Lolita with Fran Hoepfner

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect And all you need to know is that the neighbors are shy with Blank Check I want you to live with me and die with me and podcast with me!

[00:00:26] Not a bad Mason. I mean, remember when Jon Hamm busted out a James Mason on SNL? Yeah. It was like he was having a great app and then you were like, is he gonna do an impression of James Mason? You got a pocket Mason.

[00:00:40] And it was like, alright. Alright. Yeah. In what sketch? Huh? In what sketch? It was one of those Bill Hader sketches that's like a black and white Vincent Price movie or whatever. Oh. Where Hader's just like, hi guys, it's for me.

[00:00:52] Right, that became the weird receptacle for like, like does the host have an impression that is so out of vogue that there's no other sketch you can put it in? We need hosts who can do stuff like that again. Absolutely.

[00:01:05] I was looking for quotes to open this episode with and I was struggling to find a quote that didn't overly sexualize the podcast. You know what I'm saying? I mean, sure, yeah, yeah, I guess so. You didn't wanna do normal guy, normal podcast? Normal guy, normal podcast.

[00:01:23] I can't remember a lot of quotes from this movie. I'm just sort of searching my brain. It's really just the normal guy stuff I remember. After I saw it at Film Forum, I went back home and looked up that normal guy scene just to watch it again.

[00:01:35] It is so crazy in the context of the film. It is so bizarre. And all the comments on YouTube are like, this is bone chilling, this is so scary, this is the scariest part of this movie, this is so upsetting and disturbing.

[00:01:47] I was like, this is really funny. This is so funny. I think it's both. It is very funny, but it does make my skin crawl where the tension of it is unbearable. What drives me insane is the two-fold nature of this podcast, of every podcast perhaps.

[00:02:02] This mixture in my podcast is tense, and then you found this thing. I never even get it. He's going down the drain. I know it is my madness to keep this podcast. Trying to scoop him back into the cup. Gives me a strange thrill to do so.

[00:02:16] That happened to me recently where I was wearing a cheap pair of sunglasses. I was kayaking. Jesus fucking Christ. Did you lose them? They fell off. No. And they went in the water, and I had the one second where I was like, I can grab them.

[00:02:30] I miss, and then it was just like, gone. And they were heart-shaped, right? They were heart-shaped. They were like, yeah, my Lolita kayaking. You were lying in the kayak, Lolita style, on your tummy. I love to just throw off a Lolita vibe on my kayak. Legs thrown up.

[00:02:44] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Your wife said, David, what the fuck are you doing? Grab the paddle. I wish I could. David, what the fuck are you? I can get it for a second, and I lose it again. It's almost like,

[00:02:57] there's a little bit of male Catherine Hepburn in it. Right, there's like a little bit of the. Right, obviously he's an Englishman. But there is- I'm sorry, what? James Mason's from the UK. How do you know that? But there is one of those things

[00:03:13] where when you see him, you're like, well, of course this guy was a movie star. Sure, he's not maybe conventionally handsome. Sure. He's handsome, but you know what? Yeah, yeah. And he only got famous when he's older, but when you hear him talk, you're like,

[00:03:25] yeah, but no one else is like this. That's the thing. So it's just kind of like, yeah, you gotta have this guy in movies. People used to be movie stars because they were just unique. You know, it's kind of what David Niven is like.

[00:03:34] I know David Niven was a genuine sex symbol. Right. It's not, I'm, but like- But Bogart's- We're just like, who else is like this fucking guy? Bogart, sure. Bogart's the perfect example of that, where you're like, you read through Bogart's career,

[00:03:44] and you're like, as a young man in theater, his thing was playing like glib, upper crust, blue blood, like fucking rich boys, right? And then he becomes like, oh, ages, he no longer looks like that. Have him be the guy in the back of like the fucking gang,

[00:04:00] the trigger man. At some point they're like- Yeah, he was the heavy, right. Right, I don't know, just let him fucking be the star of one movie. What are we gonna do? And everyone's just like, who the fuck looks like this and sounds like this?

[00:04:09] Like this is young Bogie, younger Bogie. Or he's a little more debonair. Right. It's funny that like you read young Bogie reviews, and they talk about him like he's Bradley Cooper in Wedding Crashers. And they're like, this guy's obviously figured out his type. God. Bradley Cooper, Wedding Crashers.

[00:04:25] All the photos are like him in like a fucking- Don't get me going on Cooper. Sweater with a racket. The maestro himself? No, I can't talk about it. We can't talk maestro? Well, I mean, we can. We can talk maestro. Maybe in fact we must talk maestro.

[00:04:36] Well, we will talk maestro on blank check whenever maestro do come out. That was like, I woke up in a cold sweat being like, they're gonna cover maestro, right? She literally texted me at like six in the morning asking. And maestro do come out, right? We do think?

[00:04:48] Next year, I believe. Next year, next fall. Okay, what the fuck, maestro? Do you know what maestro is? No! It's Bradley Cooper's next directed film. Oh wow. In which he plays Leonard Bernstein, the famous composer. Steven Spielberg was supposed to direct it. Oh yeah, I saw him.

[00:05:04] I saw him in Old Man. Yes. He's wearing a big prosthetic nose. He's wearing Bernstein face, yeah. He's apparently directing in Bernstein voice. Yes. Cool. Which, I mean, I don't think you should drop the voice in between scenes. If you are the maestro,

[00:05:18] how are you gonna drop maestro when you're being the director? I mean, no, I agree. Which is in many ways the maestro. It's just a crazy thing to think because then it's like, oh, it's almost as if maestro himself, Leonard Bernstein, directed a film.

[00:05:28] But like you work in film. I've done a few terrible films, yes. The director is the maestro. Correct. Right, exactly. Always. And I only work with auteurs. You only work with maestros. I only work with maestros. I'm very selective.

[00:05:41] Like your specific, oh, you know, fuck, who, you know, who's the director who's bad? I don't know, Len Wiseman. Len Wiseman, he's not a maestro. I'm not doing a Wiseman movie. I turn on every Wiseman picture. You keep getting offered. I keep getting offered.

[00:05:55] I've turned on four consecutive underworld movies. Yeah, you get thrown underworlds at you. Yeah. Oh boy. I refuse to play either a lichen or a, I don't know what the other ones are called. I think they're just vampires. Are they? Don't they have another name?

[00:06:08] The lichens are the werewolves. Don't the vampires have some code name or are they just called vampires? Vampires and lichens. Okay. Is one of them called- She's a vampire? No, she is. She's not like a vampire hunter. Who's Mila? Huh? Who is? It's Kate Beckinsale.

[00:06:23] Oh, it's Kate Beckinsale. There's 15 years of, I feel, Beckinsale and Wiseman and Mila and Paul W.S. Anderson. I get these pairings mixed up. The Resident Evil and the Underworld and then both of them occasionally stepping outside to do other screen gems.

[00:06:39] Where they're still basically like wearing a leather jacket and kind of just doing the same thing, but it's not. But it was just like the two married couple franchises. But there's one Underworld that Beckinsale is not. Maybe the- Rise of the Lichens? Yeah, when the lichens rose.

[00:06:54] That's the prequel. That was when they were just like, okay, so Kate's not in. Nye on the poster? Let's just put Nye on the poster. I think Michael Sheen's first Bill. Michael Sheen, Bill Nye, Rona Mitra. Right, because the whole thing is that it's Romeo and Juliet.

[00:07:10] With Speedman as Romeo? Yes, and he's a werewolf. And then, at least for the first movie. A lichen of sorts. Bill Nye is one of, he's the vampire father. Bill Nye's the head of the vamps. Right. And I believe Sheen is the head of the-

[00:07:21] The Montague or the Capulet, whatever. Right, it's just funny that they were like, I don't know. It's Nye. Put something on there. The other thing is, at the time of making the first Underworld film, I believe if not married, Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen

[00:07:33] were at least strongly together. They had a child together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she leaves him for Len Wiseman. And then they were like, Michael, you gonna do the sequel? And he's like, I mean, gigs a gig. And then he's even doing the movies that she's not in.

[00:07:44] Sheen is famously chill about this stuff. There was some video of Sheen and David Tennant roasting each other. Did you see this? They must have been doing a podcast or something. No, I was gonna point out the Uma Thurman Stern clip that was making the rounds.

[00:07:57] Still love him. Of, yeah, talking about Ethan Hawke and Stern being like, he cheated on you. And she's like, so? Right. Cool. Get over it. That is cool. Because this is the thing, I feel like when we were younger, things like that, it was like,

[00:08:11] you know, you'd read the magazines, right? And it was like, Ethan Hawke is banished to bad boy territory forever for doing this unpardonable sin or whatever. And often, then you dig into it and Michael Sheen, Kate Beckinsale, they're like, oh, we're friends. We have a kid together.

[00:08:27] Yeah, yeah. It's all good. He did like four more underage movies. We all fuck each other. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Ethan Hawke is bad. No way. I'm not buying it. There are good things about him. Yeah. It was Crudup who was the most. Yes.

[00:08:41] Oh, well, yeah. Because she was pregnant, right? When he left her. My mom won't watch Billy Crudup in anything. And if he's in something, she's like, you know what, I'm not interested. Yeah. He's good. Crudup and Watts ending up together is interesting. Crudup and Naomi Watts?

[00:08:56] Yes, currently together. She was with Leave. I know. I didn't even know this. Yeah. She left Leave. She left Leave. 50 ways to leave your Leave. She made the decision to leave Fiber. I didn't know that. I had no idea. I once saw them together on the platform

[00:09:14] and asked her place. Leave or Watts? Leave and Watts and at least one child. Yeah. And I thought, there they are. There they are. No, Watts and Crudup together now is interesting. This energy is weird. We don't want to talk about Lelita.

[00:09:29] I feel like I'm just watching you all sort of dance around the topic. Well, James Mason just set us on some weird path. What's up? You know, you think we're trying to avoid talking about the movie in question today? There was like the late 90s, early 2000s thing

[00:09:42] where I think that entire actor scene of like Patricia Clarkson, Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, like there was like four or five couples that all seemed to keep crossing over. And then I feel like Leave and Watts were like right hovering outside of that.

[00:09:59] Mary Louise Parker and Crudup right outside of that. All the like sort of like, they're movie stars but they're also serious New York theater actors. Right, right, right. Yeah. And it always just felt like there was internal drama and couple swap and then shit like that.

[00:10:12] She met Crudup on the set of Gypsy. Which we all remember. The Netflix show Gypsy. I remember. Gypsy felt like the first Netflix show where people were like, oh, Netflix shows can be dog shit. Netflix having a show is no longer automatically.

[00:10:25] They can have like a prestige show with a big actor. Starring Academy Award nominees and dog shit. It's funny how that always happens to poor Naomi Watts where she's like, now I'll do my Netflix show. And I'm like not interested. Hold the shutter down. Right.

[00:10:36] HBO's like, we gotta make as many Game of Thrones prequels as possible and then she films one and they're like, except for this one. Yeah, no. This one we're not doing. Put this next to Batgirl. Yeah, Crudup, who knew? Well, you know what? What? Great up. Thank you.

[00:10:51] Ben, you wanna hit stop? Ben, wrap it up. Perfect show. I'm joking, I'm excited to talk about Lolita. I'm not, listen, hey everybody. Oh. Come on. This is a podcast. A blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies.

[00:11:03] You really bungled that? Yeah, that was weird. I'm David. Did you get nervous? Do you get nervous to record? No. No. You sound nervous. I maybe, the only time I would get nervous these days is with some sort of like fancy guest. And you are one of them.

[00:11:18] So that's why I'm nervous. Okay, thank you. Blockbuster Fran Hoffman. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers or give a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce baby.

[00:11:31] This is a pretty good example. Of a what? Of someone cashing in a check. I would say so, because this is post-Spartacus, correct? Yeah. Which is Keurig's most successful film. Directed the highest grossing film of its year. And was the biggest hit of its year.

[00:11:47] So that's one reason he probably gets to make Lolita. But of course, I think it's also the fact that Lolita was, despite being controversial, such a bestseller that it was automatically like, well, if you can do that, it could be a hit.

[00:12:00] Look, this movie does have one of, if not the single greatest tagline of all time. How do they ever make a movie of Lolita? It is perfect. It is a great tagline. And the answer is like, eh, they did an okay job. With great difficulty. Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:13] But it was like, that was the whole fucking marketing hook for this movie of like, what are you talking about? How were they allowed to do that? How was he going to find a way into doing this?

[00:12:24] I had not seen this movie since I was in high school. You did see it in high school? I saw it in high school when I was reading the book. When you read the book, sure. They taught that book at your school, right? Yep.

[00:12:35] Because my wife also read it in high school. And I was like, this seems like a terrible book to read in high school. Not even the content, it's just too hard. Oh, okay. Am I crazy? No, it's hard. It is, but I'll say this.

[00:12:45] I've never had to read it for school. I read it on my own while in college. College just feels right. I don't know, it's just like, it's a fairly dense book language-wise. Maybe I'm underestimating high schoolers. I agree, it was absolutely,

[00:12:57] I was such a skim the book, do bare minimum, watch the movie, avoid it at all costs kind of kid. Which isn't really gonna help you with this one perfectly. No, but Lolita was one of the few examples where I was like, page one, I was like,

[00:13:10] this thing's fucking well-written. And I just burned through that thing. It was like one of my absolute favorite books I was assigned in high school, and the only ones I not only read, but read like thoroughly and passionately. And then was like,

[00:13:21] and now I get to watch the movie as a bonus? It's a Kubrick film. I watched the movie and I was like, this sucks, this is not what I like about the book. Hadn't seen it since, had always been looking to revisit it.

[00:13:31] And revisiting it very recently for this show, it just hit me almost immediately, now having the context I didn't have as a high schooler of like, oh, they normally made a movie out of Lolita. They made it during the Hayes Code. Yeah, yeah, and not Dorothy. No.

[00:13:50] Dorothy Hayes. Dorothy Hayes. Character's name. Get into it. It's like pre-MPAA, like it wasn't like your movie got a rating, it just had to pass this sort of like censorship board. But it wasn't, there was no ratings,

[00:14:02] there was just a list of things you could not do in movies under any circumstances. Wow. And if you got a no, you didn't get to, you know, like you had to get a no. It couldn't exist. You just couldn't be then released. Yeah, exactly.

[00:14:12] Not many, not many particularly. You're being checked to that code at every stage of development. At script, shooting, editing, and so that tagline is like, can you believe we got it through the code? Right. Oh. You know, that's what they're saying. Yeah.

[00:14:28] Like it's not just like, oh, this is a simpler time. That's right. You may have social mores. Maybe not, but maybe the expression of pre-code movie, movies from like the early 30s especially where they're actually raunchier in a lot of ways

[00:14:41] than later because the code didn't exist yet and they were kind of like, get me to it. That's the thing, like there are like silent films with nudity and there are like early 30s gangster films that are much more hard edged and then there's this 30 year period.

[00:14:54] Fucking horny. Well, yeah, yes. Like shit like Designed for Living where you're like, this is the most still sexually impressive thing. No. Oh, Fran, you would fucking love. Designed for Living, great movie. Yes, yes. But then there's this 30 year period where like all of Hollywood is like,

[00:15:13] how do we like talk around these things? And it's not just sex and, it's like crime must pay, you know, right? You can't have someone who gets away with it. Right, he's gotta go to jail or die or whatever. It's not just about what, it's a morality,

[00:15:29] this guy named Hayes. That's so weird. He was like a fucking archbishop or some shit. He was like the archbishop. His name was Will Hayes, he was the president of the MPAA. He was just a politician. He was like, I think he was the postmaster general

[00:15:44] at some point, like it's just like. But was it always like think of the children or was it really more like morality? Yes, the 30s is when it starts at the same time as like, you know, all kinds of other sort of morality.

[00:15:57] He went from postmaster general to this? Well, let's see. Or the other way around. That's sort of a jump. No, he was postmaster general from 1921 to 1922 in the Harding administration. Okay. And yes, he resigned from the cabinet to become the first chairman of the MPAA.

[00:16:12] Now he didn't institute the Hayes Code for 10 plus years. Bizarre jump. You know what? Post movies? There's a movie called The Post? Sure. I hope Louis DeJoy becomes the next head of the MPAA and he's just like, we can't afford it. No more movies. No more movies.

[00:16:28] These things are expensive. No more ratings. You think every movie gets a rating for free? You gotta draw the R every time. Takes a while. Don't come cheap. Ben, I do think it was less about the children and more about like society is collapsing. Right, right.

[00:16:45] It was like we need to create standards in society. We need to control storytelling. Right, and it's just like alcohol is bad, jazz music is bad, you know, like all these things. We're just like the fucking, the ruined 20s, the 30s, things have gotten too loose.

[00:17:00] We gotta fucking pull it back. Art should show you how to live. Right. This is a very famous poster depicting everything you can't do in the Hayes Code. Okay. So you want me to read you the 10 commandments? Yes, please. Thou shalt not show the law defeated,

[00:17:17] show the inside of a thigh. Lace lingerie? No. Dead man? No, I don't really know what that means. Can't show a dead body? Narcotics, drinking, exposed bosom, gambling, pointing a gun, or showing a Tommy gun at all. It's like a weird list, right?

[00:17:35] I think eventually some of this stuff's softened, obviously. Yeah, no, I mean, it's of the time, right? Tommy guns aren't as much of a thing these days. But- It'd be funny if right now there was a Tommy gun in a Disney movie, and they're like,

[00:17:45] it's getting an R, I don't care. No one even used it, but. Can't show Tommy guns. You can't show Tommy guns. Yeah, it's the Hayes, yeah, anyway. No, it's a weird list, and it was like, that's why. The Hayes Code is finally defeated

[00:18:00] only a couple years after this film. It's technically 68, but yeah. It's basically diminishing- And then it's like New Hollywood. That's why there's such a revolution. Yeah, finally they had titties again. Like 69, you're allowed to start talking about 69ing again. But this movie is like Kubrick himself,

[00:18:18] and this is a miniseries on the films of Stanley Kubrick. Yeah. It's called Pod's Widecast. Our guest today is blockbuster Fran Hoffner. That's me. Blockbuster's own. Kubrick always said if he knew how difficult it was gonna be to make this movie under the Hayes Code,

[00:18:33] he wouldn't have made it. Now, you'd think he's a smart guy. You'd think he could've guessed. It's wild, and for a man who's so technical and so obsessed with systems and shit like that, he was just like, well, I thought I had a good strategy

[00:18:44] for how to do it, and then he got in there and found it was much more difficult and prohibitive than he thought. This book is like a Moby Dick situation where I think people think they have the upper hand on it and they don't for whatever reason.

[00:18:56] Sort of Ahab metaphor of like, you know, I haven't pre-thought this out. I'm just coming in with sort of whatever's at the top of my head. I know how to tackle this, and it's like, no, the book is beyond your flimsy imagination.

[00:19:11] Have you watched the Adrian line version? No. I saw it, you know, 20 years ago. I have no memory, but I thought about re-watching it just as context. It's fucking long. It's long. It's just laying out. And this movie's long too. I know.

[00:19:28] I watched like half of it last night, and I was just like, I'm too skeeved out by this. Sure, it's skeevier, yeah. I mean, I remember just like, it was one of those classic sleepover rental things where we were like teenagers and we were like,

[00:19:42] oh my God, this is gonna be, and it was like me and a bunch of girls as well. And then it was like 20 minutes in, we were like, this is boring. But you know, we were teenagers. We were not. It's sort of just an unadaptable book

[00:19:54] in a way that I think a lot of Nabokov is unadaptable. But not only is it unadaptable, I think, and I agree with, like, but two pages into this book, I would just be like, oh, how would I do this? Forget it. No, it's so- It's plainly unadaptable.

[00:20:10] Yes. It's so voicey and the prose is so rich and dense that that is never gonna be something that succeeds on the big screen. So all you can take is the premise. Right. And that premise is tough. The premise is tough.

[00:20:21] It's something you don't wanna have to actually witness. And not only that, it's very hard to put people in the situations to enact it. But I don't, no, but it's also just like, it's boring. Like, you know, a lot, I mean, like,

[00:20:35] just like literally putting shit on screen, like a lot of it is just them having these, like, sort of charged conversations. The events of the book are not that interesting. What is interesting is the internal life of this guy. Yeah, and that prose is riveting,

[00:20:47] which is sort of what they really can't figure out how to translate is like, this was a real page-turner book for me. And this movie is kind of dramatically patchy, I guess. Absolutely. Very saggy at times. And the Adrian Lyne version does the voiceover,

[00:21:03] and it like lifts as much of the language as possible, which feels like a smart move to do if you're trying to do the anti-Kubrick Lolita like 30 years later. But the second you have Jeremy Irons in full like broken skeezball,

[00:21:15] like Jeremy Irons, I'm in Dead Ringers, Reversal of Fortune, I love playing these cursed men and butterfly roles. The second you have him reciting that dialogue, you're just like, this is unbearably sad. This is just the most pathetic broken man in the world.

[00:21:30] I don't wanna live with this guy, you know? Mason does kind of get there at the end. And I think the point of view of this movie hates this guy enough for it to kind of work where he's both tragic and funny. Right. But it's so weird,

[00:21:45] because it's like to some degree he's kind of like a comic fool. To another degree, he's so much more sort of like charming and sophisticated than the character ever reads in the book. But in other ways, he's so much more pathetic and skeevy

[00:22:00] than the character ever reads in the book. Oh, so a guy in academia? Just kidding. Hey, yes, but yes. The latter half where he's like bickering with her, that's where you're just like, oh God, he's so pathetic. Like that's where I'm really losing interest

[00:22:17] in the action on screen. Yeah, once it sort of- Because I'm just like, I can't deal with this guy anymore. Pivots from like, are they gonna get away with it to like, can he even make this work?

[00:22:27] It's sort of like, well, I don't want him to make it work. And exactly, and it's like beyond any moral, it's like she's a teenager. Like what do you think is gonna happen? Like she's gonna have teenage things she wants to do. Like when he's arguing with her

[00:22:40] about like doing the play and all that, I'm just sort of like, the fuck do you think she just wants to hang out with you? You suck! It's boring! The other weird thing about this movie- What is he a professor of again? French literature.

[00:22:54] You don't wanna talk about Flo Baird with this guy for a couple hours? You wanna have a glass of wine, go to bed? No? But then he is James Mason. So sometimes you are like, look, I mean, he's James Mason.

[00:23:03] I'm charmed or I'm at least, you know, I'm interested. Like he's interesting to watch him talk. I feel like this is the thing that I feel like I will hear actors say this a lot when they sort of, people who love James Mason

[00:23:18] are obsessed with him as a movie star. He's a great movie star. We'll say like, and the fuck encouraged to do that role at that time, at that point in his career. Like that's a thing that separates him from the other movie stars. Yeah.

[00:23:30] Is that like, that on paper should be the most ruinous thing to do. Where if you do it well, you're gonna get tagged with it forever. And if you do it poorly, it's embarrassing. And he's actually weaponizing his own screen persona.

[00:23:43] He's not trying to create some new character to fit into this project. It is kind of incredible he makes it out of this movie alive. That it's- Oh, totally. You know? He might give the best, I mean, I don't think there's really a single weak performance in it.

[00:23:58] Yeah, no. I think there's good performances and weird performances. No, I like all four performances. I think they're all interesting. Yeah. But they all have such different effects on the movie. Yeah, sure. I mean, we're just going straight into the meat of this thing,

[00:24:12] because I don't know how else we talk about it. But it's another weird thing about like the exact moment in time this movie was made that I don't think is as much of a thing as if this film was made five years later.

[00:24:22] Is, you know, the character in the book is 14 or 12? 12. And she's aged up in this to- 14. Right. And Sue Lyon at the time is 16? No. She's 14. She's 14. This is, okay, so this is the whole thing. Yeah. I know that she's actually young in this movie. Yes.

[00:24:40] I even thought she was two years older than she was. Right. Watching this, it feels like a 25 year old playing a teenager. She does read old. There's no question. So much the child acting style of that moment. Sure. Right? Where she's like giving like a Hayley Mills performance

[00:24:55] where it's like, there are no naturalistic child performances at this time. She's got a lot of poise or whatever. I don't know. Like an Andy Hardy movie or whatever. Child performers at that time, I think are either pitched up or pitched down,

[00:25:06] but they're not playing right to like sort of the L.C. Fisher eighth grade kind of thing where you're like, oh, this is genuinely what a 13 year old is like. If this movie is made five years later, you have someone giving like a Jodie Foster-esque performance.

[00:25:19] Right, right, right. But at this moment, you have someone giving like an Andy Hardy like live action Disney movie style performance in a provocative film where I'm just the whole time, like I know this is actually a child and somehow it feels like an adult playing a kid

[00:25:34] on a teen show, which lends such an odd air to the thing. I guess. I don't know. I mean, my whole thing is with the book, which I read years ago and I reread for this podcast. You did? I did. You told me not to do that.

[00:25:53] Well, I didn't want to stress you out. Oh, I see. I just said like, you don't have to do it because you said, oh, maybe I'll reread and I was just trying to be like, relax. I really wanted to reread, but okay.

[00:26:00] If I had known, now I'm like, I guess I would've. It's actually Ruby who forbade her from rereading. She wanted to do it and France her own woman. David doesn't like me when I'm reading, you know? He hates you. You start getting ideas. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:10] Well, it's funny because my memory of this book was like they go on a road trip and then it ends, but it is sort of like, yeah, they go on a road trip and then it kind of just ends. Yeah. Yeah. That is the book.

[00:26:21] It's not heavily plotted, which is maybe why. Well, I mean, and Kubrick says this and I'll read some from him later, but like, you know, the first chunk of the book is you being like, is he, is this just going to be about him being obsessed

[00:26:32] with someone from afar or is there going to be movement? And then there's suddenly movement, right? She died. You know, all that happens very quickly and you're like, holy shit. And then the road trip part is sort of like, you know, there's some suspense to that obviously.

[00:26:47] And there's all this stuff with the hotel that there's not really, you know, all the hotel visits. But it's why he moved the cruelty killing up to the top of the movie is he's like, otherwise the balloon is deflated and then something shocking happens at the end. Right.

[00:26:58] If I have a sense of inevitability hanging over. I think the right decision. Yeah. I get, or I understand the decision from the film perspective, 100%. But then like you say, and then it's just kind of like, okay. It also then makes it so much of a cruelty movie.

[00:27:12] Whoa. Which then the performance is only intensified, but you're like, the whole movie is about like, who the fuck is this guy? Whereas in the book that's less of a thing. Like. That guy is not that weird. No.

[00:27:23] And it takes a very long time for you to really clock like, oh, there, you know, there is a person he should be worried about. Right. It's much more abstract. He is always looking over his shoulder and like, wait, who's this?

[00:27:34] And like, you know, but like, obviously it's not like, and then I talked to a guy with weird glasses, it's not as exaggerated. In this movie he's like the thing. Yeah, well, you know, there has to be something. It's I mean like, what the fuck?

[00:27:44] No, I'm saying he's like the thing, like John Carpenter's the thing. Like he's this like shape-shifting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is disturbing the ecosystem here? What is the threat I can identify? I reread, but I reread the book and I was again,

[00:27:57] just astonished at, right, like it is, the whole experience of it is you being in his head and his just like layers of sort of self aggrandizement and justification and patheticness. It's just so fascinating to read and it's so beautifully written.

[00:28:12] And I just again was reading it and I was like, yeah, no wonder this movie doesn't totally work. Like how the fuck do you put any, this is literally just James Mason darting his eyes around is how you dramatize that. Not only that.

[00:28:22] I don't know, like how do you do that? Not only that, but like the whole origin of this book is Nabokov being like, I'm so fucking good at writing. Everyone tells me my prose is untouchable. Let me give myself a real challenge. What's like the hardest protagonist

[00:28:37] to make relatable in any way? Oh, write a book about a pedophile. Like that was his whole thing was, here's like the most sort of monstrous archetype in our society and I'm going to try to write a book

[00:28:49] inside of this guy's head that at least makes you see the world through his eyes and understand him if not like him. Sure. Which he succeeds in doing pretty much by the virtue of being better at prose than anyone. He's pretty good, yeah.

[00:29:05] But you're like, oh the thing that sells that is his command of language and the second you try to move that into a different medium, you're like, well then how do you fucking do this? I would agree with that.

[00:29:17] Fran, do you have book thoughts that you want to, I know I forbade you from reading the book and I eternal sunshined you so you don't remember the book. You also burned every copy of it. I did, I got it out of here.

[00:29:27] No, I was looking up if there have been other adaptations of different Nabokov works that I know of and I don't think there have been. I've only otherwise read Ben Sinister and Panin which are the books that happen on either side of Lolita

[00:29:46] and I think are also quite obsessed with academia and men in academia but Ben Sinister is this nasty, mean-spirited political satire that I have to say I really loathe reading and then Panin is just sort of maybe one of the nicest books of all time

[00:30:04] about an academic who's just having a wonderful life and it's just episodic and nice and it's funny that this comes in between those but that no one even would try to go for what he's doing outside of this because it's either too esoteric because general populace

[00:30:20] does not care about the lives of academics nor should they or it's like just nothing happens. They're just prose exercises. There's that movie The Luscian Defense which I've never seen with John Turturro and Emily Watson. That is based on a book by Vlad himself

[00:30:40] that I have read and liked. I never saw the movie. I heard it was boring. He's one of those guys who it just feels very difficult to adapt because it really is about the language and it's like if you lay out

[00:30:52] what's happening in the book, there aren't really bones of a dramatic story there. The Luscian Defense is also about chess which is hard to dramatize until of course Anita O'Draig came along, chess queen. Dumb Griffin Brain's analogy, right? Here we go.

[00:31:11] But there's that period where Stan Lee was just like everything I'm fucking putting out is a hit. Every time I have to create a new character, I'm gonna fucking challenge myself to create the least appealing character possible. Iron Man was like a dare to himself.

[00:31:24] Where he was like all the kids reading my books are like hippies, like peace loving liberal hippies who are into like hallucinogenics and shit. I'm gonna write a comic book about a capitalist war profiteer. I'm gonna make them fucking like this guy.

[00:31:44] And Lolita was like that stage of Nabokov's career where he was just like fuck it, I'm coming for you. I can win over the audience on anything. I mean that's a cool artistic challenge for anyone regardless of medium. I just think that it gets tricky in adaptation

[00:31:58] because then you're not the person who came up with this challenge. Of course. Therefore you'll never have the inner workings of like why that challenge does or doesn't work. And the reason I bring up my analogy is that like over time he found like, oh I was wrong,

[00:32:13] people actually just like Iron Man as a power fantasy. Sure, yeah. I didn't have to sell them on this guy and his inner turmoil, they were just like it'd be cool to have all the money and a robot suit.

[00:32:23] And then you get to a world where like Iron Man just rules our pop culture because everyone wishes they could just fucking be Iron Man. But you can't do that with Humbert Humbert. No. You can't just be like let's just give in to the fucking power fantasy.

[00:32:36] We all obviously wanna be Humbert Humbert. Silly namey Scott. It's the same name twice. It's one of the silliest names. What? What's going on there? What's his name? My name is Mr. Humbert and I have a kid. Humbert. I'm like well we can't call him Humbert obviously.

[00:32:53] That'd be weird. Let's immediately cross one name off of this. Right? It feels like that meme image of that woman crossing off the names on the chalkboard. Ashlyn and Kaylee when it's all spelled like it's a yes. But then the last one is Humbert. Have you seen that?

[00:33:10] No. It's an old meme. Classic meme. Remember how good the chess show was? Sorry, I haven't let it go. Queen's Gambit? I never watched it. Queen's Gambit and I think you and I would agree on this and The Bear, two great shows where not a lot of episodes.

[00:33:26] Watched them all in two and a half days. Time of my life. Those are two of my favorite TV shows of what I consider the current era of TV. Me too. There was the golden age. It ended. We're in the dog shit age.

[00:33:38] Meanwhile we were talking right before record to Sir Ben. I was telling him about. Oh yeah he's in Maine Kevin's. Yeah, Maine Kevin master's fucking rules. Well Ben's watching Maine Kevin masters and I was talking about good late season eight episodes of Night Court. Yeah.

[00:33:56] And Ben was like, how do you fucking have the time to watch all these old sitcoms and keep up? And I was like, the answer is I don't keep up. Yeah, you've never watched Queen's Gambit. Never watched an episode of The Bear. Oh, that's fun. It's funny.

[00:34:07] Yeah, it's a good meme. Yeah, I just, if there's discourse around a show I'm like maybe I'll watch that in 10 years when no one's arguing over it. She's also like barely pregnant. It's such a weird photo. Oh, it's so funny. What's the backstory on this?

[00:34:20] She posted this being like, I selected my baby name and she had written four unintelligible names and selected a fifth on it. So they're Taylee, McCarty, Navy, Maly and then she ended up at Lackland. It's just one of those classic. Laken? I think Laken. Laken. Laken.

[00:34:37] But just one of those things she's just like, you know, we all think we want to call our kid McCarty too obvious. You know, like it's just like, what are you talking about? Right, because then she'll be like McCarty O in her class. Two McCartys.

[00:34:50] Four of them in the fucking daycare. The teachers will be like McCarty and a bunch of kids will swarm her. Were there other Davids in your class? Did you have to be a David S? Only in the second grade was I David S. There was one other David.

[00:35:05] David was not a very popular name when I was a kid. I think it's maybe had a bit of a rebound. Well, because of this show. There was never another different. That would be funny. Baby nameless came out. David Griffin and Ben are the top three boy names?

[00:35:18] The hell, Fran's number one on the girl. Perdusso is one of the top names right now. Bendusso, Poet Laureate, that's not a name. No, it was like post Twilight when like Jacob and Edward were the top two names for three years.

[00:35:31] Can someone make a meme of me in front of the chalkboard and then there's like all my nicknames, please? Someone do that, please. Yeah, please do. Lolita. Lolita. It's a 1955 novel written by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov? Nabokov. Nabokov, I think. I'm pretty sure.

[00:35:52] I was corrected by someone who's read the sweep of them. It was Nabokov. Nabokov. Nabokov. Nabokov. Yeah, I don't know what it is. It's that middle syllable that gets the punch, but you can do whatever you want with it, you know?

[00:36:02] It was one of those classic books that came out and everyone decided it was totally good and fine. What year did it come out, David? And it did well, 1955. No one ever thought about it. It came out, it was turned down by almost every major publisher, right?

[00:36:16] It was published in France first. Yeah, classic. By, you know, whatever. Hell's Surprise, as they say over there. Much like this episode turned down by almost every potential guest before Fran came in for the save. I'm one of the braver people. Truly. To appear on a podcast.

[00:36:33] It wasn't like David Nevin, for example, where it's like you can't be in that movie. We'll talk about that. Olivier, the people who turned down. It was more just people being like, well, I'd rather not. No, they're afraid. They're cowards. They're afraid, I'm brave. You are brave.

[00:36:49] You're in your brave era. I'm in my brave era, yeah. We talk about Fran's brave era all the time. That means she's watching horror movies. Yeah, I've started watching horror movies, yeah. It was published in France by Olympia Press, a publisher mostly of quote-unquote pornographic trash. Okay.

[00:37:06] And it had this reputation almost, Graham Greene immediately called it one of the best books of the year. It got early raves. Oh, you don't like Graham? No, I think that's a crazy shot to shoot. Exactly, and he shot it. You shot it. Yeah.

[00:37:23] He was in his brave era. Yeah, I mean, truly. And then it was the classic thing of not only was it literarily well-regarded quickly, but because it was so controversial, that only fueled interest. You have to read it to have an opinion. People were banning it,

[00:37:38] and people were running to get ahead of every ban. Remember that period where if something was controversial, people would actually take the time to read it before having an opinion? Well, I don't know if that's true. I think a lot of people were not reading Lolita.

[00:37:50] Okay, fair enough. Because that was the whole thing. It's not a particularly prurient book in its content. No. It's all- The ideas. There's nothing explicit really described in the book. It's not a textbook. Well, I was gonna say, I had the opposite reaction to hearing something like that,

[00:38:04] where when I hear something's the best book of the year, I'm like, who cares? Sure. Who cares? I wanna read something that someone was a little more equivocal on, because that's maybe more compelling. But that's something that I think is legitimately a great book,

[00:38:18] got that kind of early praise that I think it's worthy of- That's why you're surprised. Is like, oh, okay. Especially because it was an edgy position for someone to stake their credibility on. Totally, yeah. There's so much that's been written and said about the book.

[00:38:33] I mean, I've read some of the movies as well, but especially the book. And I do recommend Jamie Loftus' recent podcast about it. There's a lot of other stuff like that. You can dig into that. It's too much. It's too much.

[00:38:40] I'm not gonna give you all the context on the book. I will tell you about Stanley Kubrick though. Please. He was- We covered some of this in our Spartacus episode, because he was really, this was his obsession for about five years.

[00:38:52] But also, he was long working during that sort of era on One-Eyed Jacks, which is the movie that Marlon Brando, a Western that Marlon Brando eventually just directed himself. And he exits One-Eyed Jacks and announces, he must exit in a statement, because Mr. Brando, et cetera,

[00:39:14] know that I want to commence work on Lolita. And whether or not that's true, I think they also exited just because him and Brando had a lot of clashes, but that was it. He announced, like, I'm leaving to do Lolita.

[00:39:26] He's also got this five picture deal with Kirk Douglas, two movies end up getting done before Kirk Douglas releases him. And it's largely because Kirk Douglas is like, I don't want anything to do with this movie. I'm not gonna play Humber, I don't wanna produce it.

[00:39:42] God be with you, but I'm not getting near this thing. This is all happening in 1958. That's when he quits One-Eyed Jacks, and that's when Lolita becomes a bestseller in America. It reaches our shores, and unlike in Britain where it was banned, it just becomes a big hit.

[00:39:59] Swifty Lazar, a famed old Hollywood manager agent type. One of the greatest names in history. Pretty cool name. Owned the screen rights, and basically says you're gonna have to give me 150 grand even to start work on this movie. Like he's charging an entry fee.

[00:40:18] They work out some kind of a deal with him. And this is sort of Harris raising the money for Kubrick? Correct. And Harris, who's the producer, obviously James Harris, has to sell his rights to the killing, I think back to United Artists to get the money

[00:40:38] to buy the rights to Lolita from Lazar. So he really is like putting his ass on the line. Kubrick says it's one of the great love stories of Lolita. Here, I'm gonna give you some quotes. He points to a Lionel Trilling piece

[00:40:52] that called it the first great love story of the 20th century, using as his criteria the total shock and engagement with the lovers, which the lovers in all great love stories of the past have produced on the people around them. If you consider Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina,

[00:41:08] Madame Bovary, The Red and the Black, they all had one thing in common, the element of the illicit, or at least what was considered illicit at the time, and in each case it caused their complete alienation from society. By the 20th century, it's difficult to,

[00:41:23] he's saying like, there's nothing that's illicit anymore, right? Sure. So he says like, Lolita succeeds in this classic tradition by being so shocking. Yeah. And Nabokov is brilliant in withholding any indication of the author's approval of the relationship.

[00:41:41] I'm reading this just because I think you need this context. I do think it's interesting how he articulates it. I may confuse people as well, I don't know. But I should read this, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's interesting.

[00:41:52] I love this line at the end that he says. It isn't until the very end when Humbert sees her again four years later and she's no longer by any stretch within the definition and quote unquote nymphet that the really genuine and selfless love he has for her

[00:42:04] is revealed, which is true in a way. Like that is what's so sort of crazy about the ending is you're like, oh, he's beyond whatever initial obsession we understand here. But it's also so sad and pathetic and depressing when he's like giving that speech at the end. Yeah.

[00:42:23] But Kubrick is very compelled by this. Sure. But I also, I mean, this gets to maybe some of my core issues with the movie where I feel like a lot of that oversimplifies the dynamics of what's going on in this book,

[00:42:39] which I think are very often like four or five things going on in different directions at the same time. Right. And Kubrick seems to keep on just picking one and drawing very straight lines. I would agree with that because this is being called a comedy.

[00:42:54] That's, I mean, it's almost like he's forced to make it a comedy because you can't make it anything else. The seller stuff is outright comedic. I think it really has to be funny because if you think too hard about what is going on,

[00:43:07] it's too sad and too horrible. Right. And you're not gonna be able to really talk about anything. I mean, that's the other thing. So Fran, you brought your big lolly. You went to see this movie at Film Forum. Yeah, I brought my giant lollipop to the Film Forum.

[00:43:22] Anyone wants to know what that's in reference to, just Google Fran Hofner lollipop. Yeah, I guess so. So we're gonna talk about the lolly a lot more. Yeah, we can talk about the lolly. I brought my lollipop. I ate the lollipop maybe for the first 40, 45 minutes

[00:43:33] and then I got sick of it. For those who don't know, and I, once again, implore you, look up the article, look up the photo. But Fran's talking about a classic giant skull-shaped, sized, not skull-shaped, but skull-sized. Five inch. Giant, swirly pinwheel lolly.

[00:43:48] Yeah, that I sort of in bad faith pitched to work that I was gonna eat one and write about it and then they were like, you should do that. Your take was this is sort of seen as the ultimate candy. And no one eats them.

[00:43:59] Who actually has ever gotten a giant lolly? Yeah, and then there's some stipulations were put into place that kind of like as a health class taking care of a fake baby, I also could just not go anywhere in public without the lollipop.

[00:44:12] I didn't have to be eating it, but I always had to have it on my person. And because the lollipop is so big, it's not a lollipop that could just be put in my mouth and left there, I had to hold it.

[00:44:22] So it was easiest to do when I was not doing anything, e.g. watching a movie, great opportunity to just put some time in on the lollipop, which is what I did for the first chunk of Lolita. Yeah, a two and a half hour movie.

[00:44:35] A two and a half hour movie, first 45 minutes, laughter with my friends and peers and loved ones around me, in part because lollipop at that point in time, though nearing its end, too big still to fit in my mouth, kind of just glommed onto it.

[00:44:50] It was a horrible experience. Humiliating, non-sexual. Someone's at the door. Yeah, I think there's an ad read coming. Oh, jeez. Yeah, I better check. I saw this at Film Forum as well. I went to different screens on different days. Film Forum at the time we're recording this

[00:45:08] has been doing this 63, 64, 65 series, 62. 63, 64, because it's also with Jewish Museum and film at Lincoln Center. It's cool. It's cool. I mean, they played Strangelove as well the day after we recorded our episode, which was annoying,

[00:45:23] but it was nice that I got to see this on a big screen. This is a good one to be locked in the room with. Absolutely, and look, I will say, at the time we're recording this. Once attention wanders watching this.

[00:45:34] Barry Linden's playing like a week from now in the city and Ben and I are going to see that. No better experience than seeing that movie on a big screen. I'm watching his Kubrick movies at home for so many reasons, and I'm just excited

[00:45:46] anytime one of these screenings lines up where I can just get ahead of it, see it in a theater, get my full attention, and then lock it in my brain. Well, I saw Kubrick. He did Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, right? I saw that.

[00:45:56] Yeah, yeah, he came back for that one. He came back. He rose from the grave. He rose from the grave. Yeah, mm-hmm. Is going to Paris in this economy? I mean, that's an old book. He could've. It is an old book. Maybe he read it.

[00:46:09] He might've read it and been like, passed. But the book is called like, oh, Mrs. Harris, oh, God, now she's in Paris. It's even more silly. Isn't it lyrical? It's apostrophe A. I was gonna say, it's Mrs. Harris. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, yeah, right.

[00:46:21] But she does so much. She becomes like an MP or something. Oh, like are there sequels? The title's not gonna give it all away. Yeah, there's like five or six of them. Right, yeah, franchise, franchise. Okay, franchise, franchise. Hello, Disney. She's doing well. She's up to 10 mil domestic.

[00:46:34] Is she a 10 mil? I think she's a 10 mil. That's pretty good, and I'm sure that movie's cleaning up Britain. Those movies do. I'm saying 10 mil domestic. Britain, that's just great. Britain, it's number one for a month, you know? Yeah. Britain, it's the Top Gun maverick.

[00:46:48] You haven't seen it? No, I need to see it. You know who so hates him in it? Wait, you haven't gone to Paris? What the fuck is the matter with you? I know, I know. And I've seen some other bullshit lately. Exactly.

[00:46:55] You know who's so hot in it? Who? Jason Isaacs. He is very hot. Fuck. He's playing like a working class bookie too. He's like, oh, govnah, oh, you don't want that action. It's crazy. I love this era of Jason Isaacs so much.

[00:47:06] It is a good era of Jason Isaacs. And there's not really a bad era of Jason Isaacs, but it is a good era. Why haven't you seen that? I don't know. I'm fucking up my life. You're texting me being like, I gotta see a movie tonight,

[00:47:19] but it's between a love song and like, Minions. Minions. And I'm like, what's going on here? The timing and location stuff keeps on fucking me up. I feel like I'm also vaguely waiting to see Mrs. Harris with Rom, because that feels like such a Rom movie.

[00:47:34] Oh yeah, but I mean, you know, she's not gonna be in Paris forever. I know, I know. I know it's still playing. The clock is ticking. I'm gonna go see it this weekend. It's my highest priority movie. You haven't seen Bullet Train yet. No. Well, honey, don't bother.

[00:47:46] You did see League of Super Pets. I did. You've seen Nope. I saw it in 40X. I saw Nope twice. You haven't seen Thor, Love and Thunder. No. You've seen Nope in IMAX? Yeah. Worth. Rips. I gotta. So good. I gotta.

[00:48:01] I mean, I saw it at like the AMC Empire IMAX, but I haven't seen it in the big old Aspect Ratio changes are big on that movie. Have you seen, you've seen Capcom Maverick. Has Gru risen for you? No, you've never seen any of those.

[00:48:13] I've never seen any of them. Did the Crawdads sing for you? They haven't. I get to hear their song. They remain silent? They remain silent. I await their siren call. You didn't go to Easter Sunday dinner. No. You've seen Elvis. I have. You answered the black phone.

[00:48:28] I did. You went to Jurassic World's Dominion. I did, yeah. You refused to see Vengeance. Well, in principle. Yes, Mrs. Harris, you've not gone to Paris with her. My most anticipated movie of the summer. But you did strap on the shoes for Marcel. I did.

[00:48:41] You know the best part of black phone is when he's so sick of that black phone ringing and when he's picking it up and he's going, what? Yeah. So funny. Or dead kids. Yeah. Another one. Have you seen Resurrection? No, I need to see Resurrection.

[00:48:53] Check that out, you love Becca Hall. No, no, no. Resurrection, Mrs. Harris, top my list. And the director's a blankie of Resurrection. But only last, Love Song, what did you think of it? Not a fan. Yeah, I mean. Am I brave enough for Resurrection? I'm curious. Yes, yeah.

[00:49:09] Okay. You're in a brave era. It's mostly, what are you brave enough for? I don't know. Vengeance. That's a good question. I'm not brave enough for that. Yeah, I'm not brave enough for that one. What is that? It's the BJ Novak podcaster in Texas movie.

[00:49:20] No one's brave enough for that one. I mean, that's a title of a movie that could be about literally anything, you know? Yeah, it's funny that that's what it's called. It should be called like Marcel the Shelter Shoes on the Road. Here's what I was gonna say.

[00:49:31] I've also been seeing a fair amount of rep screenings, I like Lolita to bring things back. Fair enough. I've been checking out rep screens when I can. I just try and get in there and see shit. The rep stuff is great this summer.

[00:49:39] Yeah, there's been good rep hits this summer. I gotta say, I saw Heat at IFC. Oh, maybe. Heat, remember that movie? People should see it. It's the 4K, you know, restoration. It's the escape of the heat. Fucking 90-degrees over. Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:49] Well, that was up to Nicole Shea weather. They should rename it air conditioning. That's what they should call it now. This is what happened though at Film Forum Lolita just to bring it back. Yeah, this is what I'm gonna talk about. I got too cold.

[00:50:02] The classic thing where you're not gonna bring a sweater, it's hot outside, but then you're in the theater and it's doing. And I got so cold. I got, I remember packing the thing, sweater, into the bag.

[00:50:14] It was a long ass movie, but this is what I was gonna say. I don't know what your experience was like. Maybe that lolly was like messing with your nervous system or something. I haven't recovered. It's an Arctic mint lolly too, right? God, I wish.

[00:50:27] I don't know how much your lolly changed the sort of temperature of the theater. Not literally, right? But the group psychology of the theater. But it's very interesting watching that movie in a room with other people now. I'm sure it was interesting to watch at the time. Sure.

[00:50:47] And I'm saying, but it's like, especially now where I think we're living in a- Were people laughing? Sometimes. Peter Sellers. Other times not. And other times going like, am I supposed to be laughing at this or not? Like you could feel like the weird tension

[00:51:00] and I could feel there are people who are just like, reverence, Kubrick, masterpiece, obviously. And there are people who are looking at this like a cursed object and there are people who are just like, I don't fucking know what to make of this.

[00:51:11] And my experience watching the movie was I started to feel like I was hallucinating because the more the film starts having to do its sort of like haze code runarounds to not say the thing that's happening, the more I started to see it as like,

[00:51:28] oh, this feels like the lobster. This feels like a movie with some weirdly agreed upon bizarre reality where people just say insane things and nod to each other and then move on without explaining them. That's a funny comparison to me. And an apt one I think too.

[00:51:44] That's what it felt like to me. Yeah. You know, when I watched this when I was in high school and loved the book, I was just like, well, this doesn't get at what I like about the book. I find this movie boring and a slog.

[00:51:54] And this time I found it like truly bizarre. And I think part of that is the weird tonal, like how much of it is pitched as a comedy, but then how much it's not even like subtext. It's sort of like they're trying to circumvent

[00:52:11] the text of the thing. They're not burying it. They're like traffic cones that they're trying to weave between. Yeah. It's just, you know, you think of like, Humbert is kind of his own antagonist in this film, but once the film loses Shelley Winters,

[00:52:30] the threat of Sellers is really not that material. Right, for quite a while. For both quite a while and in general, he's too zany I think to be perceived as like- And also you know he's gonna get shot. Right, and you already know- You know where it's ending.

[00:52:43] No, it starts to lose steam the second Shelley Winters is out of the picture. I think there's another problem arguably. What's that? Which is, I don't know if this is just a modern perspective thing. Like I haven't seen this movie since I was like 15,

[00:52:58] forgotten most of how the movie plays out relative to the book, whatever. I'm watching it and going, are all these guys supposed to be quilty? Because I know Peter Sellers is playing all of them, but also what does Peter Sellers do? Play four characters in the movie.

[00:53:15] Oh sure, yeah. You know? Yeah. Where like when you get to like, the cop scene is so bizarre. Where you're like the tonal reality of this, where you're like why is he suddenly affecting a new persona and the persona's so specific. It's so odd.

[00:53:30] And then when the next time he shows up he's got like a fucking bald cap. Yeah. He's got Rick Baker like fucking coming, giving him looks now? He's fucking going to Harvey Fierstein, his brother to give him the fucking makeover? Now wait a second.

[00:53:44] I just think this Claire Quilty character- That's from later in time. Is- Excuse me. As played by Sellers. Harvey Fierstein should be in this movie and he should go like, what do you need from me now? We're gonna make you a star. Sorry.

[00:53:56] He's supposed to be a TV writer? Or is he a movie writer? Just a screenwriter? He's a playwright who sort of cashed in on TV I think. He has big TV writer vibes, parenthesis derogatory to me. I think he was sort of like an edgy playwright

[00:54:08] who crossed over into TV. He's getting the bags. But he's famous enough that he's like a cigarette spokesperson? Yeah but you know back then. Celebrities were whatever. It's also just odd relative to the book how much this movie makes him an important cultural figure.

[00:54:23] Like this guy's so fucking hip. Just a whole thing. Yeah. Sellers is so crazy. I was rewatching when he shows up in Get Back. Well he had kind of a relationship with the Beatles in general. But that sequence of Get Back is so,

[00:54:37] as unnerving as any time he shows up in Lolita. Because he just has such- Peter Sellers is profoundly disturbing. No I know. As much as I think he's so funny. Like the idea of him in reality you're like, God was this because he's the weirdest fucking guy?

[00:54:48] He looks handsome though in this. He's a handsome guy. I like his smile. He's got a good smile. He's a very handsome guy. Like an interesting smile. The other, I mean there's a lot of teeth like that. Yeah. You like teeth like that. He likes Sellers' teeth.

[00:55:00] The whole Sellers thing that he always said is like, there's no one there. But what's his famous quote where he's like- You see that in Get Back. Where they're trying to like rip with him and he's giving them nothing. He just like doesn't exist

[00:55:13] other than him being able to affect characters. If he's in character then he can do something. And all his like wives and lovers and friends all said the same thing where they were just like, there's nothing. I think fully dissociating. Yeah, yeah.

[00:55:24] Bordering on like sociopathic where it's like, like there's the line I'm forgetting but there was kind of famously, I say famously because it's the fucking, of course the anecdote that I'm gonna lump onto the most. But when he hosted The Muppet Show,

[00:55:38] he was like the only thing I refused to do because they'd always like have a guest host on and they'd be like, are you comfortable singing? Are you comfortable dancing? Do you want to do this? And he's like, the only thing I won't do is appear as myself.

[00:55:49] And The Muppet Show's whole structure was like backstage. Yeah. And then on stage they're doing routines. Yeah. And he was like backstage I will be Inspector Clouseau. Backstage I will play other characters. And they were like, well there's a segment

[00:56:02] where like Kermit talks to the guests as themselves. He's like, that's not happening. I refuse to appear in like my neutral form because it doesn't exist. There's no one there. And watching the opening Claire Quilty scene, I do feel like is this the closest he's ever come

[00:56:17] to playing quote unquote himself in a movie. Like there's something about the weird Claire Quilty who like doesn't know how to exist unless he's affecting another character. Yeah, he's doing like a greatest hits of himself. Right, right. Cause the other scenes you're seeing him either be like

[00:56:34] unbearably uncomfortable or needing to hide in some other persona. And that opening scene you're like, well now he's just drunk and he's cycling through different bits and lines. Right, he's like a malfunctioning robot at the end. You're like, this guy's kind of hip and cool

[00:56:48] and handsome and terrifying and like funny and sad at the same time. Look, I got two things to say to you. One, well I'll continue the context in a second. Two, Ethan Coen has cast Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Bisswanathan in his new movie. What's the movie?

[00:57:05] It's like a lesbian road trip comedy set in the 90s that he co-wrote with his wife, Ethan Coen. Wow. Just telling you. I love Geraldine. Me too. She's so good. It is so weird that they split up. Joel is like, well I'm gonna do Macbeth

[00:57:23] because of course I couldn't write something new without my brother. He didn't quite put it that way. He was like, I feel, I don't know what I would do. Let me- It was like a Francis project though. That was part of it. Yeah.

[00:57:36] That's how they pitched it, like New York Film Fest. All their collaborators were like, Ethan just doesn't want to do movies anymore. He's interested in plays, he's interested in writing. He doesn't want to do movies. And someday he'll come back to Joel.

[00:57:49] And now it's like, oh, Ethan finally making movies on his own? Look, it's a, you know, we were just talking about a lot of two friends not friends anymore. What can I tell ya? We were saying in podcasting, most people actually hate each other and we're still friends.

[00:58:01] But the Farrelly's broken up. The Farrelly's broken up? Yep. Each of the Farrelly's have their own movie coming out this year. True. No. No, no other. Elise Cohen's, Hughes' have been broken up for a long time. There's another one, there's a fifth. Are the Nolans okay?

[00:58:19] Well, they've always sort of done everything. They sort of ebb and flow. I think they're okay. But they're fine. I don't know though. I think they're okay. Are they okay? How are the Dardens? Just kidding. They're still together. They're holding on the fort. It's funny that they're brothers.

[00:58:31] Yeah. Right? And that they make those movies? Really funny. And those movies are funny. They're funny. Those movies are always laugh riots. Yeah. Okay. It's funny about them being brothers, I think. Is that making the most sort of grim shit of all time

[00:58:46] being like, and I'm doing it with my brother. Right. And then turn to each other and being like, we? We? Yeah. Carbon monoxide poisoning? Good. Yeah. Okay, let's do that. Steals a baby? Good. Yeah, okay. Harrison Kubrick. Speaking of all the adaptation stuff that you were talking about.

[00:59:01] They ask Nabokov himself to write the screenplay. Nabokov himself. They give him 75 grand. Oh boy. I'll take it. Nice work if you can get it. Exactly. And he is of course the sole credited screenwriter, but they barely used his script. Right. They basically rewrote it on set

[00:59:17] and even we're sort of like, don't even tell him what we're doing. And he kind of just transcribed the book, right? Yes, I believe the script he submitted was 400 pages long. Which is too long. Yeah. Famously in Hollywood, it's a minute a page and that's too many minutes.

[00:59:33] What's insane about that is it sounds like he just kind of like reformatted the book. But he couldn't, like this is an era where you can't just copy paste it. He pasted it. Right. Look, I mean he did eventually. Like the time to do that.

[00:59:44] Yeah, but if you know, if you had $75,000 to retype your book in Courier. Right, you'd pay someone else $5,000 to do that. Yeah, you'd do that. I do believe he did finally submit a shorter draft. It's not like he literally was just like, here you go, catch. Right.

[00:59:59] You're thinking fast, Jimmy. The shorter draft is still like. Probably too long. Every script now that they talk about though and like the trades, they're like, well, first draft was 350 pages. They love to say that. Yeah. So as Kubrick says, oh no, sorry, Harris says this.

[01:00:13] You know, we weren't satisfied with the script. It was too long. We shut ourselves in a room for a month and rewrote it scene by scene. And then, you know, Sellers comes in and he's improvising on set. Right. And so a lot of that is just Sellers,

[01:00:27] which is gonna be the same with Strange Love. Right. That Kubrick's like, good, good, yes, we'll integrate all of this. The retro writing where he would like take Sellers' improvs and then pick the right ones and go like that's now part of the script. Yeah.

[01:00:40] And Nabokov says about 20% of his screenplays on screen, but he is the only credited screenwriter and he did get an Oscar nomination. The film's only Oscar nomination. Wow, yeah. I always think Sue Lyon got the nomination, but she only got the Golden Globe.

[01:00:53] Yes, the film got lots of Golden Globe nominations. It got nominated for James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, best director, and Sue Lyon got the most promising newcomer nomination. And she won, she won that. Right. Excuse me, giving the only Oscar nomination

[01:01:11] for the screenplay, even if it is nominating Nabokov. Right, which is probably why they did it. Wild because the performance in this movie are good and most of its issues exist on the scripting stage. I will say that it is an absolutely stacked,

[01:01:29] one of the most incredibly stacked best actor lineups I've ever seen. I'm more than happy with supporting categories, but yes. Yeah, supporting, I mean, not bad. Okay, give me the four acting categories. All right, best actor. The winner of course is Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.

[01:01:47] One of those where you're like, of course he won. It's an iconic screen performer. One of the great heroes of American cinema. I believe AFI voted him the number one hero of all time. Number two, and he beat one of the- 100 years, 100 heroes.

[01:02:01] Yeah, right, they did do something like that, right? And then like 50 villains or something. One of the most famous screen performances of all time, Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia. And it's the whole thing where you're like, well how did he not win?

[01:02:11] And then you're like, oh, he lost to Gregory Peck playing Atticus Smith. Right, and then he never gets it. And he never got it. He never gets it. But he could get it, at his peak he could get it.

[01:02:20] And then you have Jack Lemon in Days of Wine and Roses, which is like- Low points. You know, Lemon serious. That's a good performance. You have Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce Italian style. Cool nomination. Very cool nomination. And then you have Burt Lancaster

[01:02:36] in Birdman of Alcatraz, where you're like, that's the fifth and that's a pretty famous performance from a heavyweight actor. Mason over any of them. I might not even, I don't know. I have seen all those movies. I don't know. But then give me supporting actor and actress.

[01:02:49] Okay, so supporting actor, we're like, why is Sellers not here, right? Yes. All right, best, it goes to Ed Begley, senior of course for Sweet Bird of Youth. Never seen that movie. Victor Buono for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Kind of a cool nomination.

[01:03:06] Telly Savalas for Birdman of Alcatraz. Who loves you, baby. Sloppy Telly. Omar Sharif for Lawrence of Arabia. And then Terrence Stamp for Billy Bud, which is an crazy good performance. Young Terry Stamp. Wow. But you know, I don't know, maybe you kick out fucking Savalas.

[01:03:21] I don't know, he might hit you. He's got these like ham hock hands. Good luck trying to kick him out. You better have some hardy boots on, yeah. And then supporting actress, Patty Duke wins for The Miracle Worker, which is category fraud. Classic category, she was the young,

[01:03:35] she played Helen Keller. So then Bancroft wins lead. Correct. Mary Badham, who of course is Scout in another category fraud. She's the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird. Wow. She's really good though. So Sue Lyon's like pushed out by two other kids, it's fun.

[01:03:51] Sue Lyon is the lead in Lolita probably, right? I mean, like, kind of. I'd probably put Shelley in supporting and Sue in lead if I was them. I think they're both kind of supporting. And then Shirley Knight in Sweet Bird of Youth.

[01:04:02] I haven't seen Sweet Bird of Youth. That's Paul Newman, Geraldine Pint, it's a good movie. Thelma Ritter in Birdman of Alcatraz, which was fucking cleaning up in the acting categories. And then Lansbury in Manchurian Canada, who should've won? Yeah, an incredible. It was a good time for movies.

[01:04:16] It was a good time for movies. Oh, she's so good. You know, picture and director, David Lean's like, I'll have those. Only made the fucking most incredible epic of all time. Enjoy it. Van Croft, as he says, wins Best Actress. And that's Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn,

[01:04:33] Geraldine Page, Liam Renwick for Days of Wine and Roses. Like, that's a good time. It's a good time. Horton Foote beat out fucking Nabokov for so adapted screenplay. He did To Kill a Mockingbird. A good win. Yeah, this is what I'm saying. America had to kill Mockingbird fever.

[01:04:50] Mockingbird, Mockingbird. Which I think they maybe still do, you know? Yeah. There's that weird sequel that came out. Yeah, Ghost of the Watchmen. Fucking a bummer. I mean, it was really funny. I know it's kind of a bummer, but it was funny that they were like,

[01:05:07] she's releasing another book. And I was like, oh my God, amazing. And they're like, and it's a Kill Mockingbird sequel. And people are like, holy shit. And then people are like, she probably never wanted to release this like weird exploitation of an old woman, right?

[01:05:18] And the book comes out and it's just like, Atticus Finch, what a... I was gonna say a bad word. What an asshole. He's just like, I'm so racist. I hate everything that I did in the other one. And then apparently it was the first book she wrote

[01:05:34] and then she scrapped it. And then they were like, I don't know, maybe Atticus Finch would be nice. And she was like, oh, good note, okay. Most successful book ever. Great, cool, retired. See you later. Pretty wild. The whole thing was wild.

[01:05:50] No, I mean, look, it's the thing with this movie where it's like you have four performances that are all essentially different acting styles that are arguably in different films. But I think all four are pretty great. In this movie? Yeah. I agree. When any two characters are interacting

[01:06:12] with each other on screen, you're like, what the fuck is going on here? Which movie am I supposed to be watching? And then when you think about some of the other characters, you're like, what would that dynamic be like and shit? I do think Shelley Winters kind of

[01:06:28] gets at that weird relationship. Like then the two of them together, you do. She's so good. She's my favorite performance. She's so plainly, well, because it's so big. It's so big. Right. But I think there's no other way to go. Because of the character is.

[01:06:42] That character's big, big in the book. You sort of hate her in the book because she does feel like. You do, you're like, she's annoying. Yeah, I'm with you, honey. She is antagonist or whatever. And I think the movie does a fair enough job

[01:06:52] empathizing with her while also like, I just think the screenplay that exists as it is in the movie basically hates all four of these people. But I do think it hates the Shelley Winters character the least actually. I think, yes, they view her as the only one

[01:07:08] who is sort of, what's sin? Yeah, and her sin is, you know, the classic woman's sin of just being annoying. Right. I don't know, my friend Tess is always like, if Shelley Winters is in a movie, it's not ending well for her.

[01:07:22] No, she plays a lot of tragic figures. But she's so operatic in her suffering and her misery. But like, watching the Adrian Lyne version, it's Melanie Griffith. Oh, sure. And she's trying to. It's like late 90s Melanie Griffith, okay. She's just like, well, I know

[01:07:37] the Shelley Winters performance is infamous. So it's just really quiet. That's not how it should be. She should be loud and kind of annoying and kind of like, de classe. Like, Humbert is just disgusted with her because he's like, I'm classier and smarter than this person. Right.

[01:07:51] And you're like, you know what, fucking relax, buddy. Right. It's the lack of self-awareness on the character is the key to the whole thing. Yeah. And I think there's sort of a beauty in her lack of self-awareness too that she brings to it. Or I don't know.

[01:08:07] But she is the only person in the movie who's kind of not tortured. She's got a lot of self-doubt, but sure. Yeah. I don't know. I feel for her pretty much immediately. Yeah. She's so desperate to just have him move in. Yeah.

[01:08:24] She gets to have the sort of great character trope of being maybe the most morally sound, but least put together. Right. But she's looking past the thing that's right in front of her. Sure. Like, right from the beginning, when he sees Lolita,

[01:08:42] and he's like, I will move in. Actually, my bags are in my car. And she's like, what was it? And he was like, your pies. And she's like, oh. And I'm like, come on, man. He just fucking saw your daughter sunbathing. And he's like, oh yeah.

[01:08:55] Is this my room? No, this is the kitchen, Humbert. This was not a thing that people had to be afraid of until this book. People never thought an adjunct could move to your house and do this kind of shit. And marry your teenage daughter.

[01:09:07] Yeah, and marry your daughter and kill you or whatever. I swear if the reefer madness was timed that way, it was sort of like. There was no precedent. You need to know the silent killer. Adjuncts? The threat that looms at the corners of our society.

[01:09:20] I guess he has tenure in Ohio. What is he, a speaker? He's just a speaker in their town? Don't you throw your academic language at me. I don't know how it works in the big universities, Francis. Oh my gosh, maybe he's on residency.

[01:09:33] Okay, not all of us went to Kalamazoo and Rutgers. Oh my God. Claiming both. Yeah, are both Hornets and Scarlet Knights. Is it Hornets? The Humbert of Boise, Idaho. But I was not that. I was just a person who was in town renting a house. Is it Hornets?

[01:09:46] Yeah, you were like a. Are they Hornets? Kalamazoo is Hornets and of course Rutgers is the Knights. It's Scarlet Knights, yeah. Yeah, go Knights, go Hornets. Buzz, Buzz. She's quite a loyalty. Buzz Hornet. Sort of a crazy name for a mascot, Buzz Hornet.

[01:09:59] I'm now just imagining like a Rutgers game with like 90,000 fans and it's like, who are these loud, oh that's the MFA program. All the MFA kids with like big foam fingers. I feel bad. Big foam books. I feel bad I didn't see a Rutgers football game.

[01:10:12] You should've, yeah, well you could still go, you live in New York. They're using big foam fingers to read a video. Right, they got big foam glasses on. Big foam highlighters. Highlighting. Oh, we have fun. I should go back. Yeah, go back to, what's the stadium called?

[01:10:28] Rutgers Stadium? Oh, I just meant to Rutgers but. Yeah, you should get another degree. Yeah, why not? It's called the SHI Stadium. Boring. Okay. Sounds like the SHI. In the screenplay, of course. They bring Quilty's murder to the front as we said.

[01:10:45] Kubrick's take says the main problem with the book is, and even with the film, is the main narrative interest initially boils down to will Humbert get Lolita into bed? And the second drop has a, second half has a drop in narrative interest after that happens.

[01:11:01] We wanted to avoid this in the film, so if you have Quilty at the beginning, the audience can constantly, I guess, be wondering how is it gonna get to this and what is Quilty up to? I guess that's sort of like, if you've not read the book

[01:11:14] and you're seeing this movie halfway and you're like, so you're probably just still like, how does this link up to him murdering Peter Sellers in Cold Blood mid-bit? Quilty is so inscrutable and these different personas are so bizarre. Yeah. So, initially it was at Warner Brothers.

[01:11:36] They said you could have a million dollars if you pre- Don't make the movie. If you leave this room with that blasted book! If you figure out censorship in advance, basically, I guess, if you work this out with the MPAA. Kubrick gets in a big fight with them.

[01:11:55] They want final cut. They want control over everything. He quits. Instead, they have to find a star to try and lure another studio in. Kirk Douglas was the move for Paths of Glory. But as you said, not interested. No thank you. That would make no sense.

[01:12:11] Olivier, very, the most obvious choice. His agents say don't do it. David Niven agrees to do it but then is worried that it will lose the sponsorship for Four Star Playhouse, probably some TV show he was doing or whatever. So he backs out. Brando was interested.

[01:12:31] Of course he was. But too complicated schedule-wise and he's Marlon Brando, he's probably just fucking annoying and weird. Wrong type of guy, I think, in the way that Kirk Douglas, also wrong type of guy. Yeah, I mean with Brando, you're just sort of like,

[01:12:43] look, I would see him do most things. Lord knows what that would look like but it doesn't immediately seem right. Oh sure, yeah, sure. Yeah. Olivier is the one where you're like, absolutely. That would make sense. Olivier is very good at playing very unlikable characters.

[01:12:58] Yes, I mean, especially just coming off of Spartacus and Kubrick getting that kind of performance out of him. There's something about Mason's teeth in this though. I mean, not just in this, but Mason's teeth are kind of the element for me

[01:13:12] where I'm like, this is why you were the best star of this moment to play this. For how suave and sophisticated you are and sort of bizarrely handsome you can be, every time he opens his mouth, there's something like a little shark-like to him.

[01:13:27] He's got that Michael Fassbender thing where when he smiles, you're like, oh, you're like a little dangerous. I agree with that, yeah. Look, I don't understand James Mason's career when I'm looking at it. No. Because he was a big theater actor who makes the leap to movies,

[01:13:49] mostly playing villains at first and stuff and then does Fox movies but none of them are big hits. I guess he was in a Prisoner of Zenda remake and then it's like, he's in A Star is Born and you're just sort of like, what in his career?

[01:14:06] Because A Star is Born is such a plum role. Cary Grant was the first choice or whatever and I just don't really get it. Not that he wasn't a good actor, I'm just, I don't get why he gets to be up with Garland

[01:14:19] in one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, but that's the one. You read so often though in that era. And then he does 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and it's sort of like, okay, this guy's set. Who is he in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? He's Nemo.

[01:14:31] Is he Nemo? Okay, I've seen that movie but I just couldn't remember. Prior to my understanding of him. He's got one little arm and one big arm. It's Bradley Cooper who, I said Finding Nemo. Who was reading Lolita to whatever girlfriend in the park. Yes, what's her name?

[01:14:47] Yeah, Snooki Waterhouse. Snooki. Classic. It's a reading into Snooki Waterhouse. It'd be funny if it was Snooki. It's gonna be my Halloween costume this year, Snooki Waterhouse. So he comes in and. I was just gonna say sorry to that point. Yeah, about Jimmy.

[01:15:02] I feel like when I've dug into things like that of like how does that star suddenly get moved to a position and get on this big project or this person who had been a character actor get the lead or whatever it is?

[01:15:11] And so often the answer is like weird studio system politicking where it was like someone else they had that they wanted was under contract to a different studio. At the last minute they figured out they couldn't use them. And then they had someone who they needed

[01:15:27] to put in a movie that year. You know? Yeah. I don't know. No, you're probably right. It's like literally Wikipedia, which has Wikipedia too. But it's like none of, like it lists like five movies he did in the late 40s, early 50s

[01:15:39] and it says like none of them were successful. Right. And I'm just like, well then, but whatever. Obviously he's a compelling screen presence. Yes. That might literally be it. It's like look, this guy's gonna figure it out. Yeah. Kubrick says handsome, vulnerable, easy to hurt, a romantic.

[01:15:54] He basically wants like this guy to feel heartfelt, I guess. On top of the monstrousness. Easy to hurt's a good identification. Yeah. Lolita, they see a million people. You know, it's one of those whatever. Sue Lyon gets the part with the first audition.

[01:16:15] I, you know, I don't know. Like it's kind of what you said about child acting at the time. Like Kubrick says like she was very casual. She was cool. She wasn't giggly. She was enigmatic. And it's like everything you're saying is like how a grownup would behave. Right.

[01:16:30] And I guess that of course that makes sense that you want Lolita on screen to read as sophisticated. Yeah. But still. But she's got. I don't know, when you read that book you have no sense of the character, of Lolita at all.

[01:16:40] And in this movie you really do. It feels like Judy Garland to me. Or when you watch like Wizard of Oz, right? And you're like this character's supposed to be like 12. Isn't Judy Garland like 27 in this movie? And then you look it up.

[01:16:53] You know, 12 year olds are like running LLCs back then. This is my point. Then you look it up and you're like, Judy Garland was 15 when they shot this? Right, yeah, she's like a kid. But she's like so poised. And the acting style is so specific.

[01:17:02] I don't know what friends like. I love how you're saying famous movie. After Wizard of Oz. After Wizard of Oz, yeah, right. Yeah. This feels like a very Judy Garland performance to me. And I don't generally view that as a negative

[01:17:13] but for this material, it creates such an odd vibe especially when they've already aged the character up a little. I mean, the difference between 12 and 14 is pretty huge. The other big difference they make in the script obviously is that everyone calls her Lolita. Yeah, they don't.

[01:17:28] Whereas in the book it is internally his pet name for her. Right, no one calls her Lolita. That's like not verbalized. That creates such an odd reality. Well, they also completely remove his whole like when I was a child, I had a crush on this girl

[01:17:40] and then she died, you know, his whole weird invented backstory whether or not. Which the Adrian Lyne movie front loads. Like that's opening of the fucking film. Right, that's opening the book. Right, yeah. But it does create an odd effect for me where it's like

[01:17:55] and so much of it is just obviously Lolita is just shorthand for so many other fucking things now. Sure, yeah. But when you're in a movie where the character's name is Dolores and everyone's calling her Lolita, it feels like everyone's acknowledging not that they wanna fuck her

[01:18:10] but this weird status she has for certain people. Does that make sense? Yeah. Rather than it being like I have this name for her in my head that no one will ever hear. That's my secret language. And then that invented name becomes this.

[01:18:22] Yeah, no, it externalizes the entire conflict. Yes, yeah. Better way to say it. I agree that she feels so fake in the book. You have no real, she doesn't feel real to a point where you're like this is someone this guy could've made up because he's insane.

[01:18:36] It feels hallucinatory. Right. And she doesn't even talk much in the book. Like her dialogue is so much. She's a child, like what does he talk to her about? He's just, he's a psychologically broken man. Yeah, right. The whole point is his uncontrollable fixation. Yeah.

[01:18:52] But in the movie, she's like a character and she's like bickering with him and she's quite charming in those early scenes in her way. I don't know, it changes the whole tone of everything to me that she's just like one of the four leads. Yeah.

[01:19:10] It's certainly pitched more matured effectively. It feels grounded. Again, all of these things are sort of problems for me. But it's like she's the only one doing a grounded performance. Right. Yes. In the movie, I would say. Which I think finally pays off in the final scenes.

[01:19:27] Then is amazing. She's great there. Her final scene is amazing. The best Mason is in the whole movie. Yes it is. Right. Like that's when it works. Sue Lyon talks very fondly about, Kubrick says Lolita could've been an embarrassing film for everyone but he saw that it wasn't.

[01:19:43] But has also talked about how fucked up the production was that James Harris, who was like 32, supposedly seduced her on set when she was like 15. No good, very bad. 14, 15. Don't do it. No good, very bad, don't do it. This is like it's all one way.

[01:19:57] Harris just was so old and didn't talk about it. This was all like reported on very recently. Like a couple years ago. Yes. And then you have Sellers, who I guess Kubrick just thinks is funny. Yeah. Because it's not like Strange Love where you're like,

[01:20:12] okay there's a pre-existing connection now. It's like, it's not logical to cast Peter Sellers in this. Well that's not entirely logical. The other insane thing, Fran, is that Strange Love gets made because the takeaway from this film is having Peter Sellers play multiple characters

[01:20:32] kind of made that thing a hit. That's the thing that audiences liked. If you could develop a new movie around multiple Peter Sellers characters, you have a green light. I mean I have to say, I've seen Strange Love too many times at this point

[01:20:46] to where it's like not really an enjoyable experience for me anymore. But if you were like, there's a different movie where Peter Sellers is playing a bunch of different characters and they're not the characters you saw in Strange Love, I'd be like, okay. That's the thing.

[01:20:57] It's kind of odd that this is the one that creates that. It isn't. Model. It isn't. Yeah, I mean when I told people I was going to see this. Oh sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The Mouse and Roared, I'm sorry. Yeah. Oh sure.

[01:21:10] When I told people I was going to see this, everyone was just like, Sellers being crazy. Sellers is crazy. And I have nothing to do with sort of. It's just weird that Sellers is doing it in Lolita. I remember reading the book, hearing that Peter Sellers played Quilty

[01:21:21] and I was like, oh that's interesting casting. Absolutely. It's interesting casting to put Peter Sellers in a drama and have them play this kind of inscrutable. It makes total sense though. You're like, I can see it. Like, right. And then what you're not expecting.

[01:21:35] Don't worry, he also kind of does like a German psychiatrist bit and you're like, he does a what? Like, why did he do that? That's the thing you're not expecting is that Lolita turns into a Peter Sellers movie. Not that Peter Sellers is in a Lolita film. Yeah.

[01:21:48] And it really does feel like, I mean like for Kubrick to basically outright say, look, the problem with the book and let's be honest with my movie is that halfway in it kind of loses it and you feel the movie be like,

[01:21:58] okay, hey Peter, you want to do some stuff? Like, I don't know, we got time to fill here before he shoots you. You want to do some stuff? Right? Yeah but it also. Pick up the energy. It has that weird like, the nope thing

[01:22:12] where you're like, oh, like the biggest events are happening off screen and you're both telling us and not. The nope? This is, wait. Nope the movie? What's this, the nope? Yeah, where you're like, oh, like Joop in Nope is kind of the most important character. Sure, sure, sure.

[01:22:27] And all these scene things are happening with him. It's him just talking about, I mean obviously see a little bit of it, but right, like. Right, but you like don't even realize until the end, like, oh, that's been going on for the last 40 minutes and all this shit.

[01:22:36] Where like the scene at the end where she spells it out and she's like, here's what was going on in between every other scene that you just saw. Right. Where you just have these extended seller's conversations that are like the buffer for the things the movie's

[01:22:49] not gonna show you or tell you. She's actually been seeing this guy the whole, of course that is the experience in the book because you're locked to his perspective. Right, yeah. Is you're like, as the reader, you're like, she's slipping away from you,

[01:22:59] this, you know, what are you talking about? And that's how you feel in the movie too. Oh, she's going to piano, she's not going to piano lessons, but because it's, in the book, it's again, you're just so like locked in with him.

[01:23:13] And to me it's kind of an awful experience reading the book, I really, it's such a well done book. It's like, yeah. But I was really like sick of this fucking guy halfway, I was like, come on, you. And in the movie you're leaving his perspective

[01:23:26] and it's a little different. Reading the book, the difference between Fulty and Humbert, who I don't know if you know this, his name is Humbert Humbert. One of those guys with his two first names. Right. It's the same one. Humbert feels like this, like, I am broken,

[01:23:42] I am caught in this psychological prison of my trauma, I can only love nymphets and here is the one I am most attached to and I've just destroyed my entire life around, right? And Quilty just feels like, I mean she even has the line where she's like,

[01:23:58] what does she say? That he's so much more spiritual or he's got a very Eastern philosophy on things. Yeah. Right. That Quilty just seems like a fucking libertine. Right. Who's just like, I do whatever the fuck I want. Yeah. You know?

[01:24:15] And that Humbert's hatred of Quilty is so linked in this thing where it's like, my illicit love is real. He can live openly as a freak, Quilty. Freak in quotes here. Whereas obviously Humbert can never speak of it. I get that, yeah.

[01:24:31] I think Humbert thinks of himself as a Quilty up until he's sort of confronted with the idea of Quilty. Right. He's like, I too am a free thinking intellectual who can pursue whatever and I'm not trapped by the limitations of society.

[01:24:45] But then when he meets a guy who actually kind of lives that way, he's like, I hate this guy so much. It's like everything's just a fucking lark and a goof for this guy. And I'm like Frankenstein's monster. Like I'm. Lark and a goof.

[01:24:55] He's sort of a randomista, that's for sure. Yeah. He is definitely. There's just so many. Quilty kind of the original shit poster. Sure. Yes, he's a big shit. No, but it's just so many scenes where Mason's like, just stop this foolishness, you know, both to Lolita and Quilty.

[01:25:12] What are you talking about? Like all that, that kind of malfunctioning. That's what I'm saying though. The Mason playing him like a universal monster. It is. Those Mason scenes feel like universal monster shit where it's like the guy monologuing about his affliction

[01:25:26] and how he wishes he could get over this dreaded wolfman curse, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shelly Winters, just to give you a little on her, was campaigning for JFK so hard that she demanded the movie be shot around that.

[01:25:43] She was like, you can't start filming until election, until inauguration day. Okay, Slay. Yeah, and they were like, we have to start filming. So they started filming after election day, but they wrote in her contract that if he won, she could go to his inauguration, which she did.

[01:25:58] Political Lady Gaga at Javits Center, you know? She did not get along with Stanley Kubrick at all. Not surprised to hear that. Not surprised to hear that. Right, very strong personality, had her take. He struggled to mold her take is my guess.

[01:26:14] We also watched the making of thing for Portrait of a Lady, her final film, where Jane Campion, who's a much more tender, empathetic filmmaker, was just like, she just, every single take, she goes like, I can't do this, it's too painful. Shelly Winter's whole thing,

[01:26:29] very connected to how her emotional sort of flood on screen at every moment, was just like, don't make me do this, please, this is too, I can't. Yes, according to- I love her so much. Yeah, at one point apparently, Stanley Kubrick almost fired her and said,

[01:26:43] I think that lady's gonna have to go. That's the quote, the Stanley Kubrick quote. So that's how annoying, because I think firing her from the movie would have been very complicated. I mean, the movie, the biggest star at this time, arguably, I guess.

[01:26:55] I think Mason's a bigger star. But she's certainly a big name. She's an Oscar winner already, I think? Yes. Because Diary of Anne Frank, that's her first win. So yeah, I mean- Did she win for Poseidon? No. No, she was nominated.

[01:27:08] That's her final, no, she wins for Anne Frank and for Patch of Blue, the Sidney Poitier movie. She's so good in fucking Place in the Sun. Yes, she is. She's awesome. I love Shelly. That's the thing about her, is you're like, she won two Oscars,

[01:27:22] and then trying to guess which two she won for. Right, there's a lot of plausible- You're like, she could have won for five or six different films. They shot it in England, as we noted. Every time with these- How do you know that?

[01:27:32] I know that, well, I read the dossier. But every time, it's like, Kubrick's like, it's before he's just like, I live in England now, bitch. Don't ask questions. In the 60s, he's like, that's just a good idea.

[01:27:43] I don't know, it was a great deal on a studio over there. You know, but he keeps ending up there. What was it? Oh, I said, he said, bitch? Yeah, he said, don't ask questions, bitch. No, they shoot it at Elstree.

[01:27:53] I didn't know they shot this in England. Of course you wouldn't know that, you grew up in Chicago. He did incredibly long takes, like 10 minute takes. Which I feel like is a thing in the early 60s, because that's when Hitchcock's fucking with that the most too.

[01:28:06] With like, how long can we go? I don't know. And he played music on set, classic silent film technique. People still do it sometimes, right? To set the mood. And which sounds weird, but that's okay. And so they would play like,

[01:28:25] West Side Story music to make Shelley Winters cry. I don't think you need to do anything to make Shelley Winters cry. I don't know, apparently she was into it. Irma LaDuce would apparently floor James Mason. And for Sue Lyon, they would play, he says, this is Terry Southern,

[01:28:41] not Elvis, but someone like Elvis to get her going. Some kind of balladeer, you know? The final sequence where Humbert finds Lolita and tries to convince her, that took the longest. They shot that for like two weeks. That's where they're like, we have to nail this.

[01:28:58] And I do think that is the most arresting part of the movie. Beyond maybe some of the seller stuff where you're just like, what the fuck? I will say that is the only section in the movie that holistically works for me. Yes.

[01:29:11] Where I feel like the movie has complete control over its tone and its intent and its interest. And then there are other scenes that I find fascinating, but they feel at odds with themselves. I mean, I think that's a beautiful scene,

[01:29:22] which the movie really does not have very many of. It has a lot of compelling scenes, but certainly not beautiful ones. The movie is mostly compelling in a horrifying way. Right, the seller's porch hotel, pretending to be the cop scene, I'm like,

[01:29:36] is captivating, but what the fuck is this? And the whole sequence is kind of already alarming. The whole cot bed, you know, the whole conversation with the clerk where you're just like, I want. It's weird how much of it, right, like they, yes.

[01:29:50] Well, I was gonna say, what's his sidekick? Peter Seller's sidekick? Oh, the woman with her severe haircut. Right. Yeah, but like she keeps popping up in a way where I'm like, okay, so this is. She's sort of like the great gazoo, you know, only he can see her.

[01:30:04] Is she the great gazoo or is she Jelaine Maxwell? I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%, yeah. They're very similar figures, obviously. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trendy haircut, yeah. There's also the whole weird thing with him being disgusted by the swinger couple. Right. In the town.

[01:30:22] But again, it's, right. These perverts and freaks want to. It's the, you know, I'm not like them thing, right, yeah. I do love when he's in the bath avoiding them. That's the scene I wanna talk about. That is another scene where you're like,

[01:30:34] this is captivating, it is so strange. I don't know what the fuck is going on. Yeah. Go on, go on, talk about it. Well, so he's found out that she's died. Yeah. Then he goes back to his bath. He's getting drunk. Yep.

[01:30:45] And he's kind of relieved because he was terrified. He was gonna get caught, he was gonna get rumbled. I think it's a positive bath for him. Absolutely. He maybe shouldn't have written all his crimes down in a diary for his wife to find, but yeah.

[01:30:57] And he's drunk with joy, but also sort of like psychologically unraveling because he's madman. And then all these people are coming over. And not only that, but it's also like, wait, could I get away with it? Like the weird kind of like thrill of that. Right.

[01:31:09] Like, yeah, horrifying. Everyone's coming over to console him, give him their like, you know, morning fruit cakes or whatever. Love a morning fruit cake. And it's just like one by one, they all walk into this room. Like they're the fucking like fireman and cop

[01:31:21] from something about Mary checking out the dick in the zipper, catching him in the bath and going like, oh, I'm sorry, should I not be here? And he's like, no, come on in. And everything he's doing is insane. And they're like, I don't know,

[01:31:32] I guess grief is weird. Yeah. I mean, I guess it is. Yeah. It's kind of similar to like the later stuff where in the hotel or whatever, where they're like, yeah, I guess he's her dad. And this is what's going on. And he's sort of doing the like,

[01:31:47] oh, my wife's gonna show up in a minute. Everyone's like, who am I to judge? I'm like, feel free to judge. Yeah, you know, 911 famous number, call the police. One of the top phone numbers of all time. Yeah. Or just ask some questions. Ask even one.

[01:32:03] But no one wants to. No one wants to. But that's part of, I think, the weird, like the lobster-esque reality of this movie for me. Where it's like, well, obviously they can't talk directly about what's really going on. But also the lack of interrogation

[01:32:21] by other people around them feels like, he can only ask questions about how many beds we need in a room. The movie has that bizarro world that the book doesn't have because you're so locked into his POV in the book that you're like, well,

[01:32:34] the world must be normal and he's insane. But in the movie, you have that bizarro thing of like, well, if you've got little fuckers like sellers walking around, maybe James Mason actually seems normal. Yes. That when he can't remember if he's with his wife or his girlfriend,

[01:32:48] you're just like, that's the weird guy. Here's the other thing the book get away with, doesn't have to consider that the movie does because it's a visual medium. You have to watch people perceive him and perceive him with her and their behavior. In the book, he's so solipsistic.

[01:33:04] He's so caught up in his world. He's just telling you his internal life that you don't have to think about like every time they go to check in at a hotel. Right, they have to walk in together and have this whole- They're like, something-

[01:33:15] He has to do his little cot song and dance. Oh, shit. And then she's like, oh, sucking on your giant lolly with the sunglasses and shit. It is funny how much- All right, fan master vibe. The iconography of the poster. Oh, you big lolly. Yeah, no, I know.

[01:33:27] This is gonna be tied to me for the rest of my life. You're the one who wrote Lolly's story. You went out and got the lolly. Okay. I didn't ask for this. You're the one who's gonna win the Pulitzer for Lolly's story.

[01:33:37] I didn't ask for anyone to talk about my lolly. Lolly's story, bit.ly.com slash lolly. She doesn't even eat the lollipop. That's what I was gonna say. It's funny how much iconography of the movie is- Well, it's also like I thought the movie was in color. Yeah.

[01:33:49] Because of the poster. Yes, I remember being surprised when I was a teenager. The poster is better than the movie. Just between the tagline, the imagery. The poster's better than the movie. The poster's perfect. The poster eats this movie's lunch? I think so. I don't know.

[01:34:01] It's also short. Movie's got sellers. The poster's so short. Peter Sellers' name's on the poster. Yeah, that's so sad. If it had- You don't see him, she's right. It would be funny if all of the faces are just on the corners or whatever. Hovering around it.

[01:34:13] Yeah, or like a parenthetical being like, and he's doing something weird. Yeah. That might work. Well, I like that in an old poster where the guy who's doing something weird has sort of torn open a part of the poster and is popping his head out like,

[01:34:26] ah, look out for me now. I shouldn't be here. I'm the surprise. Yeah. Here's some ideas that Warner Brothers, for example, had on how to make this movie palatable for the Hayes Code. Three teens. Loli, three duh. One, age her up. Make her 15, 16, right? Sure.

[01:34:45] A little more like- 27, 45. Stanley, keep going. Two, a big thing for them, apparently, and apparently this was something that got suggested to Nabokov a lot, have them actually get married. I guess just sort of with the thought of like, well, if they're married,

[01:34:59] then it's sort of legal, right? Everyone's put their head in their hands at that. Kubrick said- This is also, it's like, what? This is like fucking five years after the Jerry Lee Lewis shit where he's like, what's the problem? I married her!

[01:35:12] And everyone's like, you're not allowed anymore. That's not right. He was allowed. We're related. What's the big deal? But it's like, I mean- So much in common, like genes. It makes me think of like, Hail Caesar or whatever. You just imagine like these old studio guys

[01:35:26] being like, all right, well, I'm reading the book and they're like, so yeah, well, what if they got married? They're just sort of like in suits, pitching ideas or something. That'd be fine, right? What if Humbert's store, they've got a bunch of cute dogs around.

[01:35:38] I read comic books about Dick Tracy beating people up. I don't know what this is, but you're asking me to solve a problem here. I don't know. What if Humbert's a cop and Lolita is held captive and he saves her and they never fall in love?

[01:35:50] Like, that's just how I imagine some of these studio conversations going. And then Kubrick apparently was like, the Hays Code will not, that's not gonna solve your problem. Like, it's still not gonna get past the Hays Code just because you got them pretend married in your pretend movie.

[01:36:07] But basically, I guess the whole time they would just shoot alternate stuff and show it to the MPAA to kind of keep them off their backs. They would shoot like milder stuff. Okay. Like just a scene of God approving. Very good. This is just in right.

[01:36:27] These are complicated character and the movie is not outright condemning or condoning. God just comes in to say stuff like that. Depiction does not equal endorsement. Right. The MPAA, in their Hays Code form at this point, their biggest suggestion with the actual movies are the seduction scene.

[01:36:46] The initial seduction scene between Humbert and Lolita should fade out a lot earlier. Again, it's kind of like, but then the movie's gonna keep going. I know. The thing with movie censorship where it always seems so funny and then you hear directors later on

[01:37:00] about these conversations they have with the rating board where they're like, can he just thrust twice and then we cut? And you're like, why is that better? Like, you know, versus deep thrust. Our buddy Chris Weitz talks about that all the time

[01:37:13] but like the amount of what he called frame fucking they had to do over the first American Pie where it was literally like how many thrusts go into the pie from what angle, at what velocity is the difference between R and NC-17?

[01:37:32] Once he's fucked the pie, he's fucked the pie. The film got an X rating in England. Sure. It got a condemned from the Legion of Decency. Uh oh. You don't want that. Nope. They should bring that back. I think they did for DC Legion of Superpower.

[01:37:49] They're like, come on, this is just Craven. But it did get the code seal of approval which meant that MGM picked it up. Other studios had run away, obviously. And of course the battle to get the film approved was incorporated into the iconic tagline of the film

[01:38:09] on the poster, which Griffin Newman says is better than the movie. I stand by it. No, I don't mind it. I'm trying to think of the most recent thing where the tagline or any of the marketing has like relied on the production

[01:38:22] and all I can think of is that bad North Korea movie. The interview? Yeah. Do they have a tagline like that? I don't think so, but I feel like- I'm like, is it on Netflix now as like the movie Kim Jong-un didn't want you to see

[01:38:34] or some shit? Oh, maybe, yeah. I can't think of it. I wish they just sort of did more stuff with that. Remember how weird that was? Yeah, weird time. Not a good movie. Who directed that movie? No, which makes it all the weirder.

[01:38:48] I know, if only it was good. I had to write about Franco playing Castro and then I was like, which is so, which also that press release is so funny and so crazy. All right, Rogan directed it with Goldberg. Right. Yeah. Weird. Everything about that movie's weird.

[01:39:04] I don't approve of Franco being cast as Castro. No good, very bad. Even though he has the exact same bone structure when they ran it through a computer program or something? Yeah. Oh, you've convinced me. Okay. Oh, well when you say that.

[01:39:17] You do know that's their fucking defense. I know, I know, whatever. But it's just like sometimes. It's a physiognomy. Physiognomy, that word came back. Let's get it back out. They're like, look, if you have a suggestion of a better skull shape, we'll hear it. I don't know.

[01:39:28] We couldn't find one. Just get Fidel back. Bring him back. Bring Fidel back. CGI Fidel? Bring Fidel back. Yeah, hologram Fidel. It's not even about him really. You might as well have a CGI one. Sure, yeah, do a Peter Cushing and Rogue one thing, yes.

[01:39:41] I think this is a great quote from Kubrick about what he thinks doesn't work about the movie. Like fundamentally. Years later, he's reflecting. Sure. The important thing in the novel is to think that on the outset that Humbert is enslaved by his perversion and only at the end

[01:39:55] when Lolita is married and pregnant do you realize that he does love her. So he's saying like the end hits so hard in the book because you've never been in that mindset and then by the end you're like, huh, he does actually.

[01:40:08] There is something more than just this obsession he's talking about. Whereas he says in my film, the fact that his sexual obsession could not be portrayed at all just implies that he's in love with her from the start. So like, it just kind of plays

[01:40:20] as a slightly more traditional weird love story. You don't really get into the fact that this guy is obsessed with preteen girls. Right. Like at all. No, I think that's it exactly. Like if he, imagine if, look, imagine if the movie begins, red velvet curtain. Yeah.

[01:40:38] Maybe a little dry ice. Okay. Okay? James Mason comes out wearing a smoking jacket. Yeah. Okay? Got a big cigar and a cup of tea and he's like, oh, I'm Humbert Humbert. Fucking love nine year olds. You know, and then you're like, whoa, whoa, this guy is awful.

[01:40:51] I hate this guy. You know, then it's different. It also doesn't work. You guys think that's a good idea? And it's unbearably sad and difficult to watch. You guys think that's a good idea? But the Adrian Lyne movie does that basically at the opening

[01:41:00] and I do think it's to the film's advantage. You don't think that's a good idea? Thumbs down David. You don't like my smoking jacket? I hate that. I agree. I agree. He should come out fucking like Rod Serling style. Hello, I'm an awful pervert. Imagine if you will.

[01:41:14] But I do think it's interesting that he's like, because I was so handcuffed and be able to dramatize the erotic portion of this guy's psychology. Yeah. It just plays like a weird love story at the end. Like, I don't know.

[01:41:26] Well, I think either you start with sort of the weird thing that, I don't really remember the thing in his past. There's a girl from his childhood. He loses his virginity to a girl when he's like 14 years old. And she dies. And then she dies of consumption.

[01:41:38] Immediately pretty much. Like, I mean, I think you either start with that or you start with him shooting Quilty for dramatic tension, but you don't get to have two beginnings to that movie. And I think they picked the one that makes like

[01:41:48] the vehicle of the movie work better at the expense of like- Sure. But the whole- The heart of it. The whole thing, which is like psychologically sort of sourced and backed up, the very often pedophilia is some sort of like effect of people being frozen developmentally

[01:42:03] at that age, right? And so the book and the Adrian Lyman version go out of their way to say like, this is why. Yeah. And this movie, it's yes. And it's part of also the weird like his worldview of her is externalized. Everyone else is calling her Lolita.

[01:42:21] No one else seems to pick up on what's going on. Quilty is like the fucking Joker, like maneuvering the entire universe around having the secret affair. Yeah. That it doesn't feel like, it feels like a movie about a man who is at odds with himself.

[01:42:39] And that's the great tragedy of it, rather than a movie about a man who is like, you know, like fundamentally fucking cursed. Yeah. As far as you know, when he comes into this movie, this is a guy whose life has been normal

[01:42:53] up to the point that he walked into the door of this house. Right. Versus a guy who's like an insane lunatic. This girl kind of breaks him. And then the movie tries to kind of at the end go like, but the love was real, so. Yeah.

[01:43:07] Look, he did care. Look at him giving the money. No, it feels karmic at the end though. Yeah. It feels like every step of the way he's making the wrong decision. And then the consequences that has, the situation is getting worse and worse and worse. Well yes.

[01:43:22] Yes, he is fundamentally entirely dysfunctional and awful. Yeah, you know what's a really bad decision? Right. To tell her that her mom's still alive. Yeah. Yeah. Where you're just like, well whenever the shoe's dropping on this. The lows, the desperation for this character is sickening.

[01:43:40] Kubrick later finally just comes out and says it and says, if I'd realized how severe the limitations would be I probably just wouldn't have made it. Yeah. Which is fairly damning of him. Yeah, what does that mean? When you unpack that quote. Well he's like,

[01:43:56] there was something about this novel that I thought was powerful. It was impossible to realize. And I just could not fundamentally dramatize it. Because of the fact that I could not portray this guy as an outright sort of broken monstrous person. So instead he's just a weirdo.

[01:44:11] I mean, now I'm paraphrasing. But once again, I think it's like, he's assuming he could have squared the circle in a time without content restrictions. Versus just being like, what we keep on talking about? Like you just can't fucking make this book into a movie.

[01:44:26] Well also the fundamental thing is, as you said there's the line movie that does everything he couldn't do. Right. And that movie is boring. Yeah. It's not very successful. No, case closed. And like Adrian Lyne made Flashdance, which is a movie that you're like,

[01:44:41] every second of Flashdance you're like, makes no sense, makes no sense. But you're watching it and you're just like, I'm having fun. He's kind of the king of that. Lyne is usually good at like threading stupid, obviously Lolita's different from Flashdance.

[01:44:52] But on paper, Adrian Lyne in the 1990s with that cast making Lolita more faithful to the book, you're like if anyone's ever gonna pull it off it's him right now. Sure. I remember when it came out people were like, don't do it.

[01:45:06] Yeah, like why are you doing this? I mean if Cooper had waited, I wonder what would have happened. Even if he waited for the 70s or something. Yeah. If he waited five years. Because I do feel like based on the quotes you shared,

[01:45:18] all of which are new to me, that he fundamentally understands the source material that he's working with and what he wants to be saying and is limited just by the nature of the times. Yeah, I just still wonder how much you can ever externalize this book. Yeah, totally.

[01:45:34] Like in Flashdance she's a welder. Right. Yeah. She dances at a local bar in Pittsburgh that somehow allows massively overcomplicated cabaret acts to perform. Buckets of water. Buckets of water. A lady who's like I'm a subway train. It's not just people dancing, it's really complicated visual bits.

[01:45:55] She wants to be a ballerina. Yeah. She meets another welder who's rich, who takes a shine to her, right? Yes. And because he gets her the right audition, she gets to do a ballerina audition. Like he gets her in with the right people.

[01:46:14] This is how my aunt and uncle met. I can't believe this. And then she gets to be a ballerina and you watch this movie and you're like, oh this is a bit silly and people come in and are like no, no, no,

[01:46:23] the most successful film of the year basically. You don't understand. I never knew that. I didn't know that. Pulled that off. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that was the premise of Flashdance. The premise of Flashdance is she's just a simple welder who just wishes to be a ballerina

[01:46:37] and her way into doing that is doing kind of like sexy but not stripping dancing. Yeah, I think I thought it was like Footloose. No, she's got a like skeezy Flashdance. Footloose is equally insane though. Footloose is like the best dancer in the world

[01:46:47] arrives at the one town where dancing isn't allowed. Footloose also makes no sense. Yes. He's like how I express myself as dancing and they're like uh-uh, no. Yeah, Wait, What's the Dance Movie? Center Stage, that's not 98 though. That's like 2000. Center Stage is like 2000.

[01:47:04] I was like it took them a while to figure out you could just make a movie about dance. Right. Sure. You'd be like I wanna be a dancer and they're like seems hard, that's the movie. Rather than like I wanna be a dancer but convoluted.

[01:47:13] And they remained successful when they started doing that. Like Save the Last Dance and Step Up, whatever. Once they just cut out the tension and went like it's about someone who wants to dance. Yeah. Then it works. Bosley Crowther. I just wanna read you him bodying Lolita. Sure.

[01:47:28] I was a film critic for the New York Times. People at the time. How did they ever make a movie of Lolita? According to poster. The answer to that question posed in the advertisements of the picture which arrived at the Lowe's State and the Murray Hill last night.

[01:47:40] Love that in old theater, old movie reviews where they tell you like the two Manhattan theaters you can see it at. Is as simple as this, they didn't. They made a movie from a script in which the characters have the same name as the characters in the book

[01:47:53] and the plot bears a resemblance to the original and some of the incidents are vaguely similar but the Lolita Nabokov wrote as a novel and the Lolita he wrote to be a film are two conspicuously different things. Oh, he's laughing in writing this. He's like, fuck off.

[01:48:07] He's having a laugh. Kale write about this? I don't, she would have been working. Yeah. It's not in here. I feel like she would have hated this but. He loves it, she loves it. Oh, she loves it. Kale's pro. Okay, I never know.

[01:48:21] I like her because I never know what she's gonna say about something. Yeah, no, she calls it one of, oh no, I'm sorry. No, no, no, I'm sorry. Oh, she hates it. This website calls this review one of Kale's best reviews. I was confused by the capsule.

[01:48:40] Now, I think that she had a similar. Are you on a top 20 deadliest Pauline Kale body blows listicle? Crack.com, 18 times Pauline Kale absolutely shredded her masterpiece. No, she seems more positive on it. And in fact, she makes fun of Bosley Crowther

[01:48:59] in this very review says he's always counted on to miss the point. That's back when movie critics were just like, Bosley Crowther, who's as ugly as he is fat. You know, like, you're just like, whoa. There were also like six of them. They were like the Greek gods.

[01:49:14] Which one are you? Right, they're all wearing like capes and shit. What's your gimmick? But she's more positive on it, yeah, yeah. I think you read so much of the responses movie at the time and there was a lot of like points for audacity

[01:49:29] to everyone involved where it's just like, what courage to make this? Me, I mean, I don't like this film. I do think it's fascinating. It is very compelling. Yeah, I think it's fascinating, but I watched it one time to have seen every Stanley Kubrick film.

[01:49:47] That is why I eventually watched it. And I remember at the time, like King, or whatever, being like, well, there's nothing like it. It's interesting. On rewatch, I just really, it really loses me for the second hour plus. Really post Shelly Winters.

[01:50:02] The seller stuff does not charm me as much as it charms you guys. I grew up, I mean, I don't know if I'm charmed. Yeah, charmed isn't the right word. Or whatever, interested. Bewildered and entranced. I don't like it though. I mean, you guys have stopped me.

[01:50:14] I was said, I grew up twice and you guys talked over me, which is crazy because I was about to lava and you fall for you guys. You have something you want to say about your life? I grew up in England. What?

[01:50:25] And I think that really has turned me against all the great British comic figures because just because like, They're too revered. Yeah, you spend so much time and like watching TV back then, especially back when there were only fucking four channels. Yeah.

[01:50:41] And it'd be like the BBC's like 100 greatest comedians. And they basically be like, number 100, Peter Sellers, number 99, Peter Sellers again. We're going to just do him for 50. They just, Peter Sellers, Morecombe and Wise, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook, Peter Sellers.

[01:50:54] You're just like, I get it, I get it, I get it. It is good. Sure. And I think Strange Love is a masterpiece and he's so funny in it. And I think he's funny in other stuff. But like, I don't know, he creeps me out in this movie.

[01:51:06] He's a creep. He's a creep. And this is the thing where I'm saying, I do think this is the movie that gets closest to him playing himself. Not in his sexual predilections, but in his odd- I can't be a real person. Yeah.

[01:51:20] No, and I think that's what he was like. We have a dwindling number of comedians, let alone comedic actors who do a thing that I think is so funny. And also I would never want to be anywhere near them. Because of cancel culture, they're too afraid.

[01:51:30] Of course, because of cancel culture. Not that I want to fucking dip into this, but it's like, this is why every single week the like discourse echo chamber is losing their mind, fighting over the rehearsal. Oh sure. Because Nathan Fielder has built himself to be inscrutable.

[01:51:44] You know, and I don't say this as a brag. Yeah. I just don't know what the rehearsal is about. I don't know anything about it. All I know is that Nathan Fielder is in it and people are very animated about it. In both directions. I really don't know.

[01:51:58] I'm not watching it. I do think it is, like even someone like Sacha Baron Cohen. I'm not not watching it because I hate him or love him or whatever. I just haven't gotten around to it and I just sort of see people like yelling about very abstract things.

[01:52:09] I feel like Sacha Baron Cohen, and you know, not to his credit or detriment, didn't really put any energy into trying to hold on to any mystery about himself. Like he talks about that he doesn't like doing interviews as himself, but when he does them you're like,

[01:52:25] you seem normal. You're not someone whose skin is like. Yeah, he's maybe the closest modern example we have. Because Fielder's not doing, I mean, I actually can't speak on Fielder. I haven't seen enough to speak on him. You haven't played the field? No.

[01:52:39] Let's put it in the box obviously. Well okay. Okay, sorry, what's up? One last thing I wanted to say about the movie. There's a song that's playing when we first meet Lolita. Oh yeah. Original composition I think. It's an original composition.

[01:52:54] Right, what is it, Monster Mash or what is it? Well it's got that sound to it. No, truly, it's like a very old fashioned sounding song. It fucking kind of rips. Did you look up what it is? I did last night and now I'm like,

[01:53:08] unless I'm playing it out loud. See if you can find the title. Oh, we looked this up I feel. Yeah, Lolita Ya Ya. Yeah, the Ya Ya song by Nelson Riddle. It charted. Oh right, right, it was written for this.

[01:53:20] This is a fucking, okay, this is kind of like, this is kind of a solid song where I was like, this would be in a fucking Wes Anderson movie if it wasn't like, you know, wasn't in this movie. This is the other thing,

[01:53:32] so much of the music in this movie is so jaunty and fun and it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me really uncomfortable but it's like this is- But on its own, this song is great. Oh man. It's very effective. I'm just-

[01:53:43] It's like a little stop motion dog dancing to this song. Oh yeah. God, this movie is so fucking weird. Like I'm watching- A corduroy jacket. So I Googled this song, right, and a YouTube video plays- Catches on his elbows. And it's basically like a montage of the film

[01:53:55] just playing, right? And like I'm being reminded of some scenes, like the movie, The Drive-In Theater, which is like a clever Kubrick bit of like watching how the hands move around. Oh sure. You know, like where they both put their hands on him

[01:54:09] and he grabs both their hands and he lets go, Shelley Winters, then he puts his hand on Lolita and she puts her hand on him, but then Shelley Winters just like puts it and everyone's like, uh. The nail polish- Yes.

[01:54:19] Being the only outward physicalization of sex in this movie. And then you have like shots like this where it's like he's sitting in his fucking bathroom with a fucking cravat and she's like next to him with a piece of toast and you're like, what a weird movie.

[01:54:31] Like leaning in, like sort of, who me? And he's like. That toast looks so good in that scene. How's that buttered toast, you ready to eat? It looks so good. You know what's fucking good? Buttered toast? Piece of buttered toast, get out of here. Nothing better.

[01:54:47] There is sort of this very funny micro trend on food TikTok right now where people are quote unquote discovering just eating bread with butter on it and maybe a little bit of salt and it's like what the fuck's going on? If you'll allow me to reminisce,

[01:55:00] if you'll allow me to reminisce, when I was a kid in England, in London, London, England. What? I took piano lessons every week with a lovely lady. Like hell you did. What was her house, Andre? Oh, I thought she'd have like a Dame Thwine? Wisp, wisp, wisp.

[01:55:17] Mrs. Bagthorpe. Yeah. I mean, she was kind of, she was like a classic sort of slightly dotty British piano teacher lady. Chatter Brimblebratch. Right, but like she was a type of English person where it's like her house is kind of full of knickknacks

[01:55:32] and she's got like a long flowy cast. This is why I asked, I'm picturing the type. But so my mom would pick me up at school, at Hanover School, which is where I went, Hanover Primary School, my primary school, which was a crazy old Victorian building

[01:55:44] built for asthmatic children. Oh boy. It had a rooftop playground, it was right by the Regents Canal and the idea I think was like, oh, the water, that'll cure their asthma. Yeah. And she would take me to a greasy spoon called the Riedel Rooms

[01:55:58] and I would eat two pieces of buttered toast before I went to the piano lesson. That's why I love buttered toast. What do they call it there? So ridiculous, oh yeah, blimey, governor, I don't fucking know what. Two sheets of no end, ayat.

[01:56:15] Toast with butter, I don't know what they call it. Sometimes you get some like crazy big boy It's true, like bubble and squeak, like do you know what bubble and squeak is? That's like to me the funniest British greasy spoon order. No, you know.

[01:56:28] It's a potato thing, right? It's basically like potatoes and cabbages and you fry it and you know, it apparently goes bubbles and squeaks. When you get some like big crazy lumberjack breakfast, I feel like oftentimes the two pieces of buttered toast

[01:56:42] on the side are the most exciting part. You go through that and you're like, what's with this other shit I ordered? I don't want fucking sausage links. Give me more toast, give me a big tower of toast. Well for years I was like, yeah,

[01:56:52] give me the English muffin, give me the challah and now I'm just like, give me the most plain bread with toast and I'll make my choice with how I want to use it. I'll like default to doing bagel with cream cheese most days,

[01:57:06] but then it's like sometimes I treat myself at being like, keep it real simple. Fucking just toasted butter with bagel. That was a thing I hadn't even heard of till I moved out here. God damn hard. Unbelievable to me. Yeah. That you could put butter on a bagel?

[01:57:20] Never even thought of it. Thought that was a vehicle for cream cheese only. No, toasted butter bagel. Didn't know, didn't know. One of life's finer pleasures. The thing too is that order, what people don't know is if you get at a bagel place

[01:57:32] or whatever, basically they put on such a sick amount of butter that it's like, it's like you couldn't do it to yourself. That's the thing. Yeah. Someone else has to put that amount of butter. I literally had a buttered bagel for breakfast this morning from the bagel pot.

[01:57:49] Like from, someone made me a buttered bagel. It's like how an Eggo waffle, yeah, well that like when you pour syrup on an Eggo waffle and it gets wet, like that's what they do to your bagel. Your bagel is butter all the way down.

[01:58:01] And they so tightly wrap it in the paper and then the tin foil over it, so when you take it out, the entire thing is just cased in butter. When I was really broke. Like it's just the butter has just swished around in the wrapping.

[01:58:11] Yes, I love it. But when I was really broke in New York, like my breakfast would be a buttered bagel, untoasted from one of those carts. Oh sure. You know how they just have them wrapped in Saran wrap? And like with just yellow ass butter,

[01:58:24] like whatever, margarine, whatever it is, for like 50 cents. Yeah. Love that. That's the other thing though, buttered bagels still pretty cheap from even a real bagel place. Even from a fancy bagel place. They'll only charge you a couple bucks for a buttered bagel.

[01:58:35] I would do a salt bagel. With the butter? It's too much. I do everything just so you're balancing it. No, I think that's good. I'll try it one of these days. You want some extra salt, but not all extra salt. I love a salt bagel.

[01:58:47] Like toasted salt bagel. So good. Man, bagels rule so fucking hard. What if I do a spin-off podcast about bagels? I mean, I'm all for it, but how does the podcast work? Talk about bagels. Bring a guest on. Sounds good actually. Pick a, you know.

[01:59:04] We go to a bagel shop together. I guess I gotta get a shop to sponsor it. Or is it just like you have a guest on every week and you're like, so what do you think of bagels? What's your order? And you just sort of see how long

[01:59:14] you can sustain that conversation. I don't think I'd ever run dry. It's my favorite thing to talk about. I do love talking bags. What do you think of those rainbow bagels? Hate them. Right, aren't they gross? They must make people's duty look horrible.

[01:59:24] Ben, I don't wanna burn this here because I'll get an entire like fucking arc out of this on my bagel podcast. Wow, yeah, you're right. Yeah. I don't like them either. I'm very purist about it. I'm like there's like six kinds of bagels to me.

[01:59:36] Honestly, I might have to cut this all out and just save this as an excerpt for the future episode of your bagel show. Yeah, because David, you'll be a guest early on. So don't say any more bagel opinions here.

[01:59:44] And Fran will be as well because you're one of our best. Oh, thank you. One of our finest. Thank you. We shared the lolly article in the blank check text thread. And Marie just said, God, Fran is just the coolest.

[01:59:56] That's so nice to hear about me poisoning myself for a comedy. We didn't even discuss my wedding. I figured this would be the wedding episode. We can talk about, I thought we were gonna talk about the wedding too. I was fucking sure about your wedding. I totally forgot.

[02:00:06] This is the first episode recorded after my wedding which everyone in this room attended. Your wedding was great. Including Ben's girlfriend who's not in the room but she's sort of in the next room. And I brought my cat. No, you didn't bring your cat.

[02:00:18] That would be nice though. Can we be honest here? Stolen fucking valor. You want some credit for your wedding. You got married two years ago. No vows were exchanged in front of us. It was just a party. That is true. I had a great time.

[02:00:32] It was a great party. I'll be clear with you. It was billed as a wedding party. I know that's why I'm now, now you're saying. You think David stole valor. I was just using shorthand. From other people who got married? I think so. I did get married.

[02:00:45] I got married this week. No one's talking about it. You didn't tell anyone. Okay, well, it's not going well. I'll just say that. Yes, go ahead. Say that you and your wife looked great. You both really looked great. She looked great. I looked fine. Come on.

[02:01:01] You both look great. It was a beautiful night. At least two Dua Lipa songs played. Absolutely. DJ Mariko. Mariko Morimori. Shout out. I'll shout her out on my podcast. I don't know if you know this. The bit I was doing is I kept telling everybody

[02:01:14] that I actually came up with the playlist. Oh, did you? I didn't hear you. Yeah, it was a really funny bit. Yeah. No one believed me. Mariko was crushing it and everyone knew it. Ben and I were busting a gut at the table

[02:01:22] when you got up to make your speech. You were kind of at the podcast table. I'd say the cool kids table. Of course, yeah. Oh, I was at the cool table. You were at the cool table. I thought you were at the hot table.

[02:01:27] No, no, Fran was at the hottie table. Yeah, all right, whatever. Thank you. Although Ange dubbed it the bisexual girls with glasses table. Yeah, but you know. Sure, yeah. Six of one, half dozen of the other. But no, I'm sorry. Yeah, you were at the podcast table.

[02:01:36] Get up. Thank you all for coming in so much. She said her name. She said her name. We're gonna have to bleep it out but whatever. I'm sorry. David's wife Forky. Forky gets up and goes. What? Says, thank you. No. Some Forky bits. Trash.

[02:01:49] And she threw herself in the garbage. What is love? David had to fish her out. No, but she was like, thank you for coming in so much. Not only are you the best, but you're a good friend. You're a good friend. You're a good friend.

[02:01:59] You're a good friend. Even though she's not that good with a person. She's a good friend. So you're a good friend. You're a good friend. You're a good friend. Thank you for coming in so much. What is love? No, but she was like, thank you for coming.

[02:02:09] It means so much to have everyone here. It's been so long overdue. Made a joke about you growing up in England. Damn. Killed. Crazy. She knew that was coming. Honestly didn't expect that. She knew it was coming. And like said it and then pretty much directly

[02:02:21] looked over to our table and was like. Well she needed you guys to write tickets. To fight six pucks like that. Yeah exactly, get it going. But was like a very like gracious sort of like host table setting and said like when we got married,

[02:02:31] you know, two years ago, we've been waiting to have this event. And then you interjected with like, I actually did the math, it is. I didn't interject, the microphone was passed to me and I did do the math. The first thing you said when the microphone

[02:02:44] was passed to you was you did the math that it was actually two days short of being exactly two years. It was, it was a year and 360 days. It was, okay. Yeah, right, I mean I think I said the amount of days. I can't remember.

[02:02:56] You said the amount of days. I mean it was the equivalent of you having the laptop in front of you right now. Yeah. You know? You said the amount of days, Ben and I looked at each other, started busting up. Yeah, 728 days. Right, you don't love speaking publicly

[02:03:07] in front of people. I think it's fair to say your wife is also very shy about those things. Well she's genuinely shy and wrote something out and said it. You're less shy than she is, but you don't love being on like mic in front of a crowd.

[02:03:17] I don't love it, but I also was, we were so stressed and busy preparing a zillion things and I was like, I don't know, I'll just fucking say something and who cares. So David, David Rees and I were sitting together and we were talking about how good

[02:03:30] both of us are at wedding speeches and how rude it was that neither of us were ass. And I kept on joking, I had three speeches planned. I was gonna do three different speeches at different points in the ceremony. And then there was no ceremony.

[02:03:40] But so we were like rating everyone's speech as it happened, right? Being like good move. Like Molly comes up and you're like, she's locked and loaded for bear, right? She's gonna kill it, whatever. And you, once she passes you the mic,

[02:03:52] the first thing you do is the correction on the number of days. And then you go like, I don't know, there's food, does everyone get food? And I kind of laid out, we're gonna eat and then there'll be some toasts

[02:04:04] and we'll have dessert and then we'll dance I guess? You're doing like floppy Muppet arms and you're like, dance or whatever. And we just turned to each other and we went, God, I didn't think he'd go this emotional. And then the rest of the night,

[02:04:14] we were just dining out on the bits about how like, I don't usually cry at weddings, but David opened up to a different degree. Yeah, it's not my fault. You were just like, I can't get this over with fast enough. I don't know, what are the things

[02:04:26] that happen in this wedding? Sit in the chairs at your tables and then talk to the other people who were at your tables and then go over to other tables and talk to other people. And then later you're like,

[02:04:35] oh, and also we have to make a toast, I'm being told. Yeah, I'm being told unfortunately. It was the most David shit in the world. Yeah, no, that was actually, okay, so that was not my fault. When we arrived at the,

[02:04:49] and again, planning a wedding with a toddler is- Not a wedding, stolen valor. Why were you letting the toddler make decisions? What do you think? She should've done everything. All right, fine. She would've bought the place off. Really, the purple? Okay, we arrive at the wedding venue

[02:05:06] and our caterer's like, oh, by the way, we wanna give everyone a champagne glass filled with champagne, gratis, on us for a champagne toast. And we were like, oh, sure, that sounds good. And then I just totally spaced on it.

[02:05:19] And then we sit down and my wife was like, wait. We see the glass and we're like- You were supposed to leave the toast. What else are we gonna do? Everyone's got it in front of them. And I'm like, Mariko, give me the fucking microphone.

[02:05:30] I was like, ah, anyway, toast to love. You're like, oh, no, we're supposed to make a toast. It was toast to love. So that was not entirely my fault. Wasn't your fault, but even so, the energy of everything you said was just like, eh.

[02:05:42] It's when people parody you summing up the plot of the movie too quickly, where you were like, I don't know what happens at this wedding, we're all gonna get too drunk and dance. I don't know, what do you want from me?

[02:05:51] Like every time you got on the mic was, I don't know what do you want from me. I think that's fair. I think it's good. Having attended plenty of weddings where the opposite vibe is true, where it's like everyone is- That was our minds.

[02:06:04] You never wanna, we didn't want any of the sort of like, everyone, the glasses are clinking and the, because someone just keeps talking. Or the tense. Yeah, the tense. The tenseness. Ready to go. I've been working them out at the cellar.

[02:06:17] I will also say, and I'm sure people who are listening who've done a wedding, even a bit, like, it is that thing where you're just completely disassociated. And like, I ate the food in that way of like, well, I know I need to eat some food

[02:06:30] because food is fuel. But I couldn't even taste it. I was just like, I don't know. You're just so out of it. And then eventually, and then I sort of settled down. But like the early part of it, I was just like,

[02:06:41] it's so weird to be in one room. I said this, one of you maybe, and every minute someone, one of your best friends comes in looking hot. Like that's truly what it was. It's basically I'm in an empty big room.

[02:06:56] And Ben was the first to arrive, by the way. Really? Shout out Ben, 15 minutes early. Yep. Wow. It wasn't me though. That was all my girlfriend. Sure. She's a watch influencer. But like just that weird sensation of like, oh, well and then there's my friend from,

[02:07:11] you know, I know them from college. Oh, and I know this person. And they're all looking great. You know, and you're like, of course I know that's what's gonna happen. But it's a weird experience to watch it all happen. Especially after two years

[02:07:20] of like not getting to see a lot of people. Right, you're like, it's your own curated big fish ending. Yeah. But you're not dying. Yeah. And especially when this many people have not been able to be in the same room

[02:07:31] and people have been not traveling to other places. It wasn't even that big of a wait. No, no, no. Not even 100 people, yeah. Is it also a thing where you know everyone's looking at you all the time? A little bit. I mean, Alex Ross Perry kept saying

[02:07:41] that I was being like presidential. He said I was very presidential. And then I had a tie and I kept like walking over to tables and being like, how's everyone doing? I don't know, he was roasting me for that.

[02:07:52] You felt more like the owner of an Italian restaurant. Oh, well that's what I like. That's what I want. One time when I was a political reporter, and we gotta do the box office game, Jesus Christ. I once covered like an election night party in Harlem

[02:08:06] for like a local election. And it was this great old bar in Harlem. Charlie Rangel? Not Charlie Rangel, but you know, it was, I can't remember his name. And this like fucking gent comes over to me at one point. This old guy in like a great blazer.

[02:08:24] And I was like, hi. He was like, hi. And I was like, hi. And he's like, I'm the proprietor. And I was like, oh, that's cool. I wanna introduce myself like that. At this like cool, like jazzy bar. And fuck, what's his name? It doesn't, well who cares?

[02:08:39] Box office game. Okay, so this film opens, and this one was a hit. Mild hit, like nothing insane, but certainly relative to like is this movie unreleasable? And opens, what's the date? You know, it opens basically like June 1962. Wait, it was 165 opening weekend?

[02:09:00] It beat Dead Man's Chest, right? But then it, sorry. In its first, it seems, wide weekend. So a couple, which is what we're doing. And a couple weeks into its release, it's opening number five. Okay. It's not bad. No. Number one at the box office, Griffin.

[02:09:15] It's a Delbert Mann comedy. Delbert Mann comedy. Two giant stars. Okay. It's a rom-com. Okay, two giant stars. Man and a woman, rom-com, Delbert Mann. Yes. Is Cary Grant one of them? He is, and he's playing, and stop me if this sounds too crazy, a rich guy. Okay.

[02:09:40] And the lady is not rich. She's unemployed and kind of figuring it out. And it's kind of a whoop. Okay. Hmm, what is this movie called? The film is called, That Touch of Mink. Oh, sure. And it stars Cary Grant and Doris Day. Sure, sure, sure. Big hit.

[02:09:58] I'm too tired to guess. Huh? You're too tired to guess. Oh, he's tired. I don't know. Big hit, made $17 million. Okay. Nominated for three Oscars. You know, just a classic Cary Grant hit. Just a touch. Number two at the box office is a political drama. Political drama.

[02:10:15] Is it not Manchurian Canada? No, it's a Preminger. It's less famous than like the absolute top tier 60s political dramas, but it is a Preminger movie. It does have a badass Saul Bass poster and it stars like a bunch of heavy hitters.

[02:10:29] It's not about a fucking Man for All Seasons. Well, no, that's, that's a, you know. I'm just running through titles in my head. I know, I know, I know. Okay, he knows. Well, you got Henry Fonda, Charles Lawton, Burgess Meredith, Gene Turney. Do I know this movie?

[02:10:43] Is this like a known title? It's a known title in that it's like a political phrase. It's about, I think, the confirmation hearings for a secretary of state. You know, back when they really made just the most exploitative trash. Lois Cumdenow made it. It's called Advise and Consent.

[02:11:04] Oh, okay, I was never gonna get that. Cool poster though. Cool poster. It's a tag on a briefcase. Yeah, with the Capitol building. Capitol, it's a good title. Never Seen It. Young Betty White is in it. Oh, RIP. Yeah, RIP. Bless up. Number three at the box office.

[02:11:22] By the way, I'm throwing a Betty Centennial tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? Yeah, it's just, it was too late for me to cancel. You already bought the flowers. Yeah, and I bought the magazine covers. Go on. You already booked DJ Mariko.

[02:11:35] Number four, number three, number three at the box office is the best picture winner of 1970, sorry, 1961. It's in its 37th week of complete box office domination. It's one of the most famous films ever made. I might know it. What was the best picture in 1961?

[02:11:52] It's not Sound of Music. No, but it is a musical. West Side Story. Oh, of course. It's West Side Story, the story of the West Side. The most West Side film ever made. Until Stevie even went maybe even a little further west. 11th Avenue.

[02:12:08] This was just in a trivia thing I did and I had said Sound of Music and got corrected. I watched you step in the exact pitfall I did. Number three, number four, sorry, is another rom-com starring some famous people. Okay. About three men looking to meet needs

[02:12:34] that are not being satisfied in their marriages. Their bachelor friend arranges for a quote unquote kept woman who is in reality a sociology student studying the fantasies of contemporary American men. Sounds crazy, right? This isn't Balls of Fire. No. Good premise. It is kind of a crazy premise.

[02:12:56] What is this movie? It's called Boys Night Out. Okay. And the boys are James Garner, Tony Randall, and I think Howard Duff. Huh. And the girl is Kim Novak. Huh. It's a Michael Gordon film. I've never seen it. Yeah. It sounds wild.

[02:13:13] She does not actually sleep with the men to be clear, but she keeps making each one think she's sleeping with the other ones, I think is sort of the gimmick. Interesting. Sort of the Three's Company style weird arrangement.

[02:13:23] This is exactly what you could do in The Hays Code. Right. It's also got Patti Page, Zsa Zsa Gabor is in this film. Well. James Garner wrote in his memoirs that Novak was quote more interested in her makeup than the script. Okay. Fucking James. James.

[02:13:40] So that's Boys Night Out. Number five, Lolita. Ah. Some other films. Hattari. Mm-hmm. The John Wayne African Game Hunter rom-com. I've never seen it. Howard Hawks movie. I bet it's good. It's a Howard Hawks movie. It's probably pretty good. Yeah.

[02:13:57] Bon Voyage, which is a Disney Fred McMurray movie. One of their fun ones. I think I know about that one. Yeah. Let's see. Henry, Harry Willard makes good his promise to take his bride of 20 years on a long delayed trip by ship to Europe.

[02:14:10] They're accompanied by their kids. Comedy ensues. Reading here, Bon Voyage has been announced as a Disney Plus original series. Nope. Bosley Crowther didn't like it. Now we've heard of some other movies. We've heard of Mrs. Harris Go to Paris. What about Mr. Hobbes Taking a Vacation?

[02:14:27] The Monsieur Hello remake. It's Jimmy Stewart, right? Yeah. As the Ulo type. I've never seen. I haven't either. It's odd that it exists. Isn't it odd that that movie in particular is so much just his performance and his directing style? The idea of remaking it,

[02:14:47] it's not like the concept's that interesting. Number nine is something called The Counterfeit Traitor. Okay. Starring William Holden. Some kind of espionage thriller film. And number 10 is Judgment at Nuremberg, another heavy hitter from 61. I almost guessed. I mean, you know. It's probably somewhere around here.

[02:15:06] One of those movies. That's the box office game for Lolita. I don't have anything else for you guys. I don't either. Fran, thank you so much for doing this. Oh, thank you for having me. To make it very clear,

[02:15:17] the way we often book this show is we'll be like, who haven't we had on in a while? Who are people we've never had on that we should have on? And we'll throw out to them, like here's the miniseries we're doing. Tell us which ones you wanna do.

[02:15:28] And it was one of those things. It's not like you were our 20th choice for Lolita. I don't wanna make it sound like. No, 25th maybe. But it was a thing when we were throwing to people a full list. No one wanted to touch it.

[02:15:39] Or people would go like, I would do this, this, or Lolita. And if we circled back to them and said, hey, lot of interest in those other two. Would you do Lolita? They'd be like, nevermind. I actually don't wanna do Lolita. So then. I'm brave.

[02:15:53] Very quickly we said, who's the bravest person we know? Who knows books like a motherfucker? Who's got a giant lolly? Who's got a giant lolly? That's me. And as we know, anytime Fran Hoffner comes on the show, he fucking suplexes Lin-Manuel Miranda in the ratings. True. Yeah.

[02:16:11] I don't really want Lin to think there's some kind of rivalry between us. I do see us as. There's no rivalry. I see us as equals. You're not. You're much more powerful a draw for this show than he is. I'm so sure, yeah.

[02:16:24] Fran, is there anything you wanna plug Fran Magazine? I'll plug Fran Magazine, my little old sub stack. And that's it. Read the lolly piece on Gawker. Oh yeah, on gawker.com you can read about my six days with my lollipop,

[02:16:38] including a nice little visit my brother had to the city. While I was. Shout out Owen. Shout out Owen. While I was going through this, funny to explain to someone not sort of all about self-sabotage for comedy, how and why you self-sabotage for comedy.

[02:16:53] It's really hard explaining it to the normals. Yeah, you just, it's like science but less rewarding because nothing good comes out of it. You're just like, well, we'll see what happens. And my misery. It's an experiment where you know the outcome

[02:17:07] and you hope that people enjoy the outcome. Here's a great part of the stick, of the lollipop that I didn't make it in the story is the stick, which is that when you have a lollipop that big, stick is made of wood. Sure.

[02:17:20] Small lollipop, you got a paper stick. Starts to wilt. Starts to wilt, tastes horrible in your mouth. Yes. Wood lollipop stick, fine. Pretty good. Not bad. That's a ringing endorsement. Everything else about it, not good. I don't like lollipops for the reason you articulated.

[02:17:35] Yeah, I mean, I don't even really like hard candy. So this was really. I love cough drop. I like a cough drop, but the minute you unwrap a lollipop, it's like, well now I've got this fucking thing to deal with. It's the Kanye West tweet about that.

[02:17:47] Now I'm responsible for this water bottle. I mean. Back when he was funny. Yeah. Not a psycho. Maybe a little bit of a psycho. Thank you, Fran. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media

[02:18:03] and helping to produce the show. Thank you to Joe Bowen, Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Lee Montgomery and the Great American Ella for our theme song, JJ Birch for our research. Ijem Kian, Alec Barron for our editing. You go to blankcheckpod.com

[02:18:18] for some links to some real nerdy shit including Blank Check special features, our Patreon where we do commentaries on franchises along with other things. We're doing the Roger Moore Bond movies. We're saying, give me more. Yeah. But we're also doing two Kubrick bonuses coming up 2010 and Dr. Sleep.

[02:18:37] And then a mystery one coming later in the year. Tune in next week. For 3,000 years of longing. And as always. How did they ever make a podcast out of Lolita?