Glitter

Terrible timing, lack of creative direction, and straight up sabotage plagued Mariah Carey’s infamous big time flopper: 2001’s ‘Glitter’. Find out why the movie was doomed from the start, how Max Beesley’s sexy marimba playing still couldn’t save it, and why Jennifer Lopez may be partially to blame! Get an exclusive 15% discount on your first Saily data plans! Use code [wrong] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to to https://saily.com/wrong Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a classic all time, big time flopper, trademark, Lizzie Bassett, my co-host. As always, I'm Chris Winterbauer. Lizzie, how you doing tonight? And let me tell you, I'm still mad at you for what you made me watch last night.

• 2:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Are you really?

• 2:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm not mad about this at all. I'm not mad at, I'm not. I'm being facetious. I actually enjoyed this movie. I had never seen it before.

• 2:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, yeah.

• 2:31Chris Winterbauer?

  What are we discussing today?

• 2:33Lizzie Bassett?

  We are discussing the 2001 classic Glitter. And I have to ask, is this the biggest big time flopper we've ever? I think it might be for, for multiple reasons.

• 2:44Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know yet, but what I will say is it is not my least favorite movie that we've covered on this podcast.

• 2:50Lizzie Bassett?

  But I don't think that is what a big time flopper means, to me at least.

• 2:55Chris Winterbauer?

  You are the owner. You're the flopper queen, as we call you. And this podcast, guys, is not about dunking on movies. It is about exploring the behind the scenes, shenanigans, obstacles, terrorist attacks, based on the timing of the release of this film that may have plagued a film's production and why we need to appreciate all of them as beautiful snowflakes that are unique. And I just can't wait to hear about this one because, Lizzie, I can only say it is Rey meets A Star is Born meets Crossroads. I'm so excited.

• 3:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, okay, so obviously you had not seen Glitter before. What was your experience of watching it this time?

• 3:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I apologize to everyone involved in Glitter. I did not see it in the highest quality. I struggled to actually find this film.

• 3:45Lizzie Bassett?

  We should say you literally can't pay for it, even if you would like to. It is not available to stream anywhere. And also, we should say this is Glitter starring, of course, Mariah Carey. If anyone is not familiar with what this movie is, go on, Chris.

• 3:59Chris Winterbauer?

  So my wife and I watched it last night. We did unfortunately have to watch it on YouTube.

• 4:05Lizzie Bassett?

  The only place to watch it.

• 4:07Chris Winterbauer?

  And.

• 4:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I mean, I wrote down some thoughts. I can pull them up. When they uploaded to YouTube, they forgot the colors was what I thought for the first, because all the flashbacks are so desaturated that they look basically black and white. I wrote, Terrence Howard, he has murderer energy and then he does murder someone by the end of the film. I said, Padma Lakshmi giving mini driver a run for her money, strangling the cat.

• 4:34Lizzie Bassett?

  She's very fun in this.

• 4:35Chris Winterbauer?

  There are so many establishing shots that are just speed ramps of footage through New York City that it feels like the editors, like, we gotta finish the movie sooner. We got, and they're just speed ramp all of these moments. The co-lead, Max.

• 4:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Max Beasley, otherwise known as a poor man, Stephen Dorff, who I thought was Stephen Dorff for like, at least.

• 4:53Chris Winterbauer?

  A poor man.

• 4:55Lizzie Bassett?

  A portion of this movie.

• 4:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Doing the most uncanny Mark Wahlberg vocal impression I think I have ever heard. He sounds, I thought he might be a secret Wahlberg that we didn't know about.

• 5:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Or he's doing Christian Bale in Newsies. Again, it is uncannily similar to that as well. He's British.

• 5:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he is British. That's why I thought he was doing Marky. 20 minutes in, I don't think we have seen a close up of Mariah Carey, which was surprising. And then I wrote, Mariah has such a good voice. She does have such a good voice.

• 5:25Lizzie Bassett?

  She sure does.

• 5:26Chris Winterbauer?

  But yeah, just, I liked her friends. They always just cut to them dancing.

• 5:29Lizzie Bassett?

  They're great.

• 5:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Terribly. Marimba seduction. I've actually kind of liked that scene. I like when they make love for the first time and they go behind the glass, hide the nudity, but when he pulls her dress down, she's wearing giant white underwear.

• 5:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Hey, shut up.

• 5:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Which, no, that's realistic. I agree. But it's just funny because it's not typical cinema as we've gotten used to. Anyway, then I wrote, Terrence Howard owns one shirt because he's in the same outfit the entire movie.

• 5:59Lizzie Bassett?

  It's true. It doesn't change. They didn't have a wardrobe change for him, I don't think.

• 6:03Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I will say the movie held my attention. It's definitely hokey. I think it's a classic example of reality versus expectation. So I think if this was marketed today as more of a lifetime movie, it would actually be perfectly successful. But in trying to be kind of a prestige musical, I know it's not a biopic, I guess I'm assuming technically, but as like a prestige pop vehicle, it falls a bit short of the lofty goals I'm sure they had set.

• 6:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, let's get into it. I will warn you, this is quite a bit darker than I expected us to be going in an episode on Glitter. So just be prepared for that. Let's just get the basic info out of the way first. This is directed by Von D. Curtis Hall. The writers are Cheryl L. West, who has a story by credit, and then Kate Lanier, who wrote the screenplay, stars Mariah Carey, Max Beasley, as we mentioned, Terrence Howard, De Brat, Tia Tejada, Eric Benet, and more. Release date, we'll get into this, but it was September 21st of 2001. The production companies were 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, and others. And the IMDB logline is, "A young singer

• 7:14Lizzie Bassett?

  dates a disc jockey who helps her get into the music business, but their relationship become," that's what it says, "complicated as she ascends to superstar."

• 7:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not gonna read that any differently. That's what it says.

• 7:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Do you still know anyone that works at IMDB? We need to get this fixed.

• 7:30Lizzie Bassett?

  No, I'm leaving that.

• 7:32Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 7:33Lizzie Bassett?

  I would like to start with a quote from Mariah's memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. And it says, "The saga of making glitter was a collision of bad luck, bad timing, and sabotage."

• 7:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, interesting. So not a lot of accountability in that sentence, but that's okay.

• 7:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Just wait. I actually think she does take a decent amount of accountability. Or as the photographer in Glitter says, "No, the glitter cannot overpower the artist." And yet, it did.

• 8:04Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great line. One of...

• 8:06Lizzie Bassett?

  So funny.

• 8:06Chris Winterbauer?

  One I remember from the movie.

• 8:11Lizzie Bassett?

  The other thing about Glitter, as I was watching, and I said this to David while we were watching, but if someone was like, I will give you a million dollars right now, if you can sing 10 seconds of one song from Glitter, I would not be a million dollars richer. There I just, there's not a single song in this that I can remember. There are just, there are no earworms. There's nothing memorable.

• 8:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I will say, one of my early thoughts was even though Mariah's got a fantastic voice, I was reminded of Joker fully adieu, where I just, I didn't find the music memorable as I was, as we were watching this film. It really, I just thought, at least the musical numbers will be fun and poppy and, and very mainstream. Man, change the station, guys.

• 8:57Lizzie Bassett?

  There's a couple of very good reasons for that, which we're going to get into. And I did not know any of this. So it was very interesting to really dive into this.

• 9:04Chris Winterbauer?

  May I just say, I did like the piano songs she plays.

• 9:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I'm not saying I don't like the songs. When I went back and listened to them, I actually do think they're good, but I literally cannot remember. Like, there's no earworms in this, basically. I just can't remember any of them.

• 9:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree.

• 9:16Lizzie Bassett?

  And it's Mariah Carey. She's never going to sound bad. Like, she does not sound bad. So, we're going to go on a surprisingly depressing journey today through the music industry, and we will find ourselves at the doorstep of one of the biggest flops of the 21st century, I think, still. And fair warning, Chris mentioned this, but the 9/11 terrorist attacks are involved in this episode, more than you might expect. Now, since Glitter revolves entirely around Mariah Carey, it's only fitting that we should start with Mariah. So, Chris, do you know anything about her?

• 9:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Nothing. No, I mean, I've enjoyed some of her music. Again, I think she has a generational voice in many ways. Her All I Want for Christmas rendition is stunning and over the top, and I know virtually nothing about her.

• 10:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay. Well, before the Lamaly, which is her fanbase, as I've learned, I spent a lot of time on the Lamaly's Reddit. Thank you, Lamaly. Before they come after me, this is not going to be a takedown of Mariah at all. There is no denying her talent. She's one of the bestselling artists of all time. She has a five octave vocal range. Also, I would like to point out, I think she actually is a good actress. If you've ever seen Precious or The Butler, she is very good. In Precious in particular, she's very good.

• 10:27Chris Winterbauer?

  This script is not good, but she's not bad at delivering it.

• 10:31Lizzie Bassett?

  No, she's really not.

• 10:32Chris Winterbauer?

  She's fine.

• 10:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So at the time of Glitter's release, she had never had an album without a number one single, but that was about to change. So let's get some background on Mariah. She was born March 27, 1969, in Huntington, New York, which is Long Island. Her mother, Patricia, was a Juilliard-trained opera singer, turned vocal coach, I believe, who had given up her career to focus on her family. Mariah was the youngest of three, and I believe she was quite a bit younger than her two older siblings. Her father, Alfred, was an aeronautical engineer. He was of Afro-Venezuelan descent, and Patricia was Irish and white. The interracial marriage was something of a scandal at the time. Patricia's family disowned her for marrying Alfred. And here's a clip of Mariah Carey on the Oprah Winfrey

• 11:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Show in 1999, talking about growing up in an interracial family.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  For me, definitely, you know, growing up the way that I did, I felt, you know, inside, and I never really expressed it to very many people, like I wasn't good enough, like I was, you know, I didn't look like one particular group or another. I wasn't exactly the same. Also, I had kind of-

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Also, you looked even different than your own brothers and sisters.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, we look related, definitely. I mean, we all look, we all, you can tell we're brother and sister, but, I mean, they didn't live with me very long when I was growing up. So it wasn't like I had, you know, people that we could completely relate to. That's why I-

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Well, this is an issue, and you are a role model, you do know that, for a lot of biracial children, girls especially.

• 12:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Later on, in the same Oprah Winfrey episode, Mariah's mother joined her and revealed that when Mariah was little, their neighbors had actually poisoned their dog. And had even shot through the front window of their house at one point. And that was in a nice neighborhood. She said that's when they moved to like a more affluent area. At three years old, her parents divorced and her mother got primary custody. Now, Mariah described her relationship with her mother in her memoir as, quote, "a prickly rope of pride, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration, and disappointment." The jealousy in particular seems to have been a running theme. Now, remember, her mother was a classically trained and very talented opera singer. Obviously, Mariah inherited that talent and then some, I would say.

• 12:45Lizzie Bassett?

  But it seems pretty clear from an early age that she was special. According to Carrie, one time after a sing-along together in the car, her mother turned to her and said, "You should only hope that one day you become half the singer I am."

• 12:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow. I mean, I say that to my kids about podcasting, but

• 13:07Chris Winterbauer?

  because then you won't pursue it as a profession and you'll do something practical.

• 13:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, doctors, actually, no, not even doctors anymore.

• 13:15Chris Winterbauer?

  No, that will be AI. It'll all be AI.

• 13:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, sort of related, but Mariah does not really celebrate birthdays in terms of numbers. She celebrates more anniversaries and describes herself as eternally 12. I think because it's safe to say, based on her memoir, there was a substantial amount of trauma and neglect in her youth around that time, and particularly as she started to succeed professionally. I'm not going to get into it too much here because it is a massive bummer, but it was allegedly particularly at the hands of her older sister.

• 13:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Jeez.

• 13:45Lizzie Bassett?

  She also suffered some really horrible discrimination at the hands of her peers when she was growing up. And again, like she said, just felt like she never really fit in anywhere. So she poured all of her attention into music from a very early age. I don't think she ever had any other ambitions. This was it. As a teenager, she was literally traveling into Manhattan at night to record demos, turning back around, going to high school in the morning. I can't even imagine. As soon as she graduated high school, she moved to Manhattan to focus on her music career. And at 18, she attended a music industry party where she handed one of her demo tapes to a music exec. Now, he put the tape on in his limo as he was driving home and immediately turned the limo around when he heard her singing.

• 14:28Lizzie Bassett?

  But, Chris, she had already left the party and there was no phone number anywhere on the tape.

• 14:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Which they kind of recreate when she intentionally does not give Dice her phone number. And I said, Mariah, what are you doing? This is absurd. But I guess it was based on something in reality.

• 14:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Why don't we see how this turned out? So he did eventually track her down, beginning her career and bringing with him a whole host of problems.

• 14:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Uh oh.

• 14:58Lizzie Bassett?

  The exact question was then president of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola. He was 20 years her senior. And within five years, he would also, Chris, become her husband. He was married at the time, by the way. I believe they started dating pretty much immediately, even though he was married and again, she's 18. But there were reports of seeing the two of them around town right away. So she released her first self titled album in June of 1990. And he hired some of the best writers and producers to work with her on this album. He put a lot of money into it, a lot of promotional money behind it. But I want to point out, every single song from her demo, which she co wrote with a guy named Ben Margulies,

• 15:42Lizzie Bassett?

  made it onto the album. She became the first artist since the Jackson 5 to have the first four singles top the US charts. And by the way, three out of four of those singles were from her demo tape.

• 15:54Chris Winterbauer?

  So she can write too?

• 15:55Lizzie Bassett?

  She can write too. And I'm calling that out because a lot of times people talk about how Tommy Mottola made Mariah's career and that was a whole thing. Did he help her? Obviously, yes, of course. But the fact that three out of four of those singles made it onto the demo tape tells me that there was no making happening here.

• 16:13Chris Winterbauer?

  She had that innate ability to self generate, much more so than maybe some of her contemporaries.

• 16:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And also, like, he was looking for someone to compete with Whitney Houston. So this was a business opportunity for him. By the time her second album came out, her partnership with Ben Margulies, who again, she'd written the demo with, had dissolved due to a pretty nasty rights dispute. I'm not going to get into this. The deal she signed with him initially was, I think, quite shady. She was literally a child when she signed it. And she signed away a percentage of her artist rights on future albums that he didn't even write on and didn't realize that she had done that. And this is, I think, a running theme here of people taking advantage of her from a very early age. There was a lot of speculation that she was heavily produced and not actually capable of singing in that super high whistle register that you hear, maybe because she didn't embark

• 17:02Lizzie Bassett?

  on a tour to promote that album. So she went on MTV Unplugged and that shut people up pretty quickly because she sounds absolutely amazing live.

• 17:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. If you've never seen the clips of her just going for it on her own live and that, like you mentioned, that it's, you're right, that whistle register, it's a weird, like husky falsetto is almost the way to describe it. It's amazing. And I don't know of any other artists right now that can quite do that.

• 17:31Lizzie Bassett?

  David just popped in to say Ariana Grande, which yes, I think Ariana Grande was early in her career, mentioned as sort of like a new Mariah Carey.

• 17:40Chris Winterbauer?

  We get it, David. You listen to Ariana Grande. Very cool.

• 17:44Lizzie Bassett?

  David loves Ariana Grande.

• 17:45Chris Winterbauer?

  We all do.

• 17:50Chris Winterbauer?

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• 20:32Lizzie Bassett?

  On June 5th of 1993, Carrie and Matola married after years of dating. She was 24 years old. Now, Matola is credited with pushing her to release a Christmas album, which, of course, you mentioned this. It resulted in the annual holiday earworm, "All I Want for Christmas Is You", and I have to imagine an absolute... Dump truck full of money for both of them.

• 20:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Giant. They literally just backed the truck up to the house.

• 20:56Lizzie Bassett?

  They must. Every Christmas is just pouring cash on Mariah Carey's head. However, their relationship, I think, obviously featured a pretty extreme power imbalance. And it sounds like Matola took advantage of that to a really upsetting degree. Mariah refers to his compound in Westchester, New York as Sing Sing. A fun double entendre because both where she would sing and also obviously the name of one of our country's most infamous maximum security prisons.

• 21:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Lizzie Bassett?

  This is what Matola was accused of. The mansion featured armed guards, geared.

• 21:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Armed Irish Guards.

• 21:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I get it.

• 21:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Which was triggering for her due to her Irish mother.

• 21:41Lizzie Bassett?

  The mansion featured armed guards, who, according to Carrie, were all white and an intercom system. And Carrie recalls that Matola would often monitor, monitor her through the cameras and talk to her throughout the house. Sometimes when she would sneak out of her bedroom at night for some peace and quiet, to grab a snack downstairs or work on music, all of a sudden she would hear the intercom crackle and, "What you doing?" coming out over the speakers.

• 22:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I was about to make the joke of like the insecure nerd being like, "What you doing? What's going on?" Like, but that is it. That's insane.

• 22:13Lizzie Bassett?

  That's literally what he did to her throughout the house. And she was not allowed to leave the house without his permission. He allegedly paid employees to spy on her. And once when their relationship was nearing its end, again, according to Mariah, he ran a butter knife down her face and throat in front of a bunch of his colleagues who just stood there and watched. She said, quote, "Every move I made, everywhere I went, I was monitored, minute by minute, day after day, year after year. I was living my dream, but I couldn't leave my house. Lonely and trapped, I was held captive in that relationship. Captivity and control come in many forms, but the goal is always the same, to break down the captive's will, to kill any notion of self-worth and erase the person's memory of their own soul."

• 22:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Sheesh.

• 23:00Lizzie Bassett?

  She also alleges there were elements of racism in the marriage. She said he really never even acknowledged her biracial background at all. Of course, he denies basically all of these allegations, obviously, but does say that it was absolutely wrong and inappropriate. That's a direct quote from him, for him to have begun the relationship with her in the first place, and acknowledges being a little obsessive, which I think might be an understatement.

• 23:25Chris Winterbauer?

  One man's a little obsessive is another man's what you doing buttercup on the intercom in the middle of the night?

• 23:32Lizzie Bassett?

  That's like, you're just trying to eat your weird midnight snack. That's an absolute nightmare. By the way, there is a pretty scathing Vanity Fair profile of Tommy Mottola from 1996 that backs up an awful lot of what Mariah is saying, and that's from when they were married, including that two security guards were tasked with escorting her to and from the bathroom and standing outside the door.

• 23:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, my God.

• 23:54Lizzie Bassett?

  And naturally, in that interview, he did not make her available for comments. So I am inclined to believe Mimi on this one.

• 24:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, you could tell the reporter was getting as close as they possibly could to saying this is really fucked up without saying it. Things got so bad that she had to secretly rent an apartment in the city under a fake name so she could have some time to herself. But in 1997, her guardian angel arrived in the form of Yankees superstar Derek Jeter.

• 24:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:20Lizzie Bassett?

  They met at a charity gala, bonded over having a similar background. He also had an Irish mother and a black father. They started a romantic relationship very quickly. It didn't last very long. I think she has acknowledged that it did begin while she was still with Tommy Mottola. By spring of 97, she and Mottola were separated. So I do think she separated from him very quickly thereafter. And by 1998, they were getting a divorce. During all of this, she's getting shit for bringing down Derek Jeter's batting average. The tabloids are starting to have a field day.

• 24:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Lizzie Bassett?

  So it was reported that even though she and Matola were separating, Mariah and Sony would remain on good terms. That was not the case.

• 25:01Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, one thing I was surprised to learn when I started working in film a bit after film school is how small the industry is. It feels enormous from the outside, just the sheer scope and scale of movies. And you realize it's a pretty small network of people and it's an industry powered by relationships. And so the positive benefit of that is one person looking kindly upon you or saying, I want to help you can be an enormous boon to your career. And I've been really lucky that there have been a number of people who have helped me. But the flip side is it only takes one person in a position of power to poison the well,

• 25:45Chris Winterbauer?

  you know, turn an entire corporation entity, you know, away from you or against you. And so on the one hand, it would be easy to say, Mariah, get out of this relationship. What are you doing? But on the other hand, I can easily see how from her perspective, everything that she has worked so hard for professionally is tied to this person.

• 26:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 26:06Chris Winterbauer?

  And if she loses one, she might lose the other.

• 26:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, and he's also still the head of Sony and she is still signed to Sony's Columbia Records. Finally free of Tommy's clutches, she told the Chicago Tribune in November of 1997 that she was ready to try acting. And in fact, a project was being written for her by playwright Cheryl West. And she even said, Chris, that she'd already written a soul ballad for it. 1997. She told Movie Line that the movie was her idea and she wrote The Treatment. Quote, "It's a story I've wanted to tell for a long time. We start with my character, Billy Frank, as a nine-year-old girl. She's at a club watching her mother sing. Billy is light-skinned, her mother's black, and her mother is clearly out of it, high or drunk, we don't really know. At a certain point, her mother loses it in the middle of the song.

• 26:54Lizzie Bassett?

  She forgets her lines and she calls Billy to come up and sing. The little girl saves her mother, the crowd goes crazy because she's got this huge voice and she shouldn't be in a club anyway at 2:00 in the morning. Wait, am I giving away too much?" Yes, Mariah, that's the whole opening sequence.

• 27:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Madely scribbling down everything that they're writing.

• 27:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, sure.

• 27:13Chris Winterbauer?

  And then Terrence Howard shows up.

• 27:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Say what you will about Terrence Howard. I know that he doesn't believe in science or math, but he can elevate garbage like, like nobody else.

• 27:25Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a good actor and.

• 27:26Lizzie Bassett?

  He's particularly good at this, though. I don't know if you ever watched Empire, but like, he's very good at it. I'm gonna need that hundred grand.

• 27:36Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great. He's great. It should be mentioned. I think we all can figure this out at this point, but Glitter is just terrible. A Star is Born, like, it's not her saying, I had this idea. This is as close as you can get to A Star is Born without having to pay someone rights. Like, this is not a novel concept. Now, she had been wanting to act for a while at this point. By 1998, she had signed up for a James Bond spoof opposite Chris Tucker, who was a huge deal at the time, that didn't ever come to fruition. She also, I believe, had a cameo appearance in The Bachelor with Renee Zellweger and Chris O'Donnell. Around this time, Cheryl West had left the project and Kate Lanier had come on board to write the screenplay, which was initially titled All That Glitters.

• 28:20Chris Winterbauer?

  And we should note, if Whitney Houston is being used as like a lodestar, for example, and I don't know if she was for Mariah, but it sounds like she was for Tommy Mottola, who was grooming Mariah's career. I mean, Whitney had just made The Bodyguard in 92.

• 28:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 28:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Which was one of the most successful movies of the decade at that point.

• 28:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I love The Bodyguard.

• 28:43Chris Winterbauer?

  It's fantastic. And it was an enormous hit, an enormous hit. And she was obviously already an established singer, but she successfully made that transition into film.

• 28:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, totally. Now, Kate Lanier, the screenwriter, is a great choice for this. She was coming off of Set It Off, starring Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith, directed by F. Gary Gray, and What's Love Got To Do With It, the Tina Turner biopic, which of course, got Angela Bassett an Oscar nomination. Now, Mariah insists right off the bat, All That Glitters is not autobiographical. The relationship with her mom, not identical to her own, and she insists that dice, her DJ love interest was unlike any man she'd ever dated. But that didn't really matter, because pretty much as soon as the movie was announced, the press started having a field day labeling it a vanity project, which. It's not incorrect. I don't know. I mean, it's not, it's not her trying to tell her life story for sure.

• 29:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I do remember, and I was young when this movie came out, but I remember people wanted to hate it.

• 29:43Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent.

• 29:44Chris Winterbauer?

  For, for a year at least before the movie came out.

• 29:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Mariah, and I really think she had, now that I'm thinking back, it's such a shame. I had no idea she was such a talented songwriter. She had gotten smeared with that reputation for just being, which by the way, is so absurd. Because it's like, oh, she's just a good voice. She's just got one of the greatest voices you've ever heard. As if you could do anything close to that.

• 30:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. On top of that, she's not just that. She was writing a lot of it. She was doing a lot of the arrangements herself and everything, which is really impressive.

• 30:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I think she was really presented as this empty vessel in such an unfair way. And they said, oh, great. You're going to put this pretty thing in a movie and

• 30:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 30:28Chris Winterbauer?

  who cares?

• 30:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, All That Glitters was an ambitious project. It was always intended to be a dual chart topping album and box office hit, which is a pretty rare combo. When you think about it, not many have pulled that off.

• 30:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Bodyguard, I believe, is a

• 30:42Lizzie Bassett?

  The Bodyguard was obviously one of Whitney Houston's biggest hits ever, and A Star is Born also. Now, remember she'd already been working on the songs. Well, in 1998, Columbia Records, again, that's Sony, pushed her to release a compilation album instead, kicking glitter down the road. It also sounds like some of the songs that she'd been working on for All That Glitters wound up going on her 1999 Rainbow album instead. Because again, glitter keeps getting pushed. So that is why I think there's no really catchy songs on this, is that they all got put on the album before it. So even though she divorced Tommy Mottola in 1998, she was still very much under his and Sony's control. And let me tell you, he made good use of that.

• 31:25Lizzie Bassett?

  She said that they even went so far as to pull her promo materials from record stores at one point. And it sure seems like he was going out of his way to make sure glitter was not going to happen. Mariah would go on Charlie Rose later and say that she'd been trying to make a movie for three and a half years, but quote, fools wouldn't let me. Tommy, Mariah was going to take glitter all by herself. You really did not need to help.

• 31:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, poor Mariah.

• 31:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Poor Mariah. So she's no longer romantically entangled with Matola and Glitter is really happening. As we said, Vondy Curtis Hall, who you may recognize more as an actor, came on board to direct. He's also a very accomplished TV director. I'm not going to say anything else about Vondy because nothing that's about to happen is the fault of any of the cast or crew involved in this film.

• 32:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Really quick, have you seen his first movie?

• 32:16Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 32:17Chris Winterbauer?

  It's called Gridlocked with Tim Roth and Tupac.

• 32:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Ooh.

• 32:21Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's actually, it's very good.

• 32:24Lizzie Bassett?

  He's a great director.

• 32:25Chris Winterbauer?

  He is. And it's like a very dark comedy. The, and I saw it a long time ago and I saw his name and I, I didn't actually, I didn't put together that he had directed Glitter. Anyway, it's very good. It's very funny. Tupac died right before the movie came out.

• 32:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, wow.

• 32:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And so I was just thinking about, oh my gosh, your first movie, your star dies before the movie comes out. And then your second movie.

• 32:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no.

• 32:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Is Glitter.

• 32:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Glitter. Oh, no.

• 32:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Just terrible luck. But if you guys haven't seen Gridlocked, I recommend it.

• 32:57Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Great. I'll watch that. For casting, obviously we have Max Beasley as Julian Dice, DJ Julian Dice. And by the way, Chris, in case you couldn't tell from the 15 seconds they let him play drums in this, he is actually an extremely accomplished musician and drummer.

• 33:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 33:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Who has toured with Stevie Wonder and Robbie Williams.

• 33:17Chris Winterbauer?

  That's why the marimba scene works.

• 33:19Lizzie Bassett?

  He's really good.

• 33:20Chris Winterbauer?

  At first I thought they were going to cut away and use a body double. He actually played the marimba beautifully. And I thought the seduction, I actually wanted that part of the scene to continue because I, at first I thought this is ridiculous. He's going to seduce her with the marimba. No, he played it. It was so beautiful. I bought it. And I thought, maybe she will want him, you know, after this moment. And I wanted that scene to actually go on. And then they went behind the glass and she had the granny panties on and it killed the mood.

• 33:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Debrat and Tia Tahada joined as Billy's best friends. And we know, thanks to a bankruptcy filing from Debrat in 2018, that she and most other actors were paid SAG-AFTRA scale for the movie. So the $22 million budget most certainly was not going to them.

• 34:03Chris Winterbauer?

  It's not a lot of money for what they're trying to do.

• 34:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not.

• 34:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think.

• 34:07Lizzie Bassett?

  And also, she was a huge star at this point. So Padma Lakshmi, you mentioned, is Billy's rival Silk, who would later go on to host Top Chef, of course. And when asked about Glitter many years later, she said, "God, I cannot get away from this film." But then she went on to give it a 5 out of 10 and said, "It's not Citizen Kane, but it's not that bad."

• 34:29Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree with her.

• 34:29Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 34:31Chris Winterbauer?

  I think she handles her role with aplomb. She's very funny.

• 34:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Eric Benet joined for a small part, of which he said he didn't have big screen aspirations, but it just felt right. He also told EuroWeb, and I quote, "But I'm not trying to be no Tom Hanks right now." And lastly, as you've mentioned, we've got Terrence Howard as villain, one-shirt villain Timothy Walker.

• 34:56Chris Winterbauer?

  They call me one-shirt.

• 34:59Lizzie Bassett?

  You owe me my $100,000.

• 35:02Chris Winterbauer?

  That was just as an inciting incident or lock-in moment.

• 35:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It didn't make any sense.

• 35:07Chris Winterbauer?

  The arbitrary decision of, "Oh, you want to buy out my third background dancer from her contract?"

• 35:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Chris Winterbauer?

  100 grand. Just, Terrence, you're not a serious person. What are we, what are we doing?

• 35:20Chris Winterbauer?

  It's amazing.

• 35:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, why, anyway, the plot makes no sense. Why would he give up Mariah Carey when he knows that his girlfriend Silk cannot sing? Like, it doesn't, it makes zero sense for him to have made that trade. Whatever, it doesn't matter.

• 35:33Chris Winterbauer?

  He's known for his vibes, not his brains. I don't remember his character's name, but whatever it is.

• 35:37Lizzie Bassett?

  It doesn't matter. Principal photography for Glitter began on July 27, 2000, and right off the bat, things did not go well. Kate and Mariah were apparently rewriting large chunks of the script on set. She also said that a lot of the story came from improvisation. Generally not a good sign.

• 35:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Not for a first-time actor.

• 35:56Lizzie Bassett?

  No, unless it's like a Christopher Guest movie, this is not what you want to hear.

• 36:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Exactly.

• 36:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, this may have been due to pressure from the studio for it to appeal to everyone, which of course is a common theme on this podcast. She later told USA Today, "It started out as a concept with substance, but it ended up being geared to 10-year-olds. It lost a lot of grit. It was gritless, in fact. I got in over my head."

• 36:20Chris Winterbauer?

  You can tell because the first five to 10 minutes, that's where I was referencing Ray, but they want to feel a little gritty.

• 36:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Chris Winterbauer?

  And then we're just saying like, "Go, go dancing and DJs and..."

• 36:34Lizzie Bassett?

  It's weirdly like Disneyfied.

• 36:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. "You're the most beautiful musician I ever heard."

• 36:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Poor Max Beasley.

• 36:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and it's, and then by the end, and let's discuss the ending, spoiler alerts. If you haven't seen Glitter, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, spoiler alert. But Max Beasley gets shot by Terrence Howard at the end. "Oh, with a hundred grand, you still owe me?" And like, you're not getting your hundred grand now. You just murdered him. And then when everyone's watching the television, they're like, "Well, at least Billy didn't see that." And then they all turn around.

• 37:06Lizzie Bassett?

  She's standing in the doorway.

• 37:09Chris Winterbauer?

  They go, "Oh, God, Billy."

• 37:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Oops.

• 37:11Chris Winterbauer?

  "Well, we should probably get you on stage."

• 37:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Probably trot you out there for this big number. She struggled also with cinematographer Jeffrey Simpson insisting that he was purposely shooting her on her bad side. For the record, there is zero evidence that this was the case. Simpson is an extremely accomplished DP with no reason to do that. He did Center Stage under the Tuscan Sun. She was very paranoid, I think, for reasons that we will come to understand. She was also under a microscope from the press, even on set. Take a look at this interview she did for ET from set, addressing rumors that she'd been having an affair with Eric Benet. She hadn't. And that Halle Berry had come to the set to confront her. She didn't.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  We would have loved to have Halle come to the set, but she didn't. That whole thing is a complete lie. But why should this be anything different than everything else they make up? Might as well just lie. You got a little extra ink and a pad of paper. Jot down a lie and publish it. Hey.

• 38:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, not necessarily a high point of journalistic integrity.

• 38:11Lizzie Bassett?

  No, we are at this point in what The Daily Beast dubbed the tabloid era of terror, which is of course, when we came of age as people who are in their mid 30s, it was particularly terrible to women. They were just making, they were making stuff up.

• 38:26Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it really peaked with the Brittany Shaved Head incident. That was the apex or nadir, depending on how you look at it.

• 38:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I think we're going to see some like early harbingers of that across this story. They also asked her about her relationship with then boyfriend Louis Miguel. She said, "It's very hard to find time together." And then, of course, they would break up in 2001, shortly before Glitter's release. Some of her co-stars had their doubts about the film, including Tia Tejada, who later told Stuff Magazine, "It was when they brought mustard yellow men's football pants to me and said, 'You have to wear these and we're going to put a red lightning bolt on the butt. They wanted me to wear a plastic dress that was shaped like a Christmas tree. I was like, there is something really, really wrong here."

• 39:13Chris Winterbauer?

  She was right. Wasn't really the costumes, though. It was a little bigger than that.

• 39:18Lizzie Bassett?

  No, costumes were great, very colorful. Although, were they set in the 80s? It's very unclear.

• 39:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, really quick sidebar. This movie takes place in 1984, 95, 97, 2000, all at the same time. Also, her hat in the first act.

• 39:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't hate anything as much as I hate her hat.

• 39:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Italian cyclist.

• 39:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, her breaking away hat.

• 39:42Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a me, a Mariah. That is my favorite piece of costuming from this entire movie. Mariah Carey is very beautiful. That hat is hilarious.

• 39:52Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really stupid.

• 39:53Chris Winterbauer?

  What's the brand? I wrote down "Vitalicio Segura's" hat, and I just was staring at that text on her forehead. It's, it's great.

• 40:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Amazing. Well, for his part, Max Beasley later told The Guardian, "That was a disaster, but you know, when we made it, it was okay. And there was some heavy duty drama, really heavy drama, and Mariah really showed her acting boots. They just cut all that out, and I nearly cried when I saw it." So, might be why it feels a little disjointed, among other reasons.

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• 41:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, as we said, Glitter was being produced by 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures, which is of course a division of what, Chris? Sony. Where her ex-husband very much still ran things. She was reportedly quite paranoid about him messing with her, so she'd been recording the music for Glitter in secret. However, Chris, I don't think you can call it paranoia when you are 100% right. The timeline is murky here, but sometime in 2000, Tommy Boy got wind of a track that Carrie had licensed for herself. It was "Firecracker" by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The bassline was going to be used in Glitter's lead single, "Lover Boy", but he swooped in and he handed it over to J-Lo, who then turned it into "I'm a real..."

• 42:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh my goodness. The J Lo crossover event I didn't expect in this episode.

• 42:26Lizzie Bassett?

  J Lo's gonna stick around for a little bit here. J Lo's a bit of a villain in this episode.

• 42:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh no.

• 42:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yes.

• 42:34Chris Winterbauer?

  But then she gets Geely and the universe writes itself.

• 42:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe. No, I'm not sure whether this was legal or not, since Mariah had licensed it, but it was most certainly quite shitty. It ended up forcing Mariah's hand. She had to remove it from her track because J Lo's was hitting the market much sooner. And based on at least one account, they had to work really fast finding a replacement because they were matching the music to film that was already shot.

• 43:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Exactly. That's what I was wondering. They've shot the scene.

• 43:03Lizzie Bassett?

  They've shot it.

• 43:04Chris Winterbauer?

  They have the BPM. They have the tone. Maybe they're seeing her mouth move. I'm not sure.

• 43:09Lizzie Bassett?

  They are for sure. It's when she's performing. It's the lead single. It shows up like throughout the movie.

• 43:13Chris Winterbauer?

  So now we need to just replace the spine that it's built around at the last minute, and it has to match everything that already exists. Yeah, not the best.

• 43:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And I'm not going to play them here for rights issues.

• 43:26Chris Winterbauer?

  It doesn't seem like anyone owns the rights to Glitter.

• 43:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that's true, but you can listen to both versions of the song. The one they did eventually release with Firecracker as the bassline, it is better for sure. He didn't stop there, though, Chris. Producer Irv Gotti, who worked on J Lo's album, confirmed years later that he was basically instructed to copy another track off of the Glitter album called If We, which is a back and forth duet between Mariah and Ja Rule. Now, you may not remember this. I certainly didn't. But I'm Real was actually two different songs on the same album, both called I'm Real. The one that was an enormous success was I'm

• 44:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Real parentheses murder remix featuring Ja Rule, which we now know is what was written in response to Mariah's existing track. So that is the one, when you think of it, that's I'm real, the way you look, the way you talk. I can't do Ja Rule.

• 44:26Chris Winterbauer?

  So we know who was murdered now. It was Mariah in this instance.

• 44:30Lizzie Bassett?

  In this instance, it was Glitter. Are you familiar with Mariah Carey's iconic response many years later when asked about Jennifer Lopez?

• 44:39Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 44:39Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm not going to play the clip because it's a German interview and so they're actually translating in German over. So without being able to see the video, it doesn't hit as hard. But if anybody has ever seen the I don't know her meme, that is from Mariah. She's being asked by this interviewer about Beyonce and she's very effusive. And then they ask her about Jennifer Lopez and she goes, oh, I don't know her, which is just one of the best burns possible.

• 45:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Only replaced by Kiki Palmer's, I'm sorry, I don't know this man, more recently.

• 45:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, although that was genuine. She most definitely knew who Jennifer Lopez was. However, she used this to her advantage. This is officially denied, but it sure sounds like she may have been able to leverage this ultra shitty move from Matola as a way to get her out of her contract as Sony, even though she owed them one more album. This is what makes me think that what he did might have been borderline illegal. I don't know the inner workings of it. But pretty much immediately in April of 2001, she was signed to Virgin Records for $80 million for four albums, according to the LA Times. And her first album as part of this deal, the soundtrack to Glitter.

• 45:54Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a good deal.

• 45:55Lizzie Bassett?

  So she's finally free. But I also wonder if losing Tommy Matola also came with losing a certain level of protection from the press, because from this point forward, they are just ruthless to her. She's, of course, under pressure to deliver a blockbuster album for her new label, Virgin, and up against the clock to create something for them with a whole new team. I could be wrong, but I think that she let go of her manager at some point, because a lot of these people were Tommy Matola plants. They were people who she'd come up with and who he had kind of assigned to her.

• 46:29Chris Winterbauer?

  It wouldn't surprise me if she just went for a completely fresh start.

• 46:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I think she did, but that's really hard when you've been relying on those people for, you know, a decade at this point.

• 46:39Chris Winterbauer?

  And just new publicists, like you mentioned, who can you trust? Who's gonna actually keep the press from you? Who's gonna push you in front of the right people, the wrong people? Yeah.

• 46:48Lizzie Bassett?

  So the album was set to launch on August 21st, and the film had a release date of August 31st. And she later told USA Today, "I was with people who didn't really know me and I had no personal assistant. I'd be doing interviews all day long, getting two hours of sleep a night if that. I was burning the candle at both ends and in the middle, and it caught up with me." And catch up with her, it did. On July 17th, two days ahead of her dropping Lover Boy, which again was the lead single for Glitter, the one that Jennifer Lopez stole the bassline of. Mariah went on the BET show 106 in Park. She seemed frazzled and described her life as "one day that's continuous. It's been going on since November." Two days later, to mark the premiere of Lover Boy,

• 47:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Mariah Carey surprised Carson Daly with an unusual appearance on TRL. In the clip that you're about to hear, she is pushing an ice cream truck onto the stage, and she's wearing sort of a large t-shirt that says Lover Boy and very, very short shorts. And she shortly thereafter takes off the t-shirt. Take a listen.

• 47:52Speaker 06

  Holy mackerel!

• 47:53Speaker 02

  You like this?

• 47:54Speaker 06

  Hey, can we get the AC cranked down? The AC, crank it down, get nice and cool. Wow!

• 47:59Speaker 02

  You like this?

• 48:00Speaker 06

  What are you doing? What did you bring?

• 48:01Speaker 02

  I'm trying to, you're my therapy session right now, Carson. You see, it seems every now and then, somebody needs a little therapy.

• 48:08Speaker 06

  Yes, I understand that.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  And today is that moment for me.

• 48:11Speaker 06

  What's wrong? You weren't, aren't you busy? You just came by TRL to hang out? I did not know about this.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  We're just here.

• 48:18Speaker 06

  What is this you brought? Is this ice cream?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  This is ice cream truck. See, they had decorated this. Wait, try to avoid shots, because these shorts are really short.

• 48:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, just don't move! Talk about the ice cream.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  But we gotta discuss this, okay?

• 48:29Speaker 06

  Things are good from here.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  I don't move. But they, see, these ain't my, these are just some folks on the nice street. But we like this.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  Mariah Carey's lost her mind. I don't know exactly what's going on here. I was going for a commercial break out of the other video, and I hear her singing. You brought ice cream.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Look at the ice cream truck.

• 48:47Chris Winterbauer?

  She's improvising, so maybe shouldn't have been doing that on set.

• 48:52Lizzie Bassett?

  She is. I think this moment is really interesting because this was sort of heralded by the press as like a, an on-air breakdown. Like, that's, I think, what people have labeled this in years since, that this was a, she had a mental breakdown on TRL. Watching it again, it's like, no, I don't think that's accurate. Also, you didn't hear this in what I just played you, but right before she comes on, guess what song Carson Daly had just finished introducing?

• 49:27Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm Real?

• 49:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Correct. I'm Real by J Lo. Also, you can hear her saying in the clip, she's asking producers where she's supposed to stand. I do not buy for one second that this was completely unplanned. And she says it wasn't. This, she said it basically was a stunt that went awry, which is what it looks like.

• 49:47Chris Winterbauer?

  It seems, yeah, it seems like she's off-script and she's attempting to figure out what she's supposed to do. And so she starts waving at the people outside. She does, she seems a little, she seems very overwhelmed. And-

• 50:01Lizzie Bassett?

  She seems really frazzled.

• 50:03Chris Winterbauer?

  But she's trying to maintain that I'm-on-television buoyant energy that she needs to. Also, the Loverboy shirt is just like a tie-dye cursive.

• 50:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. It's like an airbrush thing you get at the beach. Carson Daly's involvement here is interesting. I mean, if you watch the clip, he does look visibly confused. I don't know and really couldn't find out, because I don't think he's made a comment about this, whether or not he has said that he knew about it beforehand. She has said that he did know about this on some level beforehand. I don't know if that's the case. You know, there's a lot of people re-examining this clip and saying that that was a little shitty of him, the way that he played it off in the moment. He did later make a comment referring to an interview that she had done earlier in the week where he acknowledged that she looked like she was visibly being pulled

• 50:53Lizzie Bassett?

  in, you know, a million different directions by all the people who were surrounding her. So I don't know what the deal is there in terms of how much Carson Daly knew or didn't know going into this moment. I also like, I do wonder about them playing "I'm Real" right before she came out. That just feels, it feels weird. I mean, it was a big song, so who knows?

• 51:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it could just be random. We never know. It's easy to attribute malice or intent when so often it's just coincidence.

• 51:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, that's very true. Either way, it did not help Glitter's press tour. On July 25th, 2001, following a series of very strange press appearances, including a Q and A where her publicist literally yanked the microphone out of her hand, a cryptic audio message from Mariah appeared on her website where she whispered that she was going to be taking a break from music, but that nothing was wrong. She said, quote, "I just can't trust anybody anymore because I don't understand what's going on." However, one day later, it was announced that she had checked into a hospital for extreme exhaustion. Now, 17 years later, she came out and revealed that during this hospitalization, she was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder. When she finally decided to speak openly about this, she told

• 52:06Lizzie Bassett?

  People Magazine, quote, "For a long time, I thought I had a severe sleep disorder, but it wasn't normal insomnia. I wasn't lying awake counting sheep. I was working and working. I was irritable and in constant fear of letting people down. It turns out that I was experiencing a form of mania." Her appearance at the MTV 20th Anniversary Special was scrapped, as was the press junket for Glitter. So, Chris, on August 9th, after obviously a pretty rough few weeks and even rougher early feedback on the movie, the release date of the movie was pushed from August 31st to September 21st. And Virgin Records also decided to postpone the album release a little, giving Mariah some time to recuperate. And, Chris, what date in the fall of 2001 did they choose as the new release date?

• 52:52Chris Winterbauer?

  September 11th.

• 52:53Lizzie Bassett?

  That is correct.

• 52:56Chris Winterbauer?

  It had to be because nothing happens on Tuesdays.

• 53:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Glitter's album was now set to release on September 11th, 2001. And release on 9/11, it did. There is actual video footage from that day that pans up from a subway billboard to the two towers as they're about to fall. It is literally the billboard for Glitter and the camera pans up and it is the two towers.

• 53:23Chris Winterbauer?

  The two towers above it.

• 53:24Lizzie Bassett?

  It's horrible. Another not so fun fact, that footage was discovered and uploaded by the director of the Loose Change documentary on YouTube. Famously, one of the earliest internet offerings started to convince people 9/11 was an inside job and is-

• 53:37Chris Winterbauer?

  perpetrated by Mariah Carey.

• 53:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Surprisingly, that was not the angle that he took.

• 53:44Chris Winterbauer?

  An amazing South Park episode about those conspiracy theories, but beyond that, I can't stand them and how they make, in a weird way, light of such a significant and unfortunate event. And I was curious, so I was looking into this and it's just, it's crazy how many movies we make that, especially at that time, that involved either bombs, planes, or New York slash the New York skyline that had to shift as a result of 9/11. I mean, you had like collateral damage, big trouble, bad company, the sum of all fears. I think Men in Black 2 had a big reshoot, Lilo and Stitch, which obviously there's a live action version now. The entire third act, I believe originally used to hijack

• 54:27Chris Winterbauer?

  747 and they redid it. So instead, it's an alien spacecraft going through the mountains. The Bourne Identity and then, you know, like even things like Zoolander, Changing Lanes, Stuart Little Two, Spider-Man, all had to have the Twin Towers digitally removed either from the film or from marketing materials.

• 54:47Lizzie Bassett?

  And also remember, like, the Twin Towers are in Glitter. Glitter is shot in New York. It's one of, thought to be one of the last films that shot in New York. But on the bright side, Chris, Glitter may have actually saved at least one life. A woman named Sarah Botkin was late to work that day because she decided to stop by the record store and buy the new CD from her favorite artist, Mariah Carey. She worked on the 105th floor of the South Tower and she should have been at her desk when the first plane hit, but instead she was downstairs about to take the elevator up. And 176 of her coworkers died that day.

• 55:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Mariah showed up for a promotional screening of Glitter on September 20th. It was her first public appearance since hospitalization. Not really a fun night for anybody involved, but kudos to her. She did show up. Now, for what I think are obvious reasons, Glitter was a disaster on arrival.

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• 56:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Opening weekend, it earned a measly $2.4 million and critics were absolutely shredding it from day one. The tabloids didn't miss a beat and continued to kick her when she was down. Chris, take a look at this tabloid cover posted by Reddit user Atomic Prince from September 5th, 2001, just four days after Glitter premiered.

• 57:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Mariah Carey back in mental ward. J-Lo drove me insane. Above, a very, it looks like photoshopped photo of Whitney Houston looking haggard. And it says, Whitney wasting away, cocaine diet destroying her looks. Oprah love crisis. She's torn between two men. And of course, JonBenet Ramsey's in the bottom corner because she was in the bottom corner of every one of these magazines for a decade.

• 57:41Lizzie Bassett?

  What a nightmare. This is just absolute nightmare fuel.

• 57:45Chris Winterbauer?

  The next one says, Mariah Carey suicide drama splits. She splits with Latin lover. And these magazines still exist. You still see them in the checkout line.

• 57:53Lizzie Bassett?

  You do, but they didn't hold the same.

• 57:56Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 57:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Thrall over us that they did at this point.

• 58:00Chris Winterbauer?

  They've been replaced by like TikTok, basically, at this point.

• 58:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's true. Loverboy, the lead single peaked at number two on the Billboard Top 100, but it did not get much radio play or video traction on MTV. The album only sold 116,000 copies in its first week, which is a third of what Rainbow had sold, and that was already a lower performing album for her. It became her first ever album without any number one hits. Critics Stephen Thomas Earlman called it, quote, "the pop equivalent of Chernobyl." It's a little harsh. On a $22 million budget, Glitter the Film made $5.3 million at the box office.

• 58:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it was more successful than J-lee. J-lee, 7.2 against a $76 million budget.

• 58:47Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what? You deserved it, J-Lo. You reap what you sow.

• 58:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I'mma be real. You were murdered for a reason.

• 58:56Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm actually scared of J-Lo. Please don't come after us.

• 58:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I'd love to work with you.

• 58:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I actually think you're a good actress, too. For years, Carey referred to it as the G-word, and no one was allowed to talk about it because it had messed her up so much. Though eventually she did come to terms with it and was able to acknowledge it for the campy delight that I think we can all agree it is. As for why it bombed at the box office, and I really love this quote, she told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, quote, "There was no script, darling, and it was released on 9/11."

• 59:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great quote. And I will say like, it's a joke and but the G word was

• 59:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I as bad as this was for Mariah, which it sounds like a nightmare.

• 59:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it does.

• 59:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck being set on fire at the box office and publicly two years later, I think did redirect some public attention and ire and the G word became Gili away from glitter after this.

• 59:53Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. Another G movie. I would argue glitter is more fun than Gili as well. I thought I would much rather sit down and watch glitter.

• 1:00:02Chris Winterbauer?

  It's that Jack Donaghy, you have to go down through the crevasse. I think glitter.

• 1:00:06Lizzie Bassett?

  They go down.

• 1:00:08Chris Winterbauer?

  They go, you think we can't go lower?

• 1:00:10Lizzie Bassett?

  They go find James Cameron's aliens in the bottom of the abyss.

• 1:00:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Glitter was nominated, of course, for many, many razzies, including Mariah Carey for worst actress of the decade, worst picture and for worst couple, Mariah Carey's cleavage.

• 1:00:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, that's just wrong. She is great cleavage. That's stupid.

• 1:00:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Factually incorrect.

• 1:00:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Lizzie Bassett?

  As per IMDb, Carey was, quote, "the single biggest individual vote getter of the decade, 70% plus of all votes for worst actress of 2001." Not fair. She is not that bad in this.

• 1:00:46Chris Winterbauer?

  It's weird. The movie as a whole is bad. It is. It is not good. We don't want to put down movies, but this one just doesn't work. But it's weird that you can look at.

• 1:00:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It's fun, though.

• 1:00:58Chris Winterbauer?

  But that's the thing, because you can look at individual parts and Mariah's fine. Like, the scenes are ridiculous most of the time, but it's very watchable. It bothers me a lot less than other bad movies, is my point. It goes down easy.

• 1:01:14Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I wasn't bored, which really is the benchmark for me at this point. Now, she has obviously gone on to have an incredible career. Glitter did not tank her. The lamely did not let glitter fall by the wayside either, Chris. In 2018, hashtag justice for glitter began trending. And in a fun twist of fate, her fanbase managed to bump the album back up to number one on the iTunes chart, briefly overtaking the soundtrack to the film whose very story it had clearly ripped off, A Star is Born.

• 1:01:45Lizzie Bassett?

  This is a tough one for this because I'm not sure much did go right, but what went right?

• 1:01:52Chris Winterbauer?

  All right. Well, we're here. Lizzie, thank you for guiding us through the no shininess present version of Glitter, a darker, sadder story than I was expecting.

• 1:02:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Me too.

• 1:02:06Chris Winterbauer?

  So it's hard to say what went right. I think Mariah Carey is what went right and what went wrong. And I don't think she's bad in the movie. I don't think she's great, but she's fine as an actress and she has an amazing voice and that combination should be enough. But candidly, it's clear that either she didn't have the right people around her or she had too much power over the director and writer. And I don't think anybody told her no or told her this isn't how you do a movie and we can't just improvise our way through it or, you know.

• 1:02:40Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the thing. And she has said that. She said basically like, I didn't have anybody who was supporting me or guiding me, which when you learn the context in terms of her leaving Tommy Mottola, it makes a lot of sense.

• 1:02:53Chris Winterbauer?

  But I do think that's where I would hope her director would have said something at some point and.

• 1:03:00Lizzie Bassett?

  That's hard, though. She's a superstar.

• 1:03:03Chris Winterbauer?

  That's my point. Yeah. There's a power dynamic flaw there. And even Lawrence Mark, I saw his name. He's the producer of the film. I believe he'd already done Jerry Maguire at this point. He was a big producer. And I just, I wonder if the problem was they were starting from a point where the material wasn't very good. And they thought, is it worth expending the energy, taking the time to attempt to overrule her on certain things or teach her or guide her?

• 1:03:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:03:32Chris Winterbauer?

  When she may not have been in the mood to. Be taught or guided, and it's a little unfair. I totally-

• 1:03:39Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, no. I think she would agree with you based on what I've seen. I mean, that's, I think she's actually extremely self-aware, particularly about this experience. And you know, she obviously had an undiagnosed disorder in terms of being bipolar and not realizing it. She was being worked around the clock by people who did not know her and was just completely without a support system. On top of that, she's extremely nervous about this massive figure in her life coming back to mess with her, and he was messing with her. And I think all of that, to your point, led to a situation where she both didn't have the support that she needed and was unable to receive help.

• 1:04:18Chris Winterbauer?

  And so I think in a way, it's, it's, she's the only reason the movie got made. And I don't think she's just this struggling, drowning actress in the middle of a movie. I don't think that at all. But she, I think she's also, in a weird way, the reason the movie never really stood a chance either.

• 1:04:39Lizzie Bassett?

  I think my what went right is that, like you said, she went all the way down into the crevasse for this one. And I think that this experience may have freed her up to be less beholden to what people think of her. And she's become pretty iconic in the years since for her very funny quips and comebacks from that I don't know her moment with J-Lo to one of my favorite moments ever where she's being asked on air about where her then ex-fiance, who was like a swindler of some sort, I think, they're at, like, do you know where he is? And she literally just goes, I don't know where the motherfucker is.

• 1:05:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Lizzie Bassett?

  It's incredible.

• 1:05:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, very charmingly walking in on her son's livestream recently on Twitch.

• 1:05:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:05:23Chris Winterbauer?

  She's like, what's going on?

• 1:05:25Lizzie Bassett?

  She's great.

• 1:05:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Such a mom. So fun.

• 1:05:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. I just feel like she allowed herself to really be herself publicly after this. I think she kind of just said, fuck it. And-

• 1:05:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it can't get any worse than Glitter.

• 1:05:38Lizzie Bassett?

  It didn't. I mean, what they were doing to her in the press was so horrible. And even though it sounds like it did take years for her to really get the help that she needed for bipolar disorder, she did get that help. It sounds like she's much, much happier and much more in control of her own life. She did come back with obviously many albums after this, but only three and a half years later with the emancipation of Mimi, which featured We Belong Together, one of her biggest hits ever of all time. So she really just did not let this keep her down. And I think that is admirable. And you know what? I was not a huge Mariah Carey fan before this, but I think I might be now. And I loved Glitter.

• 1:06:15Chris Winterbauer?

  I like Mariah Carey now as well. And I, I've always liked her music, but I didn't know anything about her.

• 1:06:20Lizzie Bassett?

  I didn't either.

• 1:06:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you for, I mean, will I watch this movie again? Probably not, but I might. And I think this would, I just don't really, let's be candid. I don't really get high anymore, but I would love to watch this movie very high.

• 1:06:37Lizzie Bassett?

  If we're ever able to get someone to take care of our children at the same time.

• 1:06:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly.

• 1:06:41Lizzie Bassett?

  This is what we turn on.

• 1:06:42Chris Winterbauer?

  And Madame Web as a, because I, oh, the other comment I made to Lizzie is that I am convinced that Madame Web and Glitter are actually happening contemporaneously to one another in the same cinematic universe. Because Dakota Johnson, in a way, reminds me a little of Mariah Carey. There's something in the talk show setting, there's just something about that, like, don't give a fuck energy.

• 1:07:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Chris Winterbauer?

  And both of them survived a bomb at the box office in a big way.

• 1:07:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Although Dakota Johnson, much less scathed than the poor Mariah, but yes.

• 1:07:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I do think we, at least I hope, we look back at the early to mid 2000s and think, man, we all were a little hyped up on our ability to just beat the shit out of people publicly.

• 1:07:27Lizzie Bassett?

  It was horrible.

• 1:07:28Chris Winterbauer?

  It was a pretty bad time.

• 1:07:30Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, Chris, well, that wraps up Glitter.

• 1:07:33Chris Winterbauer?

  We finally did it. This has been one that you guys have asked for a long time. It was part of a poll and did lose to Geely in a poll. So Glitter also had that distinction. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of What Went Wrong. We are weekly now and Lizzie, can you let the fine folks know what we are covering next week?

• 1:07:54Lizzie Bassett?

  V for Vendetta.

• 1:07:55Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. We're moving down the alphabet and we're doing all the V words. A movie I really adore, a graphic novel that is very, very interesting. And an instance, I would say, where although the creator of the original work and the creators of the film do not see eye to eye, I am thrilled that both versions exist and I can't wait to get into it next week. Lizzie, where can folks go if they would like to support this podcast?

• 1:08:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, obviously there's word of mouth. You can tell a friend, you can tell a family member, you can force someone to listen to an episode. You can post about us on your socials. You can follow us on Instagram or TikTok. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever platform you're listening to us on. You can also follow us on that platform as well. It means you'll get a notification whenever new episodes come out. But if you really want to go above and beyond, you can join our Patreon.

• 1:08:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Patreon is a platform where audience members like you can connect with creators like us. I hate that word, but it's true and you don't have to pay any money. You can join for free and get updates on episodes, corrections, various musings from me. For a dollar a month, you can vote on movies that we are going to cover in the future. We have a very exciting pirates poll that is going to be releasing very shortly after this episode. For $5 a month, you can get an ad-free RSS feed and for $50 a month, you can have your name shouted out at the end of this episode. Lizzie, are you going to give us some of that five octave range that we all know you

• 1:09:41Chris Winterbauer?

  have? Or are you gonna make, are you gonna make Terrence Howard come out?

• 1:09:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Neither. Can I just read them?

• 1:09:49Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll just read them.

• 1:09:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Cameron Smith, Ben Schindelman, Scary Carrie, The Provost Family, The O's Sound Like O's, Zach Everton, Galen.

• 1:10:03Lizzie Bassett?

  David Friskalanti, Adam Moffett, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Ellington, MZodia, CGraceB, Jen Mastromarino, Christopher Elner, Blaze Ambrose, Jerome Wilkinson, Ralja, thank you for that one, Lance Stater, Nate the Knife, Lena, Ramon Villanueva Jr., Half Greyhound, Willa Dunn, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, don't forget about

• 1:10:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Dale, Richard Sanchez, Jake Killen, Andrew McFagelbagel, Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, Ellen Singleton, Ellen Singleton, JJ Rapido, Juy Sri Samant, Scott Gerwin, Sadie, Just Sadie, Brian Donahue, Adrian Pangkorea, Chris Liel, Kathleen Olson, Brooke, Leah Bowman, Steve Winterbauer, It's the Parents' Corner, Don Schibell, George K., Rosemary Southward,

• 1:11:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Still the Parents' Corner, Tom Kristin, Jason Frankel, Somen Chinani, Michael McGrath, Lanrelad, and Lydia Howes. Thank you so, so much for making this podcast possible.

• 1:11:39Chris Winterbauer?

  We hope to see you next week with V for Vendetta.

• 1:11:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Bye.

• 1:11:50Speaker 08

  Go to patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast to support What Went Wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman. Research for this episode was provided by Sarah Bound.