00:00:00:07 - 00:00:17:17 Sean A high school cheerleader discovers she is the latest in a centuries long line of vampire slayers and asserts her newfound power to save her school. From Rosie Batty and Pee-Wee Herman. An out of work young woman in New York City in the eighties, takes a job at the ticket booth in a porno theater where she meets a 00:00:17:17 - 00:00:36:12 Sean mysterious man who she follows after a failed date between them. What could Fran Zukui's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bette Gordon's Variety have in common? That's what we're talking about in this episode of The Celluloid Mirror. 00:00:36:12 - 00:00:37:08 Film clip I mean, what do you think? 00:00:37:13 - 00:01:07:02 Film clip You think they stand a chance? You're on their side, aren't you? Who are you betting on? Magic mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest one of all? Look at these lives. One shall stand. One shall fall. Even if one of them survives. 00:01:09:01 - 00:01:10:19 Film clip The only way to stop it is to make another movie. 00:01:13:17 - 00:01:18:22 Nicole Welcome to the celluloid mirror. I am one of your hosts, Nicole Solomon. 00:01:20:03 - 00:01:36:03 Sean And I am Sean Mannion, the other one of your hosts on The Celluloid Mirror. We take two films and look at what they reflect about each other at the audience and our culture at large. Today we're talking about franchises Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bette Gordon's variety. 00:01:37:09 - 00:01:53:10 Nicole We will start out by giving you all a brief synopsis of each film. We will discuss our responses to the films and as well as the critical responses to them. And then we will dive in on what the films say about one another. 00:01:54:09 - 00:02:06:01 Nicole So Sean I guess to start that out, I would probably help if we could give our listeners a quick synopsis of of each of these films. Right. We did not determine who would do each one. 00:02:06:15 - 00:02:12:17 Sean I would like to do Buffy the Vampire Slayer as I feel you are better are better versed in variety than I am. 00:02:13:17 - 00:02:15:15 Nicole Cool. I would be very happy to. 00:02:15:15 - 00:02:22:06 Sean because I think, I think , I think if I talked about variety, I'd just be like: " and then Luis Guzman does this and then Luis Guzman does that...." 00:02:23:08 - 00:02:28:04 Nicole Luis Guzman does do a lot of things in variety. Yeah, that's or maybe not that many different things. 00:02:28:05 - 00:02:29:17 Sean Not really by many different things. 00:02:30:00 - 00:02:31:13 Nicole He does maybe two things. 00:02:31:17 - 00:02:33:17 Sean I'm passionate about Luis Guzman. 00:02:33:17 - 00:02:34:10 Sean So 00:02:34:10 - 00:02:52:20 Nicole as as you should be. So I'll just tell our listeners about variety. For those of you who have not seen it or have not seen it in recently. Variety is a kind of like downtown New York super low budget film from the early eighties, directed by experimental filmmaker Bette Gordon. 00:02:52:20 - 00:03:13:15 Nicole There are all sorts of downtown New York artist players who show up in it in various roles, and Golden has a supporting role. Sean mentioned Luis Guzman, John Lurie provides the score, etc. There's a lot of interesting people who are involved in this film and it tells the story of Christine. 00:03:13:15 - 00:03:15:12 Nicole That's the protagonist name, I think, right? 00:03:15:13 - 00:03:15:23 Sean Mm hmm. 00:03:16:09 - 00:03:30:04 Nicole Hopefully I'll check on that. That's Christine. Christine is out of work and her friend Nan Golden says she does know of a job opening. But she doesn't she doesn't think Christine's the right fit for it. She doesn't think she's the type. 00:03:30:04 - 00:03:49:11 Nicole And Christine, of course, is like, well, what is it? And what it is is being the ticket seller at porno theater, the variety theater that used to exist near Times Square in New York City, where she sits in a booth and sells tickets to the men who come to watch pornography. 00:03:50:00 - 00:04:05:23 Nicole And as the film goes on, she kind of becomes like more as she begins to indulge her curiosity more and more both about the films that are playing at the theater where she works. She starts to watch them a bit and she starts to watch the customers as well. 00:04:06:06 - 00:04:22:19 Nicole One customer in particular who hits on her and wants to take her to a baseball game, she actually takes him up on it eventually and the date does not go well. He ends it halfway through. He has to like go and deal with some very important business thing. 00:04:22:19 - 00:04:45:15 Nicole And she's curious about what that is. And she actually follows him and the rest of the film kind of follows her in what would be the film noir gumshoe role or, you know, the P.I. or something along those lines that the man who is following a mysterious woman and trying to figure out, you know, what's going on 00:04:45:15 - 00:05:04:14 Nicole with that, has Christine in that role as she kind of follows this guy, tries to figure out what his deal is, deals with her own pretty shitty relationship with a shitty boyfriend, talks to her friends, works at the porno theater, explores her own sexuality a bit, and that's variety. 00:05:05:22 - 00:05:42:23 Sean That was magical. I feel like I feel like enriched by your description. So Buffy Buffy the Vampire Slayer is Fran Kuzui's Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 1992 is a horror comedy with a fair emphasis on comedy. It's much more comedy than horror about a high school cheerleader named Buffy who encounters Donald Sutherland, who explains to her that 00:05:42:23 - 00:06:00:04 Sean , hey, you are the latest in a line of vampire slayers going back centuries, and there's vampires around there attacking people. And, you know, I need to get you trained up because I didn't find it early enough, cause we've some vampires to kill. 00:06:00:10 - 00:06:18:05 Sean There's some slaying to do that is understandably awkward to begin with, although she does ultimately go to a graveyard with an old man in the middle of the night where they are attacked by the undead. And she finds that she is capable of slaying the vampires. 00:06:18:13 - 00:06:40:14 Sean She is. Somewhat superhuman. Not quite fully superhuman, I don't think, but at least somewhat. She and her new mentor start training up. She meets Luke Perry and he's a drunk. Luke. Luke Perry, who's trying to get out of town because David Arquette is his best friend, was turned into a vampire and just wants his buddy to join 00:06:40:14 - 00:06:56:03 Sean him. Like, it's actually kind of sweet. Like David Arquette misses Luke Perry and tries to say, hey, like, I joined a new club, man, you should come be part of the club. And Luke doesn't want to. And he tries to get out of town. 00:06:56:03 - 00:07:23:07 Sean He can't. Pee-Wee Herman stops him, and ultimately he ends up becoming a sort of assistant ish almost semi love interest for Buffy towards. As the film continues and helps her out as she fully embraces her slaying at the end of the film and fights Rutger Hauer after the the final dance of the school dance of the year 00:07:23:14 - 00:07:33:15 Sean where the vampires attack the dance. And that is a very rough description of what happens. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 00:07:34:22 - 00:07:43:10 Nicole Mm hmm. So what could the connection be between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Variety? Should I talk about that? 00:07:43:11 - 00:07:47:12 Sean All right. Go for it. What is the connection between those films, Nicole? 00:07:47:15 - 00:08:06:16 Nicole I think I think the connection between those two films might be that both of them hinge on an attempted feminist genre flip in which blond white women occupy roles in the story that would conventionally be given to men and arguably vice versa. 00:08:07:17 - 00:08:30:03 Nicole Variety is a neo noir, I would say, in which a woman is in the role of the voyeur and the surveilling protagonist. And Buffy is a horror comedy, but very much playing on horror conventions. And in in Buffy, they make the pretty teen who would usually be a victim of one sort or another. 00:08:30:03 - 00:08:47:20 Nicole There are a couple different varieties we could categorize her into, but she's not a victim at all. She is that she is the conquering hero, almost an action hero type figure who vanquish is the bad guys. So what what did we think about these films, Shaun? 00:08:47:20 - 00:08:53:06 Nicole When did when did you first watch these two films and how did you feel about them? 00:08:53:20 - 00:09:09:09 Sean Variety I first watched last weekend because we were going to do this and I liked it. I think I liked a lot of the photography of that. As I texted you when we were talking about it, like once you started mentioning some of the people in the movie, you're like, Luis Guzman is. 00:09:09:09 - 00:09:26:09 Sean And I was like, Oh, okay, I'm gonna watch that because I'm enthusiastic about Luis Guzman, and I like Will Patton, who plays the boyfriend as well. He had a very I mean, he's still around doing stuff, but he he had a little bit of a bump in his career in the late nineties because he does this kind 00:09:26:09 - 00:09:46:03 Sean of character, this sort of deadpan character very well. And there is there's a lot of roles for him in the late nineties that that worked for him. But I always enjoyed him in, in, in, in movies. So and there's a couple other sort of New York indie scene people from back then that I recognized not everybody but 00:09:46:11 - 00:10:05:23 Sean because I'm not that well versed in it. But so it's. Unique. Almost one. I recognize their names, but yeah, I mean, I enjoyed it. I like the sort of way it approaches the subject. I thought it was interesting, you know, I wasn't in love with the movie or anything like that, but I enjoyed the way it approaches 00:10:05:23 - 00:10:26:16 Sean what doing what it was trying to do. Like we'll talk about a lot of this as we go. But the way that she sort of recites at first, I think it's the the the things that she sees on screen at the pornographic theater and then subsequently her own sexual fantasies to her boyfriend in this very sort of 00:10:26:16 - 00:10:41:02 Sean matter of fact way as he is increasingly just not acknowledging it, I thought was really interesting. The use of reflections that Bay Gordon has herself talked about was very apparent from the beginning, as there's just a very conscious use of that. 00:10:41:02 - 00:11:07:01 Sean That was interesting. And so I enjoyed it from from from that perspective. Well, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I have seen like. Hundreds of times potentially because I first encountered it on like basic cable sometime in the mid-nineties. I think it was one of those movies, this Fright Night and a few others, like if they were playing on 00:11:07:01 - 00:11:18:06 Sean like TBS or something like that, we'd usually stop and watch them. Like we'd be skimming through, like, what's on TV? Oh, hey, Buffy, the vampire Slayer is almost turn that on. I've watched it many, many times since then. 00:11:18:17 - 00:11:41:02 Sean I have always enjoyed it. I think it's funny. I appreciate what it tried to do in some respects, was like, okay, we're going to take who you would expect to be, as it says, the victim, Buffy and cheerleader, and make her instead the the the conquering hero, as you put it. 00:11:41:03 - 00:12:00:08 Sean And I like the vampires in it. I think I've I think I've quoted kill him a lot, many times since my childhood because just when he loses his or Amylin as his actual name is in the movie, loses his arm when when Luke Perry, like, launches him off the top of his van. 00:12:01:07 - 00:12:19:22 Sean It's funny. And it's also it's it was also it's also sort of interesting for being like largely bloodless, for as relatively violent as it is. So it makes it easy, easy for rewatching on like basic cable. So lots of opportunities to watch it but also like it committed to certain things like he didn't regrow his arm or 00:12:19:22 - 00:12:34:06 Sean anything, his arm was just gone for the rest of the movie, I think. I didn't know it was Paul Reubens for a long time and I grew up a grown up watching Pee-Wee Herman like I knew it. Like I'd seen the movie probably two or three times before. 00:12:34:06 - 00:12:44:17 Sean I knew it was Paul Reubens and Pee-Wee Herman, and I grew up watching Pee-Wee Herman, but I just really enjoyed it. And actually. I remember, you know, and we won't talk about it too much because we're here to talk about the movie. 00:12:44:22 - 00:12:57:15 Sean But I remember seeing in the TV Guide that like. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a little like Half Our BLOCK. And I was like, How are they showing Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It's must be a typo in the TV Guide. 00:12:58:10 - 00:13:08:11 Sean It's like, I'll watch the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I turned to the channel it was on, and that's how I discovered the TV show, because I wanted to watch the movie, and I don't remember exactly when that was. 00:13:08:11 - 00:13:22:21 Sean It would have been very early in season one of the show, and then I got into that for a little while. But I've always been I've always been a big fan of the movie and to a small degree, more of a fan of the movie than than the subsequent television show. 00:13:24:12 - 00:13:25:06 Sean What about you? 00:13:26:09 - 00:13:39:09 Nicole Um. Well, yeah, I've seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer countless times. The first time was, I guess in 1992 when it was released. I saw it at the State Theater in Ithaca, New York, with a couple of my friends. 00:13:39:09 - 00:13:51:12 Nicole We absolutely had been looking forward to the movie -- like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that looks funny. Paul Reubens is in it. I was very aware of the fact that that was Paul Reubens and I was I was a fan of Paul Reubens. 00:13:51:12 - 00:14:10:21 Nicole I grew up on the Pee-Wee movies as well as Pee wee's Playhouse. Those were very formative for me and I was excited to see him in this like campy horror comedy. I was like, That's great, and went and saw it, liked it, was very aware of critical reaction being less glowing. 00:14:10:21 - 00:14:27:09 Nicole We'll talk about that in a moment. And of the fact that I liked this film that was generally considered to be crap and I continued to like it over the years. I have, I have a lot of criticisms of it that we will talk about soon, but it is also a film that I largely really enjoy 00:14:28:09 - 00:14:47:13 Nicole . There are a lot of really, really genuinely funny lines in this film that that still make me laugh. For all that shit we could both talk about Joss Whedon and however much overrated I think we both believe he is as a screenwriter, I will give it to him that he gets off some funny lines sometimes. 00:14:47:15 - 00:14:59:16 Nicole I think he definitely gets off some funny lines and a lot of them are in this. In a lot of ways. I think this is maybe the best script he's written, maybe because he had a long time to kind of work on it and let it percolate. 00:14:59:16 - 00:15:17:10 Nicole And it was kind of his his, you know, statement. It was the thing he wanted to do. And I think it is a little more coherent actually than a lot of his other stuff. But yeah, so I've seen it a lot of continue to watch it on home video and you know, obviously I rewatched it for this 00:15:17:10 - 00:15:34:10 Nicole I know Sean, you and I watched it with some other friends over text about a year ago. Like, yeah, it comes, it comes up and I think it's it's enjoyable. I do part with Sean in that overall. I do think the show is more successful at what it's trying to do... 00:15:34:10 - 00:15:51:08 Nicole ...than I think this movie is. I have a lot of criticisms of the show as well, though I am a big fan of it. But you know, that said, I also think the film gets gets a lot more shit than it should in terms of people talking about like, oh, the show took the idea and made it work 00:15:51:08 - 00:16:06:20 Nicole and the movie's a disaster. The movie's not a disaster. It's doing a somewhat different thing. And a lot of it, I think it does really well. Variety I saw much more recently. I actually did not see that until Criterion added at the beginning of September. 00:16:06:20 - 00:16:22:11 Nicole They added their massive collection of films about New York City that they're streaming on their streaming channel this fall. And it was one of them. And I was like, Oh, this, I should see this film. And I was shocked when I saw it because I'm just like, Jesus Christ, I should have seen this film. 00:16:23:15 - 00:16:41:22 Nicole Decades ago, like this is very much, you know, relevant to my interests. And I thought it was very well done. I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed all the stuff it was doing with genre and its interest in, you know, how films themselves are constructed and commenting on that, I think it would make a great double 00:16:41:22 - 00:17:04:21 Nicole feature with Funny Games in some respects, in terms of how it Interacts with expectations of genre and how it tries to implicate the audience towards different ends. They're very different films, but they are interested in some of the same things in terms of the craft of filmmaking and the interaction with the viewer and things like that. 00:17:04:21 - 00:17:16:01 Nicole So I will watch it again, though. It will be a film that I'll be revisiting. I've been thinking about it ever since I watched it. The more I think about Variety, the more I like it and the more successful I think it is. 00:17:16:02 - 00:17:17:14 Nicole And so I'm excited to. 00:17:17:15 - 00:17:18:12 Sean Revisit. 00:17:19:10 - 00:17:32:17 Nicole That. So that's all we thought about these films. But I think critics as well as audience members who are not myself or Sean Mannion thought thought things about these films, too, right? 00:17:32:17 - 00:17:33:09 Sean They did. 00:17:33:09 - 00:17:34:22 Nicole We're not the only ones who saw these. 00:17:35:09 - 00:17:53:19 Sean They did. Buffy has a 36% fresh with critics and 43% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. It's kind of shocking to me that I mean, it's not that shocking to me. Maybe that like 70% of people are dumb, but whatever, 60%, it's amazing how wrong people can be as a group anyway. 00:17:53:19 - 00:18:12:10 Nicole You know, and it is in part, I think with something like Buffy, there is a huge chunk of the audience that something called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, until there's some sort of critical assessment like happened with the show where critics are like, Hey, I know it's called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it's actually really good. 00:18:12:10 - 00:18:24:06 Nicole And so everybody then is like, Oh, I get it that it's got this name that you'd think would make it dumb, but it's actually great. But that didn't happen with the film, and there's a huge chunk of the audience that is just can be like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 00:18:24:06 - 00:18:39:08 Nicole This is so dumb. It's intentionally campy. It's doing that kind of like thing. And there's a huge like I came, I've come across this with my work too, where like people laugh and they'll like apologize. And I'm like, No, that's a joke. 00:18:39:08 - 00:18:40:12 Nicole You're supposed to laugh. 00:18:40:17 - 00:18:41:03 Sean Yeah. 00:18:41:07 - 00:18:55:09 Nicole No, it's, you know, like, it's weird considering how popular horror comedy has been since, like, always, maybe. But people still sometimes seem to think that horror comedy is an accidental genre. 00:18:56:05 - 00:18:57:17 Sean Or that it's something that... 00:18:58:01 - 00:18:59:10 Nicole Like everyone's laughing AT it. 00:18:59:13 - 00:19:12:21 Sean Yeah. And or that. Yeah, you see that a lot or that like, oh, it's a lesser thing. Like horror is already lesser. So if you're not doing a serious horror, if it's a comedy horror, then you're adding lesser on top of lesser. 00:19:12:21 - 00:19:23:11 Sean And then that's a whole other thing. I mean, I do think that part of the part of the audience reaction is going to come from that. The film is derided by its own, one of its own creators or its most vocal creator at. 00:19:23:11 - 00:19:24:15 Nicole That point as well. 00:19:24:17 - 00:19:41:16 Sean Yeah, like a lot of the people who might otherwise be like, yeah, it's not the show, but it's fun, like cult of personality around it. It's been it's been dismissed and derided by its own originator for decades. 00:19:42:18 - 00:20:04:18 Nicole Yeah. And in case anybody is unfamiliar with this, what Sean is not so obliquely referencing is that screenwriter Joss Whedon has said many times that he thinks this movie sucks and like, fucked up his vision. Basically, I was surprised when I saw the Rotten Tomatoes score and like a little relieved actually, because I was like, Oh, that 00:20:04:18 - 00:20:22:13 Nicole actually I think is a useful snapshot for us to discuss of what reaction was at the time, because I was kind of expecting we'd see this thing that we see with some films that have been out for a couple decades and were came out pre Rotten Tomatoes where the Rotten Tomatoes scores are not representative of the reception 00:20:22:13 - 00:20:34:13 Nicole at the time because there's been a reassessment. Yeah, like I bet if you were to look at Fight Club now, for example, I bet it would have a pretty high Rotten Tomatoes score. But if there had been that snapshot at the time, it would not have. 00:20:34:13 - 00:20:49:21 Nicole It was much more mixed initially. Extremely mixed. But, you know, and I was because Buffy does have a lot of fans, the film Buffy has a lot of fans. It's accumulated over the years who like weren't into it at the time. 00:20:49:21 - 00:21:06:13 Nicole It definitely has fans who got into it after they were into the show. But no, those rotten tomatoes numbers are still they do not reflect any sort of mass reassessment. Maybe they would have been even lower initially. Maybe it would have been like 16 with critics, like 33 with audiences. 00:21:06:13 - 00:21:09:04 Sean That's possibly possible. And a lot of people can be wrong. 00:21:09:18 - 00:21:26:03 Nicole So a lot of people can be wrong. Variety, unfortunately, did not have enough Rotten Tomatoes qualifying critics to have a critic score. The only two critical reviews up on the site for that were done like in the past decade. 00:21:26:03 - 00:21:31:13 Nicole So I don't think that's a useful barometer of the reception at the time. But it does. 00:21:32:19 - 00:21:33:06 Sean It does. 00:21:33:06 - 00:21:38:21 Nicole Have a score for audience reaction and it is at 26%. Fresh with. 00:21:39:09 - 00:21:44:01 Sean Is the lowest scores of any of the films we've done so far that we've actually. 00:21:44:01 - 00:22:03:02 Nicole Talked about the score. Interesting, Sean. Isn't that interesting that the feminist interventions into genre have the lowest scores of any films we've done so far, even though I think we would both agree that neither of these films are, you know, within the small handful of probably the worst films we have discussed. 00:22:03:05 - 00:22:03:21 Sean No, no. 00:22:03:23 - 00:22:09:03 Nicole On this show, we have we've discussed a lot of films that are not as good as these films. 00:22:10:05 - 00:22:28:01 Sean You know, these are these are both good films. Like, they both work very well for what they're. Well, maybe not. They're both trying to do something. And as narrative films, they both function like it's a which is more. 00:22:28:01 - 00:22:45:12 Sean They can be a compliment. No, no. What I'm trying to do, I'm trying to, like, overstate it because I like both the movies, but I also like like I don't expect either of these movies to have like a 99% on either audience or critics like variety. 00:22:46:09 - 00:22:47:21 Sean Variety, you know, 00:22:48:22 - 00:22:49:21 Nicole It's not an audience. 00:22:49:21 - 00:22:50:07 Nicole Pleaser 00:22:50:07 - 00:23:09:20 Sean ...has interesting things. It's also not an audience pleaser. It also has narrative flaws. Yeah, Buffy is like it should have like like I can see why Variety would have, like, it wouldn't be at like, a 99% or something for for whatever reason. 00:23:10:03 - 00:23:25:07 Sean But it would have, it should have, like, a high score. It should be up there. And Buffy similarly, like. I would like watching it again. Just yesterday I was like, Yeah, I can see why. Like people would criticize this. 00:23:25:07 - 00:23:43:08 Sean The, the action is clumsy and, you know, the... There's nothing really particularly interesting about the way it's shot. It's very funny, though. It's very fun and there's some good performances in it. Like, I haven't seen Kirsty Swanson in that many things, but she's pretty good in it. 00:23:44:02 - 00:24:00:01 Sean And Donald Sutherland. Well, Don, Donald Sutherland is always good, but he is also particularly good in it. So I could see it being better, much better if circumstances were perhaps different or if they were more fairly judged. But we also had. 00:24:02:04 - 00:24:13:16 Sean We often as as as you say, we often look to Roger Ebert as a measure of like what the response to things was when they came out. And so from a. 00:24:13:16 - 00:24:18:14 Nicole Critic who's kind of reasonable but also very mainstream, you know what I mean? 00:24:19:03 - 00:24:32:11 Sean So he's yeah. So to that point, like he didn't talk about variety. So because it's not a very mainstream film, that also explains a lot about Variety's position on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a very underground film in a lot of ways. 00:24:32:11 - 00:24:34:20 Sean I mean, not very underground, but it 00:24:34:20 - 00:24:36:13 Nicole It's quite underground, 00:24:36:13 - 00:24:39:02 Sean more underground than anything else we've talked about. I think. 00:24:39:21 - 00:24:40:02 Sean So far 00:24:40:02 - 00:24:57:05 Nicole Probably, probably, probably, yeah. It might be the lowest budget film we've done even adjusted for inflation. But yeah, Ebert. Ebert didn't review it. Ebert also didn't review Buffy. So our our barometer is. 00:24:57:05 - 00:24:58:20 Sean Just it's just useless. 00:24:59:19 - 00:25:08:15 Nicole Although I did I did find another reviewer from Chicago. I did find a Chicago Tribune absolute pan by David Kerr. 00:25:09:11 - 00:25:10:03 Sean Oh, David. 00:25:11:13 - 00:25:14:00 Nicole David. David Kerr. He had a. 00:25:14:00 - 00:25:14:12 Sean Quote. 00:25:15:00 - 00:25:18:04 Nicole Mm hmm. But do you want me to read this quote? You want to quote this quote? 00:25:18:06 - 00:25:19:04 Sean Read the quote. 00:25:19:04 - 00:25:20:00 Nicole Yeah. You don't want. 00:25:20:00 - 00:25:32:10 Nicole To read this quote. So David Kerr had had quite a quote in his pan where he, he said there were some tone issues that I don't disagree with. I don't think the tone issues are as big a problem as most critics who cite them seem to think they are. 00:25:32:10 - 00:25:54:15 Nicole But I don't think they're it's a completely made up issue. But yikes at David Kerr's critique that about Pike Pike is played by my my beloved, dearly departed Luke Perry. He said: " providing love interest is teen heartthrob Luke Perry of TV's Beverly Hills 90210..." 00:25:55:02 - 00:26:04:13 Nicole Someday, maybe we can do an episode about an episode of 90210. Oh, like a two parter or something. Treat it as a movie. I would love to talk about some 90210 on the show anyway. 00:26:04:23 - 00:26:22:19 Nicole "In the great teen heartthrob tradition. Perry comes across as one sensitive and of ambiguous gender. And seems destined to finish his career playing self-mocking cameos in John Waters movies." Don't torture me like that. If only. 00:26:22:19 - 00:26:23:20 Sean Yeah, he didn't end up doing that at all. 00:26:23:20 - 00:26:26:15 Nicole If only Luke Perry was around right now... 00:26:26:18 - 00:26:33:03 Nicole No, he fucking didn't. His last role was fucking Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which obviously, fuck that movie, but it's yeah. 00:26:33:09 - 00:26:40:02 Sean But he's one of the best parts of it it's yeah, it's definitely one of the best parts of that otherwise unbearable movie. 00:26:41:03 - 00:26:41:08 Nicole Yeah. 00:26:41:09 - 00:26:46:07 Sean He was also a regular, or semi-regular on Riverdale as uh... 00:26:46:07 - 00:26:48:09 Nicole He was a regular. He was Archie's dad. 00:26:48:10 - 00:26:50:18 Sean He was Archie's dad. I couldn't remember who his dad was. 00:26:50:22 - 00:26:57:09 Nicole Yeah, he was Archie's dad. He was on like every episode of that fucking show. And now there's no reason for me to watch anymore. 00:26:57:09 - 00:26:57:18 Sean So. 00:26:58:06 - 00:27:10:14 Nicole Yeah, we've talked about that show. Yeah, it's. That show is a problem. Anyway. He. That's not how his career went. Also, like "ambiguous gender?" 00:27:11:10 - 00:27:14:13 Sean He's not remotely ambiguous. Like he's definitely. 00:27:15:04 - 00:27:18:05 Nicole I don't think David Carr knows what those words mean together. 00:27:18:06 - 00:27:18:21 Sean No. 00:27:19:04 - 00:27:21:14 Nicole I think he's just writing, saying stuff. 00:27:21:17 - 00:27:26:12 Sean He's very he's very like. He's very much a guy. 00:27:27:12 - 00:27:42:20 Nicole And he's very much a fucking guy. He's...maybe this wasn't as common a type in 1992, but it was not an illegible type of, like the somewhat sensitive feminist guy. Right. He's who fucking Joss Whedon wishes he could be. 00:27:43:22 - 00:27:47:12 Nicole But Joss Whedon did not look like Luke Perry. Let's. Let's be real. 00:27:47:14 - 00:27:53:03 Sean That was. That was not a. He's. Yeah. 00:27:53:15 - 00:27:56:16 Nicole Also, Pike's a much better person than Joss Whedon is. 00:27:57:08 - 00:28:00:18 Sean but we don't know. We only see Pike for, like, 45 minutes. 00:28:00:18 - 00:28:01:08 Nicole From what we've. 00:28:01:16 - 00:28:13:21 Nicole From what we've seen of Pike, what we saw of Pike was much better. You think, Joss Whedon ever helpfully brought anyone a fucking bagful of stakes? That was really helpful. I loved that. 00:28:13:21 - 00:28:14:12 Nicole Moment. 00:28:14:12 - 00:28:19:01 Sean It's good. No, that's one of my favorite parts is like, he was like, "I thought you might need this." 00:28:20:14 - 00:28:34:17 Nicole So anyway, I do think that that review in the Chicago Tribune, which we can link in the show notes, is pretty representative of what the critical response is. This is junky, this is a mess. This doesn't work. It's bad. 00:28:34:17 - 00:28:49:06 Nicole Occasionally some people would be like: Donald Sutherland's good or Paul Reubens is fun though, like or whatever. But overall, like this is a junky mess and then sometimes weird little digs like this. Luke Perry is sensitive and of ambiguous gender and... 00:28:50:10 - 00:28:50:21 Nicole Whatever. 00:28:50:21 - 00:29:06:03 Nicole Like that thing. Variety also, as you might expect, got, we could say, very mixed reviews. There were some reviews at the time who kind of like got what it was putting down and engaged with it and thought it was interesting. 00:29:06:03 - 00:29:29:05 Nicole But there were a lot of reviewers who frankly, I think much as we've come across with other films we've discussed, they were not equipped to review this film. They did not have the theoretical background to be able to even understand what Bette Gordon was trying to do at all, let alone engage with it. 00:29:29:06 - 00:29:46:01 Nicole Nor did they have the humility to be able to go in without that context and just kind of like absorb the movie and let it wash over them and like kind of, you know, wait. I mean, I don't know what their deadlines were, to be fair, but like, maybe you need to wait a minute with this. 00:29:46:01 - 00:29:47:10 Nicole Movie before. 00:29:47:10 - 00:30:06:00 Nicole Immediately turning around. You're like, Here's what it's trying to do that's totally off base and here's why it doesn't do it. Janet Maslin, for example, in The New York Times. So Maslin said that Variety was a "fenninist" which was an interesting typo to find on the New York Times website. 00:30:07:06 - 00:30:09:21 Nicole Said "Fenninist" F-E-N. So 00:30:09:21 - 00:30:10:08 Sean maybe she's talking about 00:30:10:08 - 00:30:12:16 Sean Fennel Or something. Fennel seeds. 00:30:13:11 - 00:30:16:20 Nicole I think I may have missed an entire important level of this film 00:30:17:01 - 00:30:21:10 Sean I think you did. I think you did. About the fennel. It's about fennel. I think. 00:30:21:11 - 00:30:40:16 Nicole The fenninist So. So "variety is a fenninist film about a woman working as a ticket taker in a porno movie theater." Oh, wait. Sorry, I missed this: "Ia fenninist film about a woman, and working as a ticket taker in a porno movie theater might automatically be expected to hold some interest..." 00:30:41:04 - 00:30:59:00 Nicole "...But Bette Gordon's variety, which opens today at the Waverly, has a painfully underwritten screenplay by Kathy Acker and a static, uncommunicative directorial directorial style. The idea that Christine might develop a growing fascination with voyeurism and pornography, while provocative, is something that Ms.. 00:30:59:00 - 00:31:07:01 Nicole Gordon is almost entirely unable to articulate in visual terms." Yeah. Janet Maslin didn't understand what what Bette Gordon was trying to do. 00:31:07:07 - 00:31:23:01 Sean Literally the first shot we see of her sitting in the ticket booth. It has, as I noticed it on my first watch of it. And I have my phone in my hand. Yeah. There's literally reflected on top of her a sign that says "desires within young girls." 00:31:23:10 - 00:31:35:18 Sean Like when she's in the ticket booth. That poster is reflected on her in the whole first shot where she's learning how to use the ticket booth and stuff like that is how it's communicated visually. 00:31:35:18 - 00:31:36:09 Nicole It is. 00:31:36:09 - 00:31:38:07 Nicole Full. The movie is. 00:31:38:07 - 00:31:40:00 Nicole So full. 00:31:40:00 - 00:31:53:14 Nicole Of like...cinema. It's like, this is visual storytelling. That's what she's doing. I'm sorry. There's not the exposition dump you seem to need for her to explain what she's doing. But it's a film that. 00:31:53:16 - 00:31:54:15 Nicole Doesn't actually 00:31:54:15 - 00:31:56:07 Nicole assume its audiences are idiots. 00:31:56:17 - 00:32:07:10 Sean Yeah. I just need the character to look right into the camera and say, "I'm horny. And that's what this movie's about." And that's it, like. And then I'll understand the movie. 00:32:08:02 - 00:32:18:09 Nicole How could you tell that that character was horny if she didn't say so? Sean. I think it's really confusing in Variety about Christine being horny. 00:32:18:18 - 00:32:22:16 Sean I think so. Like, it's not otherwise indicated at all. 00:32:24:06 - 00:32:27:01 Nicole Because how could you expect a woman to be horny? 00:32:28:11 - 00:32:29:22 Sean Well, exactly. 00:32:30:21 - 00:32:41:23 Nicole Yeah. But interestingly, Janet Maslin wasn't the only one who hated variety. Another, my neighbor, your hero. 00:32:42:17 - 00:32:46:02 Sean Your. Your neighbor. My favorite person. 00:32:47:12 - 00:32:57:01 Nicole Who...I either didn't know or I had forgotten, got fired from NPR's All Things Considered in 2018 for making a rape joke on Facebook. 00:32:58:04 - 00:33:01:15 Sean Good for him. Yeah. All right. 00:33:01:20 - 00:33:20:20 Nicole My neighbor, David Edelstein, who I didn't even know was reviewing movies in the early eighties, apparently was. And I think it was in The Village Voice. Yeah, it was in the Village Voice. He reviewed Variety. I tried to find this full review because I want to read it so very badly, but I couldn't find it online. 00:33:21:06 - 00:33:32:01 Nicole I might. I might have to go to the library. Might have to go look at some microfiche or something. I'll do it. I love going to the library and looking at microfiche. It's been it's been a long time. 00:33:32:01 - 00:33:55:08 Nicole But but I've spent some time looking up old reviews about things I was interested in and whatnot. So David Edelstein says that Betty Gordon probably gave this story to famed novelist RIP Kathy Acker, who ostensibly wrote the script. 00:33:55:08 - 00:34:09:05 Nicole It was a very unconventional script. Kathy Acker had no background in screenwriting. And as you might expect, watching the film, it's a combination of things. There are some sections that are more improvised. There are some sections that are absolutely scripted. 00:34:10:09 - 00:34:31:23 Nicole Everything I've read about this suggests that in terms of the story narrative, what we see on screen, it was very much a collaboration between Acker and Gordon. A lot of things changed. Whatever. But David Edelstein thinks that the reason Betty Gordon wanted to collaborate with Kathy Acker was probably that she gave the story to, quote unquote, "punk 00:34:31:23 - 00:34:58:21 Nicole authors slash exhibitionist Kathy Acker, thinking Acker would dredge up juicy, fetid stuff from the apparently bottomless pit." I think this has something to do with the fact that Kathy Acker had worked in various Times Square adult establishments and wrote about that, to be fair, also in her fiction, you know, wrote about like all sorts of things 00:34:58:21 - 00:35:14:14 Nicole about sex and violence and whatnot from a feminist perspective. But the idea that she wanted to work with Acker to like, you know, oh, cause she knows about the gross stuff. Is just like, why was he assigned to this film? 00:35:16:06 - 00:35:37:12 Nicole Why was he assigned this film? He also sees Gordon and Acker as opposites. Thinking that Acker was a, quote unquote "frother whose anger and emotion would bind these theories together." He sees it as being Kathy Acker is the emotional one, and Gordon's the theoretical one, which, like he's spent a lot of time thinking about this for somebody 00:35:37:12 - 00:35:57:05 Nicole who has drawn so few conclusions of any merit whatsoever and that it's very weird. The the the piece I was reading that quoted from this pointed out that it's odd that he would set the whole collaboration up as being this binary when so much of both artists work is about rejecting a binary between theory and emotion and 00:35:57:05 - 00:36:18:21 Nicole showing that those two things are not mutually exclusive. Also, we haven't talked about the ending of Variety yet, but in a very Funny Games review-esque flourish, David Edelstein said that "there should be a sign on the box office window that says, Be advised this movie has no ending." 00:36:20:06 - 00:36:28:04 Nicole "Gordon wants us all pent up as we leave unsatisfied, deprived of our orgasm." 00:36:29:05 - 00:36:33:08 Sean It's just like funny games. He missed the point. Well, well, well. While making it. 00:36:34:08 - 00:36:40:17 Nicole And his entire reaction to the film justifies the thesis of the film. 00:36:40:23 - 00:36:53:08 Sean There are some ways in which he might be the best reviewer because he gets the movie and he's like the person that these movies are talking about. And he can...And he can and he can. He can. 00:36:53:09 - 00:37:04:05 Sean He can state the point of the movie. He may not get it. He may not get that it's about him. But we should just read him to go like, okay, so what is he saying about the movie? Okay, there's the point of the movie. 00:37:04:11 - 00:37:20:00 Sean His negative reaction to the movie is the point of the movie. Now, I understand the movie because he seems to be very good at going like this is how the movie made me feel. And then if you go and read what the director says about how they wanted people to feel coming out of the movie, it's like 00:37:20:00 - 00:37:21:18 Sean word for word what he wrote. 00:37:23:14 - 00:37:40:23 Nicole Yeah. GORDON As we've read, Gordon has described conceiving of the structure of a variety as being somewhat based on the structure of a porn film in terms of theory, saying that porn is about creating desire that can't actually ever be fully resolved. 00:37:41:07 - 00:37:51:15 Nicole Right. Because that's its whole purpose. Its whole purpose is to get you horny, you know, and then maybe you get an orgasm or whatever and then you probably turn off the porn. I like how I said " get an orgasm", as if that's like, a disease. 00:37:51:16 - 00:37:57:02 Sean You get one! It's like the claw machine. Like like 00:37:57:02 - 00:37:57:21 Nicole Did ya get one?, 00:37:57:21 - 00:38:04:14 Sean I got one! I like how you went with disease and I went with the claw machine. It's, you know. 00:38:05:05 - 00:38:22:02 Nicole It's what makes the partnership work. But the film too, you know, spoiler alert, obviously, if you're listening to the celluloid mirror, we know, you know, we give all the spoilers. So if you care that much, definitely watch the movie before the episode. 00:38:22:02 - 00:38:34:01 Nicole But also we think you can listen to the episode and then enjoy the movie. Doesn't necessarily ruin a movie to know what to expect in some respects, especially I think with a film like Variety that isn't about the plot. 00:38:34:11 - 00:38:54:08 Nicole That's not the point of the film so much as watching the way that the plot unfolds. So I think that's especially true of this film. So as we discussed, it's about this guy, this woman, and she's kind of following this guy, her shitty boyfriends, a reporter who's reporting on like some organized crime business. 00:38:54:08 - 00:39:06:07 Nicole And I think she kind of suspects that this guy at the theater might somewhat be wrapped up in that. And she, you know, spends the most of the film, like, kind of tailing him while also living her life and things like that. 00:39:06:07 - 00:39:12:09 Nicole And the film ends with her calling him on the phone and arranging a meeting. 00:39:12:23 - 00:39:13:07 Sean Mm hmm. 00:39:13:10 - 00:39:33:03 Nicole And we never see the meeting, right? We never see this meeting, which at the time, even at the time watching it, I was both like, goddammit, I really wanted to see this meeting. And also like, well, of course, that makes sense because nothing they could possibly depict in this meeting would live up to the question that is 00:39:33:03 - 00:39:43:00 Nicole being set up of like, Oh my God, what's going to happen? You know, it's like, what are we going to see? What are we going to see that's going to add anything to what we saw? Because it's not about that. 00:39:43:00 - 00:39:47:04 Nicole It's not about what happens then, you know? It's about everything that led up to it. 00:39:47:12 - 00:40:02:14 Sean Yeah, it's like her. Her goal is not to actually find out what the thing is like, it's to actually confront him about it. It's to move from the voyeur to the participant. 00:40:04:03 - 00:40:04:19 Nicole I mean, actually. 00:40:04:19 - 00:40:09:16 Sean The resolution of the resolution is setting a meeting, is saying, let's go talk about it. 00:40:09:17 - 00:40:27:01 Nicole Like I completely I agree. It's it's it's about the journey. It truly is about the journey in this film. And but all of this, apparently, it was just completely lost on David Edelstein, who's like, I didn't even get to see the hot blond lady have sex with the mobster. 00:40:27:21 - 00:40:30:17 Sean Or find out what the mobsters is doing. 00:40:32:08 - 00:40:39:00 Nicole Or anything or any, you know, whatever, you know, he needed he needed his release, 00:40:39:00 - 00:40:39:21 Sean which is 00:40:40:16 - 00:40:53:23 Sean A thing that other people said and also would be a common response to a film like this or any film. Sure. Like if you don't give them the thing that they kind of want. They're going to be mad. 00:40:54:02 - 00:40:54:16 Nicole It's just. 00:40:54:22 - 00:40:55:06 Sean Not to defend him 00:40:55:06 - 00:41:11:09 Nicole ...Almost ironic for a film critic though..., audiences, random audiences. Sure, but if you're a film critic, you kind of the reason you're getting paid is you're supposed to be better than the average person in having some fucking idea about what a film is doing, what it's trying to do, and why. 00:41:11:15 - 00:41:24:16 Nicole And for a film that is so clearly its raison d'etre -- not entirely because I think it is also about just, like, desire in and of itself. But it's it's about. Playing with genre. 00:41:24:16 - 00:41:25:14 Nicole Conventions. 00:41:25:14 - 00:41:25:23 Sean Mm hmm. 00:41:27:02 - 00:41:43:09 Nicole So here's how it's supposed to go. And I'm going to do the opposite of it, because I'm trying to, you know, kind of circumvent and undermine genre conventions in a very similar way to how Michael Haneke tries to do it in funny games -- towards different ends in a lot of respects, although there's a little overlap. 00:41:43:18 - 00:41:46:14 Nicole And yet again, just the point. David Edelstein [makes swooping overhead sound] 00:41:47:14 - 00:41:47:20 Sean Yeah. 00:41:48:17 - 00:42:02:19 Nicole Janet Maslin did like Buffy a little more than variety, though, going back to her for a second before we leave the critics behind for the moment, she did say that Buffy, as a slight good humored film that's a lot more painless than might have been expected and praised. 00:42:02:19 - 00:42:19:17 Nicole "Swanson's deadpan delivery praised the dialog, said the film was breezily directed by Fran Zukui and slows down to make room for some mugging from Mr. Perry, who plays a potential vampire. Veidt Bate Who is better at being studiously cute than really acting?" 00:42:19:17 - 00:42:34:20 Nicole I mean, tough, but maybe fair. "It also loses speed during Buffy's transformation into a pompom waving woman warrior." Not sure I agree with that. "Her conversion may be commendable, but it's a shame to see her drop the princess mannerisms that make her early scenes so amusing." 00:42:35:02 - 00:42:50:03 Nicole I'm not sure I agree with that criticism exactly, but I think it does point to, ironically, since she hated Variety so much. But in terms of the like feminist subversion of genre tropes, I think it does point to some of the limits of Buffy's feminism. 00:42:51:04 - 00:42:51:13 Sean Sure. 00:42:52:04 - 00:42:54:02 Sean I do...I... yeah. Go ahead. 00:42:54:11 - 00:43:00:09 Nicole I guess I didn't see Buffy's transformation as being as extreme as Janet Maslin did. 00:43:00:22 - 00:43:23:16 Sean I mean, I don't know if I see it as extreme. I see it more as like my my read for her transformation isn't that she has a transformation so much as she drops a level of artifice like, yeah, like cheerleader thing and all of that, because in later scenes she becomes a much more sincere person in interacting 00:43:23:16 - 00:43:36:12 Sean with people. Like it comes through occasionally when she's interacting with like in little ways, when she's interacting with Donald Sutherland or early on, like she's not dumb. Like she has like some, like she's not just like, oh, I'll go with you to it. 00:43:36:12 - 00:43:52:17 Sean To the to the thing. She's like, are you like a pervert? But not in it. But like, in a way where she's aware of the world around her and that gets dropped as it goes on. And things like when she brings Pike home and they have the moment where she's like, icing, icing herself and she's kind of 00:43:52:17 - 00:44:11:11 Sean explaining where things going are going on. She seems to be somewhat like different, but really what it is is she just dropped the cheerleader act. And there are moments early on where it's clearly an act when and we talked about this a little bit before the show, before we started recording, but like my interpretation of when her 00:44:11:11 - 00:44:30:11 Sean parents are going around, when, when, when her boyfriend is like, I can't remember things, my name is Buddy I think is what is with the mom makes the joke. You know, there's a joke at the mom using the wrong name and and she's like, I think she thinks my name is Buddy. 00:44:30:17 - 00:44:48:15 Sean Like, it's a little moment and it's a joke, but it's also a moment of like, no, but actually, like, my parents are absent. They're not they're not here. I have like her whole thing is an artifice up until the point where she starts to drop it. 00:44:49:03 - 00:45:05:14 Sean And probably my favorite scene, which is the one between her and Donald Sutherland, Merrick, where he finally makes a joke, which is one of my favorite moments of the movie, because they have, like, this real bond moment not too early on, but like right when we need it, right? 00:45:05:14 - 00:45:22:02 Sean When they they actually have this more personal exchange between them and with her. Like, there's. Again. Yeah, she drops. She drops the artifice, and she she doesn't transform. She just sort of reveals herself. 00:45:23:13 - 00:45:45:17 Nicole Right. Right. And I agree with that. I think what the Maslin quote pointed to for me was that for all the films about like you might think this blond cheerleader's an airhead, but she's actually not. You know, you can be a cheerleader and into dresses and be a girl and not be like shallow and a victim and 00:45:45:23 - 00:46:04:06 Nicole , you know, and an object rather than a subject and whatever else, like very kind of second wave feminism one on one. But then the film itself does is actually somewhat...not quite femme-phobic, I'm not going to say. 00:46:04:06 - 00:46:12:01 Nicole But like. Buffy is the only complex female figure in that entire supposedly feminist film. 00:46:12:09 - 00:46:13:08 Sean Yeah, she's. 00:46:13:09 - 00:46:15:18 Nicole She's the only female character. 00:46:16:19 - 00:46:17:01 Sean Yeah. 00:46:18:05 - 00:46:29:06 Nicole And I think that's a problem. All all of her Valley Girl friends are viewed by the film as being ridiculous and disposable to a somewhat ridiculous degree. 00:46:29:06 - 00:46:30:17 Sean Mm hmm. 00:46:30:17 - 00:46:38:23 Sean And so even though the film has, as I'm sure there's there's a famous line that you and I both really like that I think there's a lot to discuss 00:46:38:23 - 00:46:53:12 Nicole about where they're kind of trying to say it's not that she's different from other girls, like she is a girl, and that's part of what's great. But then the film completely undermines that point by having no other female characters who are even sympathetic, let alone fully formed. 00:46:53:12 - 00:47:08:00 Nicole Which is extra insulting to me because the film has so many well-formed male characters, including small supporting ones like Paul Reubens or whatever. He's a heavy and he's comic relief. 00:47:08:22 - 00:47:10:08 Sean I mean even the principal. Yeah. 00:47:11:09 - 00:47:26:18 Nicole Yeah. Even the fucking principal who knocks out Hilary Swank at the end in a bit that has long bothered me and still continues to bother me. I'm like, I don't really love it. Being a laugh moment when the principal knocks a teenage girls head against the wall to knock her out because she's annoying. 00:47:27:14 - 00:47:37:06 Nicole That actually feels very misogynistic to me. The, in the exact same flavor of misogyny that the whole film is supposedly existing to undermine. 00:47:37:13 - 00:47:37:21 Sean Right. 00:47:38:21 - 00:47:55:19 Nicole And yeah so when in Janet Maslin like this is why I said it's not that I exactly agree with Janet Maslin saying about you know, that she lost her prince, that her quote unquote, dropping the princess mannerisms is a problem. 00:47:55:19 - 00:48:17:18 Nicole Exactly. But I do. But it does make me think of this broader thing where a lot of the undervalued cultural signifiers that the film is supposedly respecting and being like, we're not going to like, you know, this Valley Girls aren't just a point and laugh at it kind of is like, yeah, valley girls are 100% a point 00:48:17:18 - 00:48:24:06 Nicole and laugh at unless they happen to be a slayer who can also kill a bunch of vampires, then that woman can wear a dress and be taken seriously. 00:48:24:09 - 00:48:43:01 Sean I think I think that is the in a lot of ways. And I mean, yeah, that is the movie. And that is a lot of sort of. And we'll get into this more. I think the approach to the reversal of roles that this Buffy. 00:48:45:02 - 00:49:15:16 Sean And. To a lesser degree, but still also the later show. Say and that whole side of it of like no that which is feminine is is frivolous. She has to be like. The, you know, rejecting of some of those things or most of those things on some level, in order for her to to be the proper woman 00:49:15:16 - 00:49:31:23 Sean warrior, I think that is. It's not it's not a conscious point it's making. I think I think it's the the implication and some of how it's approaching things to differentiate itself in that problematic way. And maybe not ...right. 00:49:31:23 - 00:49:49:08 Sean Where I want to use but in that in that way where it's like trying to figure out how do we reverse this, how do we reverse these tropes, how do we reverse these roles when you're kind of clawing at that idea that you end up like going in a direction that undermines the point itself. 00:49:50:07 - 00:50:04:17 Nicole Right. Which I think is part of why it's so I think it's so interesting to look at these two films in relation to one another because I think variety is, you know, infinitely more successful in its genre, subversion towards feminist ends. 00:50:04:17 - 00:50:17:08 Nicole I feel like it does exactly what it's trying to do, whereas I feel like Buffy and I feel it's very thoughtful, it's a very thought through strategy, whereas Buffy like, Let's be real. Joss Whedon doesn't fucking know he had like this one idea. 00:50:17:19 - 00:50:35:13 Nicole And then he wrote, which we can link to the script and the show notes because it is available online. I haven't read it yet. I wanted to skim it before this episode. That didn't happen, but I am interested to read Joss Whedon's actual script and see how that is similar from and different from the final product. 00:50:35:22 - 00:50:54:20 Nicole Maybe he wrote a bunch of well-formed female supporting characters who didn't make it into the final film. I doubt that. But you know, I don't know for sure it's possible, but I think mostly what it is, is Joss Whedon had this one idea and, you know, it wasn't quite as brilliant an idea as he thinks it is 00:50:54:20 - 00:51:07:08 Nicole . And a lot of other people who have reported on this idea seem to think it is either. I mean, honestly and look, I like the Buffy movie. Don't get me wrong, I think there are feminist elements to it to a degree. 00:51:07:16 - 00:51:18:07 Nicole I just think it's very limited. Part of what's weird about it to me is in many respects. He's not actually subverting our conventions. It's kind of just a variation on the final girl. 00:51:18:19 - 00:51:27:12 Sean It's I mean, the truth is, is it's subverting it's subverting horror conventions. If you're not a fan of horror movies. 00:51:28:12 - 00:51:28:20 Nicole Yeah. 00:51:29:19 - 00:51:32:00 Sean And he's he's a comedy writer. 00:51:32:17 - 00:51:40:11 Nicole Like Laurie Strode with superpowers. Like what? Yeah, it's. It's not actually a brand. It's not a new archetype. 00:51:40:13 - 00:51:51:07 Sean No, it's on. It only is if you don't if you don't pay attention to horror movies or if you have a very limited sense of what they are, which, to be frank, he does. Like he's not a or he's not a horror person. 00:51:51:07 - 00:51:55:06 Sean He's a he's he's he's a sitcom writer, you know? 00:51:55:06 - 00:51:56:07 Nicole He's a rich kid. 00:51:57:01 - 00:52:07:17 Sean He's a rich kid. He's a fifth generation sitcom writer. Yeah. Yeah. So who thought he deserved to make a movie? But I won't get on that because. No, because. 00:52:07:18 - 00:52:11:22 Nicole Because we need to talk about awards. I mean, you talk about awards and he talks. 00:52:11:22 - 00:52:12:18 Sean About winning and. 00:52:13:15 - 00:52:28:04 Nicole Yeah, well, no, I could not find any awards in either of these films if one, maybe they've won awards, but I couldn't find them on the Internet. All I could find was one best actress nomination for Kristy Swanson from the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. 00:52:29:10 - 00:52:53:22 Nicole However, I did find that Buffy grossed $16,624,456. Very specific amounts against a $7 million budget, which was. Yeah, right. Like listeners at home can't see Sean's face, but he's kind of like, Oh, yeah, not bad. Which is exactly what my face looked like when I copied this and pasted it into our shownotes. 00:52:54:14 - 00:53:02:20 Nicole Because my impression at the time was that that movie bombed, and I think that was definitely the way it was discussed at the time. 00:53:03:01 - 00:53:19:05 Sean It might have had an underperforming like opening weekend. That's usually what would do, but also like discussion of flop. And this is like a larger conversation, discussions of whether or not something as a flop is actually dependent on how much the studio backs to the film. 00:53:19:14 - 00:53:20:03 Sean Like. 00:53:20:20 - 00:53:21:06 Nicole Sure. 00:53:21:17 - 00:53:32:11 Sean Like it's a lot more of a marketing thing because if they talk about the movie as a flop, they can they can kind of write off the movie and be like, Oh, it was it was a flop. But like similar similar jumps in it. 00:53:32:11 - 00:53:44:09 Sean If the if the studio has or similar gains, like if the studio supported the movie, its success, it's all like how the studio talks about the how talks about the studio didn't make the movie. 00:53:45:06 - 00:53:55:19 Nicole Yeah. I'm like this more than doubled its budget before we even got to home video. And this is so clearly a home video movie. I was shocked. I was like, that movie did really well. 00:53:56:08 - 00:53:56:15 Sean Mm hmm. 00:53:57:15 - 00:54:15:01 Nicole For for managing expectations, which, of course, I think kind of mainstream film journalism coverage has gotten more sophisticated since it was in the early nineties. Like, I feel like in the early nineties there was a lot more like this made 16 million, this other thing made 30 million. 00:54:15:01 - 00:54:35:03 Nicole Obviously 30 million is so much more and it's like, well, but not if the budget was $100 million and the 16 million grosser had a budget of $4 million. Those like budget to box office ratios, I just think are a lot more immediately part of the conversation now for the layperson than they were at the time. 00:54:35:03 - 00:54:56:01 Nicole Like, I was very young at the time, but this was right around when I was very much getting into film and was like. You know, reading Premiere, reading movie line, reading Entertainment Weekly, subscribing to all three for a while, like tearing out the full page ads for movies I liked and putting them up on my door like 00:54:56:01 - 00:55:10:12 Nicole I was getting into being a film nerd around this time and I was reading box office charts like every week, you know, I was interested in that. And so, yeah, I. Buffy. Buffy did better than I think its reputation might have. 00:55:10:12 - 00:55:19:19 Nicole One believed, have one believe variety. On the other hand, I could find no box office numbers for at all. It also cost $80,000. 00:55:20:15 - 00:55:23:13 Sean I would assume that variety had a very short run. 00:55:24:17 - 00:55:29:07 Nicole I do not think that this was a mass market. You know, Megaplex. 00:55:29:17 - 00:55:37:18 Sean I would assume that just did a couple theaters here in New York, maybe a couple and in Los Angeles, maybe a couple of arthouse theaters around the country. And that was it. 00:55:39:18 - 00:55:43:09 Nicole Yeah. What do these films reflect about one another, Sean? 00:55:44:02 - 00:56:09:11 Sean Stuff and things. I mean, I think the big thing that we've already touched on, at least generally, is the role reversals. There was an interesting quote that we pulled from a paper or was it an article screening Female Desire, Betty Gordon's variety 35 years on in an online publication called Another Gaze. 00:56:09:11 - 00:56:31:22 Sean And I think I think it applies to both films in one way or the other. Object Permanence. Let me start that again. Object permanence. That is the ability to understand that objects continue to live in the world, even if they exist outside of one's frame of vision is said to develop in infants as young as five months 00:56:31:22 - 00:56:46:16 Sean . And yet, for many men in the world, this formative developmental process seems to have stopped short of realizing that women to experience rich and complicated inner lives. Betty Gordon's variety and neo Hitchcockian thriller about a young woman's sexual awakening. 00:56:46:16 - 00:56:54:03 Sean Amy takes aim at this distinctly masculine conceit Stare long enough into the abyss, gentlemen, and the abyss will stare back. 00:56:54:22 - 00:56:56:17 Nicole When you finally watch Annette. 00:56:56:17 - 00:56:58:05 Nicole Sean, we'll 00:56:58:06 - 00:56:59:18 Nicole We can revisit this quote. 00:57:00:01 - 00:57:00:13 Sean Because. 00:57:01:18 - 00:57:02:13 Nicole This also makes. 00:57:02:13 - 00:57:03:19 Sean Me think about parts of the. 00:57:03:19 - 00:57:23:03 Nicole Net. I like this idea of object permanence a lot, and it kind of articulated for me some stuff I've long kind of felt and thought about but hadn't quite, you know, articulated in such a like, pithy way before. 00:57:23:03 - 00:57:31:22 Nicole It's some of what in my film, Small Talk, the initial genesis of it honestly was was about the initial scene that didn't end up in the final film. 00:57:32:14 - 00:57:32:23 Sean Mm hmm. 00:57:34:16 - 00:57:55:18 Nicole Was kind of playing on this idea of when you work a job like phone sex, all your clients. They're aware of you in that brief window that, you know, they're interacting with you in this fantasy context. And they certainly do not when they're interacting with you in that car, in that little window, generally interact with you in 00:57:55:18 - 00:58:09:08 Nicole a way. That suggests they don't think that when they get off the phone with you, you just like go back in your box or something and wait for them to call you again. You only exist to them in these conversations. 00:58:09:08 - 00:58:15:12 Nicole And as far as they are concerned, you know, you are not a full person who, when you're off the phone, is doing. 00:58:15:12 - 00:58:16:04 Sean Other things. 00:58:16:14 - 00:58:38:00 Nicole Or when you're on the phone is in an actual house and things. And the initial scene I wrote for that film where the protagonist is like doing a phone sex call while dismembering a body at the same point was kind of pointing to that like for me, where that came from, in my psyche, it was about that 00:58:38:00 - 00:58:55:08 Nicole like. People, women, people perhaps who are like whole filled people with all sorts of stuff going on in their lives and like maybe have this job where they interface with men and that's one little sliver of the whole rest of their lives, and they're probably playing a role in that little sliver. 00:58:55:08 - 00:59:06:14 Nicole So it's not like the goal is the guy should know about your real life. That's not the point. It's that the guy should be aware that the person they're talking to is a person who is playing a fantasy role. 00:59:06:14 - 00:59:17:21 Nicole Even if they're not thinking about it while they're jacking off or whatever, they should kind of be aware of that. But of course they're not. This is part of why clients are not historically great labor advocates for the sex workers they rely on, for example. 00:59:18:22 - 00:59:23:04 Nicole Things like that. Is some of what this brought up for me and got me excited about? 00:59:25:20 - 00:59:46:01 Sean Yeah. And I think I mean, well, it's directly talking about variety. I think it also applies to conversations about Buffy and Buffy's, the what we were talking about with the transformation or such and like, I think to a certain degree how I don't necessarily think it's a transformation for Buffy so much as a dropping of artifice, it 00:59:46:01 - 01:00:04:12 Sean is a revealing of her inner life, is that she is a more complex person underneath the underneath the cheerleader facade, even though nobody else in the movie, nobody no other women in the movie necessarily get that opportunity like it's. 01:00:05:11 - 01:00:08:10 Nicole Nor are there any women in the movie who are anything. 01:00:08:11 - 01:00:09:03 Sean Else. 01:00:09:22 - 01:00:12:21 Nicole There could be a female teacher, there could be female vampires. 01:00:13:11 - 01:00:14:16 Sean There are female vampires 01:00:14:16 - 01:00:16:04 Nicole But not until the end. 01:00:16:11 - 01:00:17:02 Sean Right. You're right. 01:00:17:02 - 01:00:19:11 Nicole Not with lines. 01:00:20:15 - 01:00:22:03 Sean Yeah, not until the very end. You're right. 01:00:22:18 - 01:00:42:16 Nicole My, my take on that. And not to drag us too far afield, but my, my take on that, I was watching it. I'm like, I guess it's because like. You know, in this somewhat simplistic second wave feminist conceit for this film, maybe the vampires were also kind of supposed to be like the patriarchy. 01:00:42:16 - 01:01:02:17 Nicole Like maybe it's an intentional choice that all the vampires that are fighting her are, you know, underestimate her in a sexist way. Like, I think that's part of the point. That said, I think that speaks to how the film is not quite as deeply conceived as as we wish it would, because, like, I'm like, okay, I get 01:01:02:17 - 01:01:19:03 Nicole that this is maybe part of the point. But I think you could have made a better point like. You could make a point where the vampires kind of stand in for patriarchy and also show about how women help perpetuate patriarchy as well, for example. 01:01:19:17 - 01:01:25:04 Nicole But maybe that was a bridge too far for Joss Whedon's burgeoning feminist concept consciousness or whatever. 01:01:26:03 - 01:01:45:15 Sean Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think one thing that can and maybe should be said about it is when he talks about coming up with the idea, it wasn't really about like, I really want to like subvert like this, this idea from a feminist standpoint, it was more like I had an interesting idea that the person 01:01:45:15 - 01:02:09:03 Sean who you would normally think of as like the victim would actually be like this hero. And I think the original idea was that this waitress was actually like a Greek goddess. Yeah. And like it it's not necessarily coming from a point of view of like he was trying to do or, you know, this like, feminist character. 01:02:09:18 - 01:02:15:18 Nicole But he's always contextualized it as a specifically feminist project, though this reversal he has. 01:02:16:03 - 01:02:29:21 Sean He has I think he has done that in subsequent conversations about it because he's an opportunist, you know, in in a in any kind of like really critical look of his work. Look at his work. Like he found a niche. 01:02:30:07 - 01:02:44:21 Sean Niche. AIs that how it's pronounced? I don't know. I always have a problem with that word. Anyway, he felt he found a niche. He found something that like it would work for him. I don't think it was completely outside of what he believed in or at least thought he believed in. 01:02:45:19 - 01:03:07:06 Sean And so he leaned into it and he said, Yeah, I know it always comes from this. Like, ladies, man. Like he does also identify the one of his inspirations as the X-Men character, Kitty Pryde, who's an interesting kind of one to look at, because I don't know that she's necessarily like a strongly feminist character, but she's also 01:03:07:06 - 01:03:26:05 Sean not like she was an evolution in those books of like what they were exploring with the kinds of characters they were doing as a teenage girl. It was trying to introduce like, we want to have a teenage girl in this book that is that has the concerns of a teenage of what we think a teenage girl is 01:03:26:05 - 01:03:44:13 Sean concerned with. She was somewhat frivolous. And she's a she's not exactly like who Buffy is at the beginning of the movie, but there's like tons of that. And like, I think it doesn't necessarily come from like I, you know, want to reverse this. 01:03:44:13 - 01:03:57:20 Sean It's just, you know, we both we both are screenwriters. We both have ideas. It I do suspect that it was just a oh, like the person you wouldn't expect. Like there's a fun idea for a movie or a story. 01:03:58:06 - 01:04:17:09 Sean Let me do that. And not necessarily like Variety is conceived as a let us deconstruct something because it comes from there. It's much more successful at doing it because they knew what they were doing. And I don't think he necessarily in writing the script, I don't think he necessarily knew exactly what he was doing. 01:04:17:09 - 01:04:24:18 Sean He was just playing around with some ideas and it kind and he also worked towards it, but it didn't achieve it also. 01:04:24:18 - 01:04:44:02 Nicole Also, Bette Gordon and Kathy Acker have a lot more to say. Yes. About their subject than than Joss Whedon did. It's interesting, because you can see the template in the movie of of a lot of stuff that continued in the show and themes that have replayed through his other work over and over again. 01:04:44:02 - 01:04:59:23 Nicole You can you can see a lot of it right there. And he's got his pet issues. He's got his things to say. He wants to say that certain sorts of sexist male behavior are gross and bad and should be punished and that it's hot for ladies to be strong. 01:04:59:23 - 01:05:24:20 Nicole And, you know, so yeah, some stuff about like how to be, you know, a dude who's not a nightmare in the world, something that he has failed himself personally at achieving. But, you know, a character like Pike, in a sense, is like, you know, okay, here, here's a male teenage character who does not subscribe to the patriarchal 01:05:24:20 - 01:05:45:10 Nicole attitudes that most of the other men, including his best friend, do, which I thought I thought while watching the film of the like I'm like this is this would not fly for me today where the awesome like feminist female love interest is best friends with like this dude who's like literally shoving a hot dog that he's holding 01:05:45:10 - 01:06:02:13 Nicole like at his crotch at like Kristy Swanson's face. Like, that was disgusting and it was supposed to be disgusting. It was absolutely supposed to be disgusting. But it's kind of like I remember, I think you and I and some other people were having a conversation while watching some other teen movie where there were sexist guys recently. 01:06:02:20 - 01:06:17:15 Nicole And somebody made the point about like, Yeah, the feminist guy who just happens to be friends with all these super. Sexist dudes. What does it say about you that that's your best friend and he's behaving that way and you're, like, disapproving, but you're also not, like, cut out the fuck out or we're not hanging out anymore. 01:06:17:22 - 01:06:18:07 Sean Yeah. 01:06:18:07 - 01:06:23:15 Nicole It's just like, Oh, man, why are you letting me down by being sexist? That's not the cool way I am. 01:06:24:06 - 01:06:37:10 Sean Well, I mean, I think I don't disagree with you, but I do think there's a weird vagueness about Pike's character that I'm like, I don't know how old he is because he drives 01:06:37:10 - 01:06:39:00 Nicole because Luke Perry was 30. 01:06:39:00 - 01:06:39:14 Sean Right. 01:06:39:16 - 01:06:43:19 Sean But he lives over the garage. There's no parents. He has a van, but. 01:06:43:19 - 01:06:44:13 Nicole He's in high school. 01:06:44:21 - 01:06:48:00 Sean Is he? He's. We'd never see him at the high school as a student. 01:06:49:18 - 01:06:51:04 Nicole He goes to the dance. 01:06:51:18 - 01:06:54:14 Sean Right? But like he goes to the dance to see Buffy. 01:06:55:11 - 01:06:57:18 Nicole I think it's implied that he's a student. 01:06:58:06 - 01:06:58:18 Sean Okay. 01:06:58:18 - 01:07:02:15 Nicole Maybe he just doesn't go to school, but I think he's supposed to be her age. 01:07:03:04 - 01:07:17:13 Sean I think. Yeah, I think it just doesn't. It's just not clear. I think the movie's not clear on where exactly he fits in there and like which. And I don't know that it's that important, but I think, like, it's a little unclear. 01:07:18:17 - 01:07:22:11 Sean There's there's little things about him that are like. 01:07:22:16 - 01:07:23:09 Nicole What's. 01:07:23:09 - 01:07:28:15 Sean Going on with cause he's an alcoholic? Like, he's drunk for, like, the first half of the movie. 01:07:29:19 - 01:07:42:02 Nicole Much like his character Dylan McKay on 90210. I mean, he's got I mean, what? I don't know. I mean, he's he's in high school. They're high school. I think he's supposed to be like a burnout. 01:07:42:17 - 01:07:43:08 Sean Yeah. 01:07:43:13 - 01:07:45:08 Nicole And he kind of gets his shit together. 01:07:45:14 - 01:07:57:06 Sean Yeah. Like he has. He has. Well, I guess like he has. Not necessarily. Again, not necessarily a transformation, but sort of an awakening, if maybe that's a better way to put it much. Yeah. 01:07:57:06 - 01:07:58:04 Nicole He has a little arc. 01:07:59:15 - 01:07:59:22 Sean I think. 01:08:00:00 - 01:08:00:18 Nicole I think he does. 01:08:00:18 - 01:08:16:03 Sean Yeah. Yeah. They both have sort of an awakening of like, oh, there's actual like he starts to he starts to turn around when, when, when David Arquette shows up at his window and he starts to realize that there's something larger going on. 01:08:16:04 - 01:08:20:11 Nicole There was there is a moment with him and Buffy that we both were very struck by. 01:08:20:23 - 01:08:21:10 Sean Right. 01:08:21:12 - 01:08:43:13 Nicole Once they go to the dance. So they go to the dance. Pike's brought some steaks. Pike gives Buffy his motorcycle jacket, and she slays and all that. And at some point, and in the mayhem at the final dance where the vampires show up, they dance together, they have this nice moment where they dance together. 01:08:43:22 - 01:08:50:11 Nicole And Pike says this very cliched line to her about "You're not like other girls." 01:08:51:10 - 01:08:56:05 Sean Even if it actually happens before she goes out to the for the final battle. 01:08:56:17 - 01:09:00:04 Nicole Right. I realized after that it must have been before that. But at the dance. 01:09:00:04 - 01:09:15:04 Sean Yeah, but they do have another they do have another moment, I think towards the end where they dance. But like before the big fight, he does say that you're not like other girls and she's you know, it's in this moment where she's trying not to she's trying to be like like she returned to the dance to to 01:09:15:04 - 01:09:25:13 Sean kind of reject her, her destiny. And she says as as you're saying, like, yes, I am. Yeah. I think that's. Yeah. 01:09:26:01 - 01:09:47:17 Nicole Go ahead. I think that's in some way is definitely one of the most successful moments of the movie that kind of encapsulates the feminist intervention to the degree the film actually I think was successful in it. I think this film, this moment encapsulates I think that line, yes, I am is a very good, simple line. 01:09:47:17 - 01:10:01:22 Nicole And that also there's a beat before it. Pike's like, You're not like other girls. And she is like, you know, nuzzled up against him or whatever. And there's a beat. And then she's like, Yes, I am. Which I think is one of the one of the few moments that feels genuinely feminist to me. 01:10:02:03 - 01:10:12:14 Nicole And in the film, and I think you put a note on our dock that you were you kind of asked a question about this line and about how to interpret it. 01:10:13:00 - 01:10:33:02 Sean And I think that there's that you could look at it two ways. Either she's saying, yes, I am, in which she wants the same things as these girls he's dismissing, which perhaps works because in the context of the moment, that is kind of that is sort of what's happening, you know, but also she's saying, yes, I am 01:10:33:02 - 01:10:45:14 Sean . But is she saying rather that all the things that you see in me that are special are not just me? Every girl has this in her as well. 01:10:46:21 - 01:10:55:16 Nicole I think it's 100% both. I think it's both. I think it's two, two halves of a whole and that's it. I think she's 100% saying both don't dismiss other girls. 01:10:56:02 - 01:10:56:12 Sean Mm hmm. 01:10:57:18 - 01:11:18:19 Nicole And she's also owning parts of her that might be dismissible, as she's saying. I contain multitudes. Right. Like I can be a cheerleader and give a shit about a dress and follow fashion and like to shop. And also, you know, give a shit about saving the world and know how to stake vampires and be smart. 01:11:18:19 - 01:11:43:16 Nicole And, you know, certain aspects of femininity that are traditionally constructed under patriarchy as being frivolous, shallow or otherwise, you know, tainted and bad in some way. I think she's absolutely owning in this line, which is part of the crux of the degree to which Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an IP that lends itself to some cool storytelling 01:11:43:16 - 01:11:55:20 Nicole that I like. That's that's a big part of what works about the IP, I think. I think it's absolutely both. It's both like those girls aren't as dumb as you think they are. Mm hmm. And it's also, you know what? 01:11:55:20 - 01:12:00:01 Nicole I'm into a lot of the, quote unquote dumb shit, too. You think it's. I think it's both. 01:12:00:09 - 01:12:17:00 Sean Yeah. And I mean, I do think that, like, when I when I when I when I watched it again yesterday and I was I was thinking about this. I was trying to watch for in the subsequent, like, scene, like, okay, but does that like does that do they play it out where the other girls are like her 01:12:17:00 - 01:12:32:07 Sean and that they like fight back and that happens a couple of times, doesn't happen very often. Mostly it's sort of faceless people running around, but like one of her friends does sort of stab one stab or stab at one of the vampires trying to get in through the window. 01:12:32:12 - 01:12:39:14 Sean There's a couple of moments of like the fighting back. And I think it does almost go into reiterating that point but doesn't quite commit to it. 01:12:39:15 - 01:12:55:18 Nicole They don't quite they don't commit to it. And to me, that's that's the that's the central problem. One of the central problems, I think there's two main two main problems I have with the Buffy movie. One is just all the shit that's a problem about the script that comes from Joss Whedon. 01:12:55:18 - 01:13:13:16 Nicole Like there's plenty of stuff wrong with the movie that's direct from the source. But then I think there is also the fact that the film, a lot of critics pointed to tone issues, which I over the years have have shifted and may continue to shift how I feel about those questions. 01:13:14:16 - 01:13:35:03 Nicole I definitely don't think the film has tone issues to the extent a lot of critics do like that make it unwatchable or confusing. I think it's tone is very in keeping of a lot of stuff like that. That said, I do think there is a conflict between the way scenes are reading and the supposed project of of 01:13:35:03 - 01:13:48:01 Nicole the film in terms of things like this, because it's like you're almost doing, oh, now, like some other girls were saying fight too. But 100% of those interactions are played just for laughs and they're not good at it. 01:13:48:01 - 01:14:02:06 Nicole We don't see any of them gaining like it could even be played for laughs, but we also see some competence getting gained and there's none of that. It's just like sight gags of silly valley girls, you know, trying to fight vampires. 01:14:02:06 - 01:14:14:23 Nicole Isn't that a funny visual? And it doesn't. And for a film that's supposed to be like, No, I'm not like other girls. Yes, I am. Like, it kind of undermines that moment to just play it on that level, to not show any complexity. 01:14:14:23 - 01:14:36:03 Nicole And that's that's part of what I think doesn't doesn't work about the like everything being heightened like ha ha, funny valley girl shit. That's so much of the movie. Everything's kind of got quotation marks around it. And, you know, the opening scene could play, which is like a vampire flashback to Kristy Swanson as like the first slayer 01:14:36:03 - 01:14:57:21 Nicole or an earlier slayer in all in Vampire Times. And it's played campy. It's played like, ha ha, we've all seen like Hammer Vampire Films or, you know, you know, the original Dracula going even farther back, whatever. These these now dated horror tropes that we're playing on and not in the way the show does it, where a lot 01:14:57:21 - 01:15:15:02 Nicole of stuff like that, they play it relatively straight but bring in humor. This was like playing it on this heightened humor level and then bringing in horror. And I think that the mileage varies on how successful that is in terms of trying to make it a feminist movie because it largely collapses. 01:15:15:22 - 01:15:25:08 Nicole No, not largely. It I would say entirely collapses all of the teenage girl characters besides Buffy into like two dimensional sight gags. 01:15:25:23 - 01:15:28:09 Sean Yeah, most of them are indistinguishable from one another. 01:15:29:17 - 01:15:39:00 Nicole Yeah. Kristy, not Kristy Swanson. Hilary Swank stands out because it's Hilary Swank, and I'm like, Oh, it's Hilary Swank. Yeah, but that's. That's it. 01:15:39:05 - 01:15:56:11 Sean Yeah, but she could be the one who bitched, like, if she didn't have a career after this. Like, it would be very. Hard to tell. Or the kind of prominent career she had after this. Be hard to tell the difference between like, is she the one who, like, sleeps with his boy, with her boyfriend or the other 01:15:56:11 - 01:15:59:07 Sean one? Like, you wouldn't be like I won't even look very much the same. 01:16:00:03 - 01:16:18:15 Nicole Absolutely. I do think that Variety does a better job than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In terms of you, you made some notes for us that there's an argument that Christine, similar to Buffy, at least the Buffy in that moment with Pike, where she says she is like other girls. 01:16:18:23 - 01:16:29:23 Nicole That similarly, Christine is not unique in Variety and her interactions with the women at the bar show that to a degree, both Buffy and Christine are not unique expressions or representations of potential within all of the women around them. 01:16:31:01 - 01:16:49:23 Nicole Yeah, I mean, I think Christine's more of a specific character. I think they're both specific characters and Christine's. I think you're I think you're on to saying, I don't know if I'd phrase it exactly like that, but I yeah, I think, Christine, one of the things I loved about Variety is it has these scenes I think are 01:16:49:23 - 01:17:10:10 Nicole great where she's just hanging out at a bar with her friend Nan, helpfully played by famed photographer Nan Gordon. And, you know, a bunch of other people, including like Cookie Mueller from the aforementioned John Waters from his his Dreamlanders one of his regular standbys. 01:17:10:10 - 01:17:34:21 Nicole Cookie Mueller shows up in this two just talking talking about work, talking about how work sucks, talking a lot about a lot of sex industry specific stuff. Also that I was delighted. For example, there's a woman in one of these bar scenes who like basically details working at a strip bar and getting entrapped for solicitation by the 01:17:34:21 - 01:17:56:01 Nicole NYPD and I. And from what I've read, the stories the women tell in the bar weren't bar were not scripted. Those were largely improvised. And those were largely stories that women were telling from their own lives. Okay. And because that that the strip club solicitation entrapment story, I was just like, holy shit. 01:17:56:01 - 01:18:16:12 Nicole That's exactly like the type of shit that the NYPD still does in trapping sex workers. And we don't see that in films very much or hear about that in films very much. We do a little bit sometimes. But it was so delightful and refreshing to me to have a woman just tell a story about like, Yeah, this 01:18:16:12 - 01:18:28:17 Nicole is what a day at the fucking office is like for me. Because that is so many women stories and other people as well who, you know, work in these industries that people don't want to hear true stories about so much. 01:18:29:22 - 01:18:30:20 Sean And. 01:18:32:00 - 01:18:49:11 Nicole You know, the women are different. Christine, one of the things that's different about her than some of her friends is like she's more sexually frustrated. I would say some people are like, oh, she's repressed. And I just I just don't want to say a woman on in a film is sexually repressed ever again. 01:18:49:22 - 01:19:07:14 Nicole I just don't because everything gets called like, Oh, it's about sexual repression. And it's like, well, maybe, but it's also about, like, so many other things. And but she's she's sexually frustrated. She lacks some sexual outlets. This I don't want to. 01:19:07:23 - 01:19:13:08 Nicole Now I'm starting. I wanted to start talking about her and her boyfriend, but we can talk about her boyfriend, contrasting. 01:19:13:08 - 01:19:19:03 Sean With her boyfriend, because I think that I think that's the natural next extension of of what we were already talking about. 01:19:20:02 - 01:19:37:12 Nicole Okay. Well, we've got in Buffy. She meets a guy and starts getting interested in a guy as a part of her kind of growth. Who's this guy? Pike, who is better than the dude she's with at the beginning of the movie? 01:19:37:12 - 01:19:57:18 Nicole At the beginning, she's with just some kind of, you know, more typical man. Typical bad man playing a teenage boy, at least like kind of jock type. I'm more threatened by her power, that sort of thing. Whereas Pike is not so Pike's like, kind of, you know, he's. 01:19:57:18 - 01:20:12:12 Nicole He's supportive. He's that supporting male love interest, and he. He is there to support her. He is not there to usurp superior to usurp her. He is not there to be threatened by her. He is not there to put her in her place. 01:20:12:12 - 01:20:21:23 Nicole He is there to just be like, Oh, she's great. Look at that great thing she's doing. How can I help? Which is a pretty nice model, like big. It's great. He's being genuinely helpful. He brings her those stakes. 01:20:21:23 - 01:20:37:14 Nicole I was like, That is helpful. That's not, Oh, I need to play a role so that I feel like I'm doing something that was actually helpful. Good job. Pike Yeah. And on the on the other side of things, though, Mark, the guy that Christine dates in Variety. 01:20:37:14 - 01:20:39:13 Sean Like he's... 01:20:40:13 - 01:20:59:20 Nicole He's not a good boyfriend for her. He is like not interested in her very much it doesn't seem like. And he also. Absolutely cannot deal with her job. Unlike Pike, who's kind of like vampire slayer. All right, that's unusual, but I'm on board. 01:21:00:02 - 01:21:00:15 Sean Mm hmm. 01:21:01:18 - 01:21:10:14 Nicole Mark is like when she tells him that he got this job. He's clearly upset about it, but he also doesn't try to talk to her about it. 01:21:10:23 - 01:21:16:12 Sean No, no, he's just. He's just, like, go. I don't feel comfortable with that as an and. 01:21:16:13 - 01:21:31:09 Nicole That's also true to me. And I felt so bad for Christine. I just. If you are if you have ever worked a job that will give people that will make people look at you like that. Which, as you know, I certainly have. 01:21:33:07 - 01:21:48:16 Nicole It's useful in terms of dating, honestly, because it's a good litmus test. Like I unlike Christine at the time, I was doing kinds of work that would cause people to look at me like that. If somebody looked at me like that, I'd be like, Yeah, great. 01:21:48:16 - 01:22:03:12 Nicole Bye. No. And I would always be like, You know what better to know now? Better than no now. Because honestly, if I even if I wasn't doing work that made people look at me like I would not want to be dating somebody who looked at people who did that kind of work like that anyway. 01:22:03:13 - 01:22:20:22 Nicole So it's a useful litmus test, but poor Christine, unfortunately. Doesn't 100% kind of off at first, although I can't necessarily say unfortunately, because she is. She's on her path of stuff and she's like interested in meeting up with him. 01:22:20:22 - 01:22:36:22 Nicole And I think after his first negative inter his first negative reaction, I don't know that she's really expecting support or anything like that from him when she like does meet up with him. So I don't know if I may, I might take back that, that it's unfortunate that she doesn't just completely cut him off if she wants 01:22:36:22 - 01:22:54:09 Nicole to see him and like whatever, she can see him, but he doesn't like her job. And then there's a couple scenes that we kind of touched on more obliquely before that I found very striking and contained kind of an analogous, maybe favorite line for me. 01:22:54:09 - 01:23:13:05 Nicole I think maybe my favorite line in Buffy is when Buffy says, Yes, I am, when he says, You're not like other girls. And I love the line in Variety where there's a couple scenes like we mentioned before, where she starts describing the films that play at the theater she works at to her boyfriend. 01:23:13:14 - 01:23:14:02 Sean Mm hmm. 01:23:14:06 - 01:23:30:10 Nicole And, you know, he can't deal. He he can't. He just he doesn't say, like, hey, could you not suddenly launch into a super graphic pornographic play by play while I'm trying to play pinball in this bar? Which, to be fair, that would be a reasonable request. 01:23:30:11 - 01:23:41:06 Nicole Not everybody's always up for hearing super graphic sex talk at the drop of a hat without checking in first to be like, Hey, I'm just going to launch into some pornography now. So that would be fair. But that's not his reaction. 01:23:41:13 - 01:23:56:21 Nicole His reaction is he just can't handle this at all and gets mad and again, doesn't want to talk to her about it, just gets mad and he's like, What are you doing? And she says, I'm telling you about my life. 01:23:57:11 - 01:23:57:20 Sean Right? 01:23:59:05 - 01:24:19:03 Nicole And that line. I felt like it's a it's a very simple, concise little line. It contains so much and it resonated with me so much. I was like, I know what that's like. Well, I mean, she's don't get me wrong, she is not just telling him about her day and it happens to involve some sex stuff and 01:24:19:03 - 01:24:27:01 Nicole he's like, Oh, a sex stuff. Like, I mean, she is doing a fairly extreme thing that one could reasonably be like, I don't need to hear this story now. 01:24:27:01 - 01:24:28:00 Sean Specifics. 01:24:28:20 - 01:24:49:02 Nicole Yeah. Like, I mean, or or like could, you know, could you, you know, content now or something, you know, like. Fine, fine. But that that said, it is. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But but we, I think we both got from it that it's that wasn't his problem with it know that wasn't his problem with his problem was with 01:24:49:02 - 01:25:02:01 Nicole the whole thing. He wasn't going to be okay with any of this under any circumstances. He does not want to hear her articulate her desires or articulate anything having to do with, you know. 01:25:02:10 - 01:25:04:05 Sean Right. Okay. All right. 01:25:04:06 - 01:25:18:10 Nicole You know, a robust, enthusiastic sexuality. But and so when you have a job that make people look at you askance and inherently has to do with a certain kind of graphic sexuality, that's the job. She works at a porno theater. 01:25:18:19 - 01:25:38:10 Nicole If she's going to talk about what like she is interfacing with a kind of graphic sexuality and anything, you know, obviously I've never had that job or whatever. But I do know the experience of. Not being able to talk about your day because people will take you talking about your day as being wildly inappropriate, even if you're 01:25:38:10 - 01:25:55:16 Nicole not being graphic. Which isn't you know, she's not a sex worker in this film in that she is not a person working in an erotic industry who is directly providing sexual gratification. I mean, it does point to some of the gray areas between these categories. 01:25:55:16 - 01:26:13:18 Nicole But from a labor organizing perspective, she's not an erotic laborer in the same her her interests and conflicts and needs are not the same as people who directly provide erotic labor. But it's not entirely disconnected either in terms of social stigma and things like that. 01:26:15:07 - 01:26:25:02 Nicole But yeah, I'm just I'm telling you about my life like, which is true. I mean, the subtext of that is she's telling him about that she fucking like is horny also. 01:26:25:10 - 01:26:25:18 Sean Yeah. 01:26:26:00 - 01:26:39:08 Nicole And he doesn't want to be hearing that. He doesn't want her to be horny. And so these are some of the things that got raised for me by that line. I find it quite heartbreaking because she is she's trying to she is trying to connect with him. 01:26:39:21 - 01:26:51:11 Nicole Yes. We're giving him a shot, giving her giving him a chance to connect with her. And he is not willing to meet her halfway. He's not willing to take a step towards her. She can get in his car and he'll tell her about his work. 01:26:51:22 - 01:27:03:02 Nicole And they can do that. But she he does not want her as anything other than an adoring audience for him and her work, her day, her interests are like obscene as far as he's concerned. 01:27:03:21 - 01:27:24:05 Sean And there's a there's a quote pulled from one of the articles that we that we read that that touches on that a little bit. But the dynamics of it, and specifically his response from Cindy Peyton in A Question of Variety new forms of women in movies from Gay Community News, " the notion of silence and language is further 01:27:24:05 - 01:27:39:03 Sean explored in two scenes. When Christine recites porno stories to her proto feminist boyfriend, he is disturbed, angry and shaking. The stories she recites have been part of his male culture, but are suddenly changed in text, rendered melodic and powerful by her poetic chanting. 01:27:39:08 - 01:27:42:10 Sean I don't know about the last part of it of that. 01:27:42:10 - 01:27:45:11 Nicole Yeah, I think that's that's I mean, I think it's a legitimate. 01:27:45:11 - 01:27:46:06 Sean Read. 01:27:46:18 - 01:27:51:21 Nicole Like. Yeah, but, but I think the beginning part of it, I'm like, yes, 100%. 01:27:52:05 - 01:27:52:16 Sean That. 01:27:52:20 - 01:27:54:02 Nicole No, no. For her argument. 01:27:54:02 - 01:28:13:17 Sean Yeah. And one of the things that we definitely saw in reading about like what Betty, Betty Gordon talked about, about the film and what other people talked about it. But the film is part of what is the reversal in this film isn't just that Christine kind of becomes the pursuing noir detective of sorts, but also that she 01:28:13:17 - 01:28:39:15 Sean is engaging with and participating as a as a as a viewer or as a consumer in certain aspects of male culture, where the men around her first first shown in and her boyfriend their mark and then shown in in when she. 01:28:39:15 - 01:28:41:00 Nicole Goes to the adult bookstore. 01:28:41:01 - 01:28:54:01 Sean Yes. And then yeah. That's like is shown as like something that is confusing and frustrating and angering to those men because they're like, no, no, this is our thing. What are you doing here? We don't understand. 01:28:54:01 - 01:28:56:04 Nicole Why fucking up our thing. By being here. 01:28:56:06 - 01:29:29:03 Sean By being by being a participant and no longer being a subject. And yeah. And not an object. And I mean, I think that's. It presents an interesting sort of the way in which Pike and Mark Reverse in their roles is is different is because, you know, Pike becomes the supportive assistant, which would often be a female role 01:29:29:05 - 01:29:34:01 Sean in a lot of action movies, is like, Oh, I got your gun or I showed up to help or something. 01:29:34:02 - 01:29:37:11 Nicole Yeah, a romantic love interest. Who's right or die. 01:29:37:11 - 01:30:05:21 Sean But while Mark becomes the person who is sort of shocked and upset by how the the the noir ish mystery has changed there, he's Laura Dern in Blue Velvet. Like where she gets really disturbed by Kyle MacLachlan as he gets obsessed with with I'm spacing her name right now, Isabella Rossellini. 01:30:06:02 - 01:30:28:09 Sean Like she starts to get more and more disturbed by who like how he's being affected by that world, Mark, in a different way. Like that's not a good like equivalent, but it's a similar sort of response. His response is, you're like, this is changing you in a way that is upsetting to me because you're becoming part of 01:30:28:09 - 01:30:50:05 Sean this. And of course, the evolution of those is different because Kyle MacLachlan returns from that world. And Christine sort of supposedly sort of is fully, fully transformed by it. But I mean, sort of similar characters around. There are other versions, other things. 01:30:50:05 - 01:30:51:16 Sean That's just the only one that came to my mind. 01:30:52:18 - 01:31:09:21 Nicole But is it is it maybe a parallel to the Buffy character in a sense of like, is it really a transformation or is it more, if not a dropping layers of artifice per se is but still a more getting down to herself, more getting in touch with her self? 01:31:10:09 - 01:31:16:16 Sean Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right about that. The transformation wasn't quite the act that we think that like. 01:31:17:08 - 01:31:18:23 Nicole But it's I think Mark would. 01:31:19:03 - 01:31:19:13 Sean Yeah. 01:31:20:10 - 01:31:24:21 Nicole I think Mark would have a problem with a similar transformation, even if there was no pornography involved. 01:31:25:05 - 01:31:25:16 Sean Yes. 01:31:27:03 - 01:31:39:17 Nicole Yeah. I think I think as as Betty Gordon has said and and some of I think the more astute critics and scholars have said about this film, like it's set in the world of porn, but it's not a treatise on porn. 01:31:40:11 - 01:31:53:06 Nicole It's not about like pornography. Is it is it empowering? Is it degrading those those aren't the questions that this film is engaging with. I think a lot of people view it that way because that's the only way they're used to. 01:31:53:06 - 01:32:14:03 Nicole There being any feminist addresses of pornography is in terms of this like degradation, empowerment, binary, like, which is pretty boring to me. I don't know and not what this this film is interested in. But I think, you know, there there could have been you could have sent to set it someplace else. 01:32:14:03 - 01:32:37:07 Nicole I don't know if it would have worked quite as perfectly as this works, but you could write a book about a woman, you know, embracing her own sexual desires and desires in general, including the desire to view and the pleasures of seeing which are what cinema are all about, which is what Christine is really getting in touch 01:32:37:07 - 01:32:51:22 Nicole with in this in this film, which is which is sexual desire in some respects, but not exclusively. And, you know, Mark doesn't like that. She's working in a porn theater, but he wouldn't like hearing about her desires anyway. 01:32:52:06 - 01:32:54:13 Nicole No, he just wants to talk about his fucking story. 01:32:54:20 - 01:33:09:04 Sean Yeah, that's. That's all he's concerned about. I think one thing that maybe we can we can wrap up with is the question of and it came up when I was, when we were looking at one of the, one of the quotes, not not necessarily a very astute quote. 01:33:09:04 - 01:33:32:11 Sean And I think that's kind of the point, as does there this role reversal have to be like a full role reversal or what does a role reversal even necessarily mean? And the quote, which is from an article we found, U of M students respond to variety and this is one of the student's responses is on on variety 01:33:32:11 - 01:33:53:06 Sean where the reversal may fall short is the lack of interaction between the female subject and the male object and the patriarchal object subject relationships set up in the beginning of the film. There's a very physical and close and intense presence of the objectification, while the latter experience is much more distant and the object was never made aware 01:33:53:06 - 01:34:13:03 Sean until perhaps the final unresolved scene that he was being objectified. How could Christine's objectification through voyeurism gone further to reverse the patriarchal system of objectification and done so in a way that made the male character objectified, but also objectified while being aware of this objectification. 01:34:13:13 - 01:34:29:11 Sean I think it's missing. It's it's you know, this is this is the sort of criticism I've seen of other things where there's like a role reversal. It's like, well, you didn't do it all the way. You didn't make it like she's like the man. 01:34:29:22 - 01:34:53:21 Sean While it seems to me and that it's saying that the in order for the role reversal to be complete, the, the, the female subject must embrace a totally male subject point of view or story arc or character arc in order. 01:34:53:21 - 01:35:12:01 Sean And the male object must must exist entirely within what would traditionally be a female object position. Ignoring that there were there are going to be differences between a male and a male and female subjectivity. And I think. Sorry. 01:35:12:01 - 01:35:12:16 Nicole Go ahead. 01:35:12:16 - 01:35:37:07 Sean No, and I just. I think that, like. There's. There's a degree to which there's a misunderstanding. And I think this is a pretty decent summary of the kind of misunderstanding what actually it means to reverse the roles in telling one of these stories. 01:35:38:11 - 01:35:52:20 Nicole I agree. I it doesn't it's not a story isn't just like, I don't know, a plate with some marbles on it. And if you roll one this way, it's going to hit the other side of the plate and then it's going to reverse direction and go the other way. 01:35:52:20 - 01:36:09:16 Nicole And it's clear and neat, like, Oh, well, if you set something on this trajectory, it's going to continue along these mathematically determined lines. Right. It's it's not how stories work. It's not like, well, to have it be correct or right, there's some sort of mathematical formula you solve and you get zero or whatever. 01:36:09:23 - 01:36:10:19 Nicole That's, you know. 01:36:11:16 - 01:36:18:19 Sean You're going to ruin the screenwriting book industry if people hear that, too. 01:36:19:08 - 01:36:36:11 Nicole That's our real long game. That's our real long game is we're going to we're going to start writing screenwriting manuals because, hey, I think we collectively have about the level of success getting feature films made that most people who make a living telling other people how to get feature films made have probably. 01:36:39:06 - 01:36:50:23 Nicole But I, I this quote from this student, I kind of it makes me nostalgic in a way. I, I don't know who the student is. This is from an article where there was a screening at U of M a variety. 01:36:50:23 - 01:37:08:05 Nicole Betty Gordon came and spoke and some students wrote some responses, some of which got published on the school website, newspaper, something of that sort which I thought were interesting in terms of seeing what some responses were from young people in academia who are watching this film in that kind of context. 01:37:08:05 - 01:37:26:04 Nicole So they are thinking of it in these theoretical ways. They get that it's a film that's in dialog with cinema, etc. But I also it brought me back to when I was in college studying cultural studies and remembering, oh yes, this is what happens when you have to write a paper is you kind of like decide a 01:37:26:04 - 01:37:41:00 Nicole point and then you argue it fully whether or not you fully even believe what you're arguing, because it's an interesting and useful in theory, at least a line of thought to go down. There's there's all sorts of stuff that I think is interesting and useful to read. 01:37:41:00 - 01:37:55:09 Nicole And it's not about like, do I exactly agree with this or not? It's more like a thought exercise. And that's a lot of what some of what like this quote felt like to me. I was like, this seems like it was written by a smart person and it makes sense. 01:37:55:09 - 01:38:18:04 Nicole And I get why you would write this after seeing this film. However, I do not think this is the point of this film. I don't think this is a film about objectification, and I think the concept of identity objectification is both generally addressed in an overly simplistic way that boils down to you object is objectification is bad 01:38:18:17 - 01:38:34:04 Nicole , objectification is a thing is what happens to women under patriarchy is bad. And I'm not saying there isn't bad objectification that happens of women under patriarchy. I believe there is, but I don't think that's the story of objectification. 01:38:34:04 - 01:38:35:18 Nicole It's become shorthand for that. 01:38:36:05 - 01:38:36:16 Sean Mm hmm. 01:38:37:00 - 01:38:54:06 Nicole I think that cuts off a lot of really interesting discourse that we could be having, including about this movie. And I'm like, No, it's about watching. It's about her subjectivity. But I don't think this is a binary film with a binary idea of gender necessarily. 01:38:54:06 - 01:39:14:05 Nicole I don't think this is a very essentialist film gender wise. And I don't like this idea that like, well, to do it fully, then the guy needs to be objectified back in the same way that it might be like the point that you are making in like a sexist film or or a film coming from a more 01:39:15:00 - 01:39:31:08 Nicole perspective of a man that doesn't really have much space for the perspectives of a woman. It's like, well, just just doing that, but having a woman do it, why is that interesting? It's not super interesting to me. And it also leads to like down this path that to me I feel like is just an intellectual trap where 01:39:31:08 - 01:39:44:08 Nicole we start talking about things like the male gaze and the female gaze, which is all referring back to this essay by Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema that I did not reread before recording this episode all the way. 01:39:44:08 - 01:39:55:01 Nicole I've read it in the past, which is where the concept of male gaze comes from. I think a lot of the stuff where people start talking about the male gaze, they didn't read this article, they don't really know what she's talking about. 01:39:55:01 - 01:40:06:15 Nicole It becomes this like dumbed down thing that's kind of almost like men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Men are like this, women are like this. This is how men look at women. What if women looked at men? 01:40:06:15 - 01:40:18:21 Nicole Why, if it would be empowering for women to objectify men? I'm and I'm not against women objectifying men, not even against it necessarily as part of a feminist project. It could be. I'm not you know, it's just that we can't. 01:40:19:12 - 01:40:19:20 Sean Yeah. 01:40:21:00 - 01:40:38:05 Nicole Well, it's just it's. Can we break out of this this trap of, you know, objectification, subjectivity? Who's looking? Is it a man like in this very binary model is it's just it's like it's 2021. Can we have a richer way of seeing the world? 01:40:38:05 - 01:40:58:09 Nicole Can we have a richer way of looking at gender? Like this movie from the early eighties, I think was less reductive about how women are, how women look, how men, you know, like then a lot of a lot of stuff today, including arguably this this quote about like, well, you know, to do the project fully, then he 01:40:58:09 - 01:41:07:13 Nicole would have to be the object. But you have to be aware of it because the whole thing and I'm like, But, but the movie's a movie. At the end of the day, it is a film. It's not a paper, right? 01:41:07:16 - 01:41:20:20 Nicole It's a film about a lot of things, but it's ultimately engaging. It's engaging with film and the history of film, not trying to solve a math problem. I don't feel like I'm articulating this very well is it doesn't make any sense what I'm saying. 01:41:20:20 - 01:41:32:00 Sean No, absolutely. Well, and I think that's I think what you're saying is actually like something worth talking about, about how a lot of films are approached. A film is not a math problem. It's trying to tell a story. 01:41:32:00 - 01:41:55:06 Sean It's going to interact with a lot of theory, a lot of politics, a lot of just social issues. It's going to interact with them, but no film is going to be a solution to one of those things, a full exploration of it, or even a very robust exploration of it. 01:41:55:06 - 01:42:12:11 Sean Like, I think Variety arguably does a very good job of being and a relative deep dove into what it's trying to do. But even then, it is not a it is not going to be that, as I say, robust. 01:42:12:11 - 01:42:32:16 Sean It's supposed to be telling a story. It's in 2 minutes. Exactly. It's interacting with all of these things, even Buffy, to bring it in into the same conversation. We will always have criticisms of the things that are still trying to do something because yes, they will never do all of it. 01:42:32:16 - 01:42:45:14 Sean And that's fine. In fact, that should be something that we embrace because yeah, this is doing these things is doing these things well. These are other things that maybe didn't do so well or other things that we can talk about as that is a launching point. 01:42:45:14 - 01:43:10:20 Sean Like it can be a launching point, but it cannot be the thing itself. And you know, in this, you know, not to talk about it a lot, but like in this era of the very fast criticisms that happen on social media like and the very, very honestly, what's the word I'm looking for shallow criticism to that happen 01:43:10:20 - 01:43:27:19 Sean across social media of art and many of which like get recycled on a regular basis because of the nature of social media. Like I think that there is a complete missing of that point of that. It's a it is a piece of art on its own. 01:43:27:19 - 01:43:41:23 Sean First, it is interacting with these topics and trying to interact with certain topics on a level it will never be. None will ever be. Perfect. Or as you know, some people I think it's I don't really love I kind of like this at first. 01:43:41:23 - 01:43:53:12 Sean I don't really love anymore. It's like, Oh, everything's problematic or your favorite is problematic or any of that is like, Oh, it's problematic. And it's saying that it should have been in the first place, it should have been perfect, but it is not. 01:43:53:17 - 01:44:18:18 Sean And so therefore it is a problem, is that no, you're talking about it and that's what it should do. Like if it's trying to do that, that's what it should do. Buffy should help us talk about the the roles of of women and the ways that we sort of view women as heroes or not, men as supporters 01:44:18:18 - 01:44:38:01 Sean or not. You know, it should it should do that, but it should not be. All of those things and it can't ever be all of those things. None of them can be, you know. And I think right now, we're in a we're in a space where. 01:44:40:09 - 01:44:50:06 Sean People are just repeating, as you mentioned, there's the what do you call it, the male gaze thing. They're repeating the same thing about things like the men, and. 01:44:50:06 - 01:45:08:23 Nicole They don't even know what it means. And I don't mean that in a snobby way. I just mean they make it more reductive than it actually is. So there's this idea of there's some sort of monolithic male gaze, there's patriarchal and sexist, and then they seem to get that like, so our project, maybe it should be having 01:45:08:23 - 01:45:13:00 Nicole a female gaze that answers that. And I'm just like. 01:45:13:10 - 01:45:22:15 Sean But they never defined the male gaze in the first place. I mean, I'm sure that article, which I have not read, but like they obviously it's about not doing it when. 01:45:22:16 - 01:45:39:01 Nicole It's about how it's a cinema studies thing, it's about how films are constructed, constructed and how they're constructed in part largely in a way that's designed to provide pleasure for what's deemed as most primarily like a heterosexual male audience. 01:45:39:01 - 01:45:57:14 Nicole Like that's the imagined viewer. And that's who the vast majority of the directors and the cinematographers, at least in the United States, who make films and and in the history of cinema, a very good chunk of the people who are making films in the early decades of cinema work. 01:45:58:00 - 01:46:13:13 Nicole Well, maybe if they weren't all heterosexual, but a lot of white dudes who were at least primarily trying to speak to a heterosexual male audience and oftentimes couldn't even conceive of female subjectivity. This is something we run up against time and time again. 01:46:13:13 - 01:46:29:23 Nicole And certainly I as a filmmaker, run up against time and time again where dudes will be like, But why isn't your script centering me? And I'm like, You're not my target audience. And that is an unacceptable answer because the target audience for cinema should be straight white guys. 01:46:29:23 - 01:46:47:17 Nicole And that's what a lot of people believe. Whether or not they're aware of the fact that they they hold that belief, that's kind of their bias that they're operating within. And I feel like, too, some of the stuff you raised, and that's a lot of why I like variety so very much so I think I think it 01:46:47:17 - 01:47:08:13 Nicole does a better job than most of these films do in recognizing the inherent necessary incompleteness of any given film. And in fact, then turn that into part of what their subject is, as well as understanding the importance of what the viewer is bringing to a film, and the viewer being someone who is interacting with a film and 01:47:08:13 - 01:47:24:18 Nicole creating meaning that that also is built into the structure of how how variety is made. These these are people who made this film. We're very aware of these these kinds of things in a way that I don't think something like Buffy is, which isn't even a dig at it. 01:47:25:02 - 01:47:26:21 Nicole It's not nearly as theoretical or. 01:47:27:02 - 01:47:28:08 Sean No as we. 01:47:28:08 - 01:47:29:19 Nicole Say, academic or thoughtful a. 01:47:29:19 - 01:47:52:07 Sean Film. No, no. Well, and I think there's something maybe that that's worth thinking about and that we can necessarily get into too much. But about that lack of completion, because that is an issue or lack of in not even lack of completion necessarily in like the end of the film because there's, there's criticisms of variety in that 01:47:52:07 - 01:48:09:16 Sean it ends on this ambiguous note, but then so it feels incomplete as we mentioned that that's a criticism. But there is an attitude towards films where people, they talk all the time about like there's a plot hole here, a plot hole there. 01:48:09:16 - 01:48:36:22 Sean It's like, yeah, they just didn't explain every little step of the way, like this desire for completion ism. But then also there's a degree to which that is birthed somewhat from the especially I think more recently from the explosion of television narrative because you know, when, when Buffy came out, there was still not that much comparatively like 01:48:36:22 - 01:49:01:17 Sean it were there were still it was still dominated by the networks. Cable was a thing that was growing. But now today, like, we have the explosion of serialized narratives which are exhaustive in their exposition of things, both because of the the structure of television, which explains things every act break so that you if you went away for 01:49:01:17 - 01:49:24:00 Sean a commercial. But the response I wonder if the response to variety as a thing that is in complete. That leaves you hanging. But then also, like every film is incomplete in many ways because there is a subject there. 01:49:24:01 - 01:49:44:10 Sean There is a life beyond the moments on camera, which is implied, at least implied in a good movie. It's always implied. There's always like a sense with film for the most part, that there is there are things that happened before, before you started watching. 01:49:44:18 - 01:49:50:01 Sean There are things that happen between scenes that are off camera. I mean, I think back to that. 01:49:50:01 - 01:49:52:15 Nicole Object permanence thing we talked about at the beginning of the show. 01:49:53:02 - 01:50:04:17 Sean And then and, you know, probably are making way more of a topic out of this than than it needs to be. But then this is perhaps also related to the fact that we have so many prequels right now. 01:50:06:02 - 01:50:07:18 Sean Everything has to have an origin story. 01:50:08:07 - 01:50:25:13 Nicole Now we have a lot of that. It would be interesting to broaden the discussion to economic motive, because that's so much about what that is. It's not really about a desire or need for like exhaustive narratives in and of itself, as it's like, well, we've got this IP, so what do we do with this IP? 01:50:25:13 - 01:50:39:16 Nicole We do an origin story. I know there are also fans who are dying for those origin stories and there is some hunger for it. But this but I think before we even get to that, it's like. You know, just the history of film. 01:50:40:08 - 01:50:58:00 Nicole It's in more experimental films like Variety that we usually see the filmmakers playing more intentionally with incompleteness. Yeah, right. And, you know, people who are very much like they theorize film, they think about film, they make films that are in reaction to existing film. 01:50:58:00 - 01:51:19:07 Nicole Betty Gordon's shorts, before Variety were, you know, much more abstract then. Variety is variety is a relatively conventional narrative. And in fact, I believe she got some pushback from people who are kind of part of the experimental film scene saying the scene variety is like a sell out move, basically, which is which is kind of wild to 01:51:19:07 - 01:51:35:05 Nicole look at now because it's like, Oh, wow, that's your sell out movie. Okay. But then I'm like, well, I can understand. I can imaginatively identify with being in the early eighties in downtown New York, and I could see that like, Oh, you got some German money to make your like $80,000 feature, like are a big spender. 01:51:35:14 - 01:51:54:10 Nicole But compared to most films that have a coherent narrative like it does, it's not that it's like super elliptical and fragmented and, like, hard to tell what's happening. It's very clear what's happening. But but but it builds it builds incompleteness and gaps into how it tells its narrative. 01:51:54:10 - 01:52:06:19 Nicole It builds in what the audience is going to bring to it. And the audience making meaning and making their own decisions about it. It builds into it, I think, in a much more graceful way than than filmmakers generally are able to. 01:52:06:20 - 01:52:26:06 Nicole So it's funny that it gets faulted for its ambiguous ending. One that's like it's like is an ambiguous or do the filmmakers actually give you and your subjectivity some credit? And maybe, you know, you could just think about it for a minute before immediately having a knee jerk. 01:52:26:07 - 01:52:28:23 Nicole I am angry that I was not given a clear conclusion. 01:52:29:17 - 01:52:31:13 Sean But people people always get angry about that. 01:52:32:17 - 01:52:35:03 Nicole People like to get angry about a lot of the films we like. 01:52:35:03 - 01:52:51:21 Sean Shaun It's true. So speaking of the films that we like, I'd be very interested to hear what other people have to say or about this, particularly like sort of the role reversals in Buffy or anything like that. Like does it work for them? 01:52:51:21 - 01:53:06:22 Sean Do they have issues with it? Other people who've seen Variety, which, you know, hopefully when we released this, it's still available on Criterion. It seems like the sort of thing they probably live on for a while. They usually leave things on for at least a couple of months, so hopefully it's still on there. 01:53:06:22 - 01:53:16:17 Sean And if you haven't watched it yet, you should. It is a good movie. It is. Anything else you'd like to say to the people before we. 01:53:17:16 - 01:53:19:19 Nicole No, I mean, goodbye. 01:53:20:14 - 01:53:23:22 Sean Goodbye. Goodbye, people. Goodbye. 01:53:27:06 - 01:53:47:15 Film clip The celluloid mirror is a four mile circus production hosted by Nicole Solomon and Sean Mannion. Our theme music is twisted by Kevin McCloud. You can hear more from Kevin McCloud at Incompetent Dove film Musica IO. Please take a few moments to rate and review the celluloid mirror on your podcast platform of choice. 01:53:48:01 - 01:54:03:08 Film clip It really helps with discoverability. If you have questions or comments about what you heard on the show or suggestions for future episodes, feel free to email us at info at Four Mile Circus dot com or seek us out on social media. 01:54:03:15 - 01:54:23:22 Film clip We are at Four Mile Circus on Twitter and Instagram. Want more from the celluloid Maire, Sean and Nicole? Join our Patreon at Patriarchy slash four mile circus. You'll get early access to episodes, uncut video of our recording sessions, access to our Discord server, and much more. 01:54:24:06 - 01:54:28:20 Sean To learn more about everything we do, visit us at Four Mile Circus Scott. 01:54:32:12 - 01:54:34:07 Film clip I ended up in that hall of mirrors 01:54:35:16 - 01:54:58:02 Film clip There was another girl. She looked like me. Exactly like me. You can choose what happens when the story dies. The evil is set free. To returns some videotapes.