(upbeat music) Get three coffins ready, kid, because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier, that is, Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloweenies. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Prince's output is infinite, you've gotta ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Flashes, huh? What's your favorite scary movie? (laughing) - Not that one. (laughing) (upbeat music) - And welcome back to Horror Queers. We're talking Christmas in July, we're talking people as commodities, and we're talking fuck, and I'm Joe. - And I'm Trace, and we're talking, baby did a bad, bad thing. - Ooh, yes, that track. It often gets associated with this movie. - Yeah, this, everyone, we are discussing, is it our first daily Kubrick film? I guess we haven't really covered it. - Which other titles would we cover? - The Shining, I guess, but-- - I guess. - We'll never, we're discussing the horror queers first, Stanley Kubrick film, and his last film, Eyes Wide Shut, which Joe, I'm gonna say wrap the top, because we're gonna get these questions. Why are we covering this on a podcast called Horror Queers? - Because even though yes, you would almost never classify this as a horror film, I'm going to say the dream-like nature of the film, and the fact that it does have a huge number of psychological elements to it. I'm going to call this a genre adjacent, and also there's a bunch of secret queer shit in this movie. - So it's doing the queer more than the horror, but that's, yeah, it was so funny. This is the first time watched for me, as I think I cued everyone into last week during our outro. I had no idea what to expect. The only thing I really knew about this movie was my parents rented it, and they said it was boring. - Yeah, that meant a whole bunch of other people in the summer of 1999. - A hundred percent. So I went into this very open mind, because I know it's been kind of like re-appray use over the past, oh, like five or 10-ish years. And I quite like it. I still don't think I was able to absorb everything the movie was doing. Like this feels like a movie that does reward rewatches, but yeah, for the first time watched, I really liked this. - Yeah, this is one of my favorite Stanley Kubrick films. I did have the pleasure of watching this in theaters. So it's the only Kubrick film I was able to watch. And in part, I went particularly because he had just passed. So it's one of those sort of tragic things, you know, he'd been working on this film for so fucking long. And then he dies right before it comes out. There was the controversy you will undoubtedly talk about with the censorship. - Yeah. - And I wanted to see what all the hubbub was. So I went by myself to this two and a half hour, some people call it an erotic thriller. I'm not going to. But you know, like it was a very curiosity look-y-loo kind of situation. And I walked out being like, that's just a really fucking interesting movie. - Yeah, I'm definitely agreeing with you. This is not an erotic thriller. I don't think there's a ton of eroticism in the movie. - No, it's the point. - Well, this is very much in like, it's Stanley Kubrick's like, oh, like let's look at the fragile male ego. Because everyone, if you don't know what this is about, because I didn't know what this was about, even when I walked into this. I knew there was an orgies scene and that's it. - Yeah, of course. That's the part everyone always talks about. - But basically it's Tom Cruise's wife, Nicole Kidman, tells him, oh, hey, women can think just like men too. They can also like sex. And also one time I thought about cheating on you. And this sends Tom Cruise's character into a spiral where he keeps trying to cheat on his wife, but just never does. - Yeah, it's a movie about sex and infidelity in which no one has sex. - 100%. The only people that are having sex are the extras and the orgies, which again, yeah. So I, and we'll talk about it on a reception. I can see why people, like if they were expecting one thing and which they did not get, you know, why people will be more frustrated with this. But again, that's, I mean, from what I've learned, 'cause Joe, I have not seen a single Stanley Kubrick film, except for "The Shining". - Okay. - And now "Eyes Wide Shut". - Oh, wow, okay. Interesting, interesting. Yes, I think I knew this because I was surprised when you told me you had never seen a clockwork watch. - Yeah, and so it's, but in my research that I did, which by the way, y'all, like an entire podcast could be made about Stanley Kubrick. So we will do our best here. But his films tend to be polarizing upon release, sometimes even hated upon release and then reappraise and acclaimed like decades later. - Yeah, it's a very interesting phenomenon. And one that I'll admit I'm not entirely surprised by because he does have this air of intellectualism about him that I think some people find very off-putting. You've got to sit with the films because he's not going to spoon feed things to you. So as you said, you know, sometimes the films benefit from all rewatch, multiple rewatches. I've seen this movie a bunch of times and I can tell you it's always fascinating every time you see it. But if you go in thinking, oh, we're getting a glimpse into Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's sex life, it's like, oh, this is not the film for you, maybe. - No, but yeah, I'll say there was an anecdote because there aren't a ton of extra features on the Blu-ray that I bought for this. And even the one that's like supposed to be about eyes wide shut is more so about Jessica Kubrick and how he didn't get AI made and Steven Spielberg took it over, which I was like, well, that's the wrong disc for this, but sure, but no, but Spielberg has this anecdote where he's like, yeah, no, honestly, like he taught me to use the master shop more, you know, a master shop meaning for anyone who doesn't know, it's just like, it's just the main shot of an open space without close-ups. And so, yeah, to help viewers understand the geography before you start cutting around. - Right, but I guess, and again, just me having seen two of his films, like what Kubrick likes to do is he uses master shots more so than close-up shots, and his reasoning for that is because he says, let the audience be the editor, let the audience decide what's important to focus on and eat shot. And I think that's why rewatches are helpful with his films because you're gonna be focusing on something entirely different and eat shot every time you watch it. - Mm-hmm, well, and he's such a fucking perfectionist that you know that if you were seeing something, it's because he wanted it there. Like he was very deliberate about what he put in the frame and the way that he edits and all these other things. Like he's a technical virtuoso. So the fact that he's leaving you this, not blank canvas, but a quite literally populated canvas, he wants you to be looking around and seeing things. So like it's worthwhile to be looking around the frame. - Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, so let's just jump into this. As I said, I was a little like daunted by the information available in this film. So I use quite a lot of sources, but the main ones I'm pulling from are, I've got cinema all eyes on them for Time Magazine in 1999 by Richard Schickel. I've got Eyes Wide Shot, a tense, nightmarish exploration of marriage and sexuality in Kubrick's Ultimate film by Sven McCoolie for Cinephilia and Beyond. I've got an article by Ed Power for the Independent that is Eyes Wide Shot 20 years on. And an article for No Film School by Justin Morrow called, "Is Eyes Wide Shot the Movie Stanley Kubrick Wanted Us to See." - Ooh, okay. - So, okay. I mean, as I said, I haven't seen a ton of Kubrick. I also didn't realize how few films Stanley Kubrick had made in the 80s and 90s. So it was legit just the Shining in 1980, Full Metal Jack in 1987. And Eyes Wide Shot in 1999, that's it. - Yeah, so we're talking about Ben Cinema because if you know him and you like him, every film is a milestone, but also he takes so fucking long, you never know if you'll get another one. And then lo and behold, we don't. - We don't, exactly. So it had been over 10 years since Full Metal Jack. And so he returned to the idea of a passion project of his that he had been wanting to work on ever since, get this show, The 60s, when he purchased the rights to Austrian author, Arthur Schnitzler's, novella called Traum novel, which translates to dream story. But basically Schnitzler was a Viennese playwright, physician and friend of Sigmund Freud. So that probably screws you into what the material we're working with here. - Psychology. - Psychoanalysis, baby. But so the story, though, was about a fashionable, yet conscientious physician and his wife, whose nine-year marriage has produced an adored child, genuine mutual affection, and a growing sexual restlessness. Yeah, so Kubrick apparently felt the story was an ideal foundation for a cinematic exploration of sexual relations and all the tension, jealousy and passion that inevitably come with it. - Right. - But he just, again, it's one of those things where he just never makes it. So he bought the rights of this novel, like in the '60s, and it takes him 30 years to come around and making it again. And so it haunts him for the longest time. So he made a couple of different attempts to adapt the novella. So in 1973, he had the idea of changing the setting of the novella from turn of the century Vienna to contemporary Dublin. And at this point, his plan was to cast Woody Allen in the lead role. - Oh, wow, okay. - What a different movie that would have been. - Just a little bit, yeah. - Somewhere along the way, though, he concluded more over that the timeframe should be changed from Schnitzler's Mardi Gras in his novella to Christmas, because why not? - Oh, I can tell you what. Well, I can give you a reading of why, but why? - Oh, you'll wait, you're right. At this point, also, Steve Martin was considered by Kubrick after he decided that the adaptation should be set in New York at this point. So again, we're moving out of Vienna and we're going to the US. - Right. But again, Steve Martin, like what is this? - We're leaning towards comedy. - Yes, which granted, though, I will say, Joe, I think there's a lot of comedy in this movie. - Oh, for sure, for sure. - Like, I mean, we'll get into it, but I think Tom Cruise is the butt of Minnie Jokes and I kind of applaud him for, like, going along with it 'cause he had, he had to have known. - Yeah, yeah, I read some people saying that this is Kubrick, quite literally satirizing Hollywood, but specifically Tom Cruise. - Oh, yeah, so yeah, okay. So Kubrick returns to this idea in the early '90s and he hires British screenwriter Frederick Raphael to take a path of the script. And they collaborated for more than two years of writing this thing, trying to get it just right. And I won't talk too much about the adaptation process and like what's different between the novella and the film because I don't really ultimately think it's that important, but it's actually a pretty faithful adaptation. I've read the book a couple times. - Oh my God, look at you coming in here all prepared. Well, so, okay, the one thing I saw that I just thought was notable was that I guess a lot of the characters in the book are hinted at to be Jewish. And author Schnitzer himself is Jewish, but Kubrick wanted all Jewishness removed from the screenplay. And Frederick Raphael, the other screenwriter, was also Jewish and he was like, oh, we should keep it. But Kubrick was like, very much, no, we are not going to do that. And so I looked into, you know, Kubrick was born into a Jewish family, but he wasn't raised religious and he eventually settled into atheism. So I don't, I mean, again, there was clearly an intentionality behind it, but I don't know what that was. - Okay, put up in in that because I think that tie to Christmas might play a part in it. - Oh, maybe so, maybe so. But yeah, so Kubrick wanted Warner Brothers to give eyes wide shut a budget of $65 million, which, oh my God, like double that. And that's what the inflation is, right? Like we're looking at about $100 million budget for this movie. - Yeah, it was a big investment, but also he was one of those people where you say, Stanley Kubrick wants to be in business with us. This is a man that when he makes a film, it's a huge fucking deal. So you give him what he wants. - Exactly. So he also refused to film outside of the UK, noting that much of the production costs would go towards recreating Manhattan in England. - Yeah, Kubrick famously, there's one point where he just left the US and he never comes back. So if you wanna see him, you go to him. - And he also, I guess, developed a fear of flying or something. So like, yeah, he just like, when he meets with Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise just takes a helicopter to his land in England. - Yep. - Which, you know, of course. - I see you do. But okay, so Warner Brothers president, Terry Simmel, was amenable to this budget, but only with a knockout star in the Dr. Harford role. Which, by the way, Harford is a portmanteau of Harrison Ford. (laughing) But he also noted, just to be like, you know, it's like, hey, like, you know, get this star if you want this budget. He's like, hey, but you know, you haven't cast a big star in a movie since The Shining, which I'm like, okay, but that was two movies ago. Like, I know it was 20 years ago, but it was also just two movies ago. - Right, yeah. - So, but Kubrick apparently thought that stars had, and I quote, "too many opinions," which is why he didn't work with them very often. But at this point though, he was eyeing then-married Hollywood A-list couple, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, who-- - Ooh, that would have been good too. - Yeah, they got married in '93 and got divorced in '02, which is not far off from Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's relationship. - Mm-hmm. - But yes, I imagine when this is all these discussions are happening, it's probably '94-'95. So like, it would have been Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger and Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were like the top couples of the town. - Nice. - Okay. - But Tom Cruise read the script, and it flew immediately to Kubrick's property in a helicopter. Kubrick gave him the GPS coordinates of where he wanted him to land, and he said, "Cool, I will do that." - Wait, are you honestly saying that Tom Cruise flew across the ocean in a helicopter? That can't be right. - You know, it's weird. So it's on a Tom Cruise interview on the Eyes by Chef Blu-Ray. He says helicopter, but then at one point, he says plane. But then, every the time, it's the helicopter. So maybe he flew a plane to a helipad in England and then took a helicopter to Stanley Kubrick's house. - Yeah, 'cause I wouldn't be surprised if Kubrick didn't actually live in London or something. So I imagine maybe of his helicopter from like, "He hero, too." - Sure. - Anyway, sorry, it doesn't matter. It was more just like, I don't want someone to write this and be like, "What the fuck?" - It's just one of those things where I'm just like, you know, like, rich people problems, right? - Rich people. (laughing) - Who knows, so they meet and they just discuss the script. And, you know, Kubrick wanted to know, like, different story points, whether or not Cruz understood them. He allowed Cruz to talk and like, didn't probe him because he, I think he was feeling him out to be like, "Do you get the script and what I'm trying to do?" - Right. "Do you understand I might be making fun of you?" - Maybe. So obviously the meeting went well and Cruz was all in, but it was Cruz himself that had the suggestion to cast his real life spouse, Nicole Kidman, as the wife, the Alice character. This was obviously something that Kubrick maybe hadn't intended on, but it was working because, I mean, y'all, if you weren't alive at this point in time, like, Tom and Nicole were one of the most recognizable couples in the world. Like, it was tabloid fodder for years, it was wild. And so, for Kubrick, you know, a real life husband and wife portraying unraveling spouses introduced a new layer of psychosexual subtext that he just like ate the fuck up. - Right, and if done properly, it's a really easy way to market your movie. - Which they, well, we'll talk about that. That's why I said done well. - Well, so Warner Brothers announced the product in 1995, and all they would do was say, hey, this is Kubrick making a story of sexual jealousy and obsession starring Tom Cruz and Nicole Kidman. And so, officially, no one added anything substantive to that press release in the year since, which is why, like, there was a rumor that flew around that Cruz and Kidman were playing psychiatrist drawn into a web of sexual intrigue with their patients. - Woodwatch. - There was another one where it was like, oh, mad genius Kubrick making an NC-17 rated blue movie. - Sure. - I know the rumor was that Cruz was wearing a dress in one sequence. And so, it's like, no one knew what this movie was. So, I guess, media just started making things up and throwing it out there based on, like, pulling things in the tabloids, I guess, and doing things like that, which is just like-- - Well, running rampant. - Rampant. - So, in the fall of 1996, production begins in London, or a veil of severe secrecy. So, okay. Fall of '96. Cruz and Kidman expected to be back in Hollywood by the spring of '97. (laughing) Instead, they'd stayed through the summer. Fall, another Christmas, filming wrapped in January of 1998. But, in May of '98, they were summoned back for more months of reshoots. And so, filming officially wraps in June of 1998, which means it took no less than 400 days, or 15 months to film this movie, earning Eyes Wide Shot, a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest film shoot ever. - Mm-hmm. And the whole time we didn't know what the movie was about, but you effectively took two of the hottest Hollywood stars off the market for, like, two years. - Well, okay. So, that's the thing. So, okay. Cruz and Kidman would invest aspects of their own relationship into this, you know? Like, their own understanding into these characters. And Kubrick appeared to get a kick out of exploring Fishers in Cruz and Kidman's real marriage. So, he had Kidman disclose her innermost feelings and extensive therapy sessions, the contents of which were not revealed to Cruz, and he forbade Tom Cruz from the set whenever Nicole Kidman was shooting her fantasy Tris with the naval officer who had awoken something in Alice, which I feel like I remember reading that about like Tom Cruz actually being jealous of that, and not being involved, but. - Okay. - Kubrick retained his enthusiasm through the grueling shoot, but Cruz and Kidman found it harder to stay positive. - Right. - It wasn't the intensity of the material, or even the semi-neutity, well, semi, the nudity required of Kidman, right? She'd been sticking the outset, though, as to what she wouldn't would not do. It was as it went on, seemingly without end, they were just like, is this ever going to end? So, I think that the most popular anecdote is, you know, Kubrick had Tom Cruz walk through the same door 95 times. - Yeah. Yeah, 'cause he was, he was a perfectionist. Like, he was one of those famous filmmakers where you just had to expect that you were gonna be at his mercy and hope like fuck that you were making a masterpiece, but I can't imagine even in this day and age, this would be so unheard of. You would never be able to take stars of this caliber off the market and then not tell them, okay, well, it's gonna be six weeks because they're PR. They would be going live it. They would just be like, wait, where are our clients? Why can't we not book them for more gigs? - And everyone to just like, to understand, like the perfectionism of Kubrick. So like Sidney Pollock has an anecdote in one of his interviews where he's like, yeah, you know, basically I'll do a scene and Kubrick will pull me back and make me watch my footage again. And he'll say, hey, like, look, do you see how you like twitched your head a little bit just like ever so slightly in that one second? Don't do that. - Yeah. - And so I can understand how as an actor, it also might be frustrating because it's like, oh, you're literally micromanaging every single fraction of a movement my body makes, be it voluntarily or not. And that's why we're doing all these takes. - Yeah. And just imagine trying to feel like you're giving an actual performance and you're not just being directed like a puppet or a marionette or something, right? I mean, I think back to the way that we've talked about Hitchcock and I do think that there's a number of similarities where the technical precision sometimes overwhelms the actual humanity. Like I know a bunch of people who watch a eyes wide chat, they admire it, but they don't find it emotionally engaging because it's a bit of a cold movie. And I would argue that's partially by design, but I think it's also in part because to a certain extent, any kind of usual charisma that we would expect from some of these actors is being dialed back because it's not what Kubrick wanted. So he just leeches that out of them with all of these repetitive takes. - Well, and that's the thing. So I'm like, we don't know what takes who he is, which that's another thing he does. Like when he has in the editing room, he'll have like 30 monitors up and he'll put like the different takes of one performance on every single monitor. And so he'll tell Spielberg, oh, it's really easy to like figure out like what performance works better, but you can watch them all at the same time. (laughing) - Oh boy. - That just sounds so intense. - I know. So like this perfectionism is like what made like, for instance, Harvey Keitel quit the film. But well, it's also a scheduling thing because again, people started filming and they couldn't come back for the reshoots. And so like Harvey Keitel quit because he had to go shoot fighting Graceland. So he was replaced with Sidney Pollock, but apparently he did like not enjoy like his time working on film. - Yeah, but I mean, there's like a whole alternative cut of this movie that exists because so many people did shoot parts of it. And then yeah, they got called away or they couldn't come back for reshoots. So then that just extends the production because then we've got to shoot those scenes all over with a new actor. - And that includes Jennifer Jason Lee, who originally played the role of Marian 'cause she had to go shoot Cronenberg's existence. I feel like too in terms of modern directors who are kind of the closest to what Krueberk was doing or they are the perfectionism, I feel like it's David Fincher. - I think so too, yeah. - But yeah, so Keitel said they shot for 10 and a half months but they were there for a year and a half, which is correct. But again, talking about like holding these famous stars for two years, like Kruez was coming under pressure from Paramount Pictures over Mission Impossible II because he had already pushed it back twice because of the eyes wide shut schedule. - Wild, absolutely wild. And like, let's be real, we're making a very serious adult drama that is probably going to do okay. Like you're hoping it's going to win Oscars and that's gonna allow you to recoup your budget. But in terms of which movie is better for Tom Kruez's career, it's like the Mission Impossible franchise or obscure random Stanley Kubrick film that nobody knows what the fuck it's about. - I know, but you know what? I bet you though, all those pushbacks actually helped, 'cause Mission Impossible II was like a juggernaut at the box office. So I met like all the anticipation from like between the first one and that one. 'Cause I remember wondering why there was like a six year gap between one and two and I was like, "Why do you know?" It's literally because of this movie. (laughs) - We probably would have gotten Mission Impossible too, like back in '98. - Exactly. So more than once Kruez would politely take Kubrick aside. He was like, "Hey, do you have an idea when we might be done?" And Kubrick never had a straight answer. And, oh God, it was apparently soon got ulcers. In fact, he kept from Kubrick because he didn't want more complications and prolonged the shoot even further. - Mm-hmm. And he's not enjoyable, just like, I like the movie, but at the same time, all of the behind the scenes stuff just sounds nightmarish. Well, but even so, both Kruez and Kibben proclaim themselves delighted with the finished movie. And they're granted, this is a lot of stuff when it's coming out. So I get it's a publicity thing, but sure. It's just, I, bruh. - I think it's the opportunity to work with someone on this level, right? Like you're probably one of so few actors who can say, yeah, I got to star in a Stanley Kubrick film because you know the number probably better than I do. It's what, like 11 films or 12 films? - I think it's 13. - Yeah, so it's like not many people get this honor. - Yeah, not at all. And so Kubrick himself was so anxious that details might leak when he arranged a screening for them in Los Angeles that the projectionist was apparently ordered to look away from the screen. (laughing) - Just make sure it's in focus. - Yep, so after shooting had been completed again in June of 1998, Kubrick entered a prolonged post-production process and on March 1st, 1999. So this is, what, the length of a pregnancy's post-production. He showed a cut to Cruz, Kidman, and the Warner Brothers executives. And then after that screening, which was supposedly a mostly finished cut. - Right. - Kubrick died six days later of a heart attack. - Yeah, because he had final cut, right? - Okay, so this is the thing. This put the film in a weird position because Kubrick's contract forbade anyone from cutting his film. So basically what they had, whether it was his intention or not with a final cut, they could not touch contractually. - Right, well, they couldn't cut it, but they could fucking alter it. - Yes, so he alone had final cut. But like, so while his sound editor could lay down tracks and put in music per his guidelines, they could not actually edit the footage. And so usually music and imagery is edited in tandem, not so in eyes wide shut. So there's a lot of controversy as to whether or not Warner Brothers re-edited the film after he died. And now, I think it's believed generally that no one re-cut the film. Like the cut is what they had, but like this idea sparked somewhat of a civil war among those on the inner circles of Kubrick's work in life. You know, many people will cite family members of Stanley Kubrick who state that not only was he finished with the film, say for minor typical post-production work, but also considered it his greatest contribution to cinema. - Wow, okay. - Now, others involved with the film said that since they couldn't touch the cut, they still had to do some of the dubbing, some music recording, but it was all planned anyway. So they recorded them, they just executed what Kubrick had already decided. Now, I'm not talking about the rating yet, but nevertheless, so I mean, like it's a debate that will never truly actually know the attitude because Kubrick is not here to tell us, but by all accounts and purposes, like this is the film he wanted to make. This is the closest we get, but there's an irony, right? This extreme perfectionist, his last film being the one that he didn't get to finish. - Right, and the one that he'd been working on for upwards of nearly 40 years. - Yeah, exactly. Now, okay, when it comes to the rating, I have two different accounts. So there's one that I found that said it got an R rating on its first attempt, but to appease the MPAA and get the R rating that Kubrick was contractually obligated to deliver, 65 seconds of his final cut had to be altered. Now, there was a critic screening where they were shown those 65 seconds, but basically what happened was, in the orgy scene, digital figures have been added to over the quote unquote depraved activities of the orgy scene, but here's the thing though. So again, this is a gun R rating on the first attempt, and then someone else said it did get an NC 17, and if Kubrick was alive, he would have just recut it to get the R rating, but since they couldn't do that, that's why they digitally added more stuff. And so I'm like, okay, well, did it get an NC 17? Did it get an R right away? Like this other one says, but I'm wondering if it's maybe it's like an insider of Warner Brothers is like just talking to the MPAA. It's like, hey, like, what's it gonna get? Oh, don't give an NC 17, what can we do? - Right. - But it was a big kind of thing because for the rating itself, the NC 17 rating, this could have been a huge boon for it if it did get an NC 17, because it's like, again, it's Kubrick, it's two of Hollywood's biggest stars, and it could help normalize the NC 17 rating, but that is not what happened. (laughs) - Yeah, it's a tricky situation because of course, if folks know your history with the NC 17, it's a fraught designation, and it didn't work for movies in the mid to late '90s. - Yeah, well, 'cause no, they wouldn't get a wide release, it was just impossible. So, okay, Joe, you said a podcast my way, it's Corinna Longworth's podcast, you must remember this, to help me with the marketing discussion for this film. And again, just like how this film was maybe not sold in the best way. And y'all, there is a three hour, like two, 90 minute episodes going on about Eyes Wide Shut that is really, really good. So I won't go into like too much of her detail, but basically the gist is this. The long and short of it is that this was constantly billed as the quote unquote, "sexiest movie of the year," or maybe even the decade. Journalists had written stories saying that viewers should basically get to see Cruise and Kidman have unsimulated sex on screen. - Yeah, like where are they pulling this from? Again, tabloids. - Tabloids, hey, I watched the trailer for this movie. This trailer is 58 seconds long, and it is just a bunch of sexy looking shots of Cruise and Kidman. Set two, Chris Isaacs, they did a bad, bad thing, which does play in the movie in an early scene, but it is not marketing the movie this is. Like it is. Like, and again, like if you're coming to this movie for tabloid fodder, you're not gonna get that. - No. - One thing I do be like that Longworth talks about though, she pulls like archived interviews with like critics. Like talking, like there were some critics that were like giving this a bad review because they were disappointed that you don't get to see Cruise and Kidman, fuck, in the movie once. - Yeah, well, let's never forget that critics and journalists are subjective. So we can definitely be influenced by our desires, our wants, and yes, I mean, folks have heard me say it a million times how easily I am affected by marketing. So I remember in the run out to this movie being released, everybody thought this was going to be the most erotic movie like we had ever seen. - Well, and it's interesting because again, Longworth goes even further, you know, we're just like, 'cause Janet Maslin for the New York Times, she like gave this a positive review and she was kind of one of the outliers in the critic community, you know? We had critics saying, oh, this is a movie that is empty of ideas, which is fine, but also heat. Or this is a film about sex that isn't sexy or a movie about love with a cold heart. And so like if she was apparently kind of pushed out of her job because she apparently liked too many movies that a lot of other critics hated or vice versa, but there's an audio clip of her like defending the movie and like one of her colleagues is kind of making fun of her for it and then going on about how American Beauty is like the best movie of the year, which it's interesting how that movie has gone down in public opinion over the last 20 years, which I like American Beauty, but I don't like, I think it's very broad. - Well, to me in hindsight, it feels very Oscar Beatty. And one of the interesting things about Eyes Wide Shut is that it was meant to be in conversation with films like American Beauty and the Oscars. Guess which movie gets zero Oscar noms? - Yeah, Eyes Wide Shut, Eyes Wide Shut. Well, okay, so this gets released in the United States on July 16th in 1999 and-- - Happy 25th, baby. - Oh, yes, thank you. But to add insult to injury, not only are we dealing with the wake of Kubrick's death, the day this movie comes out is also the day that John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash. So-- - Rahi. - Yeah, again, like y'all that was a very big deal and was all over the news. So like anything about this movie was also kind of like, shut out, but-- - And the Kennedy's always prone to tragedy. - Dude, I know. But the other new releases that weekend were Lake Placid and Muppets from Space. So-- (laughs) - Well, we've covered half of the new films that were coming up that weekend then. - Yes, but here's the thing, 'cause we've talked about Joe, how, you know, banger of a year, 1999 was the film. - Oh my God. - Yeah. - So other heavy hitters that were still in theaters at the time this came out were American Pie, Star Wars Episode One, Big Daddy, Wild Wild West, Tarzan, Austin Powers, the Spy Who Shagney, and the South Park movie. This was also the Blair Witch Project's first week of limited release. It would expand much wider two weeks later. - Oh my God, it was such a time to be alive, folks. - I know. - It was like, every weekend at the movie theater. - Constantly. So here's the thing though, eyes wide shut place, number one, it's opening weekend. It grows 21.7 million dollars. Word of mouth though. So this is where we're getting into trouble. - We are looking at a D minus cinema score, Joe. - Yeah, I wouldn't even get the F because the F might've helped with the notoriety as well. - Right? So it drops and drops and drops. It goes under gross, 55.6 million domestically, again, on a budget of 65 million dollars. But it grows as 106.4 million overseas. So, not surprising that the Europeans probably like this movie a lot more than Americans, but well, it's an art house boom at the end of the day, right? Like this is very in keeping with European cinema. So that doesn't surprise at all. - Exactly. So it gets a worldwide total of 162 million dollars. So I mean, it nearly or maybe does triple its budget. So it does make it Kubrick's most financially successful film, not adjusted for inflation. I think two dozen one would take that if we did inflation. But yeah, yeah, and so critics, I mean, again, I've already read some of the blurs, but I mean, here's the thing. Critics were polarized if a little ambivalent, but right now we're looking at a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.5 out of 10. However, I think the big, I mean, you and I know this, like modern critics now add their reviews to older films. So the Rotten Tomatoes score of films that came out at any point in time are necessarily reflective of the contemporaneous mindset at the time. - Yeah, yeah, no, this is definitely one that I think people have been discovering over time, but it was a lukewarm reception. Like this was not anybody's favorite Kubrick film when it came out. - No, but it is now Letterbox. You just have awarded this an eight out of 10, which that. - There we go. That's pretty high. - I'm curious. What did you give this? - I gave it a four out of five, so an eight out of 10. - Okay, yeah. I come in somewhere between a four and a half and a five. Like to me, this movie is fucking great. - Oh, I mean, again, like, you know, when I'm logging in something, I'll go look at like, you know, what my friends have rated it. And like pretty much all of my Letterbox mutuals who have rated this movie have given it five stars. Amazing. - I love that. But I think they're also Santa files. - Well, there we go, yeah. As per our conversation last week on Tetsuo, it's like, is this art fair? Is this indie? It's like, yes, kind of. It's a yes and situation, right? - Very much so. But I mean, like, again, there's so much more we can go into with the details of all this controversy. Like what was going on with the production? But I think like we kind of covered the bulk of it and I feel like we have a lot to talk about in the film, Joe. - Really? You don't think we're gonna be able to give the two and a half hour movie just a quick little run through? - I'm not gonna lie. It kind of flew by for me. I didn't feel that wrong. - It does. - I find it so engrossing. To me, that's part of its power. You know, I'm going to say it is very dreamlike in the way that it's constructed. I think it's masterfully composed, but yeah, because it's a series of vignettes, it's really easy to just be like, all right, and where is he gonna go next? - Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, so kick us off, Joe. - Okay, so I am gonna draw heavily from one piece by Nick Dobrinsky called "Eyes Wide Shut Hidden in Plain Sight" from his site, "Boy Drinks Inc." - Okay. - Yeah. So we open with a naked Alice who was played by Nicole Kidman and she and her husband, Dr. Bill Harford. - Oh, did you know he was a doctor, Joe? (laughing) - He is flashing those credentials like he is a fucking secret agent in this movie, and I love it. - So the white male rich privilege entitlement of him, like literally he just shows people his doctor card. You're like, I'm a doctor, thinking that he can just do anything he wants with it. I will say the piece of music that starts this movie over the opening title. So it is Shostakovich's Waltz number two from "Sweet for Variety Stage Orchestra." So there's a mix of classical music in this with like an actual score, but this piece of classical music sounds like a full moon score. Like I'm not even kidding, it sounds like the score for "Puppet Master." (laughing) - Oh, wow. - And I started, I was like, what the fuck is this music? And it just keeps happening over the movie. (laughing) ♪ Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun ♪ - Well, it's also kind of like the "Schitt's Creek" theme song. - Okay. (laughing) - I mean, part of this is you mentioned that there's some comedy I countered with satire. I do think that this is a little bit of the winky playful jokiness of Kubrick, right? - Yeah. - Where we're opening it with, hey everybody, giving you exactly what you fucking wanted. Here's Nicole Kidman stripping on screen minute one, but also not gonna give it to you because every time we think we're going to see something half the time we're cutting away and we're just doing the most inane blend fucking boring dialogue. So I love that the music is also kind of like, isn't this a little bit of a fun waltz? Hey, I'm kind of leading you, but also letting you discover like, what the fuck is going on right now? - It's kind of like the "Jeopardy" theme song. Like that's the feeling that I get. - I got. - But wait, I gotta say though, so like, okay, we do have Kidman nude in this movie quite a bit. We don't see anything of Tom Cruise. And what the fuck? (laughing) - I know, right? But this to me is, it's one of those big '90s pieces, right? Where we were super comfortable with trying to pretend like we were becoming more open-minded after the conservatism of the '80s. So it was like, yeah, we're doing sex, right? We've got basic instinct. We've got show, basically we're hoping. We've got we're bringing sex to America and then we get Kubrick doing this, but he's very realistic. It's like people say they want nudity and that they want fucking, but what they actually want is they want female nudity. - Yeah, I mean, I thought for a second we were gonna get Tom Cruise's ass, which I mean. - Right, even an ass, I would've taken an ass. - Has he ever shown his ass? Surely he's shown his ass, like in Risky Business or something, right? - Oh, I don't think so. - Every one, like, again, I'm not a Tom Cruise, like Sue Stan. - A fish in the head. - Thank you, I'm just gonna say Stan. (laughing) - I mean, that'll work too. - I am not a Tom Cruise aficionado, so I haven't seen all of his films. I mean, if you've got, I mean, obviously, yes, we know all the right moves, we know the Scream Club, but please, if you can have, give us a moment of legitimate nudity from Tom Cruise, please send it our way. I'm just curious for personally. - Yeah, I think it's a lot of torso shots, and then, yes, we do get, you know, tidy whities and that kind of stuff. - No, I want, I want ass crack. I want to see full cheek. - Mm, no, I'm out of luck. (laughing) - Okay, so all this to say, these two are getting ready for a Christmas party, because, yes, this is a Christmas set movie, so I'm going to bring in Dabrinsky right off the top here, because this movie is also filled with allusions or references to other texts, because Kubrick is hyper-media literate. He read everything. - Yeah, I just kind of glanced at some of this stuff, and I was like, oh God, like, again, it's a whole pot, I know we're doing a whole podcast episode, but there's a whole podcast episode just about that. (laughing) - Yes, yeah, so let me give you a quick little taster, because I do think it helps to set part of the tone in terms of what is the movie trying to accomplish. So Dabrinsky says, "Eyes White Shut Parallels, "it's a wonderful life. "A man who undergoes a frightening journey "through a dystopian nightmare world, "as well as Charles Dickens, a Christmas carol, "in that both protagonists are also shaken to the core "when they're exposed to disturbing alternate planes "of existence." So like, we are doing this, I mean, Dabrinsky ends up calling it a slipstream fantasy, because it feels like we're experimenting with different timelines, right? You know, Bill is on the prowl hunting for different avenues to engage his sexual fantasies, but it feels like each one is a path that could lead to something different, and one of the things I really, really love about this film is that it's almost built like, there's a circularity and a doubling to everything, so like the movie basically gets to the 70 minute point, we get the 20 minute or D sequence, and then we have 70 minutes left to go, and a lot of things in the back half are just mirrors to scenes from the first half, but with a completely new context, it's like the cold light of day changes the way that we view the interactions. - Mm, yeah, so I feel like you're gonna be a little bit more well versed on this than I am, but I'm very, I know, again, like I feel like I almost watched the movie again today, just to be like, I feel like I need to absorb more of this film, but alas. - I mean, this is the benefit of having been able to watch this movie several times over the last 25 years, Trace. - That makes sense. - Okay, so the other reason that I think the Christmas is important is because this movie is obsessed with money. - Dude, I mean, that's part where it feels like a satire, where it's like, oh, these rich people and they're problems, like, and I put problems in quotation marks, by the way. - Yeah, yeah, at its core, this is a movie about invadility and jealousy. And yes, one man's a very small fragile ego when his wife tells him something about, hey, women also have sexual appetites. - Like it blows his mind. Like what women think about sex? I mean, like, it's hilarious, it's my favorite scene of the movie, Joe, but like-- - Oh yeah, it's a standout. It's one of the ones that people often cite apart from the orgy sequence. - And it happens like 30 minutes into the movie. - Mm-hmm, which is important because it's, I would argue, the inciting incident for most of the film, but also it tells us so much about these characters and their marriage. - Yeah, absolutely. Which honestly, though, I mean, I don't know, did you find things relatable in this marriage? Because I did, actually, I found a lot of this quite relatable. - Oh, 100%. You know, I know people who find the scenes at their apartment very mundane because, yeah, the dialogue is sometimes very pedantic. You know, we're talking about taking their daughter Christmas toy shopping and we're doing homework with her and he's talking about house calls, but at the end of the day, it's like, well, the whole movie's about the marriage and how it's imploding, and it's really easy for that just to become stale when you've been together for seven, nine, however many years. - I think there's like a, 'cause again, I agree with you, the marriage is imploding, but I think when people hear that, they think they're imagining like a constant movie of the fight scene spread throughout the two and a half hours. - Yeah, it's not Kramer versus Kramer. - No, but that's kind of what I liked about it, though, 'cause it's very much, oh yeah, like look, hey, marriage can be boring. You said unto a group that I think it's when he's about to fuck, or trying to fuck, Vanessa Shaw is sex worker. And we just cut back to Nicole Kidman, like smoking a cigarette on her kitchen bar, like watching a portable TV. And I was like, yeah, yeah, she's eating milk and cookies in the middle of the night waiting for her doctor husband to come home and you're like, yep, this is it. - Yeah, this is marriage sometimes. - And that's kind of where I also want to argue, I guess I think expectations played a part into people's disappointment with this film, but I'm also kind of like, maybe people saw the mirror held up to them a little bit and didn't like that. - Yeah, yeah, you went in wanting sex and fireworks and instead what you got was, hey, isn't real life just a little bit dull? - I think it's also very interesting too, because I feel like generally speaking, the queer community is much more into, well, I'm not speaking for every queer person, but we're more open to open relationships, polyamory, things like that. And so I do find when, especially when we're watching a movie about straight infidelity, where it's just kind of like, oh man, like y'all could fix so many of your problems if you just opened up a little bit. - Well, and what's interesting about this film is that we often feel like we're not getting the full story when people tell each other things, right? Like it's part of the foundation of the story, but particularly the reason this rocks Bill's mind is because it's clear that they have never had conversations about their sexual fantasies or what is working or not working in their sex life. Like this is all new to him. And they are approaching the decade point in their relationship. - Like this to me is a very healthy, well, may I help you, but an advertisement for, hey, you should communicate in your marriage a little bit more. And again, I'm not saying, by the way, that openness and polyamory like fixes like any issues in a marriage, but it's more so it's like a thing where it's like, we're using these words, like forbidden boundaries of like when you're in a marriage and it's kind of like, well, who says they're forbidden boundaries, you know? - I mean, as long as it's working for the two of you or the three or the five or however many people are involved, it's like you're consenting adults, figure out which are all actually looking for. - Yeah, exactly. I do like their apartment though because it feels, I mean, it's clearly a big New York apartment, but it just feels appropriate in a way that like, I don't know, I know this is like an easy joke to make, but like the friends apartments are not. - Right, I mean, it's very evident, very early on that they are well to do. So they do live near Central Park West, but he is a super successful doctor who is like, barely obviously getting financial remunerations and gifts from very wealthy clients. Like when they go to the Ziegler party, that's a fucking huge event, right? Like they say, oh, we don't really know anybody here, but the truth is, is that if all of those clients are on that caliber, they are probably going in some very high society circles. - Yeah. - And sure, Alice is unemployed throughout the film, but she says that she used to manage an art gallery. - Yes, which went bankrupt in now. Honestly, I was gonna wait until we get to the fight scene, but like I love Nicole Kidman in this movie, and I, it's not even a critique. I just want more of her in this film, but it's not about her. This is very much about Tom Cruise's character, but like I wanted so much more Nicole Kidman because what she does get to do in this movie is phenomenal. - Oh, yeah. And she got really, really good reviews for this film too. - I mean, again, that fight scene, that's her Oscar clip. (laughing) - Yeah. Okay, so before we move on, I do wanna come back to the money just because I think it is, it's a core element of the film. So I think part of the reason that Kubrick shies away from the Jewishness is because he does want to look at capitalism and particularly around Christmas. So if you've got these main characters being Jewish, then that's gonna make it a little bit more challenging. Obviously you could still do it. You would just have to do it a little bit differently, but so much of this movie is about transactional relationships and also how we treat human beings as property or things that can be bought, sold, traded and so on. So important to note the very first line of dialogue that we hear is when Bill asks, "Honey, have you seen my wallet?" So that marks him as a consumer and then Alice answers and she tells him where it is and this is more Debrinsky's words than mine because I don't know if I would use this harsh a term, but he essentially suggests that this sets up her role as the wife as prostitute. - Oh, okay. - Which if you think about it though, it's like the whole movie treats her as a sex object. Like it's something that we look at as a viewer, but then also Bill sees her as sexual property. So when she confesses to this imagined infidelity, it's like, "Well, you fucking whore." - Yeah, absolutely. Well, and so I'm even going back to the Jewish Christian thing. So what I do find interesting though, is that do we want to call Victor Ziegler the villain of the film? Like I know, right? 'Cause we don't really know. I mean, I think we know, but I don't know, but nevertheless, that is a Jewish actor, Sidney Pollack in that role, but he replaced the non-Jewish Harvey Keitel in that role. - Right, yeah. I think antagonist is maybe a better word, but even that seems a little bit too strong, because I don't know that this, like to me, Bill is our anti-hero, but also he's the one who's just going around causing a lot of fucking trouble in this movie. - It looked literally, honestly, that's kind of where I felt like a whore movie for me where I was like, "No, don't go in there. Don't do that." - He's making bad decisions at every turn, digging himself in deeper. - But I like that again, like Tom Cruise, I mean, look, y'all feel heavy. What about Tom Cruise? I do think he's a very genuinely good actor. A personal Scientology shit aside. - Sure. - But I just love that he is just going into this very unlikable role for this two and a half hour movie. - Mm-hmm, yeah. A movie that seems to be partially critiquing him, like his real-life star status as a leading A-lister in a variety of different ways, because we will talk a little bit about Scientology when we come to some of the conspiracy stuff. But also, my reading of this film is that Bill is either a closeted bisexual, or he had a trist with Nick back when they were in med school. - Well, 'cause that's the thing too, 'cause I read the kids that are hurling the F'sler at him. Like, that was in the novella, an anti-Semitic rant. And so, again, it's like, "Oh, why are we specifically "choosing, out of anything that's, you know, whatever, "we're doing, oh, hey, fag it. "Oh, you're a fag, I take shit's bigger than you. "Like, cut right up my poop shooter," whatever. Like, "Why these specific things?" And it has to be, because it's always been rumored that John Travolta, it's always been rumored that Tom Cruise was gay. - Yep, yep, you got it. Okay, so we move from their giant political apartment. It's lovely to this party at Victor St. Glers, who is, yes, played by Sidney Pollock. We get a little bit of dancing. We know that we don't know people. And then, suddenly, that is proven to be incorrect, because Bill realizes that he does recognize at Nick Nightingale, who was played by Todd Field. He went to med school with Nick, but Nick ended up dropping out. And I think it's significant that one of their first lines of dialogue together, you know, when Bill goes to catch up with Nick, is, "I never really understood why you dropped out." And there's this lingering question mark of mystery, but it also hints at a kind of frat boy frivolity. Like, you very much get the hint that they used to get up to trouble together or that they were thickest thieves, or maybe they were something. - You know, yes. Also, Todd Field is like a poor man's Eber Norton. - Yeah, yeah, he is one of those people where I think is he a replacement actor? Like, was there a better option that ended up having to drop out because of all the reshoots and the extensions and stuff? I don't think that's the case. I don't think he's bad per se, but considering so many of the other roles in this film are filled with A-listers or recognizable folks, it is weird that this important role is filled with a bit of a ho-hum kind of guy. - Well, I mean, after this, he moves into directing. Like, he directs films like "In the Bedroom" and "Little Children" and "Fucking Tar" with Kate Blanchett. - Oh, fuck, are you kidding me? I did not know that, and I feel like I need to apologize 'cause those movies are bangers. (laughing) Take me out back and shoot me. I apologize. - No, honestly, it's really fun. I actually didn't know that until we were talking because I saw he was, he was in "Little Children." I was like, "Oh, who was he in "Little Children?" Oh, he wrote and directed "Little Children." (laughing) - Little folks, good, like, "Tar." Tar was so fucking good, everybody. - I still have my Oscar screener for it and I've never watched it, but like-- - Oh, Trace, I love it. - I love it. - I've heard it so good, like-- - It's so good. Kate Blanchett is like the messiest fucking lesbian who gets me-tude, and that's like the top of the movie. - Oh my God. - It's really good. - Well, by the way, I'm sure you do know this, but we have a Kate Blanchett cameo in this movie. - Do we? - She voices, she's the dub for the mysterious masked woman who warns Tom Cruise at the party. And-- - Interesting. - It was only revealed, like, I wanna say in 2019 or 2020 because basically the woman in the mask, like she couldn't do a good American accent, so they dubbed over her with Kate Blanchett. (laughing) - Wild. - Now that you're saying it, I can hear it. - Yeah. (laughing) - Okay, so before Nick gets pulled away, he does reveal that he's going to be playing at the Sonata Cafe for the next two weeks, so that'll be important because Bill needs to know where to get him later. - Yeah. - Okay, so while they're having this conversation, Alice is getting a little tipsy at the bar, spinning by Bing, and she is chatted up by Hungarian, I'm gonna say, Silver Fox, Sandor Savast, who was played by Skye Dumont, and he insists that they go dance for a little bit, and this whole conversation is him effectively hitting on her, trying to get her in the sack, but we do have these conversations that are opening the door to talk about things like marriage, female sexuality, infidelity. - Yeah, this to me feels like, again, so whereas the fight later will be Bill opening his eyes, oh, I've never thought about these things before. To me, this dance with Sandor, this is Alice's moment of like, "Oh, I've never thought about it that way." To me, marriage has always been this one rigid specific thing, but I guess it doesn't have to be. - Oh, interesting, I don't think that this is the first time she's had this kind of realization. I do think that she's pretty aware of the effect that she has on men. Like, I mentioned, you know, the sort of derogatory description of her, of the wife as prostitute, and we see her both playing into the sort of sexually desirable, like, I see this as, I'm at this party that my husband fucking dragged me to, I don't really wanna be here on the plus one, and then this attractive older gentleman wants to shower me with compliments, tell me that I'm fucking sexy, make me feel good about myself. I'm gonna play into it a little bit 'cause I'm tipsy, but also when it starts to get serious, when it's like, hey, I wanna go up to the second floor and look at my bronze collection, that's where I need to say, oh, I'm actually married and I'm not gonna step out on my husband. - But she considers it, like she, you can see it. - Yeah. - Like, you can see, she hesitates way too many times she runs her eyes up and they're like, she, again, she decides not to, but I do believe there's a moment where she's like, oh, maybe, maybe I do. It's, I guess I would say maybe, a repeat of the scenario with the Naval Officer. - I think so too, and I think part of this is, it's really important when Alice is intoxicated or inebriated in this movie and when she's not, because when she's not under the influence of drugs and booze, she seems very in control, like, almost authoritarian, like you can see her having a game plan. And I think that's a good fit for Bill, which is why they've been a good match and they have a child and everything. But I think when she goes under substance, that's usually when she opens up and she maybe says things or does things that she wouldn't normally say otherwise. - Right, right. I love this kind of poetic line from Sander 2, where he asks her, don't you think that one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties? - A necessity. - It's funny, right? Because in other films with lesser actors, I would say, this is a little heavy-handed. I mean, you're playing your cards pretty out in the open, but I actually really like these scenes with these two actors. And there's something about the dialogue that really sings to me, especially between these two in this moment. - Yeah, that's why I get the complaints about, oh, it feels like a very cold film, like it's not very emotionally connected, but again, to me, this is almost an intellectual conversation about what marriage means and what fidelity is and things like that, that I find very engaging listening to. - Right, and then you contrast that with the kind of conversation that Bill is having, with the two models, so he's walking around with Gail, who is played by Louise Taylor, as well as Newala, who is, Trace, did you know who this is? - No, who is it? - So this is Stewart Bourndijk, who has gone on to direct queer movies, like The Island as well as Bad Things, so we do have queer representation in this film. - That is wild, okay, I mean, we have Alan Cumming later. - Well, there is that too, yeah. So Gail and Newala are walking Bill around, and they're doing the same thing as Sandra, right, where they're kind of feeling Bill Oud, seeing if maybe he wants to play with them a little bit, and they end up saying they'll take him where the rainbow ends, which is another one of the sort of repeated motifs that the film is engaging with. You know, we're doing Drupal Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland with Alice, but then we're also doing-- - Wizard of Oz. - Wizard of Oz with Bill, because he's on this odyssey with a variety of different companions, and what do you find at the end of a rainbow, Trace? - A pot of gold. - A pot of gold, because we're all about fucking money in this movie. - Nah, not fucking money, fucking money. - Has to be kept separate, because we will never get to that fucking folks. (laughing) But yes, so this is promising. You don't see Bill protesting too, too much, but he ends up getting called away by Ziggler so that he can attend to Mandy, who is played by Julianne Davis. She is a naked sex worker who has OD'd. - On heroin and co-- (laughing) Whatever Ziggler tells him, heroin and coke, and Bill looks at him like, "Hara when and coke." 'Cause the idea is like, why would you mix those two things? (laughing) - Mandy, you party girl, what have you been up to? - Yeah, so, and we just get full beaver shot too here. So again, there is nudity in this movie, but none of it is particularly sexy. I mean, this is not sexy. - No, and very clearly, we saw Ziggler with his wife when we entered the parties. So this is Ziggler engaging in that marital deception that Sandra was talking about, and he has no qualms, but he does want Bill to treat the sex worker. He wants to get her the fuck out of there, ASAP, and also keep your mouth shut. - Oh, okay, no, one of my biggest laughs actually is, "We save Mandy, she's fine." And Ziggler's like, "What do I do?" Okay, we can just stay here with her for an hour. And he goes, "An hour?" (laughing) - I got a party, I got other people I wanna fuck. (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, this is where you could say, "Ooh, this guy's not great." - No, I mean, again, most people in this movie aren't particularly great. - Well, no, I mean, these are the people that we're dealing with, right? They're rich, they're white, they're entitled, and it's Christmas season. - I'm curious, do you think that Nicole Kidman is particularly like, do you think Alice is kind of like a bitch, like a mean person? 'Cause my husband said something along those lines, too, where he's like, "Oh yeah, I think she does "some pretty terrible things." And I was like, "I don't know." I don't know, I don't know what to be talking about as we go through more of her scenes. - It's hard to tell, right? Because she really is sequestered at home for most of the film. So we don't get to see her interact with anybody. Like, she seems nice to the babysitter, but you're gonna be nice to the babysitter 'cause they're looking after your kid. - I mean, I guess maybe it's like, oh, like, do you have to retell him the entire dream you had or you had an orgy and laugh in his face? Like, maybe that's the thing, but he did say, tell me. - Yeah, there's some editorializing that might have helped the relationship. Like, when Alice gets candid, it's like, "Girl, you don't have to say everything." - Let's see, it's these ones, though, where I'm just like, oh, look, I wonder how much of this was coming out of like those therapy sessions 'cause it was making her have, you know? - Right, yeah, yeah. 'Cause it's all in "Trov no Vel" where she does confess to having fantasies about this man, but, you know, there's certain levels of specificity that feel like, oh, is that cribbed for Nicole Kidman specifically? Is that gonna be some kind of pain point for Tom Cruise in real life? Like, it does feel like we are deliberately trying to fuck up the real-life marriage. - And I like, though, again, like the ambiguity of it. That's not knowing, like, well, it could be, but it also might not be. Like, I do wonder how it would play now. I mean, listeners actually, if you're watching for the first time, like me, but you weren't really present for this tabloid era of their relationship, I'm wondering if it plays differently for you. I mean, I wish I would have known how it would play for me in 1999, but, you know? - I mean, I remember feeling like we were getting a certain level of voyeurism, you know, like a glimpse into the real marriage, how much of this was actually informing what we were seeing on screen, but then particularly when they get divorced a year after this movie comes out. - I know, I mean, like, they announced their divorce, I think in February of 2001, or they announced their separation, and then like, you know, divorce is pretty speedy after that. - Yeah. - So. - Yeah. Okay, so folks, we're 20 minutes into the movie when we get back to the apartment, and this is where we see what we think is going to be. - A sex scene? - Some sex, let's get down to fucking because we're kissing, we're half naked. - We see Nicole Kim and Titty right here in this scene. Like, okay. - Yeah, well, we'll see her tits a bunch in this movie. - A lot. - But I do love the fact that Alice is looking at herself in the mirror as opposed to looking at Bill, or sort of like, you know, she's not really making eye contact, it doesn't feel intimate. - Yeah. - And then I think part of this is that if you wanted to read this like Alice as wife, as prostitute bit, it's she's feeding into the fantasy that Sandor was telling her about how beautiful she is and how desirable she is, but it's not about Bill. Like, she doesn't feel like she's present for the sex that we think we're about to see. And instead we just cut to black and we cut back the next morning. - But this is when we get the baby did a bad, bad thing, which again, the inclusion of the song is so singular, I guess I wanna say it because it's unlike anything else in the soundtrack or score. - 100%. And it really does prime you for let's get down to the business. And I love that this is no, Kubrick is just going to adjust for the rest of the film. - I was literally saying Kubrick is edging us for two and a half hours and he knows it. - But he knows what he's doing. - Get three coffins ready, kid, because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier that is Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloweenies. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Clint's output is infinite, you've gotta ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. (upbeat music) Okay, so, yes, we then go about the daily routine the next day, so we get to see Bill at work, treating patients, we see Alice at home with her daughter, Helena, who was played by Madison, Edkington, and we're hearing this same old familiar musical refrain, it's the jazz sweet number two. - Yep, and again, just this mundanity of their daily life, you know, like this is boring. - Sure, yeah. - So, but what's not boring is what happens when we decide, let's smoke a little bit of pot, hang it in our underwear and play more or less truth or dare, except it's all truth and nobody likes it. - Oh my God, I wasn't expecting this. This feels like such an emotional peak in the film, which again, I'm like, there's still like about two hours left in this movie and we have this already? Like, whoa, this is a spectacular scene, like honestly, like high school kid, I mean, maybe not high school, but the college kids, if you're doing a duet for your theater class, look at this scene. (laughing) - Okay, so this is interesting because one of the big critiques people like Nicole Kim not a lot in this film, but I did see a bunch of folks say, oh, the way she's acting, it doesn't feel like she's actually high, or Nicole Kim and has never gotten high, like particularly the part where she laughs and kind of falls on the ground. People just said, oh, it feels so cringy, it's just not good. - Okay, that's stupid, I have been high many times and I-- (laughing) - Well, I did want to get to her opinion as somebody who has been vibed a few times. - No, but I just like, I mean people, high people behave differently. I am sure Nicole Kim has gotten high, come on. (laughing) - She's Australian, of course she has. - It was the vocal affectation for me. When she's like, oh, can you grab your little titties? (laughing) - Yeah, 'cause she is actively mocking Bill in these scenes, right? Like it starts a little bit inocuously. She's saying, so where did you disappear to? And of course he can't say, oh, I was helping Ziggler with his fucking ODing sex worker. So he says, oh, I was off of these two models and then that just starts the snowball effect where she wants to know, did he fuck them? No, of course not because he's faithful. He's totally committed to their relationship. He's not asking that of her and then she's just like, really? You want to talk to me about whether I've always been into this marriage? Like, let me tell you, buddy. - Well, 'cause she gets offended because, you know, basically what he's saying is he's implying that a man would only talk to Nicole Kidman because he wants to fuck her, you know, when she brings up the sander stuff. But then she's like, well, what about men? And he's like, well, I think we both know what men are like. And again, so she just continues. They're the only reason you wouldn't fuck those two models is that a consideration for me. And then we just blow up. Also, I'm sorry, going back to the high thing. Do you really think Stanley Kubrick would, like, let her get away with the high so they didn't feel authentic to him? - I don't know. I mean, I go back and forth on it every time I watch the film. Sometimes I think it's fine. This time I actually, I didn't really love it. I almost wanted to just quickly jump over that moment, but... - I just thought it was funny. - Sure, okay. - But yeah. So, I mean, this fight is basically just, it rocks Bill's world, right? Like, the battle of the sex's nature of this scene, I just found very fascinating. And again, I mean, 1999 is not that long ago, even though we're saying it's 25, I mean, guys, a quarter of a century, Jesus Christ. But still, I love, again, with these two actors, we're having this kind of a conversation. And I mean, it doesn't really lead anywhere positive. And I don't think the idea of women enjoying sex is something that was like out of the ordinary for people, but maybe for a big segment of the audience it was, 'cause it sure is for Bill. - Well, yeah. It's important to note that if you listen to the, you must remember this episode. One of the things that Karina Longworth talks about is the popularity of things like red shoe diaries, which was David Dukovny going around telling women's stories about basically wanting to fuck a bunch of different people. Sometimes their husband, sometimes random strangers, sometimes both, and it was a big moment, but it was also HBO, premium cable kind of stuff. So it felt like it was still risky and taboo, even though, yeah, you could watch it at home with the door closed and the shutters drawn on sort of thing. But then we've got arguably one of the most famous film directors with the most A-list of A-list stars on the big screen talking about their fucking sex life. So this is a big deal. - Well, I'm glad you brought up red shoe diaries though, because quite a few reviews negatively compared this film to red shoe diaries, saying like you're better off- - Because that was sexy, that was a sexy series. - Right, exactly, but again, it's the idea of like, okay, well, is what you're wanting necessarily what the movie is doing or trying to do? - Interestingly enough though, just as a bit of a side tangent, that show was very famous for its kind of progressive sexuality, particularly around women, but also it never had male nudity either. - Oh my god. (laughing) We just like when we think of sexuality, we think of female sexuality, but only to look at. - Well, honestly, I mean, we're in a better place now, but honestly, I'm really over this prosthetic penis thing. Like, I'm sorry, women don't have to wear prosthetic titties. We shouldn't have to wear prosthetic cocks, but whatever. - You've tried to make this comparison before. It'd be like, it's not a one to one, because men have tits and women have tits. So you would have to say women don't wear prosthetic before us. - Of vaginas. - Or vaginas. - Sure, why not? - Sure, but whatever. - And the reality is, we don't often see bottom genitalia from most people. I'm happy with fake prosthetic dicks, because I think it just normalizes, oh, people have penises, and you can see them. - That's fair, that's fair. - I mean, if we're talking about like everybody suddenly has a 12-inch prosthetic penis, then I think we've got a problem. - I guess I have more respect for the actor who just does it, who just bears it all. - Sure, but that's also easy for you to say. - I'm not a star. - Yeah, I guess that's true, but like, I mean, come on, Joe. Like, there are probably videos of me out there somewhere. - This is true, don't sound them to me. I don't want to. - That's, no, I'm just saying. Like, I'm sure someone has posted my nude somewhere online, and I'm not aware of it. - Yeah, I mean, the reality is, is that we live in a very different day and age. Like, I would be so interested to see what eyes wide shut would look like. - Today. - Nowadays, right? When we've got the advent of things like, "Oh, send me a picture of your dick, and I'll come over." - Right? - Well, no one's ever gonna remake that, but I would-- - No, yeah. (laughs) - Anyway, anyway, so what comes out of this is that Alice didn't even fucking cheat. That's what I love. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - She saw a naval officer when they were on vacation the previous summer, they caught eyes at each other, and she, for the briefest moment, and then throughout the rest of the day, she thought about giving everything up so that she could have a sexual encounter with this man. She didn't, they didn't have any kind of conversation. She doesn't even know this man's name, but just the knowledge that Alice was willing to give everything up, and she specifically uses the line, she was ready to give up their marriage, their daughter, and her whole fucking future for this man. - It's, and it's so interesting, right? 'Cause technically, technically, nothing about their marriage has changed. It's just that now Bill knows this one time for a split second, this thing happened. But I think the dagger that Alice drives home here, though, is the last thing she tells him before they get interrupted by a phone call, is my love for you was both tender and sad, and that to me is the dagger, but I don't think that's even what he cares about. It's just the fact that she might have cheated on him. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially in this moment, I think when we have the second confessional conversation, when he wakes her up and she's laughing, that one feels a little bit more cruel to me, but this first conversation is quite literally, I didn't think women had these kinds of desires, and it sends him on an odyssey. - And I think it's interesting, given that he is a doctor, and that he doesn't think about me, we've seen him like man-handling some breasts in the office already, so like he doesn't think that women have this kind of side to them, this quote unquote male side to their sexuality. - Well, in his mind, and particularly, if you think about his practice as a doctor, it is cold, it's antiseptic, because it's medical, right? Like he thinks, oh, well, because I'm there potentially giving them bad news about their health, or I'm making sure that they're okay, that it must be reciprocal, that must be the nature of the relationship, as though no one has ever thought sexually about a care practitioner, or just anybody, like who among us has not had a hot service repairman, or gone to the grocery store and thought, that check-out person looks great. What do they look like naked? - I think when I really, the biggest I/O, I think he says something like women are just naturally faithful, and I, like my eyes, went to the back of my head. (laughing) Like the naivety for this guy. - Yes, yes, and just, yeah. Well, it's almost Victorian levels of sexual repression. Like, oh, oh my God, so of course, I wanna fuck everything that moves, but ladies. - No, yeah, they're fine, they're so faithful, they're obedient and subservient and faithful. - Every woman I have ever met who is sexually active has been like, yeah, I would like to do it, I would like to do it my own way, on my own terms, I don't enjoy being sexualized by other people, but like, do I wanna feel sexy? Do I want to fuck and have a good time? Yes, because we all have sexual desires. - I mean, it's like the whole myth about, you know, a women hate sex, it's the equivalent to me of like, you know, the greatest trick the devil out of a pole was committing the world he didn't exist, like someone somewhere convinced the world that women don't enjoy sex. - Right, if they don't enjoy it, it's because you're doing it wrong. (laughing) - It's a man. - Pro tip. - Okay, so I do love the timing of this. It's like, what would have happened if we hadn't got the phone call and we just had to sit and unpack this, like fucking adults, but no, Bill gets a call and because he makes house calls, he runs away effectively. So he hops in the cab and he goes over because a patient of his has died. - Well, but I love though, like, throughout pretty much the rest of the film, we will get these sporadic like cuts to his fantasy or like, well, that's like the second step. - No, I think you said the exact right word. - Okay, 'cause his fantasy of Nicole Kidman getting flocked by this name officer and he just keeps envisioning it and it fuels his jealousy, his obsession, his rage at this, and just can't handle it. - Yeah, yeah, if we've got a spare moment of downtime, it is what he's thinking about in the car, on the streets and so on. And I do love the decision to film this in black and white. So it almost looks like a cereal or it's almost more dreamlike in that sense. - Look, is it sometimes blue because there's a lot of blue lighting in this movie that I think adds to that dreamlike quality as well? - Yes, because so much of the rest of the film is Christmas colored, like everywhere else we go, it is neon, it's green and red, and then we've got these very stark fantasy sequences with the naval officer. Okay, so we had to the Nathanson residence where he is greeted by Marion, that is Mary Richardson, and this is, as you mentioned, originally Jennifer Jason Lee, and she is the adult daughter of the man who has died, so his former patient. And, you know, we have this very mundane conversation about what she did that day and how her dad was, and then all of a sudden, what does she do, Trace? - She kisses him. - And she confesses that she loves him. She has always loved him. She doesn't want to move away with her own doctor fiance, Dr. Carl. And I love it, right, because immediately, this is confirmation that Alice was right, because Bill Jess spent this bunch of time being like, when I'm meeting with female patients, they're thinking about their health. They're not interested in fucking me, cut to Mary and kissing him, saying, "I love you, I want to be with you, "I will do anything to be with you." - It's interesting though, because he doesn't accept this, which again, I feel like, because I think a part of this too is also like how jealousy makes a person cruel. And he never quite, I mean, he is cruel, I think, but like, he never, because he never gets to do this. Like, well, what do you think stops him from like doing this with this person? - Well, I think in this instant, he's so taken aback, it surprises him, right? But I mean, later on, we see him actively make a call to Mary because he wants to follow up on it once he knows that she's interested. - Yeah, but well, we'll never know how that would have happened because it's from Beyonce that matches the phone, not her, 'cause that's the other, with Jennifer Jason Lee, like, this is this woman's only scene in this movie, right? - Yes. - So again, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, so Jennifer just like must have shot this scene, be like, cool, I'm done. And then he's like, no, we gotta go back and we shoot at it. And she's like, I'm done in Cronenberg. - Yeah, which is wild, right? Because we talked earlier this year, because of course, '99, baby. We talked about how good she is in that role, but also how sexually liberated she is. I think it would have been amazing to have seen her in this role by comparison in the same year, because of course, it's that kind of stilted repression then bursting loose with the sexual freedom. - Yeah. - Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I also just would have loved to seen Jennifer Jason Lee in a Stanley Kubrick film. - Yeah, I mean, you know what? Technically, you can say she was. Like, she at least worked for Stanley Kubrick for a point. - But also, we know that she shot those scenes. Like, the fact that you've got this physical media release and there's virtually nothing on it. And they've already confirmed, like, they know it's the 25th anniversary and they're not putting out a special edition of this or anything. - That's wild. It's somewhere and maybe we'll get it someday, but not today. Okay, so bear with me as we travel down the conspiracy theorist pathway trace. - Okay. - So one of the interesting things that Dabrensky brings in is that there's a lot of etymology in this movie in terms of, like, the way that people are named and Kubrick's potential reasoning for that. One of the things that I really liked was we've not said it, but Marion's boyfriend fiance is Carl. So Dr. Carl. And Dabrensky says this character is played by Thomas Gibson from "Darma and Greg." So Thomas Gibson shares a birthday with Tom Cruise. The two actors bear a resemblance. They're similar height and build. They have the same hair color. In the film, they have the exact same hairstyle. It is just parted on opposite sides. Carl is a math professor, which means that he is a doctor. So we have Dr. Carl and Dr. Bill. And then yes, that birthday. And they also share the same first name, Thomas and Tom. But it's like, how fucking wild is that? Like, is it potentially all just coincidence? Are we looking for connections that aren't there? Quite possibly. But if you think about how many doubles we have in this movie and this movie is a double of itself, as I mentioned, 70 minutes, 20 minutes, 70 minutes, the casting is very suspicious to me. - I mean, again, it's like that. - Or deliberate. I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't put it past Kubrick to be like, yep, that's what I'm doing. Like, it's not just doubles on the screen. It's behind the screen too. - It's interesting too, because it extends the conversation that we're having about male, female sexual politics and like the battle of the sexes, as you said, right? Because we're seeing the same kind of dilemma play out only in reality here between Dr. Carl and Marion that Bill is so worried about. So this is not just confirmation that Alice was right, but that everybody is engaging in this kind of risque behavior. - What's the thing, right? Once you notice it, like you can't not notice it everywhere you own. - And the whole rest of the movie is him noticing. - Yep, sure does. - Okay, so when Dr. Carl arrives, Bill's like, I'm gonna get the fuck out of here. So he leaves and then he begins walking down the street and we've got a free moment. So of course, we're back to thinking about Alice, this naval officer, and then this is when we get, I'm not gonna say gay bash, but he does get harassed in a kind of hate crime. - Yeah, it's these youths, but it's just a verbal harassment. - Yeah. - I mean, I misquoted it, but the line was, "Wanna take a ride in this fudge tunnel, faggot?" Do you have to say the f-word? - I feel like for this, for Kubrick, I do. He would not, he would not censor me. No, but I just, again, like, this feels more meta-textual than anything else because this feels more directly commenting on the rumor surrounding Cruz's actual like sexual orientation. But in the film itself, why is this here? - Okay, so part of this is, as I mentioned, a bit of my queer reading, right? So these kids are seeing something in Bill that he is not recognizing. Now, if you wanna do a very traditional read, it would be that Bill is an emasculated figure, right? Like, he's basically been kicked in the dick by his wife and he's embarking on a sexual odyssey. And these kids see him and say, "Ugh, well, here's a man who can't poll, he can't get it." - Yeah. - One of the other interesting things and I mentioned conspiracy theories. - Yes. - So if you look closely, you can see that these kids are wearing Yale paraphernalia. So they are Yale students. And I don't know how much you remember about our skulls episode trace, but that is where the skull and bones organization originates from. - Oh, that's another secret society. - It is, yes. And this movie indulges in the idea of secret society. So we're playing with the idea of the Freemasons as well as the skull and bones in terms of like secret societies that engage in sexual behavior, that they also then either have to keep quiet or they blackmail people about as they become more famous. And what other organization does that in real life trace? - Scientology. - Scientology. - Which is rumored, you know, if you want to go down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland, Scientology has the power to, I guess, protect Tom Cruise as one of the biggest members of the religious organization. So if he was in fact queer in real life, they would be hiding it for him. - God, God. - It just adds a bunch of extra layers to the film that are very interesting. - I know. I don't get caught up because my husband is more of a conspiracy than I am, but like it's just a thing where it's like, I really hope we find out one day. Like if Tom Cruise and like John Travolta, like people, all these Scientologists are just actually just closeted gay men. - Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith? - Oh my God, yes, right? - That lavender marriage. - I think it's one of those things where with conspiracy theories, I'm always just kind of like, oh, who cares enough to like go through all of this rigamarole, but clearly people do. I just, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would be like, it's not worth the trouble. - But we love a red string mystery, don't we? Especially if it's of people who are rich and famous. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - Because it makes our mundane lives seem less mundane. - Mm-hmm. So after this, after this encounter with these Yale students, again, metaphorically kicked in the dick, it makes sense that he would then accept an offer from a sex worker, Domino, who was played by Hillary, or sorry, Vanessa Shaw. - Wait, was that, were you trying to make a joke? Was that, did you actually make a mistake? - Bitch, go back and listen to our "Hocus Pocus" episode. - Oh, oh, I don't remember that at all, because I've never thought she looks like Hillary Swag. (laughing) She doesn't "Hocus Pocus" to the point that I used it throughout the entire episode. And then people wrote to us and said, "Hey, Dom Dom, she's not Hillary Swag." - Oh my God, I don't remember that at all. I must have looked at it on my memory. But again, I love this actress, one scene in this movie. She never comes back after this. - No, no, everybody gets a kind of one and done, or a one and then come back for a quick couple of beats and then done. - But this feels like Stanley Kubrick's "Pretty Woman." - A little bit, yeah, right? Like, she is the kindly sex worker who takes him back to her not great apartment. And I actually think that these two have really good chemistry in these scenes, and you almost want them to fuck, particularly because Bill is so desperate to prove his virility. Also, we just wouldn't be gay if we didn't know that she's basically dressed like Daphne from Scooby-Doo. (laughing) - I just like her big fur hat that she's wearing. - Oh, it's amazing. The costuming is great. - It's really good. But no, I mean, I like this character so much. And, you know, I also love that he's clearly never hired a sex worker before, so it's like, what do you wanna do? What would you recommend? (laughing) Like, does she wanna pull out a menu or something? - Honestly, well, I mean, you would usually think if you were propositioning a sex worker, you've got something that you would like them to help you with, but part of it speaks, I think, to Bill's naivete, as we've already said. But also, I love how this feeds into one of the film's big themes, which is not being able to say what you actually want, or having to dance around issues of sex and money, right? Because he doesn't know what he wants, so she offers, okay, we'll just leave it to me and I'll do what you want. And then we have to talk about money. It's like, okay, well, how much is this gonna cost? Okay, well, how much are you prepared to spend? - Meanwhile, Alice is at home watching TV smoking a cigarette and eating some delicious-looking snack well as devil's food cakes. - Yeah, yeah. Does this position her as, I don't wanna say matronly, but it's like, oh, is this indicative of why their sex life isn't working? Because Bill would rather be with somebody like Domino, whereas Alice is at home, quite literally eating milk and cookies. - Interesting, yeah, I could see that reading for me. This is more like, oh man, like poor Alice, her life is so boring, but again, it's not boring. It's just like, that's just life. Life isn't always sex workers all the time. (laughing) - Truly, no, I don't think your life can be all sex workers all the time. (laughing) But also, I mean, let's be real. They also have a child. When you're rearing a little kid, your life is gonna be very different than if you're just out and walking around the streets of New York at night. - Oh, I don't think it changes that much, it's fine. - Sure, sure. (laughing) So let's talk a little bit about the fact that he's like, yeah, I'll give you 150 bucks, which I think is a little bit above market price. - Okay, that's interesting because I was thinking it was really low for a New York sex worker, just because I was like, I mean, the rent for that apartment must be obscene, but maybe I'm wrong. - I guess it depends on what they would have eventually done and how long it would have taken. She makes a very specific claim that she doesn't watch the clock, but I think it's also because he's young, he's attractive, I think she's genuinely attracted to him, so it's like, oh yes, I will fuck you for money, but also I don't mind fucking you too much. - But I do really like that he still gifts for the money, even though he doesn't fuck her, that was a very gentlemanly offer. But again-- - Oh yeah, he's such a nice guy. - Is it gentlemanly or is it patronizing? I don't know. - Oh, yes. - Yes, that's fair. But I was like, oh, please give her the money, she needs the money. (laughing) - But this will begin a bit of a trajectory, right? So we haven't really seen Bill throwing around a ton of money, but he does, yeah, he says like, okay, I'll give you $150, he doesn't really even blink an eye at it. And going back to Dabrinsky, he says, throughout Bill's Odyssey he spends large amounts of cash without scarcely batting an eye, offering up hundreds of dollars to a sex worker, a cab driver, a costume shop owner. His name after all is Dr. Bill, which is a pun like dollar bill as a form of currency, or a bill as a receipt of a financial transaction, as if he himself is just another instrument of the wealthy elite. - I wish his last name was Pepper, Dr. Pepper. - Oh my God, get out of here. (laughing) Okay, so after this doesn't work because Alice has effectively called to say, "When are you coming home?" And then Bill can't go through with it because even though he's so desperate to get out there and be like a man and fuck. He's like, "Hmm, no." - He's a really bad liar. And he's like, "I mean, it might be like a while "because here's the thing, "he doesn't go home after this. "He has a much longer night ahead of him." - Oh boy, does he ever, yeah. So he goes back out onto the street and we should notice that we are in Greenwich Village, which is the gay part of New York, and this is where the Sonata Cafe is, which is where Nick, the piano player from Ziegler's party, is doing his two-week residency. - Very, and the fact that they had to build this whole set, it wasn't just like, "Oh, location Scotty, "hey, let this work, let's do it." So no, we're specifically saying we're going to Greenwich Village. - Mm-hmm, yeah, because Kubrick was apparently able to get some B-roll of New York, but most of what we're actually seeing are sets that he constructed at Pinewood. - Right. - So these are also not accurate. So when we're looking at the streets, apparently Kubrick would change certain things. So I think one of the stores around the party supply shop actually changes location. Yeah, I can't remember what the specifics are, but it's like the club is right next to the party shop, even though Bill has to take a cab to get between them, and you're like, "But in another scene, "they're actually just across the street." So Kubrick is playing with this because it's all supposed to be a little bit dream-like, even though it's not giving us the usual hallmarks of, "Ooh, what you're seeing is a dream sequence." - Oh, yeah, okay, okay. - So yeah, this is all fabricated, but we deliberately wanted to set this club where Nick is playing, where Bill will seek him out in the gay section of New York. - Yeah, also, what really irked me about this. He walks into this bar with his jazz club, I guess, and he goes, "I'd like a beer." - I'll be here. - I'll be here. - Just any beer. - Beer, what beer? (laughing) - Yes, I also thought that. (laughing) - So Nick is finishing his set. He comes over, they have a quick conversation about their families. We should note that Nick does not wear a wedding ring if you look closely. So even though he says that he is partnered up, he has clearly taken the ring off. And then, of course, when we talk to the waitress, the next day, it very much sounds like Nick has been fucking around. - Okay, I thought the exact same thing. 'Cause she was being really cagey, but then she just gives all the information up. She knows a lot of information about some quote-unquote random guy that comes into her diner. - Yeah, like which hotel he's staying at. - Yeah. - Then why do you know that unless you've been going to the hotel? - Literally, everyone is fucking off screen and none of it's tongue prison to call Kidman. - Exactly that. Yeah. (laughing) Okay, so Nick, during this conversation, admits that he has another gig, even though this is relatively late at night because we're closing this bar down. And this is where we start alluding to a secret meetup. So we get a mysterious phone call. This is where Nick will play blindfolded, but he does need a password and that is Fidelio. - So does this have any significance? - Well, technically it is associated with a, let's see if I remember this correctly, it's tied to a opera, if I'm not mistaken, but the word Fidelio is a derivation of fidelity. - I guess that makes sense. Apparently in early drafts of the screenplay, the password was Fidelio Rainbow. - That's a big cumbersome. - Yeah, I guess we're going back to the rainbow thing, but I did, 'cause I was trying to look up to see if there's any more significance to it, but I think yours makes the most sense. But this is also used as a password in Mr. Robot, by the way. - Oh, right, yeah, which is laden with conspiracies. - Yes, very much so. But yeah, I guess it also feels kind of like Fidelio, it feels very much like a Venetian name, right? - Yeah, yeah. One of the other things, if you're leaning into my queer reading between these two is because Nick is talking on the phone, he needs to hold it because phone's a cumbersome in 1999 still, and Bill has to help him to write out Fidelio on the cocktail napkin. So it's very, I don't want to say like lesbian hands, but it's giving that kind of hero, let me help you out. - Yeah, I mean, I did notice that because it was a big, I mean, it's just Kubrick. You're like, oh, this is a very intentional, like you don't have to have this in here where it's with Cruz helping him hold the napkin down, but he kept doing that. - And it's a close up of their hands, as you mentioned, and Kubrick tends to favor master shots and so on. So this is very much, yes, we want you to see Fidelio getting written out, but also here are these two men's hands nearly touching. - Right, yeah, 'cause he's gonna do a close up shot, he's like, then I'm telling you, like even though, in these master shots, hey, the audience let them be your editor, or like they can figure out themselves, this is me telling the audience, that you need to be looking at this. - Yes, yeah, okay, so Bill is very intrigued by all of this. He wants to know the location, he's going to go there, but he won't expose Nick, he'll come later. Here's the problem, this is a costume party. (laughing) And it's late at night, where are you gonna get a mask? Where are you gonna get a costume? So we go to rainbow fashions, and again, I mean, yes, we're obviously doing the Wizard of Oz, but from a queer perspective. - Yeah, right, yeah. (laughing) - Like we're filling the screen with visuals, we're talking about it, there's rainbow references. - Everywhere. - Okay, so this is under the current management of Mr. Milick, and this is played by Rade Serbija, and he is more than happy to overcharge Bill for all of this, even though it's the middle of the night, but what he is not okay with is catching his underage daughter, played by Lili Sobieski. - Wild, I think she has one line of dialogue in this movie. - Mm-hmm, it's a lot of coy looks, and that's because she is trying to entertain two Japanese men played by Togo Agawa and Iji Kurashawa. - Yes, which, again, this is one of those things where it's like, okay, why is this in here? Like, why, I know this is the third time I've asked that exact same question for this, because, but I guess this is because I'm just saying, yeah, but why? Like, why is this so important? Because we'll come back to this later, and maybe we can discuss it then because it's the resolution of this story, but it's just Bill seeing now even younger people who have sex have a more adventurous sex life to him, so he gets even more jealous. - I think so, and this idea that even underage girls can be sexualized, and I think on one hand, we're looking at it as, oh, this is disgusting, this is a father pimping out his daughter, that's what we'll come to see in the second scene when we revisit this. But initially, like, she does seem coy, right? Like, you're right, Sobieski doesn't get a line here, but she does hide behind Bill, and she gives him this look like, "Oh, you protected me," or, "I might be interested in you." - I took it as the latter, (laughs) but she's also like, how do you say a minor? - Yes. - Yeah, she is like 13 or 14, I wanna say. - I don't, well, this camp is at the same year as Never Been Kiss, I mean, I think she's like a teenager, but like, she looks young. We'll put it that way. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, so Bill hops back in the cab because now he's got his costume, so he's ready to go to the party. What can he not stop thinking about Trace? - Oh, do you mean, is it his wife fucking the naval officer in a bunch of flashbacks? - I'm sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. (both laugh) - So we think about that all the way to this mansion, it's gated, it's a very exclusive. We've got servants and bodyguards, but they're all decked out in mass. So from this point on, through to the end of the Orgy sequence, if I mentioned someone, default assumed that they are wearing a mask and cloak. - Yeah, okay, so here, I'll come over some technical stuff for this. So, okay, let's do the music first. So Kubrick's way of getting his head into the Orgy was via the soundscapes of composer Jocelyn Poo, who did the score for the film. - Right. - One of his producers had introduced him to her piece, Backward Priest, which features Romanian Orthodox divine liturgy played in reverse. And I know, right? 'Cause when you hear about things like played in reverse, it's like, oh, that's like demonic shit, right? - Yes. - So Kubrick was struck by the dark, dissonant quality. So when they met, he told her, let's make sex music. - Amazing. - She had no idea what that meant, and Kubrick didn't care to elaborate. - Oh God. - But just that he said, he trusted to answer the question. So what she did was she composed 24 minutes of roiling chance and percussion, using the same back-to-front technique pioneered in her song, Backward Priest. And here's the thing. The lyrics of this piece when played the right way around are, and God told to his apprentices, I give you a command to pray to the Lord for mercy, life, peace, health, salvation, the search, the leave, and the forgiveness of the sins of God's children. - Okay. - Deeply religious. - Now, to where to get the sexuality from, fun fact, I love that you mentioned red shoe diaries, because Kubrick and his crew were immersing themselves in soft-core porn, particularly the red shoe diaries. - Hey. - They were asked to prose the Commissutra. Apparently, Kubrick's initial idea for this sequence was to have all of these sex be un-simulated. - Oh, okay. - But. - That's NC-17 right there. - Well, but also the actors were like, that's not what we signed up for, so. - Yeah, we're actors, we're not sex workers. - Yeah, so the sequence is instead re-imagined as a choreographic piece suggested of bakanalia. And so I've seen people say that this scene is like, it's not sexy, it's like, it's very, it's very vanilla. And I'm just kind of like, yeah, but I feel like that's kind of the point. Like, this is the best these rich people can come up with. Like, sure, like, why not? - Yeah, it's all cloak and dagger bullshit. And then when you finally get in there, I mean, sure, it's still an orgy with probably very rich New Yorkers who are acting parts, right? I mean, they like to get dressed up and they like to go and buck sex workers. Like, that's what it ultimately boils down to. But on the other hand, when you think of a mainstream film released with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the height of summer movie season, and it's rated R, it's like, oh my God, we're watching a fucking orgy in this film, what? - Yeah, and I mean, it's just a very, it's a very theatrical, I think Buck and Halle is the best way to put it, right? I think the sex that pleasure these people get from this is less so from the actual, like, act of penetration and more so just how the showmanship of all of this. - Yeah, because it's so ceremonial. I mean, when Bill comes in, he comes into this big ballroom, it's multi-level, people are watching, but it's essentially this guy in a red mask who is credited as red cloak played by Leon Vitale, and he's standing in a circle of mostly naked women, they're wearing mass G-strings and high heels, and we have this elaborate process that we do, where we go around, we bang the baton kind of thing and we send the women off. - Well, it's also like, I think it's frankincense is what he's like waving around, like that's very much a Catholic thing too. - Yes, yeah, which makes sense when you think about, okay, what is the wording that we're hearing in reverse? - And I don't necessarily see this as a religious piece so much as we are almost making fun of religious practice because these are just our sex games, but we've elevated it to the point of, ooh, we've made it theatrical and so on. - Yeah, no, it's not a black mask, but it almost feels like a perversion of an actual mask, you know, like, we're using masks for sexuality here instead of like worshiping the Lord. But I also think the banality of all, like the process, I guess I wanna say, with which we're doing the ceremony, it's again, almost mundane in a way, but except for the fact that this is something that isn't quote-unquote normal, but there's a rigidity to this that I feel like almost mirrors what Alice in Bill's sex life is like, we just don't know. - Well, you gotta follow the rules, right? And of course, one of the reasons that Bill will be found out, he initially thinks is because he doesn't know all the rules, he doesn't know the second password. Oh, okay, I'm sorry, if I'm in a place like this and the first person warns me, you're in trouble, your life is in danger, get out. That's when you listen, like Bill is so stupid in this scene. - But here's the thing, he has been searching all night for this kind of thing, right? Like this is his opportunity to have anonymous sex. It's the voyeurism in him that has been imagining his wife having sex all night. So he has finally arrived and he doesn't wanna just let that go because it's an opportunity. But of course, I think he's also getting off on the thrill of the danger, right? He's infiltrated this organization and he's gonna figure out what's going on. - Which also, he's kind of rude because it's a point where he walks into a room and there's people fucking in the middle of the room. He just like stands in front of people on the couch watching this display of sex. And I was like, the party fouls in this man are wild. And well, he's very entitled. - He's a doctor. Did you not see him flashing his credentials? - I cannot believe he doesn't flash at some of these naked people. We're like, when he gets to a trial and he's like, excuse, I'm a doctor. Here's my card. - So a couple of key things folks, you may not know this depending on which version of the film you're watching, but if you went to see this in theaters, the big controversy was that most of these sex acts were being blocked by black figures. So it's very much the we drew clothes on the women in showgirls. - Very much. Now I have the Blu-ray and I think the only Blu-ray you can get at this is the unrated version. So it's the full one, but I didn't look on streaming, but I saw an article that said the version streaming on Apple TV Plus is the R-rated version, which will have these digital obstructions. - Yeah, and I will say it is very obtrusive because they do not look natural at all. It's like Rorschach figures standing in front of the action. So it takes you right out of the moment, which is so fucking frustrating because for a lot of people, myself, I'm going to include, this is the big moment in the film. This is what you remember about this movie and I think it is so fucking well done and to just be taken out because some fucking perude said, no, we need to cover up that sexuality. - Well, and again, bear in mind, this is coming out a week after American Pie comes out, which did have similar battles to the NPA where they had to remove two thrusts from the pie fucking scene. - Oh my God. - But it's just like, and I would argue that some stuff in American Pie is more graphic than this. And I did keep an eye out too because this is a very heterosexual scene. I did spot two men dancing together fully close. - And there's two women dancing behind them. - Yeah, so that's your one gay scene. But yeah, no male nudity in this. We were getting lots of female boobs, butt, and some bush. - Yes. - I will say the funniest thing about the sequence to me is when you see people, they're fully having sex and you can see them kissing, but they're all wearing the mask. - Yes. - And I was just like, why, why? Like I kept waiting for people to have taken the mask off, but obviously that's a breach of decorum. - Yeah, yeah, no, but that's the ceremony. Just for show, it must be some kind of like greeting thing that you're supposed to do before. Maybe that's the consent. Like if you kiss, if you kiss, mask to mask. - Oh my God, then that means you can touch each other. - I mean, it makes sense when the women are first being sent out of the circle to go and find their first playmate, but when we're actually fucking, I mean, no, I need to be kissing. - Well, that could also be a statement though on maybe the elites in personal nature. - Yeah, I mean, as we said, transactional sex or performative in a certain regard, so I can see that. - Yeah, but no, I hear yes, I'm big on kissing. It's an important moment for what will come later, but we should note that before all the women get sent off, as Bill is standing here watching this ornate ceremony playing out, we do get, I think it's the only time in the film, we get a zoom in on a man and a woman who are standing on the second story. - Yeah. - The man tips his head at Bill and Bill nods back at him. - Yeah, there's two zoom ins in this scene. It's this one and then once the mysterious woman like object has been asked. - Oh, right, yes. And it stands out from the rest of the film, which is very slow, languid, very deliberate. So this feels like, ooh, a sudden jolt of weight. What is the camera doing? Okay, we need to pay attention to what's going on. - It almost adds suspense to it. I mean, to be clear though, I mean, like, this scene is creepy, like, we're seeing a lot of people, but again, with these wearing these Venetian masks, their eyes, and like, it's just, again, there's just something giraffe, like, it's not a turn on. - It's not a turn on and to be honest, you're worried for Bill the entire time. Like the boy you're in me is like, "Oh yeah, show me that fucking sex." And the other part of me is really worried for Bill because he keeps getting warned by a mysterious woman who is played by Abigail Goode that, yeah, he needs to get out of there. And even when she comes, like, she gets escorted away and she comes back later on and she says, and like, "No, really, you need to go." And he says, "Well, why don't you come with me?" Because clearly, it says, "Dr. fucking savior," but also he wants more answers. So he wants to take her with him and she says, "No, if I do that, both of our lives could be put at risk." - And that's why I'm just like, "Okay, she just said your lives are in danger. Get the fuck out of there." 'Cause it's a secret society. You don't know what these people are capable of. - Okay, I know it's all over the very end, but whenever we find out what got him called, it's like, "Oh, you are never gonna make it out of this." Like, "No, come on, like you idiot." - Oh, he's real bad at this. He's real bad at everything. - Yeah, it's comical, it's comical. - It is, it's hilarious how much he thinks that his doctor status and his financial status will protect him throughout this entire film. And it'd be so easy to turn this movie into a proper horror film, where he is just continually put in danger from people trying to kill him. - Yeah, absolutely. - Okay, so, yes. By the way, this is all very similar to skull and bones and Freemason stuff. So, Dabroonski does say both of these organizations are exclusively men oriented, although women are sometimes used in sex rituals as portrayed in this scene. But there's obviously this underlying commentary on misogyny as women in the film and in reality, and the concept of women as objects of pleasure are co-opted for commercialism. So, they're packaged, they're bought, they're used, they're thrown out by the men who run the world. - Well, that's the thing though, because, I mean, we're led to believe that this mysterious woman is the sex worker in the movie. So, she's not like a rich person. So, like, oh, a lot of the women, I think, especially in the opening bit, they are sex workers. They're not the elite. - Yes, yeah. So, these women are just being bought in here for the pleasure of what we see is mostly men doing the sex as well. - Yeah. - And we'll have some fun things about who the mysterious woman naturally is later on. - Well, maybe she is, maybe she isn't. Who knows? - Exactly that, yes. But I know so many people who are like, oh no, that's the sex worker from Ziegler's party. And then Bill goes to see her body in the morgue and you're like, it's played by two different actresses. All right, so as we said, Bill sucks at this. And yes, he definitely gets caught. But again, it's so ceremonial where we say, sir, can you please come with us? We escort him back to the ballroom and everybody is just waiting there looking at him. - Yeah, I love that we see a character look up and then we cut to see what they're reacting to. This cut to just, oh, all these people are in here watching you. (laughing) - Yeah, whereas previously they were watching sex. So, their attention has been voyeuristically diverted to you. - By the drama. - The drama, yes. So, as you said, he's kind of put on trial here, right? So the red cloak says, all right, we'd like you to take off your mask. We would then like you to take off your clothes. - Oh boy, which again, I was like, come on, cockties of a movie, but no. And again, he refuses to do it, which just shows how fucking vanilla this guy is. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think at this point, you could argue that he's afraid for his life, but. - Yeah. It's frustrating where you just think, I do it, man, get into it. - I know, I feel like this would have been the show of good faith. It's like, oh, okay, he is one of us. Like he does want to watch the show. But yeah, and they ask him for the second password, which he does not have. I kept trying to think of how I would get out of this. Although, now that I know the answer to the question, I'm like, oh, good, if I'm ever in the situation, I just say, there is no second password. (laughing) - Yeah, that's your default. There's no second password. (laughing) So he does not offer them one. And instead, he is saved by the second zoom of the mysterious woman who offers herself in his place. - Yes, but what I love too is the person that carries her away is wearing, what looks like a, like it's like a plague mask? - Mm-hmm. - Like, it's like exactly the moment, it's like a hooked beak thing. But yeah, and again, it's very serum. It feels like very much like a court of law, right? 'Cause she's like, I'm ready to redeem him. And they're like, what? - Everybody gas. - 'Cause as you said, it is really drama. - Yeah, which again, the implication is she is trading her life for his. - Yeah, and when he tries to ask, okay, well, what's gonna happen to her, they just refuse to answer his questions. And more or less say, you just gotta get out of jail free card, stop looking at gift horse in the mouth, and also don't be asking more questions. - Which, they're still like an hour left of the movie, so he will be asking more questions. (laughing) - So as I said, yeah, we've now broken into the back half of the film. (laughing) Okay, so I will fully confess this is where I hit pause, took a breather, and I was like, okay, let's get back into it. - Oh, yeah. - What does the rest of the film have for us? - I marathon through this thing. - All right. (laughing) So Bill returns home at 4 AM. He hides the costume, and then he goes into the bedroom where he hears Alice laughing in her sleeve. - This, again, really good team of kids. It's not as good as the fight scene for me, because I've actually grown to like this one more. It's interesting, right? I mean, I don't know if you've ever encountered a partner who does something unusual in their sleep, but I love that moment of coming to realization or coming to consciousness, where the person is still in a bit of a days, and they maybe don't even know what they're saying, because I really get that vibe from Kidman's Alice here. - Yeah, I can get that. I mean, well, I mean, the way she delivers this monologue, I mean, this is a lengthy monologue as she recounts this dream, but like the pauses, she takes so many pauses during this thing, 'cause she's also like in tears at the time. - Yeah, yeah, we go from laughter to tears, and this story is bizarre, right? I mean, it's very much a dream that she was having, 'cause she says she and Bill were in a strange city, they were naked, and she was ashamed and humiliated of him, and she didn't feel better until Bill left to go and get help, and then that's when the naval officer shows up, they start having sex, this crowd of people gathers around, and then she starts having sex with all of these men, and she knows that Bill is watching, and she just feels so sad for him that she just can't help but laugh at him. - And so this, I know, again, like this is a, right, editorializing, maybe don't mention that part, but maybe say you queef, you farted during sex, and then that's really funny, but the first half the story reminds me, though, we're going back into like religion, is it's almost like the tale of Adam and Eve, because they're alone, they're naked, they feel very awkward, Adam goes away, and then she is faced with the naval officer, AKA Satan, Incentation, offered her the apple, yeah. So this feels like an allegory to me. - For sure, for sure, yeah. I mean, in a weird way, is also the plot of a bunch of different pornos. (laughing) - Maybe it's a Red Shoes Diaries episode. - I mean, I wouldn't be surprised, but yeah, it really feels like it's mixing a bunch of different type of archetypal stories. - Well, but it's also, 'cause it's like, okay, well, Bill just got back from an orgy, whereas she's living one out in her dream. - Yes, and thank you for pointing that out, because what we're about to get in the back half of the film is a bunch of scenes that feel like they're commenting on what we have previously seen before. So we're gonna come back around the other side of the circle, so yeah, in much the same way that we had Alice deliver her first story, and then we immediately had Marion acting on it. We're going to recontextualize a lot of what Bill has seen throughout the night, and this feels like the start of that. - Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, because this has just passed the halfway point of the movie, so that makes sense. - Hmm, so, I mean, we should note there's that famous, oh, I'm not gonna be able to remember who to attribute it to, but it's like, the scariest thing that can happen to a man is that a woman laughs at him, and the scariest thing for a woman is that the man kills her. - Oh, oh, oh, yes, I don't know the exact quote either, but I know the quote you're talking about, because again, it's like, it's those gender dynamics, right? - Mm-hmm, yeah, like for women, the stakes are way, way higher, whereas for Bill here, the worst possible thing that his wife can say is, oh, I was involved in a sexual situation, and I just laughed at you, 'cause I felt sorry for you. - It's emasculating, and again, it's small potatoes compared to, oh, a woman might get raped and murdered on her way home. - Mm-hmm, so we move to the next day, and this is where Bill starts to go into private investigator mode, so. (laughing) He tries to use his doctor credentials to get information out of a waitress at the diner next to the Sonata Cafe, 'cause he's trying to track down Nick. - I think, at a certain point, definitely by this point, I was just laughing every time he whipped out those doctor credentials. - Mm-hmm, yeah, it's just so high privilege, and I know that that's a bit of a dirty word, and people don't like it when we talk about things like that, but the reality is, is that he is flashing it around, like his educational credentials, he thinks are just going to open all the doors, and we should note that in at least one scene, I think it's this one, where he's trying to get information about where Nick is, he often mentions like, oh, I've got something that he needs to know, and it's really important, and again, if you want to read it from a bit of a queer reading, it very much feels like Nick has contracted something, and I'm trying to get to him, and it's like, this is in the gay area, if we're reading Nick has a bit queer-coded, it's like a bit of a specter of AIDS thing. - Well, okay, but like, so we've done this waitress thing, where do we go after the waitress? - Yeah, so we get the name of the hotel, it is the Jason Hotel, and we find out that Nick has checked out early, and he was accompanied by two Burley men, and all of this information is delivered by one, Alan Cumming, playing very fey, and very flirty with Tom Cruise. - Okay, I made a very particular note that I was like, oh, this is a very effeminate performance from Alan Cumming. Like, I mean, we know Alan Cumming, you know, he's a bisexual, like, out and proud man, but like, he normally doesn't play into the effing, at least not in this time period, right? - No, like, if you watch The Traders, he's very campy and vampy, and that's a performance that he's giving for that show, but like, at this time, I was used to seeing him as more of a weirdo, right? Like, Josie and the Pussycats. - Yeah, 'cause I mean, for me, I mean, it's Romeo, Michelle, and Goldeneye, but like... - Yeah, he's almost a straight man in those. - Yeah, I mean, I guess he just played the bad guy floop in the Spy Kids trilogy, but like, sure, sure, whatever. (laughing) - All this to say, you cannot misread this character. He is practically blushing because he finds Bill so attractive, and he's willing to play this flirty game where we give up information because Bill's just so cute. - He's just irresistible, like this man can't do no wrong. I mean, we should also note that when he talks about Nick leaving with these two burly men, he says, they weren't the kind of men you wanna fool around with, if you know what I mean. (laughing) And the way he says this to Bill, it suggests that Bill will know what he means. Like, Bill has played around with a certain type of man. - Yeah, that is he, you know? - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - Yeah, so what Bill takes from all of us, because of course, he would never think that this man is hitting on him, he leaves with the information that Nick has been forcibly removed and made to go home. So, ooh, the conspiracy plot thickens. - Or so we think? - Maybe. - Some we think. - Yeah. One other thing that I wanted to note, and I'm going to attribute this to a Reddit thread that I found by 33 DOE eyes wide shut, or DOE eyes wide shut, I imagine. (laughing) So, this person notes that the language that Alan Cummings' character uses to describe Nick being taken away has a lot of similarities or even duplications with Alice's initial confession about the naval officer and her fantasy. So, what this person, 33, DOE eyes wide shut, they wrote, "In the film's fantasy cutaway sequences, Alice is shown with the naval officer in his hotel room. It would appear then that Bill is Alice's counterpart in the hotel Jason scene, trying to get to Nightingale. So, both scenes are catalyst for Bill's sexual jealousy. We can probably also assume that Alice in Bill's feelings in the two scenarios are equivalent." So, in the same way that Alice has this fantasy about connecting with the naval officer, Nick has become the equivalent for Bill. But we'll just never see it get consummated 'cause Nick is out of this movie. - Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, technically the naval officer situation never got consummated either. - I guess that's true, but we don't get fantasies. We don't have Nicole Kim in fantasizing about him, but Nick. - No, because of course it's not her film. And also women don't do that kind of thing. - Oh my God, right? - Okay, so Bill heads back to Rainbow costumes 'cause he has to return the cloak and the mask and all the other jazz. - Oh, but he lost the mask. - Lost the mask or so he thinks. Yes, it is not there, which means we are going to have to incur another fee which Bill has no problem with. We are paying for cash for everything in this movie. - The mask is $25 though, it's fine. - It's true, but just think of how many cab rides he's also been taking throughout all of this. - Dude, right? Okay, so this is when we have the resolution of the millage's daughter, which is a completely subiesta sequence, which is, okay, basically, there's only one way to read it. She's a sex worker now. - Yeah, or like, you know, this is the deal that we came to. So instead of calling the police as we threatened to do last night, it was, oh, we can make a financial transaction for sex and everybody seems satisfied. - So I did see a read, someone described this too as he sold for it to sex slavery and I was, I know. - Was that a xenophobic reference? - That maybe, it might be honestly, 'cause yeah, this just seems like he's prostituting her out. - Yes, I mean, we should note this is not a very racially diverse film. It's a lot of white people and then we have these two Japanese men. - Although I wonder, maybe I'm wrong here, maybe her designation as a minor automatically makes it sex slavery? - I mean, yeah, like we're going into very taboo territory and we should know that Millick is played. I wanna say, I think this actor is Serbian. - I was gonna say Serbian too, but I will tell you, he is Croatian. - Okay, but again, it's very much like, oh, okay, well, this man is coded foreign, let's say. And then we've got these two men from Japan. So it does feel like we're going into some dicey racial politics, but what we're supposed to be worried about is, oh yes, this minor is being sold into sexual slavery, but nobody seems to have a problem with it. - I was gonna say, she seems fine with it, but again, I could hear people yelling right now, but like, she's the minor. It doesn't matter what she thinks. - 100%, 100% all that. But the way the movie is treating it is that everybody is just okay with it. And the movie continues to treat all of its sexual politics in this way, right? Like Bill is the prude. He is the one on the outside. He doesn't understand how any of this works. Everybody else is just kind of okay. - Yeah, yeah, they're all fine with these choices as well. I'll say they're choices. - Yeah, and also Bill refuses to get engaged in things that he doesn't want to get engaged with. So now that there's no opportunity for him to have a flirty little relationship with Lee Lee Sobieski like last night, he's out. He's out the door. He doesn't care, it's not his problem anymore. - It's not his problem. (laughing) - Okay, so he goes to work. He does have another vision. Like he cannot stop fucking imagining his wife getting fucked by another man. - I can't believe he doesn't at least jack off in this movie. - No, no, he is not touching himself at all. - I know, which again, just edging, edging, edging. - Mm-hmm, but he can't let it go. So he clears his entire schedule and he dries back out to the mansion. And I do love this moment because I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist, but I like watching them on film. So watching this old man drive down to the gates of this McMansion, pass him an envelope. It's so cloak and dagger. And of course, the message is like, this is your second warning. - Like stop looking into us. And this is also, I mean, I know I mentioned this score earlier during the Orgy scene, but like again, like the piano score that plays during all these, I've got to call them suspenseful scenes or like scenes where Bill is potentially in danger. Like again, I think the score adds so much the minutes to these scenes. - Oh, 100%. Yeah. And it's wild, right? Because it feels like it's just a single piano key. - Yeah. Yeah. - Okay. So Bill returns home. This is where he watches Alice go over Helen's homework. It's again, very mundane. It's just regular couple stuff. - But then over this is we now get voiceover repeating Alice's monologue for about her dream. So now we moved on from him fantasizing about the naval officer sex. And now he's just hearing her recollection of this orgy dream over and over again. - Yeah. And you know, she's looking at him from the kitchen. He's down the hall a little bit. So there is distance in the framing in the geography of this palatial New York apartment. But she, I mean, she clearly knows that something is going on because he's not really engaging, but it also just, it's like, dude, you could breach this distance. You could go and you could talk to her, but he chooses not to. - But yeah, why do that when he can do whatever he does for the rest of this movie? - Yeah. Instead he's like, oh, I gotta go back to the office. I got more shit to do. So he pieces out on his own marriage so that he can go once again, try to indulge in the solicit behavior. So he calls Marion, but instead it's Carl who picks up. So he just hangs up. - And then he's like, oh, what can I do now? Oh, what about that nice sex worker that I gave $150 to? - Maybe I can collect my dues. - Yep, so we're doubling back. So he goes back to her apartment and Domino's not in, but she does have a roommate who he immediately default assumes is also a sex worker and just starts like groping her. - There is kind of a sexual tension between them. Like, but, because I mean, but we also don't know if this woman's sex worker too. - No. - But like, there seems to be something between them, but then again, it's this thing where, 'cause it happens again in a minute, but like, she keeps trying to tell him something, but she keeps being like, I don't know if I should. So she's edging him in the way Kubrick is edging the audience because she's like, oh, I, you know, I wanna tell you this thing about Domino. But you know, like, and this goes on for a while before she finally just tells him what's going on. - Yeah, because again, the whole movie is about people not saying what they need to say or us as an audience not seeing what we wanna see and so on, like, people are just willingly not engaging in open communication throughout this entire film. - Well, and so, what news does she have to break to him? - Okay, so this is the ultimate, to me, gay, straight. Well, it's the straight panic of a very gay issue, which again, if you think about how Bill has been trying to use his credentials and saying, oh, I need to tell Nick something, you know, it's really important, it's really timely, you need to get me in touch with him. - Right. - And then to have this, ooh, Bill, you almost slept with a sex worker who is revealed to be HIV positive. - Which, that it's a female, it's not like a gay guy that has HIV in this movie, but still, I mean, we're also saying HIV positive, you know, we're not saying she has AIDS. - Yeah, yeah. And in 1999, it was slightly different. Like, it wasn't the death sentence it would have been at the beginning of the decade, but we didn't have the high functioning cocktails. Obviously, we didn't have prep and that kind of stuff. So getting HIV or having contact with somebody who was HIV positive would be a significant issue of concern for folks. - Absolutely. And I really hate that we don't give Vanessa Shaw back in this scene. It's her roommate delivering this information. - But I think that's so deliberate, right? Because we liked Domino, we liked the chemistry that we had between the two of them, and it would have, in a way, I think we would have gotten a sense of reassurance. I don't think Bill would have been so cavalier about it because he, oh, once again, just fucking bales on this situation. It's like, oh, the back half of this movie is finding out hard truths that I don't wanna deal with and I leave. - And running away. - Yeah, running away, absolutely. But I think it would have been impossible to do that given how they interacted before. So I do think that's why we don't give Vanessa Shaw back. - Well, it would have maybe given the audience a catharsis that we're not supposed to have. - Right, yeah, the edging continues. - Yeah. - All right, so we're on the street and all of a sudden, hey, are we being followed? And the answer is maybe. - I'm pretty sure, but this one at least we know for a fact, this answer is yes. - We do get confirmation of this 100% later on, but yeah, we don't know who this man is. Is he dangerous? Bill tries to shake him. This is definitely one of those. If you look around, you can see that the street is actually different from what it looked like last night. So it's like, oh, he's revisiting the same haunts, but things aren't quite the same in the way that you have recurring dreams, but things are just a little bit off. - Oh, I like that. And this again, this is a very horror-y scene because it's basically a stalking scene. And again, yeah, pooks like score. This piano score is just going full force here. - Yeah, so Bill ends up buying a newspaper, thinking that being around somebody else might save him and then he ducks into a bar and he begins to read the paper. And I do love that the cover, the headline of this newspaper, the top story, the headline is lucky to be alive. (laughing) So then he's reading through and he sees an obituary for Amanda Curran. And this is an ex-beauty queen who died from an overdose. - Yeah, so her name isn't even like in the headline, it's ex-beauty queen, which I, yeah, so, 'cause he doesn't know for sure if this is the same mandy from earlier yet, right? - Right, which is why we end up going to the Norg, once again, flashing those fucking credentials, like the goddamn Batman or something. - It was so funny, I wrote my notes, but they just let anyone back there. Oh, right, sorry, Dr. Card. (laughing) - Yeah, so he is basically trying to figure out, is this the mysterious woman from the Orgy? So he opens up the slab and we take a look. And the fun thing about this is that it could be yes and it could be no. - Yeah, it's a thing where it's like they look similar, I mean, they are different actresses. - They are, yes. - But it's also like, but they look similar enough to where that might like, ah, I don't know, I don't know. - Yeah, is it Kubrick fucking with us by casting different actresses, but then we're meant to believe that they're the same person? - Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm, god, there's another movie, I mean, any movie with like a double, right? Like a, I can't think of it on my head, so sorry, move on. - Vertigo? - Oh my god, yes. It is Vertigo. - The other one I was thinking of was Mulholland Drive. - Yeah, no, Vertigo is the one I was thinking of, but Mulholland Drive is another good example. - All right, so this is when we get a call from Ziegler. So can we pop over immediately? So once again, like we're doing the exact same beats that we did in the first half of the film, but with different or new information. And what we get from Ziegler is that he knows all about what Bill has been up to. - Yeah, so like, I don't know. Do you remember what you felt the first time you watched this? 'Cause I was very, I didn't think he was in any danger. Like, like, like Sidney Pollock gives off of at least a mostly kind demeanor in this time. - There are acquaintances, like work acquaintances, verging on, hey, I'm looking out for you. So I don't feel like we're meant to believe that Bill is in any danger because Ziegler is more or less admitting I've been protecting you, but also stringing you along by making you think that there was this vast conspiracy and you were in danger, mostly so that you would stop asking questions because rich people don't want to get outed. - Yes, and we learned that he's the one that hired the guy to track him throughout the city. And he gives him a bunch of these like, I'm going to say stories, but you know, the woman from the party is not the woman in the morgue. - No, he's saying she is. - Oh, I'm sorry, she is, but she just died from a normal overdose, like you had nothing to do with her standing up for you, blah, blah, blah, blah. - Oh, Nick is back home in Seattle with his family. That's where this member bring him. And it's like, ugh. - None of the people you're talking about can verify this. So I love that the film allows you to make up your own mind. Do you want to believe that there is no conspiracy? This is just a bunch of weird events perpetrated by rich perverts, or you can totally go down that garden path and say, holy fucking shit, we are in Freemason, skull and bone, Scientology, and they're pulling strings to cover this shit up. - Yeah, so this is when, if I'm Bill, I'm like, okay, this is all bullshit. Like, you clearly killed these people, but I'm going to buy into your story, to your face, go home and never think about this again. - Well, I mean, at the end of the day, even though he is himself, rich and powerful, he's not in the same league as these people. So whatever he believes, the only answer is, go back to your fucking regular life, go back to your vanilla sex with your hot wife, and maybe just don't get her stoned as often so that she doesn't send you on whirlwind confessional tours around the city. - But again, there is something just very unsettling about the scene, and maybe more so in the way we leave the scene, right? Where it's like, we just don't have these answers, and you're not going to get these answers. Like it's, what do you think? I don't even know if I like asking that question, Joe, though, because I feel like whatever the answer is. - I don't think one answer is going to satisfy, right? Like, it's whatever you choose to believe, but I do remember being deflated because I wanted the conspiracy to be real, so I did take this at face value on a first watch. - I do take it at face value, but again, I don't think that the answer to it is any kind of point to anything of a clue because trying to do in this film. So this is just window dressing. Like, this is more about Bill's mind journey. - Sure, yeah. I mean, this is a journey into dream-like territory. So whether you believe that this was real or made up or if it was sheer performance and so on, it doesn't change the way that the film plays out because it's really, this is about Bill and what he has gone through, and he is, I mean, in some ways, I think he is forever changed by these experiences, particularly when you add them up over the course of the last two nights, but when we get to the end of the film, I don't know that he's learned that much. - No, no, but I think, again, I think that's also what we'll play into that D minor cinema score. It's not just, oh, this is a movie I thought it was going to be. It's also just like, we're kind of back at square one. Like, we've done just a complete 360. - Yeah, a 360 that doesn't feel like it's offering closure or catharsis. - No, not at all. I mean, and so that's why the last 10 minutes of this movie, we're just going back to their mundane lives as they go, finally go Christmas shopping. (laughing) - But don't you love that moment where he just comes home? 'Cause again, it's been like a whole day, he's been out of the house dodging Alice. Nicole Kidman is not in the back half of this movie for the most part. - Yeah. - And when he gets home, she's asleep in bed and that fucking mask is on his pillow. And I loved it as a, I've been telling you everything and you've been telling me nothing. - Yes, yes. And so here's the thing though. We don't see him tell her everything, so nope. - He wakes her up with his loudest fuck crying and he promises he will tell her everything and we just cut to her crying in a separate chair. Like she has moved away from him. - So we still don't even know, like if he told her the whole truth. - Yep, yep. - Like for all we know, he could have just told her I went up to a hooker's apartment. Like that's what he could have said. - Yeah, yeah. And I think it's so clever, right? Because think about it, Kidman's two big scenes in this movie are both full on confessionals, monologues for days, as he said, great theatrical performance. And then we have this opportunity to do the same thing with Cruz. We could have him be super emotional, tearfully confessed to everything and Kubrick just cuts around it. - It's wild, obviously very intentional, but it's like. - Yeah, yeah. (laughing) - So it's like, no, we don't get to know what Bill made of any of this. And you're right, he could have totally lied about the whole thing. And I'm, I have disdain for this character, so I'm totally willing to believe that he did. - Yeah, he's too much of a. - He's a pussy. - He's a pussy! (laughing) - Not in a derogatory sense to anybody except this character who sucks. (laughing) I do like Tom Cruise's performance in this movie though, to be clear. - No, I mean, again, I'd love to hate this character. - Mm-hmm, yeah. Okay, so at this point, the sun is about to come up. So we have had two epically long nights and we're not quite ready to be done because Ella says, Helen is gonna be up soon and we promise to take her Christmas shopping. And it's super fun watching this kid come in and out of the conversation as they're at the Toy Store 'cause we're trying to have serious adult talks about the future of our marriage. - Oh. - And this kid is like, "I want this giant baby!" - Like, that they're doing this again at a department store. I was just like, "Oh my God." - Trace, capitalism, anxiety, sumarism. - Yeah, okay. - We're bringing it all home. And of course, you know, we're talking about how we survived this and Ella says, "Aren't we lucky that we went through these experiences, "real and dream?" And of course, then Bill having to be fucking Bill and we've not really talked about the foreignism of it and all this kind of stuff, but the whole movie has been driven by his id, his desire to go out there and fuck around and ultimately just find out. But he says, "Well, sometimes a dream isn't just a dream." And she's like, "Okay, well, let me tell you "what we need to do to get our relationship "back on track, motherfucker." And Trace, what is it? - Oh my God, okay. Y'all, the last line of this movie. - It is perfect. - Yeah, so there's something very important we need to do as soon as possible. What's that? - What's that? - Long pause. Fuck. (laughing) - Smash cut movie is over. - I didn't, her delivery is more like, duh, like fuck, like duh, like that's obviously the answer to this question. - Get on my page, Bill, you fucking idiot. - But also there's something very pathetic 'cause you know, they're doing their vowels to each other and he's like, "Oh my God, like forever, forever, forever." She's like, "She doesn't wanna commit to it anymore." - Let's not use that word. - Yeah, she's like, "How about we fuck "and figure out whether we're still even compatible?" - Yeah, yep. And so, again, I had a huge laugh 'cause we just got to the title card. - It's hilarious. - It's so funny, but I could only imagine, like, the collective stupor, the absolute audience. - How fucking dare you. Two and a half hours of edging. And again, you think, okay, well, we're gonna end it the way that we begin it. We're at least gonna get a sex scene between it, no. - No. - No. - Never. - No. But again, there's just something so demented to be funny about this. And again, I love that Kim, even though I want her to be in so much more of this movie, I love that she punctuates this film. And her delivery of a lot of these lines, you know, I said, I don't love the laughing part of it, but so many other moments. Like, even the way she looks, she is so fucking stunningly beautiful. And I really feel like Kubrick knows how to emphasize the coy sexuality in this, like her hair, the glasses. There's just something very wholesome, but also incredibly sexy about her. And Kidman knows how to wear this so that we feel attracted to Alice as a character, and we find her very endearing, but then she's got all this repression that is just really, I was gonna say, interfering with the marriage, but the reality is that Bill is not doing his part, and that's what's fucking them up. - Yeah, I would love to see like the eyes wide shut, but like from Alice perspective. - Her perspective, yeah. - 'Cause all we know is that she's doing these mundane things, but what if there was something else going on during all this time, right? - Mm-hmm, yeah, there's that one movie with Jessica Chastain, and, ooh. - What's it about? - Well, it's about a marriage, but it's told from his perspective in one movie, and then there's a movie from her perspective, and then you can also watch the two of them as like a supercut. - Is it scenes from a marriage with Oscar Isaac? - Yes, that would be it. - That is the five as a TV show, many series of many series. - Yeah, yeah, but like they also release them in a standalone films, I think. - Ah, interesting. - I've never actually watched it. I've heard mixed reviews. I heard the costumes were kind of the best part about it, but I've always been fascinated by the idea of telling the same story, but from different characters' perspectives, but not, you know, Racham on style, more like the last five years. - Oh, oh, man, the last five years. I've only seen the movie. I haven't seen the stage production, but I know. - The stage production was devastating. I know the movie I mixed reviews. I thought the movie was devastating, so I hear you. Like there's something just about doomed relationships. And you're like, "Oh, it's gonna be a fun musical!" - No, no, no. - Well, in the same way that eyes wedge at, "Oh, it's gonna be a sexy rock." Oh, no, no. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. - But I do agree with you. I would love to see what this movie looks like from Alice's perspective, but I think at the end of the day, we're actually getting what we need from this character in just her scant scenes because Bill is the enigma. He's the one who doesn't know anything about himself or what he actually wants. - Yeah, absolutely, he's such a pathetic figure. And I love it. - Yes. - I love it, Cruz, like, new things. And I was like, "Yep, because we're dealing with a real-life married couple, like it does feel like Bill is kind of a parody of sorts of Cruz's actual persona or the public perception of him." - And isn't that wild? I don't think you could make this movie now because, I mean, A, asking people to give out this much of their lives would be impossible, but I don't think an A-list star at the top of their game would consent to do something like this, which not only makes fun of you, but also it makes you look like a putz. - I think also just in an era of social media where privacy is nonexistent, like-- - Right. - There's something about, you know, tabloid fodder, where it's like, "Oh, we don't know the lives of celebrities," so that's where we got it from these tabloids, but now everyone has social media, well, not everyone, obviously. Some celebrities are smartly pulling their social media accounts, which I think is a very smart idea, but I just, again, is there anyone, I was gonna say, is there anyone we care about as much as we did celebrity couples back then? I mean, I guess we still have that today, but it's more like pop stars. - Yeah, it really does feel like it's moved into influencer pop realms. - Right, like, you know, Taylor Swift and whoever is like with the equivalent of why Tom Cruise and the-- - But even, I don't even think that's a good comparison either. - No, because here's the other thing, there was a longevity to their relationship, right? Like they had already starred in a movie together, far and away, and this felt like a coming home, but also a glimpse into their private lives, but it was also, yeah, so we sat at the height of their celebrity, and I also just don't think we have movie stars in quotation marks the same way. Like, actually, you know what, I've got it. It's Tom Holland and Zendaya. - Oh, you know what? That is probably the closest approximation we can get to that. And it even still, it's not the same. - It's not, not at all, no. - Oh man, but yeah, no, I quite like this. And again, I wanna go back and watch it again, even after having this conversation with you. - Yeah, and I can firmly say, this is a movie that will pay dividends on rewatches, if only just because you get to watch the things that are happening in the background, because you kind of recognize the plot isn't actually that important. Like, some of the dialogue is very choice, it's very key, but I would argue that it's some of the other stuff. It's the technical things and the set dressing, and even the way, yeah, like the way Kubrick is moving this camera and what he chooses to focus on, like, those are really interesting minute details that end up informing the whole production. - No, for sure, I mean, I know I use this a lot as like a shorthand for summarizing what you just said, but it's a vibe, this movie's a vibe. - And it's a bit of a vibe, yeah, that dreamlike, but not in the traditional way even, right? Like, we're so used to saying, oh, you know, like when I think of Dreamlike, I think of something like Inception, or even some David Lynch films, but this is not that. - But I think that's what makes it even more Dreamlike, is that it's Dreamlike, but not in the way that we're used to movies conveying dreams. And so I go back to what you were saying earlier about how, oh, like, you know, this is the same street as earlier, but there's little tiny things that are different about it. And so it's like, oh, maybe you won't notice it on the first watch, but maybe on another watch, you're like, wait a minute, some things off here. I mean, so like, not uncanny, but kind of like the same feeling of uncanny. - Yeah, no, it's absolutely that. It is the vibe. - So yeah, I mean, that is Eyes Wide Shut, everyone. - Lovely first time watch for me, a lovely in-time watch for Joe. - Exactly, yes. And honestly, delighted to get to cover a Kubrick film, because I really think the other one is maybe clockwork orange, and that one's also a bit of a stretch. - It's literally the shining. - Oh, yeah. - You keep forgetting the shining. - I guess we've also had a conversation about the shining before. - Yeah, I know, I know, I know. And honestly, I've always put off clockwork orange, 'cause I tried to read the book in high school, and like, you know, 'cause the book, they have like the different language for certain words, 'cause it's censorship, and I read like 20 pages, and I was like, I don't know what they're saying, so I like-- - I can't do this. - I couldn't do it. So I've never watched the movie also, because I just know it's gonna be like, just, I mean, it's Kubrick, and it's that particular story. - I mean, here's the thing, they're always dense, so. - Yeah. - The same reaction that you had to this, you'll likely end up having again, just because it is so packed with detail, and meaning, and so on. But honestly, I mean, the film, bro, and me, I love Kubrick. I think all of his movies are just so different, and so, yeah, they're just, they're worth your time. - Yeah, no, and I have no doubt. It's just been like, very much a blind spot for me. But I think it's also, yeah, because I know that like, yeah, his movies are very dense, and I'm not gonna get everything out of them on the first time watch, but I almost feel like I'm giving myself extra homework by being like, okay, I'm gonna watch it, but I know I'm gonna have to watch it a couple more times to like, fully absorb this movie. - Yeah, or unpack it. - A bunch on a podcast that's almost the same length as the movie itself. - Absolutely, so before we get to that length, everyone, before we announce that we're covering next week, if you wanna get in touch with us, you can read just on Twitter and Instagram @horroquiers. Shoot us an email @horroquiers@gmail.com. Find us on Letterbox to get track of all the films we've covered. If you wanna chat with other listeners, join our Facebook Horroquiers group. If you have a moment, please write and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and if you want even more content, please support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/horroquiers. If you subscribe today, you will get 317 hours of Patreon content, including this month's new episodes on Hannibal Season One Episode Seven, A Quiet Place Day One, Maxine, and Long Legs. And to tie in with Long Legs, we've got a brand new audio commentary on David Fincher's 1995 classic, Seven. - Oh yeah, okay. But Joe, we are going a bit lighter next week. (laughing) - Yeah, it's a hard pivot into less dense and less readings, but you know what, plenty of fun. And then obviously we're doing this to tie into the release of the new film Twisterrs. We're gonna check out the original Hionda Bont Twisterr. - I haven't watched this in so long because this is one of those movies that I watch a lot as a kid. So I have no idea how it's gonna play for me. Now that I'm in my 30s. - Yeah, no, I'm excited because to me, this is the height of summer escapism, but I have a lot of fond memories and I'm gonna put my card on the table. There's probably no real queer reading to this movie, but I will say that the line, we got chaos is a bit of a queer icon. - Well, I think Jamie Garrets is a queer icon. And Jamie Garrets is, she gets done dirty in that movie. So. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Justice for Jamie Garrets is character, but until next time, everyone, we can cross out eyes wide shut. - Indeed. - And cross out horror queers. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Get three coffins ready, kid. Because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier that is Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloweenies. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Clint's output is infinite. You've gotta ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
Ready for an all-night sexual odyssey? We're going LONG on Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) which stars then real-life Hollywood A-list couple, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Trace has a lengthy production history for this Guinness Record-holding film, which appears to be making fun of Cruise's own stardom and sexuality?
Plus: high praise for Kidman's two confession scenes, selling the film on sex, the cast that could have been, secret societies on and off screen, and talk of Kubrick "edging" the audience for 2.5 hours.
References:
> Nik Dobrinsky. "Eyes Wide Shut: Hidden in Plain Sight." Boy Drinks Ink.
> Karina Longworth. "Eyes Wide Shut, Part 1". You Must Remember This Podcast
> Sven Mikulee. "‘Eyes Wide Shut’: A Tense, Nightmarish Exploration of Marriage and Sexuality in Kubrick’s Ultimate Film." Cinephilia & Beyond
> Justin Morrow. "Is 'Eyes Wide Shut' the Movie Stanley Kubrick Wanted Us to See?" NoFilmSchool
> Ed Power. "Eyes Wide Shut: 20 years on, Stanley Kubrick’s most notorious film is still shrouded in mystery." The Independent
> Richard Schikel. "Cinema: All Eyes On Them." TIME Magazine
Questions? Comments? Snark? Connect with the boys on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Letterboxd, Facebook, or join the Facebook Group to get in touch with other listeners
> Trace: @tracedthurman
> Joe: @bstolemyremote
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