The first
@RememberThisPod
ep has been missing from
@ApplePodcasts
& other feeds for almost 10 years, due to music rights issues. For our 10 year anniversary, I've reedited and re-released it. Listen now to The Hard Hollywood Life of Kim Novak, Redux!
I have found it: the most triggering magazine cover of the 90s. It has everything: normalizing dieting, a weird lens on trans stuff, "how NOT to get raped"
Today my doctor, as small talk, asked me what shows I'm watching and I lied rather than tell him that last night I watched an erotic thriller from 1984 that literally has 0% on Rotten Tomatoes
Writing in a cafe in Hollywood. They have the impeachment hearing on a big TV, full volume. Jeremy Piven came in, sat down, ordered a granola bowl, and starting yelling answers at the screen. Then he finished his granola and left.
Bong Joon-ho and Song Kang-ho surprised the audience for Memories of Murder at Lincoln Center 😩. “I’m a huge fan of David Fincher and Zodiac, but please remember this came out four years before Zodiac.”
My official statement on this evening’s news: if Meghan Markle worked at Humphrey Yogart circa 1994, there is a 100 percent chance I purchased yogart from her. That is all I can say on this matter.
I saw LITTLE WOMEN embarrassingly late, because I wanted to pay for a ticket and not watch it for free and I’ve been busy. But: what a gorgeously made film. Also, put aside all the Timmy memes, and look at Chalamet’s performance: this guy is incredible and so exciting to watch.
My husband got nominated for an Oscar this morning! So it would extremely impolitic for me to tell you what I think about anything else that did or did not get nominated!!!
I can’t say it enough: almost nothing is streaming and if what you want to watch is available for purchase on a physical format, buy it because you don’t know when you’ll be able to see it again
For research, I'm watching a badly degraded YouTube copy of the landmark 1985 NBC movie An Early Frost--it streams nowhere and the DVD is out of print. A midstrike reminder that corporations are, predictably, terrible custodians of the work of those they refuse to pay fairly.
I know I’m going to get asked, so: I believe Hollywood’s history of racism should be openly discussed. As I explained in the
@RememberThisPod
season about Song of the South, when the industry tries to hide that history by de-circulating the products, they become fetish objects.
If you want movie theaters to survive this crisis — independent theaters and chains, the institution of public moviegoing on the whole — please buy gift cards to the places you would be frequenting if you weren’t staying home.
What film that has a reputation for being "bad" or a "flop" (critically or commercially), and that hasn't been reclaimed as misunderstood or "good, actually," do you think should be?
"Most Academy members don't know how to judge film editing," says Academy member, immediately before demonstrating that they don't understand what a film editor does
I'm sad Taste of Things, All of Us Strangers, Fallen Leaves and Ferrari did not get any Oscar nominations. But I think only 2 of the Best Picture nominees are absolute garbage, and that's pretty good!
The fact that none of the "what happened to Biden" jokes I'm seeing reference the movie DAVE suggests to me that we have not done a good enough job of canonizing the movie DAVE
The subtweet has taken over to the point where every time I open Twitter, I have to do 10-15 minutes of detective work to find the actual thing everyone is talking about.
The most uncool thing about me is that I genuinely love and care about the Oscars and baseball, and the fact that both are extremely broken should make me want to give them up but I cannot stop being desperately uncool
This is the last episode of
@RememberThisPod
for the time being. My contract to make new episodes is up and I am busy with other projects at the moment. I hope the podcast comes back in some form at some point. That’s all I know now, but when I have more to share, I will!
Novarro was a gay, Mexican silent film star who overcame the challenge of his accent to have a decent sound and even musical film career into the mid1930s, even playing Greta Garbo’s fuckboi. But in the 40s things got sad, and then they got worse.
Thinking about the longterm ramifications of movie theaters closing, I took a look back at the 1918 flu epidemic, which caused the movie industry's first recession. Then I made a mini podcast about it! It's free to all for the next two weeks on Patreon:
ps this is my second such encounter with a member of the Entourage cast this year. Johnny Drama sat next to me at a hotel bar and yelled things at Dodgers/Yankees game in August.
1. Kelly Reichardt is one of the best American filmmakers working today and First Cow is maybe her best yet, please see it when/however you’re able
2. Ten minutes in, when the cow shows up, me leaning over to my wife: “pssst that’s the first cow”
What an honor to be the token woman at this table! Seriously, getting caricatured on The Simpsons is beyond the wildest dreams of 8 year-old Karina whose parents wouldn’t let her wear a Bartman shirt to school.
The gang Kent is hanging out with at Streami's are the hosts of some of my favorite podcasts: (L to R): Mike Lombardi
@mlombardiNFL
from "GM Shuffle",
@KarinaLongworth
from "You Must Remember This," and
@NickWiger
& Mike Mitchell
@BDayBoysMitch
from "Doughboys"
For the past year I've been working in secret on a podcast miniseries about actress Joan Bennett, whose husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot her agent/lover in 1951. It's a collaboration w/
@VHopeful
(JB's granddaughter),
@VanityFair
&
@Cadence13_
. It debuts a week from today!
If you are interested in a high-level analysis of blackface on 30 ROCK, you should BIRTH OF AN INDUSTRY by Nicholas Sammond, which taught me a lot about the privilege of white artists to employ blackface with "good intentions":
I saw Diane Keaton in a restaurant the other night so last night I put on Something’s Gotta Give. Perfect film, think it would crush if released today, but can’t imagine any currently 60-something actor as successfully interrogating his sexual persona as Nicholson does
Charles Manson is dead. In 2015, I made a series of
@RememberThisPod
episodes about him as a wannabe star and his connections and reverberations through late 60s/70s Hollywood:
Two highlights from the archival research I've been doing:
1. In 1991, a Joan of Arc movie was announced, to star Sinead O'Connor, to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow;
2. In 1992, the below-the-line power move was to agree to come to LA for a job, but refuse to stay at the Oakwood.
I am so into MINDHUNTER and also very, very into Holt McCallany in it, especially when he is in his "casual" uniform of suit jacket and tight polo shirt. I feel like I've never seen anyone who looks quite like him as the star of a show and I am extremely hot for it.
Yesterday I spent the day on a sparsely-populated beach reading about Fritz Lang and then took the 405 to the 101 to get home and there was no traffic and I stopped for Humphrey Yogart on the way. This will probably be the best day of my life.
There will be a new season of
@RememberThisPod
beginning July 3. From that date on, there will be new episodes almost every week for the rest of the year. That is all I can tell you at this time.
The upcoming season of
@RememberThisPod
truly spans a full century. Today I had to process details about both Rob Lowe’s sex tape, and the backroom deal that got Tallulah Bankhead her first job. It’s a lot!
MOONSTRUCK (1987) Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia. Dir: Norman Jewison 6:00 PM ET
When she tries to make peace in her new family, an engaged woman falls for her fiance's brother.
Color, 102 mins, CC, Letterbox,
#comedy
#TCM
Peter Bogdanovich was a legend like no other. I wanted to tell Polly Platt's story in part because I am such a huge fan of the movies she and Peter made together, but I also love a lot of his later movies--yes, even At Long Last Love (this poster is in my kitchen)
I haven’t seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood yet, and I don’t think I’ll be able to for another couple of weeks. In the meantime, everything I have to say about Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, Charles Manson, etc is in this podcast.
I think if something gives you anxiety and you tell the people you are in a promotional relationship with that you have certain boundaries, they should expect that. I have issues about being filmed and when I shared that with a podcast team earlier this year...
The day I picked up the dress I’m wearing to the Oscars tonight, in the car on the way home I started thinking about how she didn’t win for this film and started crying on the freeway 🤷🏻♀️
This week's
@RememberThisPod
is our 150th episode! It took five and a half years to get to a landmark that other shows reach after 3 because this show is incredibly difficult to make, but thanks for bearing with us!
A new season of
@RememberThisPod
begins tomorrow and one thing you should know about it is that the first episode includes parts voiced by
@julieklausner
and film director James Gray.
Greta (or someone) should actually adapt PRAIRIE FIRES as a limited series. It's an incredible book, Laura Ingalls Wilder lived for almost a full century, and the journey from her childhood to her daughter's career as a Libertarian grifter in the 30s-40s is wild
Olivia Rodrigo is a big fan of Greta Gerwig and wants her to adapt, ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ one of her favorite books as a child.
(Source:
@RollingStone
| )
The new season of
@RememberThisPod
begins Tuesday. The first episode deals with early 20th century culture wars, a powerful man’s fetishizing of his female teenage employees, and rumors of incest between two silent stars. Also there will be 90s britpop. Subscribe!
When you start going to awards shows, it becomes pretty apparent who declines to be professionally groomed. Basically, a few male producers/directors...and our queen, Frances McDormand
Splash Mountain is in the news, so you might want to listen to the episode of
@rememberthispod
from last year about how Disney built to reference Song of the South, even as they were deciding that no one should see Song of the South:
The new season of
@rememberthispod
debuts May 4. The first episode covers Tammany Hall-era sex work, the real family behind Chinatown, "sob sister" reporters, silent era film critic corruption, The Birth of a Nation, and much more. Subscribe:
New season of
@RememberThisPod
! Gossip Girls: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Today: the corruption of the newspaper men who gave them platforms; & Louella’s rise from obscurity into the first gossip writer-as-Hollywood enforcer via The Birth of a Nation
Today, awards nominations went to a few things that are absolute garbage, while several good things did not get any nominations at all. Finally, a return to normalcy!
if you are looking for entertainment that you can consume without leaving the house, here is a full list of the films we've discussed on
@rememberthispod
:
Every afternoon that I can, I'll highlight one available for streaming on this thread.
Justice for Sohla El-Waylly, who not only bailed her white male colleagues out on that Andes mints video, but also consistently writes great recipes, such as this lamb yogurt pasta:
from sohla’s Instagram stories
bon appetit’s lack of diversity is obvious from the video content that spurred its massive following, but to find out that only white editors are paid for video appearances? i am disgusted
I thought I had made peace with the ignorant insanity of Oscar takes, and then I read multiple versions of "'Justine Triet' is a typo and a man named Justin got a nomination instead of Greta."
I hope that BLONDE (which I haven’t seen yet) will do for Marilyn’s movies what it seems like ELVIS did for Elvis. If you don’t know where to start, my top 5:
The Misfits
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Niagara
Bus Stop
How to Marry a Millionaire
There are two episodes left in the current season of
@RememberThisPod
. I'm working on another season due out in fall. Then there is another project coming out in between. Working on all of this content has almost broken me and I'll never do so much all at once again, so enjoy!
Also I saw it in a theater by myself and cried for like the last hour straight, and then I went to a restaurant that I go to 3 times a week and the manager gave me a free glass of wine because I clearly looked like I needed it
Free podcast idea for The NY Times: Inside the Obit. Hire someone to record interviews with the writers and editors who work on the week’s most fascinating obituaries, revealing the reporting and decision making process.
It’s looking more and more like
@rianjohnson
and I might convert our twitter accounts to full-time reviews of commercials that air every night on Dodger games
Found an article about 50ish Doris Day’s beauty secrets, which included full-body masking with Vaseline. She said: “You feel remarkably soft and pliant. It’s no good, however, if you have a man sharing your bed; so recently I had to give up my petroleum-jelly baths.” Doris!!!
Zoey Deutch told Vulture that she "had the coronavirus early on, before the shutdown" & tested positive for a month, which gives credence to my conspiracy theory that the virus floated around Hollywood during awards season. Hanks was sick with something at the Golden Globes...
Just learned
@RememberThisPod
was nominated for an iHeartRadio Podcast award! I'm literally the only person nominated in my category who has no current or former career as a TV star (and also no Google alert, which is why it took me two weeks to find out about the nom)
I swore not to tweet about Oscar nominees this year, but I was on a plane the other day and was like, “Fuck it, guess I have to watch [REDACTED BEST PIC NOMINEE] at some point.” I lasted thirty minutes 🤷🏻♀️
The 90s sitcom I wish Gen Z/young millennials would discover and get into is NewsRadio. It's wickedly funny and I'd hate to see it fall down the memory hole.
Just learned that
@RememberThisPod
won the iHeartRadio 2021 Podcast Award for Best TV & Film Podcast. As the only nominee in the category who has never been "on TV" it is a big surprise to win! Thanks to whoever voted!
And obviously, that “history” is not over, it lingers. And the fetishism already exists: Trump invoked Gone with the Wind when Parasite won best picture.
Next week
@RememberThisPod
returns with a new season about, amongst other things, changing ideas about masculinity and “the man” from World War II to Vietnam, parallels between mainstream capitalism and underground criminal economies, race in America in the 20th century, and more
My husband
@rianjohnson
made a very funny movie called Glass Onion which opens in theaters for *one week only* on Wednesday. I highly recommend watching it with a crowd. Get your tickets now!
they talk about how there's no sex or eroticism in movies anymore, but I can't think of a better example of how radically tastes shifted into this borderline puritanical movie landscape than how 30 years ago a smutty neo-noir made more money than most MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies
I don't know if this is real, but whoever made it is obviously a very talented storyteller, up to and including the choice to hold up the dad's Grammy and NOT the mom's Oscar
In a new posthumous memoir, Paul Newman says Joanne Woodward turned him into a “sexual creature” and reveals they had a spare bedroom in their house they called the “F--- Hut.”
Many months ago I met someone who had seen Deep Water to potentially acquire it. They said they turned it down because they felt it was "too sadistic." I am extremely excited to watch it on Hulu!
Last year when it seemed like I wasn’t doing anything for 9-10 months, I was actually trying to launch several projects and failing. One was an audiobook label, through which I would read my fave Hollywood books not otherwise available on audio. No one was interested 🤷🏻♀️