The World's Only Podcast™ about bizarre, overlooked, and misbegotten media
Jen welcomes back Julie to discuss a criminally under-seen coming-of-age film directed by Adrian Lyne, Foxes.
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Read an interview with Kandice Stroh, in which she talks in detail about playing the part of Deirdre in the film.
“I learned it from watching you!”
Watch a 2003 documentary on the Camarillo State Hospital, made shortly before its closure. The grounds now make up California State University, Channel Islands.
Jen and Tim look back at an all-star polemic from 1990, The Earth Day Special, a plea on behalf of Mother Earth that made a powerful impression on a young Tim. Also, we better not catch you pouring any old house paint down the drain.
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Watch the special at the Internet Archive (and if so inclined, maybe throw them a small donation for collecting all that health data recently purged from US government websites).
According to this recap from Living Life Fearless, soap actor and Teen Witch (1989) star Dan Gauthier played Bachelor #2 in the Dating Game segment. He is apparently uncredited in the special.
Anarchist publication The Fifth Estate provides a leftist perspective on The Earth Day Special in a contemporaneous review, and they ain’t wrong:
But the same powers of manipulation continue to function: the chemical manufacturers will plant some trees, and even the “forest products” magnates will, as they generally do, plant some trees. George Bush has called for the planting of a billion trees—but none of the rulers or their allies mention the possibility of refraining from cutting a billion trees (in particular, say the last few remnants of old growth forests, but also anywhere where woods are coming under the developers’ blades). These forces, these institutions are concealing their grisly daily business with a multimedia extravaganza, a spectacle that converts a natural love of what is alive into a pointless civic ritual.
Market Realist has an easily digestible rundown on who actually founded Tesla and who merely came on board shortly afterward to leech off other people’s work and push the founders out of the nest like a shitty South African cuckoo.
Jen and Tim swab the deck with a hygiene film straight from the U.S. Navy, The Story of D.E. 733: Ship of Shame. Actually, turns out it’s pretty good, even with all the sores!
See the film in two parts (first reel and second reel) over at the Periscope Film YouTube channel, but be warned that it contains insert shots of male genitalia with symptoms of sexually transmitted infections. Wrap it before you tap it!
Jen says Mike Pence was governor of Iowa when she should have said Indiana. As she is a lifelong coastal elite, the states in the middle of the country just merge into a big blur when she looks at them. Anyway, the HIV outbreak started when Pence balked at funding needle exchanges for injection drug users.
See photos from the wartime U.S. Naval Photographic Services Depot, which produced The Story of D.E. 733.
The song the sailors are singing at the beginning of the film is “Bell Bottom Trousers,” which was adapted from an extremely saucy folk ballad called “Rosemary Lane.” Wikipedia has the original spicy lyrics.
Tim and Jen defend a movie you either love or hate, Darren Aronofsky’s mother!
See crybaby Kyle Smith’s review of mother! at the world’s worst magazine if you want to know what kind of thing gets your hosts into a theater to see a movie.
Jen whiffed the explanation of the bad blood between Satoshi Kon and Darren Aronofsky. The situation is way more complicated than the latter purchasing the rights to Perfect Blue (which never happened, incidentally). The Animation Obsessive Substack did a deep dive.
Looking for an exploration of the meaning of the pelican-in-her-piety from someone way more informed than Jen? The nice people at the St. Mary Magdalen School of Theology have you covered.
For more Aronofsky, listen to the episode where we compared Pi to an obscure British television series, Hammer House of Horror.
Tim gets a little treat this month— we talked about one of his personal favorites, Gaspar Noé’s trippy version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Enter the Void!
Hear the whole episode at our Patreon!
Read an interview at Den of Geek with a voluble Noé about Enter the Void.
Towards the end, the weird trip turns into a bad trip, like sometimes mushroom trips or acid trips turn into bad trips. But a bad trip can be very rewarding, because when you come out of one, it’s like coming out of a bad dream where you get killed or something, and the moment you wake up, you still feel the presence of that reality and the dream, or the nightmare, is always real. But you feel so safe coming back to the real world, and some people said when they came out of this movie that they were still scared. – Gaspar Noé on Enter the Void
The Hype Williams-directed video Tim got so mad about is for Kanye West’s “All of the Lights.” Honestly a pretty pallid copy of the title sequence Tim loves so much.
See Paz de la Huerta crash the shooting of Louis Theroux’s Scientology documentary.
For more transgressive cinema, listen to our episode about Lars von Trier’s divisive masterpiece Antichrist.
Tim and Jen scratch their heads over an incest-filled nightmare of a David Cronenberg movie, Maps to the Stars!
Hear the whole thing over at our Patreon!
Hey remember that Mysteries and Scandals show on E!? They did an episode about Jon-Erik Hexum! (Whatever happened to A.J. Benza?)
The poem by John Cooper Clarke that so moved Tim, “Evidently Chickentown,” may be heard here.
Jen pointed out a mention of another poet, Anne Sexton, in the movie. Interestingly, while Sexton’s daughter reported credibly in her memoir Looking For Mercy Street and elsewhere that her mother sexually abused her, Sexton’s own memories of abuse have been called into question due to the methods her psychiatrist used to unearth them. However, Sexton’s history of dissociation, psychotic breaks, and eventual suicide seem to point to some kind of trauma.
Finally, if you missed our Crash episode, listen to it here!
For a SUPERSIZED one hundredth episode, Tim agrees with everything Lars von Trier has said and done because they’re both misogynists. Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
For the (swinging) lowdown on Willem Dafoe’s gifts, read this article about von Trier’s obsession with the actor’s wiener.
Thank you to all the listeners for supporting us for one hundred episodes and here’s to ONE THOUSAND MORE. If you want to see where it all began, you can check out our very first episode, about Elaine May’s little-loved Ishtar!
Jen and Tim note the peculiar similarities between an episode of an obscure British horror anthology and Darren Aronofsky’s debut (NOT Life of Pi!!!!!). Also, Jen seizes an opportunity to talk about Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
Hammer House of Horror is free to watch with ads over on Tubi!
If you’re looking for more British horror, why not try our episode on the controversial one-off TV special Ghostwatch?
Tim and Jen return to the fevered nuclear paranoia of the 80s! We look at one of the most important TV events of the era, The Day After. We also stick to the show mission statement by highlighting a lesser known nuclear horror telefilm: Special Bulletin.
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You can watch Special Bulletin in its entirety here. We recommend it! Also: David Clennon, if you’re out there, come on the show, king.
Following the broadcast of The Day After, ABC aired a panel discussion moderated by Ted Koppel on nuclear proliferation. If you would like to see absolute ghouls like William F. Buckley Jr. and Henry Kissinger argue for “robust defense,” check it out. But really, we watched it for the much-missed Carl Sagan.
For discussion of a movie that makes The Day After look like an episode of Steven Universe, listen to our episode about landmark British telefilm Threads.
Tim speaks cogently on the world’s most depressing nuclear apocalypse drama, Threads, from 1984. Jen tries not to fall into a well of despair.
We’re not kidding; Threads is possibly one of the bleakest films ever made, and everyone should see it at least once. Severin Films offers it on region-free DVD.
For a slightly lighter British horror telefilm, try our episode on the controversial faux documentary Ghostwatch.