well, and singles out

1:03:10

romantically lit shots of Dominique

1:03:12

Swain as Lolita, saying things like

1:03:14

beautiful lighting. We just wanted to make

1:03:16

her look totally alluring. So

1:03:19

while the child Pornography Prevention Act

1:03:21

of gets all of the sex scenes

1:03:23

with the nineteen year old body double eliminated

1:03:25

except for the one I described to you frantically

1:03:28

collecting those gold coins of Humbert's

1:03:31

that Lana del racings about in her music fifteen

1:03:33

years later. Even with these shots

1:03:35

omitted, Lolita and Humbert gaze

1:03:37

at each other lovingly upon meeting,

1:03:40

she soaked in the spray of a sprinkler,

1:03:42

wearing a bikini, her mother completely

1:03:45

oblivious. The camera is clearly

1:03:47

telling you this is their moment.

1:03:51

The cinematography of Lolita is

1:03:53

done by Howard Atherton, whose

1:03:55

other credits include Fatal Attraction

1:03:58

in Decent Proposal and Bad Is.

1:04:00

The first two of those are Adrian Line erotic

1:04:02

thrillers, and the last you probably

1:04:05

know is a Will Smith Martin Lawrence

1:04:07

action classic that, uh,

1:04:09

you have to admit, treats women's bodies

1:04:12

like they're absolute objects. Line

1:04:14

bringing his team over from the erotic

1:04:16

thriller genre just does not

1:04:18

work, And that sticks out particularly

1:04:21

in the cinematography, because here's

1:04:23

a cinematographer who does not and has

1:04:26

never dealt in nuance in

1:04:28

a movie that desperately needs that behind

1:04:30

the camera in order to work again,

1:04:32

I'll go back to spend Nike

1:04:35

Fist, the cinematographer for eight

1:04:37

Pretty Baby. His work constantly

1:04:40

brings you into the perspective of Brookshield's

1:04:42

twelve year old character. The

1:04:44

camera communicates her confusion and

1:04:47

fear in ways that don't even exist

1:04:49

in the movie script. That's his job,

1:04:51

particularly in a story hinging on something

1:04:54

as fraught as child sex abuse. The

1:04:56

camera cannot simply translate

1:04:58

the narrative of an abuser, but

1:05:01

that is more or less what Howard

1:05:03

Atherton does here. The same

1:05:05

thing happens in almost every scene

1:05:07

in which they appear. While there is

1:05:09

the occasional shot or a moment that

1:05:11

reminds us what a nauseating power

1:05:13

dynamic this is, we are far more often

1:05:16

presented with softly lit love scenes,

1:05:18

with foot shots, with Dominique

1:05:20

Swain gazing at Jeremy Irons knowingly

1:05:23

seductively. It's the same

1:05:25

thing we've been talking about for

1:05:28

the entire series. The

1:05:30

many moments that this movie presents

1:05:32

as erotic are similar. Not

1:05:34

only does Dominique Swain's lovely to sarcastically

1:05:37

laugh after a number of key lines

1:05:40

it's called incest. I was a daisy

1:05:42

fresh girl and look what you've done to me. But

1:05:44

any moment the camera isn't presenting her as

1:05:47

traumatized, It's presenting her as

1:05:49

very sexually knowing. And this is

1:05:51

pretty exactly how Humbert presents Dolores

1:05:54

in the text, as consenting

1:05:56

and vindictive in one moment than crying

1:05:58

and undone in the net. What lines

1:06:01

direction misses is the context

1:06:03

is who is telling you this story?

1:06:06

I know, I know I'm harping on this, but truly

1:06:08

imagine the person who has hurt

1:06:10

you most in your life got to tell

1:06:12

your life story like it was unquestionably

1:06:15

true. That's how this movie is adapted.

1:06:18

Then there's the cinematography in the sex

1:06:20

scenes where Dominique Swain does appear.

1:06:22

There is that deleted scene where Humbert is

1:06:24

aroused by Lolita on the couch, the

1:06:26

camera language implying that she's in

1:06:29

on it, shooting him knowing looks.

1:06:31

There's that scene where she climaxes

1:06:33

while reading a comic book. There's that

1:06:35

scene where she removes her routineer before

1:06:38

ostensibly giving Humbert a blow job

1:06:40

at age fourteen. There's that scene

1:06:42

where the camera frames her laughing

1:06:44

her head off when Humbert asks her

1:06:46

where she's been. The camera shows

1:06:49

Dolores in these moments as a

1:06:51

consenting and willing party,

1:06:53

ignoring, particularly at the end, that

1:06:55

the other person she's seeing is another

1:06:58

child sex abuser. As Brian Boyd said,

1:07:00

all the high level decisions in this movie

1:07:03

are invested in telling Humbert's

1:07:05

story, not Nabucos, and

1:07:07

that's a big problem. How can I be sure

1:07:09

of that? Well, this movie absolutely

1:07:12

flopped in the US theatrically due

1:07:14

to the whole not being released thing,

1:07:16

but it does do pretty well financially and

1:07:18

critically overseas, particularly in

1:07:20

Russia. But as you may know, when a movie

1:07:23

flops, this usually means it will eventually

1:07:25

crop up for free on YouTube. And

1:07:27

that's how I found this movie in high school,

1:07:30

via a late two thousands upload of

1:07:32

the movie in fourteen parts, back

1:07:34

when YouTube videos could only be ten minutes long.

1:07:36

I'm old, and this rip of the movie has

1:07:38

long been removed from YouTube. If

1:07:40

you were interested in seeing this movie as

1:07:43

a young person, it was not hard

1:07:45

to find it. In fact, our whole next episode

1:07:47

is about people who either managed to

1:07:49

swipe a copy of Lolita from Blockbuster

1:07:52

in the early two thousand's, or like

1:07:54

me, found easy to find illegal rips

1:07:56

on YouTube and daily Motion and then

1:07:59

created fan for hims about the movie. I

1:08:01

just rewatched lines Littlita the other

1:08:03

day on a YouTube rip, just before

1:08:05

recording this episode, and it's a

1:08:07

great and frustrating way to gauge

1:08:09

how Adrian lines presentation of Dolores

1:08:12

Hayes's story creates this dissonance

1:08:14

and confusion. Here's a random assortment

1:08:17

of comments on the current upload from the past

1:08:19

two years. But girl

1:08:21

fall in love and she also

1:08:24

enjoy it. I

1:08:26

read this book when I was twelve. My

1:08:29

mom was like, you can't let read

1:08:31

this, and my dad

1:08:33

told me it's way too

1:08:36

hard for you. But I kept

1:08:38

reading and I didn't regret it.

1:08:41

I'm so confused. Is he in love with

1:08:43

her or no? Is she in love with him

1:08:45

or no? I'm

1:08:48

fifteen and finding this movie interesting.

1:08:50

I'm watching not

1:08:53

to mention, and I hope that this

1:08:55

upload of the movie has been deleted by the

1:08:57

time you're hearing this, because I did report

1:08:59

it and explicably, in the middle

1:09:01

of this re uploaded Lolita for

1:09:04

reasons I could not explain to you with

1:09:06

a gun to my head, there is actual

1:09:08

pornography spliced into the

1:09:10

middle of this illegal YouTube upload,

1:09:13

coming in about an hour into the normal

1:09:15

movie. I've been frustrated by a million

1:09:17

times. It is just a full ten

1:09:19

minutes of porn spliced into

1:09:21

the middle of lines movie, and the uploader

1:09:24

placed it right after the

1:09:26

scene where Lolita climaxes

1:09:28

while reading the comic book. You're about

1:09:30

to hear a scene from the movie end and

1:09:33

a nineties era porn scene begin.

1:09:44

Even the illegal YouTube uploaders

1:09:46

are telling you that is how we are

1:09:48

being encouraged to see Dolores in this movie,

1:09:51

and the legacy of this ambiguous

1:09:53

presentation is still with us. A

1:09:55

lot of the influence that this movie endures

1:09:58

is related to that thing that Nabokov

1:10:01

loved, aesthetics. The aesthetics

1:10:03

of this movie are connected to beautiful

1:10:06

costume design and set design, and

1:10:08

yes, the aesthetics of romanticizing

1:10:11

Lolita's relationship with Humburd Humburt.

1:10:14

So that's Lowlita by Adrian

1:10:16

line from and that's

1:10:18

the very American America that

1:10:20

it was released into. As these

1:10:22

YouTube comments indicate, this movie may

1:10:24

have been a financial failure in the short term,

1:10:26

but it has secured a long legacy

1:10:29

on the internet. For better and for worse.

1:10:32

Is right around the time when computer access

1:10:34

became normal and feasible for teenagers,

1:10:36

whether they're at their homes, schools, or

1:10:38

libraries, and with this, the Lauras

1:10:41

Hayes fan communities and fashion sites

1:10:43

start to crop up. The Lauras

1:10:45

Hayes logs in next week on

1:10:48

Lolita Podcast. Lolita

1:10:51

Podcast is an I heart Radio Production.

1:10:54

It is written and hosted by me Jamie

1:10:56

Loftus. It is produced by Sophie

1:10:58

Lichtman, Beth and Marcheluso,

1:11:01

Miles Gray, and Jack O'Brien. It

1:11:03

is edited by the wonderful Isaac lu.

1:11:05

Music is from Zoe Blade, theme

1:11:08

is from Brad Dickert and My guest

1:11:10

voices this week are Sophie

1:11:12

lich German, Miles Gray, Isaac

1:11:14

Taylor and Julia Claire. See

1:11:16

you next time.