The first episode of You Must Remember This tells the story of actress Kim Novak -- a top box office draw of the late 1950s and the iconic star of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo -- and her painful struggles to assert herself from the mid-20th centu

Introducing: Talking Pictures from TCM and Max

Jan 16th, 2024 49m 40s

Our first guest on Talking Pictures is writer director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, The Holiday). Recorded at her home, host Ben Mankiewicz talks with Meyers about casting Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, getting scri

Eyes Wide Shut, Part 2, and the Sexiest Man Alive in 1999 (Erotic 90s, Part 21)

Oct 24th, 2023 1h 32m

In part 2 of the Eyes Wide Shut story, the movie is finally unveiled, and critics are divided on its quality, and the use of digital effects to evade an NC-17 rating. Where could Hollywood eroticism go from here? We’ll wrap up the Erotic 90s st

Eyes Wide Shut, Part 1 (Erotic 90’s, Part 20)

1 Oct 17th, 2023 1h 32m

At the peak of their careers, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman left Hollywood for two years to collaborate with legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick on an erotic drama that the media speculated would pull back the curtain on maybe the most fascinati

90s Lolitas Volume 3: Wild Things, Cruel Intentions and Britney Spears (Erotic 90’s, Part 19)

1 Oct 10th, 2023 1h 17m

If Adrian Lyne’s Lolita became a case study of what Hollywood and America didn’t want to acknowledge about its sexualization of young girls, as the 90s came to a close the culture was full of “acceptable” depictions of teens in heat. Two hit fi

90’s Lolitas Volume 2: Adrian Lyne’s Lolita (Erotic 90’s, Part 18)

1 Oct 3rd, 2023 1h 16m

In the previous decade, Adrian Lyne had made two movies (Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal) that had grossed over $100 million in the US alone. With carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, he made an adaptation of the Nabokov novel about a

The Lynch Family: Boxing Helena & Lost Highway (Erotic 90’s, Part 17)

1 Sep 26th, 2023 1h 22m

One of the most notorious – and least seen – erotic narrative films of the 90s, Boxing Helena was the misbegotten passion project of Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. Four years after Boxing Helena, the elder Lynch released one of his mo

Crash and David Cronenberg (Erotic 90’s, Part 16)

Sep 19th, 2023 1h 27m

One of the only high-profile NC-17 releases post-Showgirls, David Cronenberg’s Crash was the kind of dark adult art film that the rating was supposedly created to support. We’ll talk about how Crash fits into Cronenberg’s filmography, why it wa

“Lesbian Chic”: Bound and Anne Heche in Wild Side (Erotic 90’s, Part 15)

Sep 12th, 2023 1h 14m

At the beginning of the 90s, lesbians were a punchline for a male-gaze-oriented media, an easy target for expressing the anxiety that women might not need men after all. By the middle of the decade, women-loving-women had become the heroes of a

Bonus

Introducing: Glitter & Might

Aug 25th, 2023 3m 35s

In Glitter & Might, a new series exploring the intersection of show business and politics, bestselling author Shawn Levy unpacks the story of Lew Wasserman, the shadowy legend who lorded over Hollywood for half a century. He was a feared deal-m

Showgirls, Jade, and the fall of Joe Eszterhas. (Erotic 90’s, Part 14)

Jun 27th, 2023 1h 35m

Joe Eszterhas’s tenure as the hottest screenwriter in town ended with two notorious 1995 flops: the NC-17 rated Showgirls (directed, like Basic Instinct, by Paul Verhoeven) and Jade (produced, like Sliver, by Robert Evans), We’ll analyze why th

The Last Seduction, Disclosure, & Fear of the Female Boss (Erotic 90’s, Part 13)

Jun 20th, 2023 1h 15m

The 90s were obsessed with what magazine writer Tad Friend would describe as “do me feminism” – and the attendant fear that men could be victims of female sexual aggression. Two films from 1994 married these anxieties to the still-lingering bug

Sliver and Sharon Stone as Superstar (Erotic 90’s, Part 12)

Jun 13th, 2023 1h 21m

Sharon Stone and Joe Eszterhas’s post-Basic Instinct reunion film was one of the most troubled productions of the 90s. A post-Hitchcock tale of sexual surveillance given a technological update for the 90s, after a long battle with the MPAA the

Indecent Proposal (Erotic 90’s, Part 11)

Jun 6th, 2023 1h 27m

Are men okay? Several films from 1993 answered that question with a resounding no. One of the highest grossing movies of its year, Adrian Lyne’s Indecent Proposal was misunderstood as a gimmick, and its insight into toxic masculinity and male s

Sex, Erotica and Body of Evidence (Erotic 90’s, Part 10)

May 30th, 2023 1h 27m

In the early 90s, Madonna was the biggest pop star in the world, and she used – and in the minds of some, squandered – her star capital to launch a multi-media exploration of sexuality: the album Erotica and its companion book Sex, followed by

Red Shoe Diaries and sex on TV in the 90s. (Erotic 90’s, Part 9)

1 May 23rd, 2023 1h 15m

While the MPAA’s confusing and hypocritical ratings decisions were leaving filmmakers flummoxed in the early 90s, cable TV was opening up new possibilities for erotic content. Today we will offer a brief history of sex on TV, and then focus on

90s Lolitas, volume 1: Drew Barrymore, Amy Fisher and Alicia Silverstone (Erotic 90’s, Part 8)

May 16th, 2023 1h 27m

Culture in the 90s was obsessed with the sex lives of teenagers. This is a theme we will come back to several times throughout the season. In this episode, we’ll talk about Drew Barrymore, who became a massive star at age 7 in E.T., went to reh

Murphy Brown, Dan Quayle and Damage (Erotic 90’s, Part 7)

1 May 9th, 2023 1h 25m

In the early 90s, one of the biggest scripted shows on TV was Murphy Brown, starring 40-something Candice Bergen as a product of the 60s whose high-powered career precluded marriage and family. When the character became a single mother, and was

Basic Instinct (Erotic 90’s, Part 6)

May 2nd, 2023 1h 28m

One of the biggest hits of 1992, Basic Instinct was sold as Michael Douglas’s return to Fatal Attraction territory, but its success owed to an alchemy of three other creatives: a writer (Joe Eszterhas) who was driven to become the highest-paid

The Blanks From Hell: Fatal Attraction’s Children (Erotic 90’s, Part 5)

1 Apr 25th, 2023 1h 14m

In the five years after the release of Fatal Attraction, Hollywood scrambled to make one movie after another about homes and workplaces invaded and threatened by sexy outsiders. Today we’ll talk about five of these films: Presumed Innocent (199

Thelma & Louise (Erotic 90’s, Part 4)

Apr 18th, 2023 1h 14m

One of the most controversial movies of the 1990s, Thelma & Louise pushed every hot button of the new decade: date rape, sexual harassment, the failure of the feminist movement to create real change for the working class, and how pissed off wom

Bonus

Introducing This Little Light with Flea

Apr 13th, 2023 2m 18s

Hosted by Flea, founding member and bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, This Little Light is a podcast about falling in love with music. Flea interviews musical guests from all genres to discuss the teachers who guided them, the influences th

“The actress everybody wants to fuck”: Theresa Russell and Sondra Locke (Erotic 90’s, Part 3)

Apr 11th, 2023 1h 27m

An enigmatic sex symbol dating back to the 70s, Theresa Russell made a play for Hollywood stardom in the late 80s and early 90s, making a number of films about the sexual commodification and role playing. Ken Russell’s Whore was marketed as a g

Pretty Woman, Sleeping with the Enemy and Julia Roberts in the early 90s (Erotic 90’s, Part 2)

Apr 4th, 2023 1h 12m

The first blockbuster about sex of the 90s, Pretty Woman both reinvigorated Richard Gere’s career, and turned Julia Roberts into the biggest female movie star of the era. We’ll dissect the gender politics of this fantasy about love between a st

Prologue: Porn, Feminism & the folly of NC-17 (Erotic 90’s, Part 1)

Mar 28th, 2023 1h 26m

Erotic 80s began with a prologue about the short lived heyday of the X rating, pornography, and feminism. Erotic 90s begins with a prologue about the disastrous rollout of NC-17 –the X rating’s replacement – and the evolving state of both porn