Madonna: The Movies With Amanda Dobbins and Sean Fennessey

Yasi is joined by Amanda Dobbins and Sean Fennessey of The Big Picture to reconsider Madonna’s life on film, including her breakout role in Desperately Seeking Susan, box office hits like Dick Tracy and A League of Their Own, polarizing works like Body of Evidence, and of course her most critically acclaimed film work, Evita. They discuss Madonna the cinephile, the vulnerability required to be a great artist, the unfair criticism that followed Madonna the actress, and what they think her best film is. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Amanda Dobbins @akdobbins and Sean Fennessey @seanfennesseyProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love the song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain.

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about the filmography of the one and only Madonna. You guys, my guests today, the esteemed hosts of the Big Picture Podcast, Amanda Dobbins and Sean Fantasy. Thank you so much for joining me here.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Thanks for having us.

• 1:09Yasi Salek?

  I needed people who understood movies. Cinophiles.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:13Yasi Salek?

  Critics.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  I don't know if you actually did for this filmography, but that said, I'm thrilled to be here.

• 1:17Yasi Salek?

  I want to do some renegotiation of history here. I think that people have been wrong and wronged.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Interesting. So you're gonna reclaim roughly the entire filmography of Madonna?

• 1:30Yasi Salek?

  There's some parts where they were right.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  I was having a good time prepping for this until yesterday morning, when I was going through a couple, like, I don't want to deal with that right now. Save it for later, save it for later. And then I was texting you a little saltily. But that's okay. I wanted to be a part of Madonna on Bandplain in any way that I could be.

• 1:50Yasi Salek?

  And when you do, you have to take it all.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  I did, yeah.

• 1:53Yasi Salek?

  It's all the good and some of the not so good.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58Yasi Salek?

  Not her fault. Madonna innocent, as far as I'm concerned.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  My wife, Eileen, wandered into the bedroom last night while I was watching Who's That Girl, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And she was looking at the screen and she said, "Why did she want to do this?" And I don't, she didn't mean this movie. She meant try to become this in addition to what she already had.

• 2:20Yasi Salek?

  I have answers.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  And I figure we'll dig into that.

• 2:23Yasi Salek?

  Tell her to tune in to this podcast.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  That was what I told her.

• 2:26Yasi Salek?

  This is something we're doing here, just for now.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  The gloves or the?

• 2:30Yasi Salek?

  The gloves. We're Susan.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, why are you gonna take them off?

• 2:34Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, they're a little like hot. Everything right now is a little hot. I might have to like strip down. They're a little itchy. I mean, I don't know, I think, I'm sure Madonna's were like quite higher quality than these that I got from Jeff Bezos's online shop, but.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  What's that URL?

• 2:49Yasi Salek?

  It's amazon.com.uk. Amazon.edu. I get a student discount. We talked about this a little bit before on our group text. And I was like, me, wild eyed, just like my heart opened. I was like, we'll do a Hall of Fame. And then I was like, oh. And then you said, there's not enough good movies.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  I mean, she's only made 16 movies as an actress, so that's not a lot already and.

• 3:18Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't mean there couldn't have been 10 to make the Hall of Fame.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think even for the greatest actors of all time, if you only had 16, the first 16 to choose from, it'd be tough to build a real hall, right?

• 3:28Speaker 03

  I think Daniel Day-Lewis, which we did a Hall of Fame of on the big picture, probably is like in the, in the twenties, but it's not, you know, Meryl Streep numbers.

• 3:37Yasi Salek?

  He was a chooser.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  And well, but still, we were like rooting around for nine and 10.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, he made some dogs too, so he's got that in common with Madonna.

• 3:46Yasi Salek?

  Listen, we've all, we've all had a checkered creative output. That's what it means to be an artist. If you've only ever made good things, you haven't made enough things. That's how I feel.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I agree with you. I think about this in the experience of podcasting. Like, everybody has a bad pod, right? Like, I've had many a bad pod. The trick is, when you know the pod is bad and you can feel it mid-pod. You have to kind of lean into the, to the badness to make it kind of an active acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of what you're doing.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  And I'll say like, sometimes it seems that Madonna as a performer is on that wavelength and other times she doesn't, maybe hasn't gotten the memo, that something isn't going well.

• 4:26Yasi Salek?

  Well, I do think it's so different, not that I have, you know, a huge amount of experience with filmmaking, although you know that I have directorial experience.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  We do know that.

• 4:36Yasi Salek?

  You don't always know. You don't, you don't always know until the end. Sometimes you do. And sometimes you're like, wow, I thought this was gonna be great. And then you're like, oh, man, this is bad.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  I hope as the director, like over time, you do know and you learn. But as, as the actor in a film, you don't always have full control over the, the production or everything's going on, or even how you're gonna be used, or what take they're gonna pick. So we'll give her the benefit of the doubt, at least until Filth and Wisdom and, and WE, or WE, WE is what we're calling it, right?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  I think WE, yeah. I, um.

• 5:13Yasi Salek?

  I didn't see Filth and Wisdom. That's like the one that I missed.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I, I, I think it's an interesting challenge for any pop star when they try to make this pivot because no one tells you the truth, as we learned in Charlie XCX is the Moment. It's very hard to find a good confidant who can tell you like, this movie's not going well, or maybe you should do this. And that can be shared with honesty, sincerity, and trust and vulnerability. And that's why a lot of times this sort of thing goes very badly for pop stars. It's a very hard pivot to make.

• 5:42Yasi Salek?

  Does that happen to you now too, because you're so famous? Do you feel like Jack Sanders won't give it to you straight anymore?

• 5:47Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm constantly being told what an idiot I am. So I, I, that's not an issue for me.

• 5:53Yasi Salek?

  You have Amanda to be like.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  That's my job, yeah.

• 5:55Yasi Salek?

  Okay, no, okay. I can't do it anymore.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:57Yasi Salek?

  We made it for us.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Rapping for Mickey Mouse, though.

• 5:59Yasi Salek?

  Well, you know, I felt inspired by your trip to Disneyland yesterday with Alice. And also I have maybe four to seven Mickey Mouse t-shirts, so, and I find that they look good on me.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  You're, you're pro Mickey?

• 6:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, of course.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  You're riding for Disney and Amazon in this discussion thus far.

• 6:15Yasi Salek?

  I'm a, I'm a technofascist and everyone knows that about me. I work at Spotify. As do you guys.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Here we all are.

• 6:24Yasi Salek?

  How should we do this? Should we take it from the top?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Let me ask you this. Did she always want to be an actress? Was that always?

• 6:29Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  It was, right?

• 6:31Yasi Salek?

  Yes. So when she was, she was very, at first a dancer, that was her like primary thing. And then when she moved to New York City in the late 70s, she was dancing and when she got a little, I think she got a little over dancing after a while and she started to do music and acting at the same time. She was going to like, you know, backstage magazine auditions and stuff. Which is how we end up with the film A Certain Sacrifice, which I didn't see. Did you guys watch it?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  I did watch it.

• 7:03Yasi Salek?

  How was it?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  It was quite raw. And clearly like an independent film and kind of an exploitation film and a bit upsetting at times.

• 7:13Yasi Salek?

  I've seen clips of it, but I didn't sit down and watch it.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Interesting artifact of sort of like what you do when you're not quite at the seat of power, you know, but want to have. And you know, she, I'm sure you've talked about this on other episodes, but she's in, exists in this interesting terrain of like, she's kind of this like outsider artist, but also pursuing the highest levels of pop stardom. And her background in New York and downtown and in the dance and club scene. It feels like it's happening kind of concurrently to the punk rock scene. So there's something about this being like the safe haven or refuge for a certain kind of like lifestyle point of view.

• 7:49Yasi Salek?

  Madonna was in like post punk bands. She dated the guy, Michael Jira from Swans.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:53Yasi Salek?

  Like she was actually much more in that world than I think people understand or give her credit for.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  But this was, it was like filmed.

• 8:02Yasi Salek?

  This was filmed so long ago, 79.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Right. The man ran out of. She's at a very different point in her career. And then it comes out like in 85, once she's mega Madonna.

• 8:12Yasi Salek?

  Man ran out of money and the film was like basically never completed, but I think once Madonna was a star, he was like, oh, we better capitalize on this.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  It reminded me of, do you remember the scene from Notting Hill where Julia Roberts shows up at Hugh Grant's house with the blue door? Because some pictures that she like did when she was like young and broke are published in the tabloids. And it makes it look like she did a, you know, and.

• 8:35Yasi Salek?

  Which happened to Madonna as well.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 8:37Yasi Salek?

  Playboy and Penthouse.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  So it's, you know, but it was, it was of that moment.

• 8:42Yasi Salek?

  It's also, look, I'll say again, I've seen the like relevant scenes. I respect you guys for taking in the full, the cinema of it. Just like she said, I think about her Playboy shots, because she did nude modeling too, to make money. She was like, I'm not ashamed. And I don't think that, you know, I don't think she was ashamed of it. If anything, I think she might've been ashamed of how, how poor the film turned out, but not that she was like nude in it.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  I mean, there's just like a really upsetting rape sequence in the movie. That you, you would, you would do differently, I think, if you had a little bit more agency at that time in her, in her career.

• 9:17Yasi Salek?

  It's also pretty fucked up because somewhere in that timeframe, like, I don't know if it was before or after the filming of that, but within like a year, Madonna was raped in New York and she just talked about this publicly. So that kind of adds like this whole like extra layer of horror to that situation. She does, you know, have rape scenes later in her acting career as well.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  I think it's more just like, this is kind of a grungy exploitation movie and it's not really handled very sensitively.

• 9:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Um, I don't, that movie probably should never have come out. With respect to, or maybe not respect to the filmmaker. All right, let's talk about a movie that I only saw for the first time the other day, which is 1985's Vision Quest.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Okay, and you, and you did the whole thing.

• 10:08Yasi Salek?

  We used to be a proper country is what I just need to say about that.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  From this film?

• 10:12Yasi Salek?

  What a, what a movie.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Wow, so what, what was keeping you from Vision Quest all these years?

• 10:17Yasi Salek?

  It just never occurred to me to watch it. I don't know. I knew about it because of the songs, but.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:22Yasi Salek?

  I feel like Matthew Modine is giving a little Sean Fens. Did you feel that when you're watching it?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  It's huge news.

• 10:27Yasi Salek?

  Has people, has people told you that?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  We share the New York Knicks, obviously, and one of the all time Knicks fans, Matthew Modine.

• 10:32Yasi Salek?

  You have like a similar like smirkiness.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  I see it. Matthew Modine is another one where he obviously, he peaks mid to late eighties. And so I like came of watching age like slightly later. And so I never really caught up on everything. I mean, I've seen Vision Quest many years ago, but it wouldn't have occurred to me that you, yeah, I can see it.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  I say thank you.

• 10:56Yasi Salek?

  It's a wonderful film. Linda Fiorentino, one of the hottest women to ever exist. I believe it's her first film.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Playing a very similar part to the part she plays in After Hours 2, where she's like an aspiring kind of avant-garde artist.

• 11:07Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I loved it. This is not really a Madonna movie, but it's notable in the sense that it's her first real appearance in an actual film that isn't like a weird downtown art snuff film.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  And it like, it sets a template that is present in the rest of the career, which is just her doing a musical performance

• 11:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  in a cinematic setting.

• 11:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Which is sometimes the best way to use Madonna.

• 11:35Yasi Salek?

  I think if people are gonna use Madonna, often they want that too.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 11:40Yasi Salek?

  Until she has enough power to say, "I'm not doing that anymore," you know?

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:43Yasi Salek?

  Which does happen later.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  I think it's a, it's an artifact of its time for sure, but it's also like, it's directed by Harold Becker, it's written by Daryl Ponixson, who wrote The Last Detail. Like, it's got some class to it as well.

• 11:54Yasi Salek?

  I just like that kind of like, simple sports movie about pushing for your dreams.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:01Yasi Salek?

  You know, it just warms my heart. And also, we don't get a lot of wrestling content. Jake Ryan, whatever that actor's real name is, so hot.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Um.

• 12:08Yasi Salek?

  He plays Chooch, is that his name? They have the weirdest.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Is it Michael Shuffling?

• 12:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that sounds right.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:13Yasi Salek?

  Great, isn't it? Cosplaying as a Native American.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Can we situate Madonna in 85?

• 12:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Second album?

• 12:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we are, second album has come out.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:24Yasi Salek?

  And is doing Gangbusters, babe, like, multi-times platinum.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  So that's like a virgin.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  It is.

• 12:30Yasi Salek?

  That's like a virgin. She filmed this a little prior to that.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Okay. So. Because I was gonna say, this is kind of a weird like, little bitty thing to be doing.

• 12:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  If she, because she is on MTV running shit.

• 12:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  By this point. Like, she is at the center of controversy.

• 12:44Yasi Salek?

  But this is filmed in like, 83. So she hadn't.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:47Yasi Salek?

  She had like, her first album had come out, the singles were rolling out, and she gets this like, small part, thanks to John Peters, who was her producer, famously.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  We'll come back to him.

• 12:59Yasi Salek?

  And she, the greatest thing about this movie in terms of Madonna is Crazy for You, which is a song she wrote for the film, which is one of the best Madonna songs of all time. And then The Gambler, which is a little bit forgettable.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I, there's a hilarious episode of The Rewatchables about Vision Quest, featuring Ryan Rusillo. Encourage people to check that out.

• 13:16Yasi Salek?

  Was Ryan Rusillo a wrestler?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Do you mean despite his physique?

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 13:22Yasi Salek?

  I wasn't commenting on his physique.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  It's, that's just for him.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  To do.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a personal pride.

• 13:29Yasi Salek?

  Wow, so there is a chance that rewatchable Desperately Seeking Susan featuring Ossie Salek is in the future.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  I'm not really empowered to make that call.

• 13:36Yasi Salek?

  Do you think Bill is a fan of Desperately Seeking Susan?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, how could you not be?

• 13:40Yasi Salek?

  How could you not be?

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Wonderful movie.

• 13:42Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, that's why, that's why it makes no sense. But they like, they bet on the right horse.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 13:47Yasi Salek?

  Because then when it comes out, it's like, she's like the biggest star, one of the three biggest stars in the world. It's Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna kind of dominate all of 1985 and 86.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I haven't seen this in a long time, like Amanda, and so I think I probably just forgot she was even in it.

• 14:00Yasi Salek?

  It's brief.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  It doesn't feel like a notable part of the movie, really.

• 14:04Yasi Salek?

  It's not. I just want to talk about it because I hadn't seen it and I had a good time.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  You do the work.

• 14:08Yasi Salek?

  I did it. Well, I certainly, some things I didn't do the work, but, okay, let's talk about my fucking.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:15Yasi Salek?

  My heart, Desperately Seeking Susan. Sean, I know you've gone on record that you don't think women should make films, but don't you feel that this is sort of something that goes against your personal beliefs about that?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I never did and I never will say that. And in fact, I continue to platform female voices on a consistent basis throughout my career.

• 14:37Yasi Salek?

  You almost do it too much where it's like the lady doth protest too much.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Oh, so you're platforming us right now?

• 14:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Oh, okay, that's how it is?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 14:44Yasi Salek?

  Sean did actually platform me, so I have to say.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  No, I mean, Susan Seidman, one of the most interesting, important directors in the 1980s. And this is kind of her rising to the mainstream.

• 14:57Yasi Salek?

  Why don't we get more movies like this?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. If Madonna wasn't in this movie, I wonder what the legacy of it would be.

• 15:05Yasi Salek?

  That's true.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Because even though she is, you know, effectively a side character who doesn't really have like a tremendous amount of influence, like it's Roseanne Arquette's movie, right?

• 15:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  And.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  It's not a huge arc that she has. And she's also used perfectly where she doesn't have to carry any of the dramatic tension.

• 15:23Yasi Salek?

  No, she just has to be herself, which is incredibly charismatic and beautiful.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  And she like brings an energy and she's also an object of fascination to the characters in the movie, which she does so naturally. I mean, that is her greatest gift in pop music and movies and just in life. So. Um, it uses her really well. Part of the reason we don't get this because this is like a deeply eighties of its like moment movie in a great way. It's like, when I think about like, oh, wouldn't it have been fun to be, you know, in, in New York or thereabouts in the eighties with, with all of these people, you know, before New York got cleaned up, quote unquote.

• 15:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  This is what I'm imagining, which is obviously like a very shiny, beautiful cleaned up version of it, even though there are, you know, crimes and mobsters in it.

• 16:08Yasi Salek?

  There's mobsters.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 16:10Yasi Salek?

  They stole some Egyptian earrings.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Everybody, you know, all that's at stake is an earrings and you know, everyone's gonna be fine. And it's just, and it's people living out their dreams.

• 16:21Yasi Salek?

  Live out your fantasy here with me.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  In a, in like, in a like slightly gritty, but not scary way.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  So we don't really have, we never had this dream version of the eighties, but part of it is that it's just, it's 2026 now.

• 16:35Yasi Salek?

  I feel like this is like one aspect of what it was like back then, you know, like, I don't think it's like untrue in that sense. It's just like, doesn't, it's not showing the, the totality of what it was like to live in New York in the eighties. It's just showing the fun part.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  I think it communicated to people who were not close to New York, what it seemed like New York could be like.

• 16:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  I think the, the lasting legacy of it is like, you were just wearing those, you know, lace gloves and her style. And there's all that incredible imagery of like interviews outside of arenas before Madonna played of teenage girls dressing up like her in that time. And I feel like this was the first look of hers that people really glommed onto and copied and, and made like mega. There probably were other things from the first record that, but because that, because like a virgin sells like 10 million copies and it's such a massive album. Um, and she's basically playing herself in the movie and using her own personal style in the movie. And then that is like being ported over into the movie, into the Rosanna Arquette character, like this like twinning quality that they have.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  It's a little bit of a tough beat for Rosanna Arquette though, you know, because she's on the precipice of a certain kind of fame. She kind of gets blotted out of her own movie because Madonna's getting so famous at this time.

• 17:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She is so charismatic. You can't not look at her. Roseanne Arquette's amazing. I love her. And she's so great in this part. And the part is just also not as coveted. You don't like, she's cute and she's just kind of like.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Frustrated housewife.

• 18:05Yasi Salek?

  A frustrated housewife has amnesia, you know? It's not, and I think she was a little upset about it. There's some quotes where she.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  She's very good in it, but then Madonna outstrips her in this one. And then this movie reminds me a lot of, or Married to the Mob reminds me a lot of this movie. But that's Michelle Pfeiffer in the, in the Roseanne Arquette, like, you know, category or character. And it's tough when you're going up against Madonna. And then when Michelle Pfeiffer comes to, you know, eat your lunch three years later.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is the step two in the after hours triangulation for Madonna. Where she gets to work with Arquette now and we'll get to, we'll get to the part three shortly.

• 18:49Yasi Salek?

  I just, I love this movie. I think, like you said, they, Susan Seidel moved on the right horse with this. Cause I think she wasn't originally, there was some real actresses that were up for the part. I think Ellen Barkin was one of them. I can't remember the other names.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  They would have been good together, Roseanne Arquette and Ellen Barkin. They have the same kind of, and Ellen Barkin had a, also had a real vibe. A real tractor beam quality back then.

• 19:12Yasi Salek?

  But she, Susan Seidelman pushed Madonna because she knew her from like around town and Dance at Tria and stuff. And it worked. And this movie made all its money back in like three days because Madonna was so famous. Like it might, like to your point, it might not have even been remembered at all if it hadn't have had Madonna. And particularly if it hadn't have had Into the Groove in it. Which is something we talk about in the first Madonna episode, but like, that was not meant, that song never lived anywhere. Originally, but it was just a demo floating around.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Imagine just having into the groove, like on the, on the floor somewhere, being like, we don't need this.

• 19:50Yasi Salek?

  The version that lives in the world and is in this movie was a demo. It was recorded in an apartment in the East Village and they never redid it.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  So crazy. I mean, good for her. Yeah.

• 20:00Yasi Salek?

  Fantastic.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Have you seen Smithereens?

• 20:03Yasi Salek?

  Yes, I love Smithereens.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, it's a very Yasi-coded movie, yeah.

• 20:06Yasi Salek?

  I think she's so cool. Also, this is a thing I'm obsessed with and I should look up their name. And I didn't catch it until I saw the film again, like a year or two ago. Cause I'd seen a bunch when I was a kid, but I hadn't revisited. There's like a scene where, I think it's Roseanne Arquette's character's husband and sister, played by Aunt Jackie from Roseanne, a wonderful actress.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Sure, Laurie Metcalf.

• 20:31Yasi Salek?

  Laurie Metcalf. And they're coming to like, get her out of prison or whatever, or jail. And, and the camera stops and pans across three triplets in exactly the same outfits. Those are the triplets from that documentary about the triplets that were separated at birth.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Really?

• 20:49Yasi Salek?

  Isn't that not insane? And I read it, I was like, oh my God, it's those guys. But that documentary didn't exist yet, so they were just like probably New York fixtures that hung out and Susan Seidel.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Three identical strangers?

• 20:59Yasi Salek?

  Three identical strangers, exactly. And they are in Desperately Seeking Susan. Isn't that a fun little tid? I screamed when I saw it. There's, there's a million great cameos. John Lurie is in this film, Richard Hell is in this film. Um, Anne Carlisle, Rocket's Red Glare, it's great.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  What happened to Dez? Aiden Quinn.

• 21:16Yasi Salek?

  Uh, Aiden Quinn to me, by the way, is one of the hottest men that's ever existed. Especially specifically in this iteration.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  And when I rewatched it, I was like, you know, I don't think, the first time I saw this movie, I really appreciated what was going on there.

• 21:28Yasi Salek?

  Hot cinephile works, uh, runs a.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:31Yasi Salek?

  Runs the thing at a movie theater.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Projector.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  It's a projector.

• 21:37Yasi Salek?

  Hairy chest, we don't see that anymore, that doesn't exist anymore.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Do you think he's in Practical Magic 2?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 21:42Yasi Salek?

  Oh, thank god. Well, he was, you know, Legends of the Fall.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  I'm not seeing it here on Aiden Quinn's Wikipedia.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Tough beat.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  I'm seeing, uh, City from the Sea, starring Dominic Cooper, or Cry from the Sea. Sorry, City from the Sea, I don't know what that is.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  City by the Sea is, uh, no, that's just by the sea, is the Brad Pitt, Angelina film, challenge film.

• 22:06Yasi Salek?

  This goes into something that's just a small through line that doesn't have to do with Madonna that I would love to talk about throughout this, which is that like, we don't have men like this in films anymore.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Irish Americans?

• 22:17Yasi Salek?

  No, just like, Matthew Moundean is a good example, when we get to, um...

• 22:21Speaker 02

  White guys? What are you saying?

• 22:22Yasi Salek?

  No, like...

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Skinny white guys?

• 22:24Yasi Salek?

  Not Chad, kind of, like...

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, skinny white guys.

• 22:28Yasi Salek?

  Like, it's sort of like...

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Thank you, yes, my people.

• 22:31Yasi Salek?

  Skinny, but like, a little off, like, a little unusual, like, Griffin Dunn is a great example when we get to who's that girl, like, these are like, really interesting looking, and I find them quite attractive, but they're not...

• 22:43Speaker 03

  We've still been used all of them, and then...

• 22:45Yasi Salek?

  You didn't make anymore?

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, they didn't make anymore.

• 22:47Yasi Salek?

  They have births anymore?

• 22:49Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 22:49Yasi Salek?

  I'm like, not everyone can be Jacob Elordi, where, can we have some normal guys?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Why is everyone 6'6" and yoked?

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:55Yasi Salek?

  It's all just Austin Butler.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Every morning I wake up, and I do actually say, why is everyone 6'6" and yoked?

• 23:01Yasi Salek?

  I don't think Louis Pullman is kind of a good example.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  But he is yoked, he's secretly yoked.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  I just met him, and he was large.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  And Timothy Chalamet is too confident, he's like, the closest, at least build-wise.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's pretty, though, he's like James Dean, you know? You're talking, this is sort of a more ordinary guy.

• 23:17Yasi Salek?

  Griffin Dunn, I think, is a perfect example.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  But like, ordinary handsome.

• 23:19Yasi Salek?

  To lead a film, when's the last time you saw a man like that lead a film?

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Now they're all just like, the SNL boyfriends, you know, they're all SNL writers, and married to Emma Stone, and, uh...

• 23:29Speaker 02

  The Dave McCray's of the world, yeah.

• 23:31Yasi Salek?

  I think we've lost something, with that, and with everyone fixing their teeth, we've absolutely lost something.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  I agree, well, that, yeah, I mean, Griffin Dunn in particular, like, a lot of imperfections, but just incredibly charismatic, charming person.

• 23:42Yasi Salek?

  So funny, like, can, I thought, I think can totally lead a movie, some of my favorite films.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  They keep popping up in a lot of her movies, for some reason.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  These, the skinny guys?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  The regular guys.

• 23:53Yasi Salek?

  Even honestly, and this can sound like, even Sean Penn, while like, obviously a commanding and hot presence, had like, kind of a fucked up face, like an interesting face.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  No, he was, I mean, his, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think his attractiveness is born of like a crazy confidence. I mean, he's just so in command when he's on screen and feels like he has a secret that no one else is ever gonna learn. And so it's a different kind of thing, but you're right, that he is like a little unconventional looking.

• 24:21Yasi Salek?

  It's just, we don't, it's like not allowed anymore.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  And now that we have older Sean Penn and Sean Penn over the decades to watch him again in the eighties, I'm like, you're a little young and a little scrawny in these.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:32Yasi Salek?

  Fully young and scrawny, yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Not like now, where he's a piece of hide leather, you know.

• 24:38Yasi Salek?

  God bless him. Again, they don't make them like that anymore.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  No, he's living hard. He's living real.

• 24:42Yasi Salek?

  He was best friends with Bukowski. Like, this guy really like lived, he was about that life.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  He's, you know, ripping American spirits and flying to Cuba. I mean, he's.

• 24:52Yasi Salek?

  He's literally in war-torn countries, like with his own hands. He was in Haiti and, he was the mayor of like an establishment in Haiti to like rebuild.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  He donated his Oscar to Ukraine to make more bullets.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  To be melted. Smelted.

• 25:04Yasi Salek?

  I think it's fucking cool.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  We have to follow up on that. I don't actually know whether the bullets have been made.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  You want to know if they've been fired? Have they killed any Russian soldiers? Is that what you're asking?

• 25:12Speaker 03

  No, I just, I don't, you know, much like Tom Cruise sent his Golden Globes back, but like I never saw the tracking number.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  I see.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  I, we also.

• 25:19Yasi Salek?

  You want the FedEx.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I don't, like I didn't see any smelting, so we don't totally know.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  It's fair.

• 25:26Yasi Salek?

  You think Sean should have made a TikTok?

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Is that how you, is that how you word things now? By the way, I don't really know. What is smelting?

• 25:33Yasi Salek?

  It sounds like it's melting and you can mess it up.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  I'm using the word, like I definitely know that's what you would do to melt down an Oscar into bullets.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Was the implication also that they would be gold bullets? Are Oscars made of gold?

• 25:45Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  They can't be, right? They're way too valuable at this point. Gold prices? Way up there.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I see. You want to go back to the gold standard?

• 25:52Speaker 03

  Well, no, I think many people do.

• 25:54Yasi Salek?

  An Oscar can't be made of gold.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  I don't think it's gold.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  No, I don't think it's actually made of gold. I don't, it's not, maybe not even plated.

• 25:59Yasi Salek?

  If that was, they'd be like, oh.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Oscars made of gold. Is this what, is this what you wanted on ban split?

• 26:05Yasi Salek?

  This is everything I always want on ban split.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Solid bronze.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Can you, and plated in 24 karat gold, according to AI.

• 26:13Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, gold does not make good bullets, as far as I know. I'm not, I'm not like a weapons expert.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  I'm happily not an expert on that, nor do I want to be.

• 26:19Yasi Salek?

  Sean Penn might be, we should ask him.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:21Yasi Salek?

  Um, speaking of Sean Penn.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  He's got three of them, or he had three, until he started smelting them.

• 26:25Yasi Salek?

  Well, he, he's still hot. You can't take them away from him, just he physically doesn't own them.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  What is smelting?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  You mean like emotionally?

• 26:30Yasi Salek?

  Just, it's a, it's a, it's a pride. It's a, it's an award, it's an achievement.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product.

• 26:41Yasi Salek?

  I feel like we need to get Jack Sanders to drop in, even though he's not working on this episode, that Amanda's science phone.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Science corner and engineering.

• 26:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Maybe we should rebrand it to Woman in STEM.

• 26:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Amanda's STEM corner.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  I think that's a little alienating for all the men, you know? I feel like we want to participate. We want to be able to.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Are they here, listening to this podcast?

• 26:57Yasi Salek?

  Are they in this room?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Maybe not on this episode.

• 27:00Yasi Salek?

  I believe in my audience. I think they can, they can roll with it. Okay, we are speaking of Sean Penn.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:06Yasi Salek?

  So we will speak of Sean Penn, because the next film.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Ew.

• 27:11Yasi Salek?

  It's a tough one. It's Shanghai Surprise, 1986.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Sure, yes.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  I'd never seen this before. I watched this for this episode.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  I hadn't either.

• 27:19Yasi Salek?

  I hadn't either.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Um.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Can't say I did it.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  I think there's a reason why, right? You know, I watched, uh, I watched a documentary last year about handmade films, which was this production company that George Harrison started.

• 27:31Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Which is, was a great production company.

• 27:34Yasi Salek?

  Did they mention?

• 27:34Speaker 02

  And, excuse me?

• 27:35Yasi Salek?

  Do they mention Shanghai Surprise in it?

• 27:37Speaker 02

  I believe it comes up, I, I can't remember. There's a lot of time spent on like, the Python films and a lot of the more interesting film, like, uh, With Neil and I was produced by handmade.

• 27:47Yasi Salek?

  All time.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Uh, How to Get Ahead and Advertising, the other, um, guy, what is the actor's name? Richard E. Grant.

• 27:53Yasi Salek?

  Yep.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Um.

• 27:54Yasi Salek?

  I love him.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  They had this kind of ra, I think, uh, Long Good Friday, the Bob Hoskins movie was produced by handmade. They had this incredible stretch of movies of producing, producing British films in the 1980s. And Harrison just like bankrolled it. It was just his money paying for everything.

• 28:08Yasi Salek?

  Is he the best Beatle? Did we, did we all agree?

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Well, he had such a cool genius. And this was one of the things that he did.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  He's the best Beatle for you. And I think that that's right.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Oh, good take.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my Beatle.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  You are, you are George Harrison.

• 28:21Yasi Salek?

  I'm not like other girls.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Um, but George is super cool.

• 28:25Yasi Salek?

  Super cool. I also love his solo work.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  And he produced this movie as well, and he wrote music for this movie.

• 28:31Yasi Salek?

  But I think afterwards, he was like, no, I didn't.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Well, so I had also never seen Shanghai Surprise. I knew that it wasn't, I knew there was a reason that I hadn't seen it. So when I sat down, I was not expecting like one of the great works of cinema. I did not know that George Harrison, um, him was a producer on it until the credits started rolling. And I just was like, oh no, George, no, I don't want you like, you know, wrapped up in this. But his name is in the credits about 14 times.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  It is. He wrote five songs for this movie.

• 29:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay, this is gonna come up for me a bunch of times in Madonna's Watergate. Like, it could have been good. It could, I don't think it could have been like a great work of cinema. But it could have been like a fun time at the movies. And it's just really not. And that's, that's confusing to me. She, while maybe not like the world's greatest acting performance here. She's so beautiful. Like that made the, that made the watching for me at like doable. Because she's so stunningly beautiful on camera. It's just like the blonde hair and the looks and everything. Sean Penn is absolutely phoning it in from 17 states away. Um, I believe he was.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  And they charged for long distance then?

• 29:47Yasi Salek?

  They did. I believe he has, he has confirmed that he was drunk almost the entire time.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  I feel like it's not that he's phoning it in. I feel like he's just off. He's giving like a very messy performance.

• 29:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  The case like, they both made some big choices with the characters in terms of their performance styles. And they're going for this kind of. It's very similar to the next movie that we'll talk about where it's a very old fashioned kind of comedy.

• 30:10Yasi Salek?

  Well, that's what she wanted to do, right? She wanted to do like 1930s screwball. She loved Carol Lombard. That was like her north star.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Which I think is like a great idea.

• 30:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  And on paper makes a ton of sense. And even to your point, I agree. She looks like very beautiful in Shanghai Surprise and, and even in like Who's That Girl? Because that styling and that, you know, that era of physical presentation really, really works on Madonna, fits on what she's playing with in her like music and specifically her tours and is like a great reference point, but they don't have whatever magic it is to bring it. And they're also mismatched.

• 30:52Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna make an argument that I think Who's That Girl is good. I genuinely think it's a good movie and we'll get that. Shanghai Surprise is bad. The, the performances are not great. There's no chemistry somehow, even though you're married to each other. I am not buying that you like each other at all. Sean Penn's beard is put on with mascara.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:12Yasi Salek?

  I was like, where was the budget for? He looks insane. Um, the story makes little to no sense.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 31:18Yasi Salek?

  There's high key racism. It is just.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Quite alarming, yeah.

• 31:23Yasi Salek?

  And I know that this is one where like they had a horrible time making it and like it's bad because everyone hated each other besides Sean and Madonna. Like the, the crew and the director hated Madonna and Sean. Madonna and Sean hated the crew and the directors. It was freezing cold and it had, it was supposed to be summer. So she was always wearing these like little dresses and like, again, she's not a seasoned actress. So like add that to the situation. Sean Penn again, drunk. Like it's just, it's a recipe for disaster.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Jim Goddard, the director like didn't really make a lot of feature films. He did a lot of British television. And so like, it doesn't really feel like the steadiest hand is there either.

• 31:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally. That's what I'm saying. Madonna Innocent. Also, I feel like they could have put a few other. They're like bigger actor or better actors in it. They're not, their, their supporting cast isn't amazing either, you know?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  There's some familiar folks like, like Victor Wong, who is in a ton of Carpenter movies in the eighties and is really funny. Like I feel, he's the kind of actor who fits this tone well. You know, Paul Freeman, who's the bad guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There, there's some memorable British figures here. It's just like this movie and Who's That Girl both are totally doing the thing you're describing where she's trying to do a Carol Lombard. Kind of like ditzy blonde that's smarter than everybody else move, but that feels a little bit closer to Judy Holiday movies to me from the 1950s. And the reason those characters are the way that they are is like, that, that was a kind of contemporaneous style of performance. And she's trying to bring a very old fashioned performance style, which she really loves and admires.

• 32:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And put it into, this is a period piece, but the pacing is more modern and then Who's That Girl? It's a contemporary movie.

• 32:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  And you're like, why are you acting like somebody who was born in 1908? And it's never really explained, you know?

• 33:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Like, it's like, we're just kind of hoping that her charisma will carry.

• 33:04Yasi Salek?

  Well, I thought in Who's That, okay, so I'll say, I think Who's That Girl works. I think that people are like unfairly harsh on it. I think it is absolutely super fun. I think Griffin Dunn is amazing. I think the story is interesting. It's just like, to me, like a fun eighties movie. That like has all the best parts of like what I like about this kind of film where they're like, oh, we don't have CGI. We trained a panther and we put diamonds around his neck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Its name is Murray. I think the screwball Carol Lombard thing she's doing here works a lot better than the Shanghai Surprise one. Cause it is closer to who she is, at least like stylistically. And she's just being, it's not a real person. It's not supposed to, like she's a cartoon character, you know? Right. And it's kind of charming to me.

• 33:47Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if some people would put off by it, but like, it's a very nice, like, it's, it's a very old trope, right? Like the like manic pixie insane woman and this like staid like lawyer who's like trying to do the right thing. I thought it was, I thought, I really liked it. I don't understand why it was so, I think Shanghai Surprise is. Ill will bled into this film. That's how I feel.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, I wish Who's That Girl were really, really good. I mean, I don't dislike it. I like it, but it is borrowing, you know, I, I like Madonna, really love all those screwball comedies. This in the, in the, the Panther has a direct reference to Bringing a Baby, which is prob- probably my favorite of the, the old time romantic comedies. And it, you know, it's a similar structure of Daffy off the wall, a woman coming in to disrupt the state's social structure of, you know, of a man.

• 34:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  And the, the problem is that the, the Madonna movie and then the Griffin Dunn movie, again, they're just in different movies and it is supposed to be like sort of a worlds colliding or like a two fish out of water being flipped structure, but they don't ever actually meet. You know, they're almost like just acting against each other on split screens. And that's why, I don't know, I, I, I like the two halves of the movie. They don't meet and that's what makes me sad about it.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  I think it's a really hard tone to hit correctly. And it's, so James Foley directed the movie.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  He directed a bunch of really good movies.

• 35:24Yasi Salek?

  But not, not here. He had only done, he had only done the Sean Penn.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  At close range, yes. And I, I wonder if that's why he got this job.

• 35:33Yasi Salek?

  He did.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  He had just worked with Sean Penn.

• 35:34Yasi Salek?

  So the, kind of the context here, which is interesting is Madonna's extremely powerful now. And this is a Warner Brothers film and she's a Warner Brothers artist. So she got this film made, like wholesale. She got the script. She chose James Foley as the director because that was Sean's best friend and she trusted him. He had done a couple of her music videos at this point, too. She changed the name of the film. It was supposed to be called Slammer. And she like was writing music and she's like, that doesn't work for a song. I wrote Who's That Girl? This movie is called Who's That Girl? And they were like, Warner Brothers was like, whatever you want, babe. You're one of our biggest artists.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just, if you look at, I really, really like James Foley. He directed Glenn Ross.

• 36:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  He directed After Dark, My Suite. He, he, he's kind of in, he's kind of like, um. Kind of a sub Fincher. He's like, he was, he's friends, he was friends with Fincher.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Um, and he worked on House of Cards. And you know, Fincher obviously is a huge figure in the Madonna image making history, which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit. And he didn't make any movies that were even, not a drop like Who's That Girl? Like every movie he made was a hard boiled thriller.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was probably just like a bad, like she wanted him because she felt comfortable, but perhaps this is not his wheelhouse yet.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  But it's like not anyone specifically's fault. It's just like sometimes the, the, the, the cream doesn't rise, you know, and this one just kind of feels like it's just like unfinished. I will say, Havelin Morris, who plays Griffin Dunn's fiancee, is like one of my all time movie crushes. She's also in Gremlins 2 and she's the blonde, she's the blonde from 16 Candles, but I love her as a redhead.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Of course you do. Of course, yeah.

• 37:05Yasi Salek?

  And she's great. And also the little subplot of her is like so great. I just, I get it. It's not a wonderful movie, but I, I think it was very harshly criticized. Like it was just, it was like just a fine, normal movie.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:18Yasi Salek?

  That wasn't as bad as people made it out to.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:20Yasi Salek?

  I just think they were, they were like taking on the Shanghai subplot.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  But it's also so.

• 37:24Yasi Salek?

  It wasn't amazing.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Madonna in 87.

• 37:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Where are we?

• 37:28Yasi Salek?

  We have put out True Blue, which is a fucking smash. It's like 11 times platinum.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:32Yasi Salek?

  She's married to Sean Penn. That's what True Blue is about.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:35Yasi Salek?

  She's huge. She done Live Aid, you know, like she's a massive, massive star.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Right. So is any of it just that?

• 37:42Yasi Salek?

  A hundred percent.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  You know, she is like doing these things on the side.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Was in that close range.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Totally forgot about that.

• 37:49Yasi Salek?

  We didn't talk about it because she's not in it, but.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:51Yasi Salek?

  Lipstall is so fun. She wrote in like, it was supposed to be a song for a different movie and then she, her collaborator brought it to her and she like, was like, oh, we can put it in James's movie. She wrote the lyrics in like five minutes and that was it.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  True Blue is crazy.

• 38:03Yasi Salek?

  So is it like?

• 38:03Speaker 03

  One of the best albums of all time. Is it like a little, like stick to music, you know?

• 38:07Yasi Salek?

  Okay, that's what I was, I think it's a, I think it's a hundred percent them being like, oh, like you can't do it. Like Madonna gets this her whole career. Like.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:15Yasi Salek?

  It's never just like on the basis of what she's doing. It's like, don't get too big for your britches.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  I think also.

• 38:22Yasi Salek?

  Don't try to be a movie star too.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  I think post Papa Don't Preach, she takes on a very like fiery valence in the culture, right? So like every time she does something, people are like, hold on, maybe not this.

• 38:32Yasi Salek?

  The nude photos have come out because they come out right after Live Aid and that was like a huge scandal that she's, has like 18 pages of nude photos, which by the way are like so tasteful. They're for art class, you know?

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:46Yasi Salek?

  Do you have them at home right now?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  No, I've seen them though.

• 38:49Yasi Salek?

  And like A Virgin was incredibly scandalous, that performance, you know?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:53Yasi Salek?

  I think Annie Lennox called her like a whore or something. Like it was like really, it was all, everything she's doing.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Annie Lennox wants to take that one back.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that was, I mean, here's the thing with Madonna. I remember this very well because my mom was a huge pop star fan. And she hated Madonna, really just hated her.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  And my mom didn't really hate a lot. So it was always very memorable to me that she was just not into it. And I think that there was something about people who were raised Christian, who like Madonna just got under their skin.

• 39:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  You know, and that she was trying to provoke them to call her a slut. Like that was like a thing that Madonna, very, I think cannily, very wisely, was kind of, she was playing with. She was like confronting people with their discomfort.

• 39:37Yasi Salek?

  I think, yes, but I, I think like, also very funny how different, my mother was obsessed with Madonna. And that's why it's like the first artist I was ever aware, I was like raised only knowing Madonna music. But I think her thing was that she was very authentically entrenched in religion herself. She was raised very Catholic. And so what she was doing was working out her own stuff. And it just happened to really trigger some other people. Of course, she's very savvy and she knows what she's doing.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was very good at getting a reaction.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Like a prayer.

• 40:06Yasi Salek?

  But she wasn't doing it inauthentically. She was getting a reaction while working out her own art.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  But she is also, at some point, like the machine becomes self-aware. Not that Madonna is always very self-aware, but she's doing it a little on purpose. By the time you get to Like a Prayer, which is when I logged on and my family logged on. And I remember Madonna being one of the great early taboos that I was just absolutely obsessed with. And then being told like, well, do you know what Like a Prayer is really about? And you know, all the ones.

• 40:36Yasi Salek?

  You were like a sex and you're like oral sex, low jobs. Definitely not. It's about religious ecstasy, but.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's trying, she's trying to provoke. That's part of her artistry.

• 40:46Yasi Salek?

  This is like, was I raised by wolves? Cause my, my parents were like, this is fine. We love Madonna. You can have like the Madonna naked smoking poster on your wall. They were like, we're gonna watch, like, one of the best. We're gonna watch, I don't remember, it wasn't basic instinct.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Tower Records and I was like, how is this legal?

• 41:03Yasi Salek?

  It might not have been, might have been smut. My parents let me watch like full R rated, I think we watched Basic Instinct together, I think it was like 10. Like, my parents were just not, so whatever reason, like, it didn't-

• 41:13Speaker 02

  It was an outlier for me.

• 41:14Yasi Salek?

  I don't think they were being cool or whatever.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  I was allowed to watch R rated movies too, I, you know, it was a fairly permissive experience. I think she just, something got under her skin about her, and I do think that that's kind of, that's been true of Madonna for decades, you know?

• 41:25Yasi Salek?

  I think that's part of why she's one of the most important artists of our lifetime, because she, she made people think. And in a way that pop music hadn't done before, she pushed people to like, have to like reconsider things. And whether that meant that they didn't agree or agreed, like, that wasn't really happening much with pop, especially female pop musicians before that, you know? Yeah. Love her, ride or die, ride or die. Who's that girl innocent? Love who's that girl, okay. Um, James Foley probably would rather forget. Also, did you notice Stanley Tucci is in the movie for like one second, he doesn't speak?

• 41:59Speaker 03

  I did not notice that.

• 42:00Yasi Salek?

  He's the other dock worker, or maybe he does talk, hmm, he's the, when they get the panther, the wildcat or whatever.

• 42:11Yasi Salek?

  All right, Bloodhounds of Broadway, 1989. Directed by Howard Brookner, were you familiar with Howard Brookner's work?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:20Yasi Salek?

  He didn't do a lot because he died before this film even came out. He, he had done a couple of things before, and one was a documentary about William S. Burroughs.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 42:31Yasi Salek?

  Um, he was kind of part of the Andy Warhol crowd, so Madonna knew him from like back then.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  I've seen Burroughs, the doc, yeah, it's a good film.

• 42:37Yasi Salek?

  He was great, and he already had AIDS while they're making this film. And he basically like went off of medication, because it was so important for him to just finish the film. And he finished it, but he died before it came out. Also, I think it was pretty heavily recut. This is, this is a black and white film based on four Damon Runyon stories.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wouldn't, I, I would say, applies to this, my, uh, my general theory on short stories, which is, you know, write a novel.

• 43:08Yasi Salek?

  I love short stories, but maybe don't make a film.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they're not totally, they, they don't come together.

• 43:17Yasi Salek?

  I just found it hard to follow. I was like, I'm not, it's really hard for me, maybe it's my diminished attention span, but I was like, I'm not totally sure what's going on here. Who is that again? Why are, he sold his feet to the scientists to pay his gambling debt?

• 43:32Speaker 02

  I, I didn't revisit this. I've seen this before for the episode.

• 43:36Yasi Salek?

  You remember Randy Quaid selling his feet to science?

• 43:37Speaker 02

  I don't. I remember.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  You understand. You've done that yourself.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  I remember Rutger Hauer trying to do 1920s New York comedy, you know, like old, old, old style gangster comedy.

• 43:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  And it, to me, it's like, for Madonna's purposes, it's the same problem that these other movies have, which is like, she keeps trying to be a comic actress.

• 43:59Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Instead of an actress who can bring comic levity to dramatic circumstances, which she figures out later in her career, but trying to be like the funny dame, which is the persona she keeps going for.

• 44:11Yasi Salek?

  I don't know that she was trying to, that's the, that's the script. Yeah, well, yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  I mean, she's picking the parts, or you said she's got all this power.

• 44:17Yasi Salek?

  You're right.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  And it's, it's interesting that she keeps being led to this, because it's the, to me, it feels like the cultural inverse of what makes her such an interesting presence as a musician.

• 44:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Where she is like, kind of on the cutting edge of something, or at least it feels like it, or, you know, there's much discourse about how much she was sort of adopting other cultures and, and, and, and shooting what, that, what they had built through her prism, but this is all this like old fashioned stuff, that it's cool that you like it, but there's, there's nothing really modern about what she's trying to do with it. And so I think these movies, these kind of early stage films are, all have like kind of lousy reputations, because it's like she's trying on clothes that don't quite fit her.

• 44:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I, I mean, the only thing I like about this, but it's not like terrible, it's, it's fine. And I watched it, I was like, oh, Matt Dillon. She did it at like scale, because she loved this, this director and his work, and it was kind of like a favor, I think, which is quite kind, you know? And I think she was at his bedside when he died. And just that, that stuff is nice, you know? I don't think she was like, this is my proudest moment as an actress, but. And I don't think this is her proudest moment as an actress either, 1990s Dick Tracy.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Sean, speak on it.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Well, I worked on me.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:25Yasi Salek?

  She's great at it.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  She's good. She's, you know, it's, it is the best use of her trying to recreate 30s, 40s, you know.

• 45:35Yasi Salek?

  You know why?

• 45:36Speaker 03

  Because the whole, the movie is not just reheating it. It is a, it's an adaptation of a comic book, but it's also referencing a lot of noirs from, and knows how it is using the references and knows how it is using her and puts her in a position to succeed.

• 45:52Yasi Salek?

  I, I think it's just that she, this character has like a sinister, sinister is not the right word, a transgressive streak, which so does Madonna, and it really works here. Whereas I don't, this, this character's before where she's trying to be this sort of like 30s thing, didn't quite have that like darkness.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:13Yasi Salek?

  And she has that. So it like works kind of perfectly here.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's um, her realizing that instead of Carol Lombardi, she should be trying to be Barbara Stanwyck. That like, there's a femme fatale quality to Madonna, that she's so alluring and she seems so intelligent that, that that is the, that's the archetype for the femme fatale. You need an actress who conveys a kind of like sensuality and an allure to a dumb guy to kind of bring this guy into your web and then spin the web around him and get what you really want. And she has like a, has like a popular figure, I think, sometimes communicated that really well. And Warren Beatty knows a thing or two about getting spun in a web, you know, like he.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Or spinning a web.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, they spun each other a little bit.

• 46:55Yasi Salek?

  Do you, do you think a femme fatale also has a quality of vulnerability? Or is that not part of the character?

• 47:01Speaker 02

  I think she brings it in this. I think that might be a little bit of a flaw of the movie is that it, it's trying to be a little too PG at times. And so the movie doesn't really totally follow through on some of its more kind of noir shading. Like it's trying to have, what Amanda was saying, it's trying to be both. It's trying to be this comic strip thing and it's also trying to be. A really hard boiled story.

• 47:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Trying to have guys with like lots of weird makeup and funny names, but also people being shot in cold blood. I don't know, I love this movie because when if you when I was eight when this came out, I saw it in theaters and I was like the colors and the comic book stylings and you know, the dashing quality like I didn't realize that Beatty was way too old for the movie when I saw it. I was like, that guy's cool. You know, I couldn't really read it. And so it just kind of sits inside a very nostalgic place for me, but Breathless Mahoney is probably along with Jessica Rabbit, one of those like activating agents.

• 47:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  In my mind of like, what am I drawn to? What am I attracted to? And she is, she's, even though she's riffing on something that happened 50 years earlier.

• 47:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  For me, it was the first time I ever saw it.

• 48:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Right. And it is a riff rather than just a Xerox copy.

• 48:05Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Which is what makes it successful.

• 48:07Yasi Salek?

  It's like when I saw a material quote video and I was like, this is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because I don't have never seen that film and this is what that is now. I don't know what that is, but this is that.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  No, same thing.

• 48:17Yasi Salek?

  Uh, Warren Beatty, a little too old.

• 48:21Yasi Salek?

  Or in insane time where you could get actors of this caliber to like put on like insane prosthetics and look like full clown show.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:30Yasi Salek?

  And come and do like Al Pacino looking like that. Nuts.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was an amazing act of auteurship.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. At what point does their relationship start? Is it before filming, during, after? Like, are they?

• 48:45Yasi Salek?

  It's before filming.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:46Yasi Salek?

  Just before. It's basically like right after she divorces Sean Penn.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:50Yasi Salek?

  And gets cast in this and then they pick up. It's kind of like, from what I read, that was like Warren Beatty's sort of like thing. Like he would like.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  I mean, I, he had many things, but I believe that that was one of them.

• 49:01Yasi Salek?

  13,000 is what the book I read said. Um, so they're dating. Madonna has talked about this, that she had a horrible time making this movie, that Warren Beatty would like sort of push the scenes too far and like, there's like some, she has some memories of like Al Pacino like really like laying into her and, and Warren Beatty being like, again, again, until she like started fully actually crying on set. Which is actually really crazy to think about because that's what Al Pacino looked like while he was doing it.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:30Yasi Salek?

  Also, she said that he insisted that she gain 10 pounds, like, and would take her to the costume store and kept being like, tighter, tighter, cut it lower. And she was like, I felt like a piece of meat. Like, she didn't have a nice, she didn't have a nice time making the film.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:46Yasi Salek?

  She also did this for scale because she wanted the, the parts so bad, but she negotiated a percentage of the proceeds of the film and the soundtrack. So she made quite a bit of money in the end because she's very smart.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Very smart.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Good job.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Movie was a big hit.

• 50:00Yasi Salek?

  Big hit. And one small important thing is that for the, just the Madonna arc, is that because three of the songs she has to sing in the film are the Stephen Sondheim songs, she had to get a vocal coach.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 50:12Yasi Salek?

  And so this is like the first iteration of her sort of elevating her voice to another level because she had to, like, she couldn't, the rhythmic changes and like the melodic changes of Stephen Sondheim songs were like so complicated that she like

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:26Yasi Salek?

  needed help to do them.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  She needed a different training.

• 50:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then she made her inspired by songs. This is not technically a film in the sense of it being a movie, but I think we have to talk about Truth or Dare.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  No, that is a film. It's not like a scripted.

• 50:43Yasi Salek?

  It's not scripted.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  It is a feature documentary.

• 50:45Yasi Salek?

  I just say that because this is probably the only one we're going to talk about. She made a couple more of these, but they're

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never saw those.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:50Yasi Salek?

  They're, they're good.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:51Yasi Salek?

  If you want to see your boy Guy Ritchie, um, he's in the next one after this. I want to tell you a secret, but.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  This is a great movie.

• 50:58Yasi Salek?

  I think this is the greatest music documentary of all time.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  I agree. This is absolutely classic. And I did a similar thing where I did all of the, when we do these big rewatching projects, I save something special for the very end. And so I, I went out with some friends, had several drinks and then came home and was like, I'm watching Truth or Dare in fall. And it was, I mean, it's a delight.

• 51:18Yasi Salek?

  I was so jealous. I was like, I should have done that. I should have done.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  I think it's a perfect blend of. Like, stage managed moments, real moments, and performance footage. Like, the blend of those things, where like, there's some things she wants to accomplish, that she's kind of performing for the camera. There's other moments where you're like, these people are clearly just hanging out. Like, and the fact that they're hanging out means you're getting this Verite gold. And then, I think a lot of the performance stuff from the tour is really, really good.

• 51:44Yasi Salek?

  It's amazing. It's really, really, really.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  And you're seeing her kind of, that, this is really her, I think, at the height of her powers. Where she's got like, a 10-year catalog. She is the biggest pop star in the world. She's a better dancer and like, stage show person, I think, maybe than I had remembered.

• 51:59Yasi Salek?

  She's, I mean, she's a trained dancer. She's an athlete. Like, once you start watching, you're like, this is an incredible feat that she can do this.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  There's not, and there, but there's not a lot of, God, how to frame this? Like, this is before the kind of boy band and Britney craze, where those people were sort of like, dancers first in some ways, before being vocalists. But it's not quite, you know, like, Whitney Houston couldn't do this. You know, like, there's kind of a middle ground here, where she has some vocal chops. She's never like, best known for that, but she has so many good songs at this point. She's got like, 12 or 14 songs. You're like, I desperately need to hear this tonight. And she's just, her and her, her crew of dancers are so good, that it's just so visually compelling and great material for a concert video doc, as opposed to like, watching the Eagles perform or something, where you're like, oh, that guy's playing guitar.

• 52:46Yasi Salek?

  This is the tour that, I think, created the blueprint for all pop tours going forward. Like, this is, was not a thing, really. Where like, you'd have multiple worlds, and like, all these like, costume changes. And there was like, an art to it, where you're, it was theater, you know? Like, this was very Madonna, sort of like, minted that. She had done it a little bit up to here, but this is when she hadn't money and ability to do it. And resources. She was, she wasn't the first person to use the wireless mic. That was Kate Bush, actually. But she made it like, a thing. Like, people called it the Madonna mic. You know, so she could move and go freely. I thought it was really interesting that this was supposed to be directed by David Fincher.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:28Yasi Salek?

  But he was hired to do David, Alien 3. Okay.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Interesting sliding door.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  You know.

• 53:33Yasi Salek?

  I think, I don't, as much as I love David Fincher, I'm a big Dave stan over here. I don't think it would have been as good if he had made it.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Do completely disagree.

• 53:41Yasi Salek?

  I don't, I just, I think that, I think Madonna had a different relationship with him. Which would have yielded.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  She was like impressed by him and sort of maybe even a little intimidated.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I don't know if you get the candor of all of the.

• 53:57Yasi Salek?

  And I think they might have had a very intimate relationship, you know what I mean? And I just think it would have been so different. And the kid that she hired was like 23 years old. Alec Chisholm, who had, she had been, she's so good at this. Like, one of her greatest skills, Madonna's identifying collaborators and plucking them from like very early on. She had seen his senior thesis at Harvard, which was like a pop opera version of Wuthering Heights.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  Which actually was, was gonna be made at some point. And there's Rain, Madonna's Rain song was for that adaptation that never got made. But anyways, and she was really into him, she'd been following his career. And so when David Fincher couldn't do it, she was like, I want that guy. Which is incre- an incredible leap of faith for.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  But so when it starts, is it just the concert doc?

• 54:44Yasi Salek?

  No, so they, they did wanna make a concert doc and then she was like, no, that was gonna be on HBO.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  Got it, okay.

• 54:51Yasi Salek?

  It was a kind of a regular documentary. And then, then she was like, I wanna do something totally different. So HBO was like, no. There, there was an HBO, a totally separate HBO concert film that was like incredibly huge hit. So then she has Alec Chisholm, who's like, I wanna film, which I think, I think works so incredibly well. Having the black and white and the color be like, the BTS is black and white. The concert footage is color and putting it in these two different worlds. But New Line Cinema was like, we're not paying for anything in black and white. And they pulled their money. And so Madonna funded it with her own money, four million dollars.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  Well. Good job.

• 55:26Yasi Salek?

  Good job.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  I mean, so many iconic moments. Obviously, Kevin Costner, that was neat. That was really neat, you know, just like, oh.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Good shit.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  But also, just a really good snapshot of Costner at that moment and what the nineties were like.

• 55:39Yasi Salek?

  She apologized to him publicly at a concert many years later.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  What does she do, like?

• 55:43Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  I mean, she's right in the moment.

• 55:46Yasi Salek?

  She said, she was like, she was like, I'm literally up there, like, bearing my soul and you called it neat?

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, also just like, read the room, sir, which, you know, I don't know whether Kevin Costner could do then or now.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Just let horny white guys be horny. You know, what's he gonna pretend to be cool?

• 56:00Yasi Salek?

  It made a great moment in the film.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  It did.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  At the very beginning, when she's giving, uh, when the sound isn't working. And she's like, if we can't get someone up here to fix the sound, I'm not doing the show, which I think about a lot.

• 56:14Yasi Salek?

  I'm like, I need.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Extreme Amanda energy.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  Well, and then pays the way for Beyonce, what is the point of giving more notes until I see my notes, until I see my notes applied, you know? But this isn't all started Madonna, truth or dare.

• 56:24Yasi Salek?

  I found it very inspiring. I've been trying to, I've been trying to bring more of that into my life. You, how do you accomplish greatness?

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:32Yasi Salek?

  Being nice?

• 56:33Speaker 03

  You don't actually see that much live footage of women of any kind giving feedback.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  So.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  I'm glad you guys were inspired. That's awesome.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 56:41Yasi Salek?

  Bust her ass to make this thing and there's, her mic cuts out, I will fucking burn this place down.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's at the beginning, but then there's the mic that cuts out during the show. And they're just like, well, we don't have any answers. And she's like, but the, she just, like, why? Why is this happening this way? She's not mean. She's just kind of.

• 56:59Yasi Salek?

  She's direct.

• 57:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, keeps asking. I, I really appreciated it.

• 57:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The dancers are incredible.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  They're wonderful.

• 57:05Yasi Salek?

  They were cast, I think, specifically for their personalities. So, and you see that kind of shine through. This is one of the first, I mean, this is a hallmark of Madonna's career in general. Like, we said it on the first episode, but she was the first person to distribute, um, printed material about safe sex in relation to AIDS before the government. Like, a full year before the government. But like, showing gayness. In a film like this, in this way, where like, not only was it shown, it wasn't the point. Like, it wasn't like, oh, we're making a big deal out of it. It's just, people are gay and that's part of what happens in life. It was so, so major, and I know to a lot of young gay men who saw this, like, really important.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think she was an incredibly inclusive performer, who already, I think, in some ways, very fortunately for her, because she was so comfortable being confrontational, never worried about people saying like, oh, well, this is for these people, or this is for that. Like, she felt very comfortable bringing it in. I, I think that both the safe sex and queer identity and its relationship to pop stardom, she's like, probably the central figure in that story from a pop culture perspective. And I think we're all the age too, where all of those things, we all felt like, maybe more comfortable, I think we were scared out of doing a lot of things because of some, some of the way things were communicated to us.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  But also, we felt like very situated and more comfortable culturally around those ideas, because there were these sort of avatars who were showing it in a way that it had really not been shown in a cultural way, at such scale, in the seventies or even the early nineteen eighties. So, you know, I don't know if she claims credit for something particularly, but she kind of makes the world like, just a tiny little bit safer for some of this stuff because of the incredible platform that she had.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  And, and she just wouldn't be talked out of it. Another great scene is when, I, I believe it's in Toronto, where the police show up and they're like, we're going to arrest you if you perform like a virgin with the masturbation. And she's been, she's told this by her brother, and she's like, so what is that? Like, what are they gonna do? They're gonna like, book me? And she was like, how are we defining masturbation? And she's like, taking it seriously, but also, it's like, you shouldn't have told me. Like, I'm gonna do it, I don't care.

• 59:20Yasi Salek?

  I found that part really savvy too, because I think that's probably one of the parts that was a little more manufactured.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:25Yasi Salek?

  But, but great.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  But it's only thirty-five years ago that it's like, indecency laws in Canada are potentially threatening her ability to do what she wants.

• 59:33Yasi Salek?

  There was still antisodomy laws in like, thirty states at this point, you know, like. Yeah, it's also just, no one's ever looked more beautiful in the history of the world than Madonna looks at this time in her career, and this is just one of the best. One of the like, more controversial moments, but like, now that I've seen it a couple of times, I feel like I've like, come around to a different perspective on it, is the part with her hairstylist. Do you remember this part where she comes and says she was drugged?

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why is it controversial?

• 1:00:02Yasi Salek?

  Cause she was raped and

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:00:04Yasi Salek?

  Everyone kind of laughs.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:00:07Yasi Salek?

  It's like a very awkward, like-

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, but Madonna is like, we need to figure out what happened, right?

• 1:00:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it's just like that initial reaction.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:00:14Yasi Salek?

  But then like, it's so authentic because that's what it really is like when something like that happens. Like, it's not a after TV movie or whatever where like, everyone is suddenly like, oh my god. Let's call the police. Let's get a rape kit. It's like, nobody knows what to do with the information. So the more times I've watched it, I've been like, wow, it's incredible they left that in because it is so real. Anyway, it's just one of the greatest things that's ever existed.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  I like it when all the moms come to visit. And take that, when the dad who hadn't seen him, we hadn't seen him like five years comes to visit with it, it's so nice. Great, but True or Dare is iconic.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Do you think it's her best movie?

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  I was thinking about this last night when I was watching it.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  With her in the center.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  I didn't finish it last night, unfortunately.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Oh, that's, that's your loss.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Well, I had a fourteen hour day at Disneyland, so, you know.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  I don't, well, we- We choose our choices.

• 1:01:08Yasi Salek?

  I'm not gonna disrespect her film career like that and I'm gonna say no, because this is a documentary and she's had some great films.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Okay, let's find them.

• 1:01:16Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna say it. Shadows and Fog, it's not this one.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:19Yasi Salek?

  Um, nineteen ninety-one. I actually had not seen this one, so I did watch it. Um, I liked it.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  It was fine, but when we started talking about Bloodhounds of Broadway, I was like, wait, this isn't the Woody Allen one, so-

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  She keeps doing this.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Um, not her best performance. Like, she's in a tricky spot.

• 1:01:36Yasi Salek?

  She's barely even in it.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Only a couple of scenes, right? She's up against Malkovich. Malkovich, really just a god.

• 1:01:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  And, like, they don't have chemistry.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  And she's trying to do another old-fashioned-y thing.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  And he's doing his kind of like, flip-removed Malkovich thing. And I don't know. Did these people ever fuck? Like, they didn't.

• 1:01:54Yasi Salek?

  He's in a play, she's in the circus. I don't know what's happening there.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, once again, carnies, I sort of turned off, so.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not your thing.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, not my thing.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Kind of a nice-

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  Are you into carnivals?

• 1:02:05Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  Circuses?

• 1:02:06Yasi Salek?

  Well-

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Carnival performers are fascinating people.

• 1:02:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I, you know, I'm, I'm very interested. I love freaks.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:14Yasi Salek?

  So, yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Yes, is the answer. Let me put it another way.

• 1:02:17Yasi Salek?

  I don't like theater kids.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro.

• 1:02:20Yasi Salek?

  I've not seen it.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Okay, you should check it out. You might like it.

• 1:02:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Um, is it about a monster who just wants to be loved?

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Yes, but the monster is a carny played by Bradley Cooper.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right. It's a remake of a 1940s film.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay, is he like the, the ugly man or something?

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  No, he's handsome. They let him stay handsome, right?

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Sort of.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Well, but, you know.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  It deteriorates over time.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:02:43Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I'll, I'll check it out.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  He's like a, uh, what's the word? Not a medium, but, um.

• 1:02:48Yasi Salek?

  A mentalist.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  A mentalist.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  He's a mentalist, but then things take a turn.

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  Kate Blanchett has a very beautiful art deco office.

• 1:02:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I think it's a wonderful movie.

• 1:02:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think, I think you're right. Now that you've made me think about it.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  So, you, I like, I do like carnies.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  I think it's better than, than, than this Woody film.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  Than Shadows in the Park. I, I agree with that.

• 1:03:05Yasi Salek?

  This is a very small, little, nothing.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  I can see the appeal of just she wants to be in a Woody Allen movie.

• 1:03:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and this is, it's just like a Woody Allen thing where he's just like, I'm gonna make a couple of jokes and put my then-wife in it, you know, like, I love seeing John Cusack. It's just, it was a fun artifact for me, but I wasn't like, oh, this is Madonna's best and most memorable.

• 1:03:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:03:24Yasi Salek?

  What about A League of Their Own, though? 1992.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Maybe this is her best movie.

• 1:03:29Yasi Salek?

  I, I think this might be her best movie.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  It's definitely her best performance and the best integration of Madonna into a movie. She actually

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  No question.

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  has a real character. She gets to be herself. She gets to be funny and because it's set during World War II, it is kind of like that throwback, throwback.

• 1:03:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  You know, um, old Hollywood era.

• 1:03:50Yasi Salek?

  She's very funny.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  She has great chemistry with Rosie O'Donnell. Are they friends? Does this start the friendship?

• 1:03:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they meet.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  That's so beautiful.

• 1:03:57Yasi Salek?

  She's dating Vanilla Ice at the time, just a fun.

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  Oh, okay, well, you know.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Robin Winkle? Famously featured in the sex book.

• 1:04:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's why, because they were dating.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  I.

• 1:04:08Yasi Salek?

  Along with Big Daddy Kane. They were not dating, but he's in that.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Hard to not be in love with her in this movie. I mean, she's the best. May is the best. Also, I remember seeing this movie in theaters with my mom and me being like, Mom, come on. You know, because she's so good.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  She catches it with the.

• 1:04:25Yasi Salek?

  Your mom was still carrying the hatred, 1982. Just never let it go.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  I remember sitting on the couch watching Grammy performances to her and her being like, ugh. But this is really good and I feel like the, I feel like her befriending Rosie weirdly helps her performance. Like she just seems really comfortable in this movie in a way that she doesn't often feel comfortable in films.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  They have chemistry.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  She doesn't have chemistry with many other people on screen, including some husbands and, you know, current boyfriends.

• 1:04:51Yasi Salek?

  I wonder what, if it, if it's the thing of like, I think to be a good actor, and I don't know anything about it because I don't act, but like, you, you can't be a perfectionist. You have to be messy and loose and vulnerable. And I just don't think that's her orientation towards the world. She is an achiever and a perfectionist. And I think that might kind of stand in the way of what could be a great actress, you know? Because she does have a lot of the like, other parts that you would think, you know, she has the charisma, she has the star power.

• 1:05:31Yasi Salek?

  You love looking at her on screen, but she's just missing that thing where you have to, I believe, like just completely let go. And here it's different because when you're yourself, you kind of can let go, right? Because you're kind of being yourself. And her best performances are when she's able to play a character that is very similar to herself, which is not Carol Lombard.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:51Yasi Salek?

  It is May Morbeto or it is Evita, which we'll get into later.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  It's interesting. She, I mean, she only worked with two women, two female filmmakers over her. This is the second of the two.

• 1:06:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:06:03Speaker 03

  And this is really the only, I mean, she was mostly working with women.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  And it's really the only time.

• 1:06:09Yasi Salek?

  Oh, by the way, Gina Davis. Can you even believe people looked like that?

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:06:14Yasi Salek?

  She had like the original Instagram face before we even had Instagram face. It's like modeled on her natural.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:06:21Yasi Salek?

  It's just like so the lips, like everything.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  What do you mean? You don't know about Instagram face?

• 1:06:25Yasi Salek?

  Am I really explaining this to you?

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Just like, give me the specific details that define Instagram face.

• 1:06:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's like really full lips, high cheekbones, like sort of like lifted eyebrows.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a sculpted seamless plain face where the.

• 1:06:40Yasi Salek?

  You can never achieve what she has because you can never make it look natural.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Most desirable?

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  Um, according to Instagram and then thus the plastic surgeons who receive people asking for Instagram face.

• 1:06:53Yasi Salek?

  It's sort of like a Kim Kardashian minted thing if I had to, if I had to pin it back to a patient zero.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  Kim Kardashian and Instagram computer filters, you know, that kind of, that smooth everything out. Also like contouring, do you know about contouring in makeup to give you the, you know, the, the right, you know, some places you want shadows and some places you really don't.

• 1:07:15Yasi Salek?

  Should we give you a little contouring later? Have Mr. with me?

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:07:17Yasi Salek?

  No, okay.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Social media need.

• 1:07:20Yasi Salek?

  Anyway, she's an absolute stunner. This, some of the funniest things in my young childhood were from this movie. When, when May and Morbidio is like, what if like when the camera comes out, all of a sudden, my jersey pops open and my, my bosoms come out. You know, all those characters like, I think there's a man in America who ain't seen your bosoms. Also the John Lovitz character, just perfect. Every, every minute he's on screen, I'm like crying laughing.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  When she's teaching, uh, God, what's the, the other, the teammate to read on the bus, but with a romance novel, really funny.

• 1:07:54Yasi Salek?

  Milky wide. What are you teaching her, May? Don't worry about it. She's learning.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Very supportive.

• 1:08:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And also the end, I just weep every time.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Listen, I also remember seeing it in theaters.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  My playground, you know, the, the final needle drop, right?

• 1:08:09Yasi Salek?

  So wonderful. Jimmy Dugan, Tom Hanks, what a guy.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Yasi Salek?

  Really. Really, again, always, always a delight.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  It's so funny, like, what comes after this in her career, because she really does not take the note that everybody was like, Madonna was so winning in this film, like, she got great reviews. You know, she's part of this big ensemble. The tone, she finally figured out the movie with the right tone for her, right? Which is kind of what I was saying before, which is like, this movie is a drama that has really great comic moments and very memorable comedy. And she fits right in. It's never weird that Madonna is on this team, that she's like amongst these people. She's not, no one is more famous than the other in the scenes. And then she never makes a movie even close to this ever again.

• 1:08:54Yasi Salek?

  I don't know that she was allowed.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  So where is she, what's 92?

• 1:08:59Yasi Salek?

  Okay, 92 is incredibly important.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  Okay, but at this point, so "Like a Prayer" is out, she's been chastised by the Pope.

• 1:09:05Yasi Salek?

  "Vogue" has come out, because if you'll remember, "Vogue" was actually from Dick Tracy. Nobody really remembers that. "Vogue" was, they, they made it and it was so amazing. It was supposed to be a B-side of a single, but it was so good. And they had to put it somewhere so it could exist in the world. And they put it as one of her original songs on Dick Tracy, but it's a huge hit. "The Immaculate Collection" has come out, that's a huge hit. "This Used to Be My Playground." And then "Erotica" and "The Sex Book."

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:09:29Yasi Salek?

  Which completely changes the course of the public's perception of Madonna.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  This is the thing, it's July 1st, 92 for, um,

• 1:09:37Yasi Salek?

  "This Used to Be My Playground."

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  For "A League of Their Own" and "This Used to Be My Playground." And then it's October for "Erotica."

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so that's how quickly it turns.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  The paradigm of Madonna changes.

• 1:09:47Yasi Salek?

  And then she's like the most hated woman in America, like, she is.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  So much of this is so manufactured, though. It was such, like, daytime talk show bullshit, you know?

• 1:09:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but it had real implications. I mean, she lost like a chunk of her American fanbase. It had like monetary implications.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  I don't want to neg too much, but it's like, is part of that just because "Erotica" is not as good?

• 1:10:07Yasi Salek?

  "Erotica" is amazing.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  But it is not, it is not the pop bonanza that any of those previous albums are.

• 1:10:13Yasi Salek?

  But it's art. It's actually, if you look at,

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  That's not the same.

• 1:10:15Yasi Salek?

  And it's been reevaluated, like, okay, yes.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying, though?

• 1:10:18Yasi Salek?

  Sure, it's not, it's not.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  It didn't appeal to the base.

• 1:10:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's not as.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  I shouldn't say that. It didn't appeal to like the wider public in the same way that the previous albums did.

• 1:10:26Yasi Salek?

  Sure, but like, I, I just feel like I get really, I get really heated about this because erotica is such a good album. Again, it doesn't, it's not as like legible on a pop radio scale, but it's an incredible work of art.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  This is just the challenge though, being a pop star. Like she's being measured against all the big hits that she had previous to this. And I mean, there are albums that come after this that have huge hits on it.

• 1:10:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Th- this is the one though, where like it gets real quiet for a minute because people don't love these songs as much.

• 1:10:53Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Deeper and Deeper was a pretty big hit.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm looking at the tracklist now. I'm, I'm 10 years old.

• 1:11:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Rain was a pretty big hit.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  No, I'm eight years old. Went to see League of Their Own in theaters. I know everything from the eighties, like Immaculate Collection has been handed down, even though the, you know, the Pope and everyone is like tsk, tsk. Uh, and I don't, I'm not jamming out to these. Age, eight or nine, which is, which is not to say that they are good or that they are.

• 1:11:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, no, what you're saying makes total sense. There, it's, it's not like a prayer. It's not express yourself.

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  And it just is also, you know, a League of Their Own is a huge, huge hit and just very mainstream pop star. Like everyone in the world knows who Madonna is. And she doesn't double down on that level of mainstream, stream radio pop. She goes in a totally.

• 1:11:45Yasi Salek?

  Which is like, why I stand her forever. I, I guess like, the thing that is so interesting to me is like, if it was just the album was mid or whatever, you're not as pop, she would have been ignored. That's what happens to pop stars. They get ignored.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Yasi Salek?

  They, she was vilified and it was because of the sex book. It was, it was a one-two punch. If erotica just come out and there was no sex book, it, nothing would have really happened. And she would have made another album and it would have been fine. She was like, public enemy number one.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  I think, I think what I was thinking about when you first said that though, is if erotica had like a Papa Don't Preach on it, it would have been different because it would have been like, you have a chart topping song, but you're stoking controversy with the sex book. And you've just come off a league. It's just one of those things where like, the, the album is just like one song short, where it put her in a very vulnerable position to your point about. Losing some of the juice.

• 1:12:33Yasi Salek?

  It just never would have had a song like that because it's not the orientation of the album.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:12:37Yasi Salek?

  She went in a completely different direction. Honestly, like the leap between Like a Prayer and Erotica is so insane.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Credit to her for taking an artistic chance. That's not really what I'm trying to say. And I shouldn't have said not as good. It's more like.

• 1:12:49Yasi Salek?

  No, I get what you're saying.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  She kind of jeopardized her centrality as a pop star by making an artistic choice, which is a good thing for her.

• 1:12:54Yasi Salek?

  Which she does over and over.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  Many times over, yeah.

• 1:12:58Yasi Salek?

  And it could have happened with Like a Prayer, you know, like, or Like a Virgin as well, you know?

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  It is also, it is, it's the first time that she does that. And so it is just like a turning point. For the first decade that we've been talking about now, like Madonna is just Madonna and Michael Jackson are the pop stars. And like she's on MTV all the time.

• 1:13:19Yasi Salek?

  Faded away, obviously, at this point.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  Sort of, yeah, please, you know.

• 1:13:23Yasi Salek?

  No, but like.

• 1:13:23Speaker 03

  Dangerous is 91.

• 1:13:25Yasi Salek?

  Dangerous 91, but it's, it has hits, but it's, it's not quite as like.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Yasi Salek?

  And then after that, what happens after that?

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  Ah, I mean, Remember the Time is on TV, nonstop.

• 1:13:34Yasi Salek?

  Wonderful song.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  Nonstop. In 92, he was still big, but it was, it's interesting that they both go into a little bit of a lull.

• 1:13:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  In this time. And Prince is in a little bit of a lull.

• 1:13:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Springsteen's in a little bit of a lull. A lot of these icons of the previous seven, eight, nine years.

• 1:13:49Yasi Salek?

  Because of what happened in 92.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Rock and roll, babe. Yeah.

• 1:13:51Yasi Salek?

  Grunge music.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Nirvana comes around. That's what it is.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  But so I do feel like we think of reinvention when we think of Madonna. And like now she's trying this and now she's trying this. And, but this is the first reinvention, right? Like this is the, well, I mean, she's obviously doing slightly different things and doing costumes and characters and sets.

• 1:14:09Yasi Salek?

  Reinvention, I would say, would be Papa Don't Preach, because it's the first time where she's doing like subject matter that is not frivolous.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:14:17Yasi Salek?

  And she has a new look and stuff. So that's like really the technical first one. And then Like a Prayer is the second one where she's brunette and she's. Playing with, you know, this is, this is like probably the third one.

• 1:14:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I mean, like now, when I think of like the Madonnas that I know.

• 1:14:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  Sure, like there are lots of visual references, but I'm like, there's, you know, mega pop star Madonna. Then there's sex book Madonna, then there's Kabbalah Madonna. I don't really know where that comes in along with moves to London and has a British accent.

• 1:14:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  Madonna, uh, you know, there's the, there's sampling ABBA Madonna, like you can think of all.

• 1:14:54Yasi Salek?

  That's kind of the fourth, yeah.

• 1:14:56Speaker 03

  Right. There are different phases of her life and this feels like a new phase.

• 1:15:01Yasi Salek?

  It's funny because I think of, I, yes, I think you're totally right. And I think it's.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  I mean, and you know, maybe that's just what I'm paying attention to and what I metabolize.

• 1:15:09Yasi Salek?

  I think there was multiple changes between the eighties and nineties. It's just maybe we were a bit young to like clock them perfectly. But this is a huge deal. And as it has to stand with her films, it's a huge deal because she thinks of things in a grand scale. You know, every part of what she's doing is always connected to everything else she's doing.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  360 degree artist.

• 1:15:30Yasi Salek?

  360 artist. So like you're putting out erotica, putting out the sex book, and of course you're doing Body of Evidence. Of course you are. That fits perfectly in.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:15:39Yasi Salek?

  With what you're doing. And I'm going to say something. Body of Evidence is a good movie. You guys are wrong. Not you guys, the, the royal you guys.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  It's really not. It's really not. Um, I, go ahead.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  I, well, I didn't revisit it for this, but I did watch it, I think for the first time in, was that 2020 or 20? No, it was 2020.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  When the big picture in the depths of COVID, not, not even, I think it was the summer of 2020. We did an erotic thrillers episode and there wasn't much else to do. So I did spend a lot of time watching erotic thrillers at, you know, not what I consider to be erotic thriller hours of the day. Again, it was COVID. We weren't going outside very much.

• 1:16:23Yasi Salek?

  Broad daylight and you're watching.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Yes. Body of Evidence at like 2 PM is when my husband walked into the room and was like, what's going on here?

• 1:16:30Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  And is this, is this appropriate? And I was like, it's only you and me here.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  There were no children yet.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  This is professional.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  We had no children in our lives.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  What do you mean? Is it appropriate? I don't think, I think he was more just like, could I also be a part of this? Which, um, but it is.

• 1:16:46Speaker 03

  It's bracing and there it's a real.

• 1:16:48Yasi Salek?

  They go for it.

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  They they do go for it and are they going for it on the same team? Is there any exploitation? Is there I you know.

• 1:16:57Yasi Salek?

  I mean.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  Her tits look great and there is a little bit of like you gotta do it and put it on film while you still have it.

• 1:17:04Yasi Salek?

  The only person I think might have been. You do?

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:17:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't think Madonna was exploited. I I don't think she was. Maybe Julianne Moore because I know she's come out and said that she didn't feel that that her nude scene was like necessary. And it was like sort of gratuitous, but I think Madonna is like fully in.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  I don't know if I'm the most, if I'm the right person to speak about all of this stuff. I the thing about this movie is it's coming in this like really in the wake of Basic Instinct. And Basic Instinct, you've got this Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, who comes to America after, um, you know, making a handful of films in Europe that have all these transgressive qualities. And he makes Robocop and he makes Total Recall and he makes Basic Instinct and he's kind of throwing in America's face. All of these kind of grisly, sexual, violent ideas that are right on the surface of our culture and kind of almost like making fun of us in real time. And in Basic Instinct, there's this sort of like male panic about the woman who will take everything from you, who will, you know, you know, suck you dry and then stab you in the chest.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  And that movie is a huge hit and it's also like a really interesting work of art. And it launches Sharon Stone into the stratosphere. And then six months later, you get Madonna handpicking Uli Adel, who's made like Christian F.

• 1:18:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:18:20Yasi Salek?

  Incredible director. Last exit.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Last exit of Brooklyn, like really good films, like really more of like an art house filmmaker, for lack of a better word. And trying to apply the lessons of the erotic thriller boom. And to me, the script is just not good and.

• 1:18:37Yasi Salek?

  The script's a little wooden, but I kind of like, I just feel like this is a bit camp, which is why I like it. You know, like I think feel like through the lens of a bit of camp, it's kind of.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  I don't think that that was what it how it was intended at the time, though, like and it was really pilloried at the time. I agree that Madonna is so hot in this movie. And it was really mind blowing for me to see this as a teenager. Like honestly, mind blowing.

• 1:19:02Yasi Salek?

  I think her performance is really good.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  It's okay.

• 1:19:04Yasi Salek?

  I just think when you, when you get the reveal of the character at the end, and I don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't watched Body of Evidence. I feel like once the character was revealed in the twist, I was like, oh, wow. Now every acting choice made a lot of sense to me.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  I think that she does this thing over and over again in her career where, well, let's take Who's That Girl as an example. Opposite Griffin Dunn, she's pretty good because he's a fairly light actor.

• 1:19:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  You know, his, he leans on comic mannerism. And so when she wants to do that, they feel comfortable. But in her serious dramatic works, you know, she's going opposite John Malkovich and Sean Penn. And in this film, Willem Dafoe.

• 1:19:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  Like these really weighty, intense, masculine powerhouses. And she's just not as skilled an actor.

• 1:19:51Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  As they are. And like, you can really see some of their vulnerabilities in her work when you, she's up against these figures. But when she's up against somebody, you know, in Dick Tracy, it works a little bit better because the tone of that movie and the performance style that everyone's doing is a little bit lighter. So I feel like she suffers because of that in this.

• 1:20:07Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was okay because I thought like her whole, the whole problem, if you will, with her acting performance here is it's a little inscrutable. But then once I realized, I was like, oh, it makes sense for this character to be inscrutable. I don't know if that was a choice, but whatever it is, it worked for me. I just, the only weird part about this movie is why is it in Portland? None of these people live in Portland.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Good question.

• 1:20:25Yasi Salek?

  None of you have ever lived in Portland. What are you talking about?

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Really good question.

• 1:20:28Yasi Salek?

  This doesn't, this doesn't happen. And also I love Joe Montana and Joe Montana for president. The ending is wonderful. That last line.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  I can't even remember what is, what is that.

• 1:20:36Yasi Salek?

  When Willem Dafoe is like, you should have convicted her. And Willem Dafoe, or Joey Montana goes, I did. As they're wheeling her body, her lifeless body out of the houseboat. Sorry, spoiler.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Damn. Wasn't she like a dramatic fall from a, like through the plate glass?

• 1:20:51Yasi Salek?

  She's kill, yes, she's like shot at by the doctor that she conspired with in order to like win the case.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:59Yasi Salek?

  About how she like did kill the rich guy she was dating. I'm just going to take a moment and do a dramatic reading. Of my friend Patrick Sandberg's Letterboxd review of this, because I feel like he puts it more eloquently. He said, "Everyone was wrong about this movie. Madonna's performance is perfectly calibrated and compulsively watchable. The sex scenes have a performative, outre quality that makes sense within the context of the film's central erotic mystery. And it all comes across unusually chic due to Uli Adel's directing, which is utterly phenomenal and drenched with noir references, while maintaining a visceral grit. This is a much better shot film than Jagged Edge, for example, which commits many of the same supposed sins, but in a less cinematic approach. Back in the old days, the term Vanity Project used to be thrown around as an insult against films that were financed by a star's involvement for their own personal, careerist reasons.

• 1:21:44Yasi Salek?

  It's funny how that now becomes the de facto business model for filmmaking across the entire spectrum of financing, because it's a good thing. People with taste, artists, should be making the decisions. The fact that Madonna wanted to make an erotic legal thriller in the vein of Basic Instinct and selected the director behind Christian F. and actors like Willem Dafoe, Julianne Moore, and Frank Langella, not to mention Full Metal Jacket cinematographer Doug Millsam, to do it with is fucking cool. Could the script have been better? Yes. Should they have shot in Seattle instead of Portland? Without question. But is it a nasty, fabulous, enthralling pop artifact? It's museum-worthy. Apologize now." And I stand behind that. That's how I feel.

• 1:22:21Speaker 03

  I like the house in Jagged Edge better. Not that anyone asked me. But, um, it's a really good house.

• 1:22:27Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna go say what I said before about every one of these Madonna films. It is unfairly criticized. Fine, is it, is it better than Sliver? Yes. To me, you know, like, and no one was like, "Sliver's the worst movie I've ever seen in my life." "This should be buried in the ground and never thought about again."

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  These movies very quickly went from being like, "Isn't this so exciting that it's happening?" To like, "These are all getting picked on and punished publicly." And a lot of it was coded in like, middle-aged, white male critics who didn't necessarily understand some of the creative choices that were being made. To me, the movie is like, it's witness for the prosecution, but what if Marlene Dietrich got naked in the movie? And, which is like, a cool idea.

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  And also, at this point in Madonna's career, you know, like, I, I am glad that erotica and the sex book are immortalized, like, on cinema. That, that is art. Her body.

• 1:23:16Yasi Salek?

  That's a gift.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  Is actually art in this, in this particular, and it's a

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Guys, no, I agree.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  Sort of interesting movie about that.

• 1:23:21Yasi Salek?

  The parking lot scene, I'm sorry, not to be candid, but that's

• 1:23:24Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:23:24Yasi Salek?

  That's one of the hottest sex, sexy, I find sex scenes in movies fucking lame and awful 99% of the time. I'm like, nobody does it like that. I'm bored. I'm gonna get some popcorn. I was riveted. I was like, edge of my seat. I was like, this is actually really cool.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  I vividly remember rewatching it with Eileen during COVID for that episode that Amanda described. And we were just laughing at the movie. We're having fun. We had fun.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's fun.

• 1:23:53Yasi Salek?

  Was that when Julia Momo was like, what does that hurt your chest? Who did that to you? What is that? That was really good.

• 1:24:00Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, agree to disagree.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  I'm glad you're caping for it.

• 1:24:05Yasi Salek?

  I really enjoyed, I just genuinely enjoyed it. I also enjoy maybe like

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  I do own it on 4K for the record.

• 1:24:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm not a critic, so my litmus test for if a film is good or not is do I, did I enjoy it or not?

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  I forgot Anne Arter is in this.

• 1:24:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  Another one of my gals.

• 1:24:23Yasi Salek?

  I know. Interesting. I find her completely forgettable. Dangerous Game, 1993.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was thinking about this when you were describing some of the challenges that she had on Dick Tracy, because this feels like she took this part to channel some of that.

• 1:24:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:24:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This is a fucking amazing film. It took me a second.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  It's

• 1:24:41Yasi Salek?

  It takes us, I had to metabolize it.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  It's in the middle for me with Abel Ferrara. I'm obsessed with Abel Ferrara, the filmmaker. And this is one of his collaborations with Nicholas St. John, the screenwriter, and like, pretty much every movie they made together to me is like four or five stars. Like, I really love Abel Ferrara's movies. This movie's a little rough. And it's a little jagged, um, story-wise, more so even than some of the like, crime movies that, that Ferrara made.

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can, you really see the pieces creaking around on this one.

• 1:25:13Speaker 02

  It's not as like, it's not as tight as the other Ferrara movies, but it's a really interesting Madonna movie.

• 1:25:19Speaker 03

  I think she's really good. She was great in that. And I guess it is because, to your point, she's borrowing a little bit from real experiences. And then the, like, the movie within a movie and the meta-quality of it probably helps her feel more comfortable or more natural in the setting and also then makes her performance just read more naturally because there are, like, kind of layers to the consciousness of what you're watching. But I think she's good in it.

• 1:25:44Yasi Salek?

  I think it's a credit to Abel Ferrara, who, like, is such an unusual filmmaker and, I think, definitely crafted entire, like, contexts and scenarios that pushed her to have to access parts of herself that she couldn't before. I mean...

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  There's that scene where Keitel is trying to direct her into that performance and making her repeat her lines over and over again, which is like, you can see Ferrara doing that to her through him.

• 1:26:08Yasi Salek?

  What is he, call her, like a, like a commercial actress?

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:26:11Yasi Salek?

  You stupid commercial... Also, James Russo was one of Sean Penn's best friends. So, like, to put your ex-husband's best friend opposite you as your love...

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  So crazy.

• 1:26:21Yasi Salek?

  There's a scene where he cuts her hair, which, obviously, very clearly a wig, but that was, like, a reported thing that had happened within Sean Penn and Madonna's relationship, and one of their last fights is that he had threatened to cut her hair. And it's like, putting that in, it's like, I don't know. When I first sat after I watched it, I was like, "Oh, I didn't like, what? I didn't like this. So what?" And then I, like, was like, "Let's just sit and think about it." And then I was like, "Oh, actually, this is absolutely a work of genius." The, like, kind of meta-commentary on Hollywood, the meta-commentary on, like, what it is to make a film.

• 1:26:55Speaker 03

  I had never seen this and I liked it, so...

• 1:26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a cool movie. It comes right in the middle of, like, some extremely formative movies for me. It's Bad Lieutenant, or King of New York: Bad Lieutenant, Body Snatchers, Dangerous Game, The Addiction, The Funeral. That was when I was really getting turned on to, like, New York crime movies. Tarantino was a huge, huge Ferrara fan and cited him all the time. We eventually did King of New York on the Rewatchables with Quentin. And this was always the one that was, like, a little bit of the outlier. Like, it was not like Guy with a Gun movie. It was a different kind of a thing.

• 1:27:25Yasi Salek?

  Women's interests always get pushed to the back burner.

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know if I would say this is a women's interest movie. It's about, like, being a maniac film director.

• 1:27:32Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah. Okay. You know that the wife character is actually Abel Ferrara's wife?

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:27:38Yasi Salek?

  That's his actual wife.

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. Well, then, not now.

• 1:27:41Yasi Salek?

  Then, yeah. But that's also so interesting. Also, what a time where Harvey Keitel with that haircut could be considered, like, a hot leading man. Again, a different time.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Coming off Bad Lieutenant, he had a unique energy.

• 1:27:53Yasi Salek?

  It's a full drag haircut. He has a drag haircut.

• 1:27:57Yasi Salek?

  But I loved it. Unfortunately, again, the there was the ill will towards Madonna was like at an insane peak and this film was basically not seen and then buried. And I guess Abel Farrah blamed Madonna for that.

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  Not the most commercial of filmmakers in general, though.

• 1:28:12Yasi Salek?

  No, yeah, it's not like it was gonna have like a blockbuster.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  It was in A League of Their Own.

• 1:28:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I don't think Madonna thought it was good, actually. In the end, she's kind of been quoted as saying that.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  I think it's some of her strongest acting.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:28:24Yasi Salek?

  But she said that he turned it into Bad, The Bad Director, which is not untrue.

• 1:28:28Speaker 03

  But she doesn't really seem to be interested in doing naturalistic, like, personal work. She wants to be highly stylized, so.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  You nailed it.

• 1:28:38Yasi Salek?

  Which she kind of is both in this film. She has like highly stylized moments where she's playing the actress character. It's like she looks cool, she's wearing glasses, she's smoking cigs, like, and then she's also.

• 1:28:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, the sung- thank you about the the bar scene. I definitely spent a while reverse image searching the exact sunglasses that she's wearing in the.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  Did you find them?

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:28:58Yasi Salek?

  If you guys are listening.

• 1:28:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, if anyone can source those from.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  It's 33 years ago. It's almost.

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Sure. And and not very widely seen.

• 1:29:07Yasi Salek?

  How long have Ray-Bans been made, Ben? They could still be out there.

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  I don't think they're Ray-Bans.

• 1:29:10Yasi Salek?

  Maybe they're, I'm just saying, there's there's enduring sunglasses.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  They could be sourced.

• 1:29:14Yasi Salek?

  I didn't see Blow in the Face, so if anyone has anything to add.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  I've seen it before, Wayne Wong movie, part of this like duopoly of movies he made with Smoke about people coming into a smoke shop and just shooting the breeze. She's in it, super short, like, super quick moment.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, her cameo.

• 1:29:28Yasi Salek?

  She's a singing telegram girl, so back to the me assy.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  It's kind of cool that she decided to chip in on this. It's a lot, there's a lot of cameos, it kind of like a lot of small parts throughout the film.

• 1:29:39Yasi Salek?

  I think just what you just said, important to think about throughout. Madonna could have made a lot of different movies. She chooses really interesting projects.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  She pretty much only does cameos for this three-year stretch, you know, these like small parts.

• 1:29:53Yasi Salek?

  Well, she was completely devastated and like kneecapped by how people reacted to erotica and the sex, but she's talked about it. It like took the wind out of her sails. Like, it really made her.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  Like it devastated her. It was horrible for her.

• 1:30:08Yasi Salek?

  So I think she kind of lost a bit of confidence and wasn't like

• 1:30:11Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 1:30:11Yasi Salek?

  Trying to also have like ten more bad.

• 1:30:13Speaker 03

  Can I, can I, can I ask a question you're not supposed to ask?

• 1:30:16Yasi Salek?

  How old was she?

• 1:30:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, when talking about women, but I'm just interested in.

• 1:30:19Yasi Salek?

  At this time?

• 1:30:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Yasi Salek?

  Thirty-eight?

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:30:23Yasi Salek?

  Like thirty-five, thirty-six.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Inching up to a tricky time, right?

• 1:30:26Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, certainly like in a pop star's phase of life.

• 1:30:30Yasi Salek?

  In ninety-two, she was, yeah.

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  Ninety-two, she was thirty-four, so she was still, you know, pretty young.

• 1:30:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but yes, of course. And also, don't forget, like.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  But you can also sense her doing all this stuff, doing Body of Evidence, doing the sex book, doing erotica, is like, I may never look this good again.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  You know, like, there's something about just like, let me just radiate at my highest power.

• 1:30:48Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it was like, I'm like, the thought of I may never look this good again. I think it's like a kind of a known thing that like, women come into their sexual power and prime around that age.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  Actually, wasn't that like a part of the pitch for the book?

• 1:31:02Yasi Salek?

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  That might have been the first time I heard that, like, she was talking about it.

• 1:31:05Yasi Salek?

  Like, I think men hit their sexual prime at like eighteen and women hit it at like thirty-five, you know?

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, sheesh.

• 1:31:10Yasi Salek?

  So she is, she's really peaking. Um, I love Four Rooms. Four Rooms, nineteen ninety-five. Really an artifact of my youth.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  I saw you log this on Letterboxd, it's something you love.

• 1:31:21Yasi Salek?

  I love it because.

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  I was there, I was there when it happened.

• 1:31:23Yasi Salek?

  Listen, it is obviously uneven and weird or whatever, but I love that you just got movies like this back then. Like, you would just be like, wow, I want to watch something fun and weird, and it's four short films, united by Tim Roth being an absolute face actor to the max as this insane bellhop. And you get these like, four different directors, like, having the best time of their life, making some weird little short, and it has like, huge stars in it. It's just, it's fun, you know?

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  We used to be a country.

• 1:31:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  But you, you hate short stories.

• 1:31:57Speaker 03

  I do, again, and I, I've watched this and my response was, I like. I like, Yasi, like when people try things.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  This is not what I would have tried with my budget and time.

• 1:32:08Yasi Salek?

  It's certainly uneven. Alexander Rockwell's, I found, like, so bizarre. Like, his, which I watched back then, but I was like, I don't know what's happening here.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  I think this is a case where the accepted wisdom is the right wisdom, which is the man from Hollywood, the Tarantino segment, the last segment of the movie is a lot of fun. It's basically a remake of a TV show.

• 1:32:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  But, you know, it's got Bruce Willis in it, it's got a really funny story, it's really brief. Everything else in it-

• 1:32:31Yasi Salek?

  I love Alison Anders, the part of the Madonna's. I just, I think it's like-

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  It's fun.

• 1:32:35Yasi Salek?

  It's fun, and it's like, it's, it's really visually arresting. I think you have all these, like, incredible starlets of their time, looking so beautiful. And it's like, a funny, cute little witchcraft story that has like, a lot of sexual innuendo that you almost would think a man would have made, but a woman made it. Madonna looks fucking incredible in that latex dress.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I saw this in theaters, like, if you, if you were-

• 1:33:00Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  In on the Sundance wave, like, it was a huge deal.

• 1:33:03Yasi Salek?

  I was like, oh, Miramax, I'm on my way, babe. What you got for me, Mr. Weinstein?

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  But it bombed, it bricked.

• 1:33:09Yasi Salek?

  I mean, you could see, also, nobody wants to see short, short films, period, you know?

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I enjoyed it.

• 1:33:15Yasi Salek?

  I have a great affection for, and I, I love Tim Roth. I would follow Tim Roth to the moon, what a great actor.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  This was Miramax's big Christmas release of 1995.

• 1:33:24Yasi Salek?

  That's really funny, they were like, here you go, take your family.

• 1:33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:28Yasi Salek?

  The ending makes, I think, the whole thing worth it.

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:32Yasi Salek?

  That last moment, and his little, like, doo-doo-doo, dancing out of the thing.

• 1:33:39Yasi Salek?

  I hadn't seen Girl 6 in 20 years. And I got to watch it last night, because I have my ways. I think this is one of the best movies that's ever been made in the history of movies, in my-

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  It's a pretty strong statement.

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  It is, yeah.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I haven't seen it in a long time.

• 1:33:54Speaker 03

  So, Better Man, is that what the Robbie Williams movie is?

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  That's number one.

• 1:33:59Yasi Salek?

  I do love-

• 1:34:00Speaker 02

  Girl 6, number two.

• 1:34:01Speaker 03

  Girl 6. And Testament of Adley. And what was the, la grazia?

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  La grazia.

• 1:34:07Yasi Salek?

  I would put that in my top four.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Hot Frosties.

• 1:34:09Yasi Salek?

  Hot Frosties. But these are only the ones I've been allowed to talk about on the big picture, but I have, I have various.

• 1:34:13Speaker 02

  I would say invited to talk about, and not allowed to talk about.

• 1:34:17Yasi Salek?

  I love the Before trilogy. There's a lot of movies that I love.

• 1:34:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:34:21Speaker 02

  Girl, Girl Sex I remember being fun. I, it's, it's an odd movie for Spike Lee to have made.

• 1:34:25Yasi Salek?

  Well, this is why I find it so interesting. I love, I, I realized that when I saw it originally, I wasn't old enough for it to hit me properly.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:35Yasi Salek?

  I would recommend watching it again, Amanda. It's like actually such an incredible meditation on what it is to be sexualized as a woman and what it is to like exist in the patriarchy. Sorry for putting on the pink pussy hat. It's phenomenal. Like, and the fact that Spike Lee did it so deftly. I mean, he didn't write it, but a woman wrote it.

• 1:35:00Speaker 02

  Oh, it's Suzanne Laurie Parks.

• 1:35:01Yasi Salek?

  Suzanne Laurie Parks.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Who did Top Dog Underdog and, yeah. Famous playwright.

• 1:35:04Yasi Salek?

  I think Rewatch, if you haven't seen it. And, cause it's, he does something really special and he's able, like, I walked away from it feeling really like, wow, like this was like profound.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:35:15Yasi Salek?

  And it's fun. It's both. Like, he does it both and it has obviously like wall-to-wall Prince music. It's visually incredible. Like the outfits, the colors, like the saturation of the colors. It's like Disneyland, Naomi Campbell's in that movie, Debbie Mazars in that movie. Obviously Madonna has a cameo. Prob, like a repeat cameo.

• 1:35:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:33Yasi Salek?

  She comes back twice and she looks great.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  This is one of the most frustrating unavailable on physical media movies, like of all time.

• 1:35:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  Like, it's only available on DVD and it's like $500 on eBay to buy it on DVD.

• 1:35:46Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:35:47Yasi Salek?

  If you're about that life, be about that life.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  The only Spike movie all the way up till like he starts doing the streaming movies that you, where you can't really find it.

• 1:35:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:55Speaker 03

  Why is that?

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  And it's not really streaming.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  Is it Prince music?

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  And the music, yeah. And. That's ironic because the like the Madonna scenes in the movie, there's a moment when Madonna is like talking to Teresa Randall over a Prince song.

• 1:36:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  That is like Spike, Prince, Madonna, meeting, and it's like these kind of iconic figures.

• 1:36:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  Of this decade of our lives intersecting in one little two minute period of the movie that is so cool. I remember liking the movie. I don't, I probably just need to rewatch it.

• 1:36:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know, again, I don't want a pink pussy hat, but like it might be like a, like more impactful if you're a woman. Like it's just, there's something really special about the way, and it's so light touch. It's not so heavy handed as often these stories are, you know?

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  It's satirical. It's well, or it's like a black comedy.

• 1:36:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a dark comedy and it's, it's, yeah, it's just like, it's really.

• 1:36:47Speaker 03

  So it's not too po faced about anything?

• 1:36:49Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. And the actress Teresa Randall is incredible.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  She's terrific in the movie, yeah.

• 1:36:54Yasi Salek?

  John, has a lot of really funny little people in it, like Michael Imperiali is in it.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  Halle Berry.

• 1:36:59Yasi Salek?

  Halle Berry as herself. It's wonderful. Anyways, Madonna has a very small part in it, but she's, she's great.

• 1:37:03Speaker 03

  She's good. I rewatched.

• 1:37:04Yasi Salek?

  It's very her in that era too, because she's playing a mistress, you know?

• 1:37:08Speaker 03

  I just wish she was funny. Yeah.

• 1:37:12Yasi Salek?

  This is, now we're getting to the really momentous thing where I'm gonna need you guys to.

• 1:37:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  I did not rewatch Evita.

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  I did.

• 1:37:20Yasi Salek?

  I will never rewatch Evita.

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:37:23Yasi Salek?

  With love and respect.

• 1:37:24Speaker 03

  So I, I did rewatch it and you had never, you had not seen it. And you and Sean and I both remember going to the theaters to see this. Like it was a cinematic and pop cultural event.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  It was, I went on a school trip to see this movie when I was in high school.

• 1:37:40Yasi Salek?

  So you answered my question. You, you had to, and you were like, I love musicals.

• 1:37:46Speaker 03

  I didn't totally love musicals, but I was 12.

• 1:37:49Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  And I, and it was Madonna.

• 1:37:53Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:37:53Speaker 03

  And so getting to go to the movies was just, you know, a treat. And it was also. Despite the backlash after erotica and the sex book, like Madonna was still Madonna. And this was like a big Christmas movie in 1996. We were both Oscar nerds and reading Entertainment Weekly at this point. It was, it was a thing. It was a moment.

• 1:38:15Yasi Salek?

  By 95, she's put out Something to Remember, which if you guys remember at all, it's, it's the compilation of all her ballads. And that's a huge hit, has a new song on it, Take a Bow.

• 1:38:26Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Big, big hit.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, and huge.

• 1:38:29Yasi Salek?

  So this is, this is like the rehabilitation of Madonna in the eyes of, she's, she's, she, she has.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  It's her very purposely classing herself out, right?

• 1:38:36Yasi Salek?

  Not even, yeah, but reminding people like, I'm still America's, you know, pop star. Like, I still have, I'm not just like the woman with her vagina out and the sex book, like, don't forget, you know?

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:38:48Yasi Salek?

  And yeah, she's rehabilitating. So that's 95.

• 1:38:51Speaker 02

  And I will do that by playing an Argentinian woman.

• 1:38:54Yasi Salek?

  Right. By, yeah, by playing a film where I don't get naked. And it's a really dramatic, high, you know, I don't know, high what value, high, high touch? I have no idea. I did not enjoy this movie. I don't, but I also famously hate musicals, so it's like really difficult for me to like a musical.

• 1:39:13Speaker 03

  I'd like to interrogate what was going on with Andrew Lloyd Webber, which I feel like every time, every time I watch a movie adaptation, Andrew Lloyd Webber film, I'm like this, or musical. I'm like, this film isn't very good, but also like, what were you, what were you on?

• 1:39:32Yasi Salek?

  Isn't his?

• 1:39:33Speaker 03

  This started, why, why did we need to make like a, a concept album, which is how this started, about the life of Eva Peron?

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  I think he's a very eccentric artist. I also do not like his film adaptations, except for Jesus Christ Superstar, which I think is really cool.

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  Um, but I think like Jesus Christ Superstar, another good example of his eccentricities as a writer. It's also, you know, Tim Rice, um, wrote it with him, Tim Rice coming off of, I think he had just come off of The Lion King at this point.

• 1:40:00Yasi Salek?

  Good one.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  And it's directed by Alan Parker, who, you know, started out with like Pink Floyd's The Wall, but has become this sort of more hallowed Oscar type figure with stuff like Mississippi Burning in the eighties. And. It's a weird mishmash of a lot of different kind of competing, very strong figures all working. The script is co-written by Parker and Oliver Stone, who of course is well-known for his films of revolution and-

• 1:40:27Yasi Salek?

  My thing is just-

• 1:40:28Speaker 03

  And also parachuting to South America and/or Central America-

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  He's done it.

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  And inserting his own opinions.

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  That's right, something he does.

• 1:40:35Yasi Salek?

  Sean Penn and him should get together and go on a trip.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  They did.

• 1:40:38Yasi Salek?

  They did. Here's my thing. I don't know whose decision this was or whose like inflexibility it was that was like, "There will be no talking." "Every piece of understanding in this film will be through song."

• 1:40:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:40:56Yasi Salek?

  "No, thank you for me. I need a little more connective tissue." "I'm sorry, I'm not an Argentinian history scholar. I had to look at Wikipedia the entire time." "I actually think Andrew Lloyd Webber, kudos to you." "Eva Proon's a fascinating figure. It's a cool story. I get why you were like interested in it." "I totally get why Madonna was interested in it." "If you look at Madonna's understanding of her own life path and Eva Proon's life path, there's a lot of similarities. Like, came from nothing, used your feminine wiles and your looks and your skills to ascend to another level. Were demonized for being just an entertainer." You know, I think she saw a lot and she's for her whole life been,

• 1:41:40Yasi Salek?

  whatever you want to say about it, a philanthropist. I mean, she's raised more money for Amfar, I think, than anyone during the 80s or whatever. She's always been like interested in the well-being of the world in whatever ways she was. I could see why she'd want to do it. I just don't understand why we can't know what's going on in the movie. With more dialogue.

• 1:42:01Speaker 03

  Right. You don't respond to Antonio Banderas narrating through the lens of the everyman.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  I mean, this is what Andrew Lloyd Webber does.

• 1:42:10Speaker 03

  This is the musical. I know, again, I bring it back to Andrew Lloyd-

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Cats is this, Jesus Christ Superstar is this.

• 1:42:17Speaker 03

  Popular film.

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  You know, Miss Saigon, Never Adapted, The Phantom of the Opera, these are all sung through musicals. They don't have dialogue.

• 1:42:24Yasi Salek?

  But The Phantom of the Opera is like esoteric. Like, you don't really need to know what's going on. You feel your way through it. This is a historical story.

• 1:42:31Speaker 02

  I have seen at least three, maybe four Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals staged. And there are these like- Kind of set piece dominated, kind of sweeping, chaotic, big grandiloquent stories, right? And so you'd think that they would pour it over nicely to cinema, but because of the sung through style, it feels, something feels very unnatural.

• 1:42:51Yasi Salek?

  Grandiloquent a word, or did you just make that? That is a word. I love that.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:42:55Yasi Salek?

  Can I use that?

• 1:42:55Speaker 02

  It belongs to the English language, so dig in. And so, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with Amanda. I feel like they very rarely translate to something. This movie's not as kooky as I find some of his other adaptations. Like Cats is just weird.

• 1:43:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Which, well, it's about talking cats.

• 1:43:10Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:43:11Yasi Salek?

  Singing cats.

• 1:43:12Speaker 03

  Which I do ultimately think is, is part of the problem because this is an adaptation that is taking.

• 1:43:19Yasi Salek?

  A real person's.

• 1:43:20Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  It's situated in a real political environment.

• 1:43:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's situated in a real world. And so when they are recreating it, I mean, I was amazed at rewatching it. It just, you know, how many real people there were in the crowd scenes because, you know, now, you know, my kingdom for one crowd scene filmed with real people instead of AI. And it was. Have not figured that out digitally.

• 1:43:39Yasi Salek?

  It was very moving, but there's parts that are just so moving where you're like, she is, the people are crying and responding to this figure and like, also mimics a pop star.

• 1:43:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that's.

• 1:43:49Speaker 02

  Totally. You can see the appeal for her.

• 1:43:51Speaker 03

  This deconstruction of fame, but just like the, the production value and the recreation of this era of Argentina and her costumes is beautiful, but.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  Smooth shot by Darius Kanji.

• 1:44:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. So it looks good and real worlds, but when you've taken that out of the theater and the kind of fantastical sitting of we're all on this adventure together. And so you're recreating events much like you would at like historical epic. Um, you know, and we did see this, this was released at like at Oscar season in the nineties. And we, you know, so you're expecting something. And then Antonio Banderas is just switching into rock opera, narrating the political situation in Argentina. And it is, it is so still not silly, but fantastical.

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  And it feels a little camp.

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it feels camp.

• 1:44:39Speaker 03

  And so there's a, there's a mismatch of tones and I think that she's not bad in it.

• 1:44:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you.

• 1:44:46Speaker 03

  Listen, I mean, don't cry for me. Argentina with her doing this and the hairs was very, very important to me.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  And were you telling me that Rachel Zegler is doing this now in London?

• 1:44:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think she, yeah. She just won the, she just won the Olivier.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:03Speaker 03

  And I think it's coming to.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Makes sense, I think, because you also, I feel like the challenge with the movie is, I think she sings well in this movie, but it's a, it feels like it's written for a belter. And Madonna is not a belter. She's not a To the Rafter singer.

• 1:45:14Yasi Salek?

  She did, you know, the fandom has a lot of opinions about it, but she underwent intense vocal training for this. And it kind of permanently changed her voice. So all the albums that come after this have a new Madonna voice.

• 1:45:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:45:28Yasi Salek?

  That is.

• 1:45:28Speaker 03

  What's different about it?

• 1:45:29Yasi Salek?

  It's just bigger. It's like she's able to access more. It's again, she, yes, she's not like, you know, Patti LuPone.

• 1:45:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's never been a Patti LuPone.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's on Broadway in seventy nine, yeah.

• 1:45:40Yasi Salek?

  But, you know, I think Tim Rice said that they wanted her because she's a brilliant interpreter of song. And I will say, her best acting to me is in her own songs. That's what makes Madonna's music so compelling to me is that when she's singing her own lyrics, you really feel the, the character and the story in it. She is able to bring that. And I can see what Tim Rice meant. I was like, I need someone who can interpret song in a dramatic way. Because that is the whole story. I thought she was good. I thought she was really good.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  It's not bad. It's, there's just something a little bit.

• 1:46:15Yasi Salek?

  I don't know how to judge how good a person is in a musical. So as, as like an actor, that's a little difficult for me again, as someone who doesn't really understand musicals.

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  It's definitively not a fiasco, which it could have been.

• 1:46:26Yasi Salek?

  Right. It, it, it performed well, right?

• 1:46:29Speaker 02

  It did, it did business.

• 1:46:30Yasi Salek?

  She won a Golden Globe.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Back when that really meant something.

• 1:46:33Speaker 03

  Well, you know what? Jennifer Lopez never won one. And she was upset about it.

• 1:46:37Yasi Salek?

  She beat Glenn Close and Frances McDormand and Debbie Reynolds.

• 1:46:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:46:40Yasi Salek?

  And Barbra Streisand. That was the lineup that year. That's kind of impressive.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:46:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  Does she beat Debbie Reynolds for mother?

• 1:46:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Frances McDormand for Fargo.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's a joke.

• 1:46:51Yasi Salek?

  Did she win the Oscar for that? Frances McDormand did, yes. Yeah. Which Madonna was.

• 1:46:55Speaker 02

  Her first of three. How many Oscars does Madonna have?

• 1:46:57Yasi Salek?

  She does, well, does she even, does she have one for a? A song? A song? Was You Must Love Me, it didn't win. You Must Love Me wouldn't be her Oscar anyways. I think it did win, but it did win, but she didn't write it. So she doesn't get the Oscar.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  She's never been nominated for an Oscar.

• 1:47:12Yasi Salek?

  No. Wow.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  She has performed at the Oscars twice.

• 1:47:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  She performed Sooner or Later.

• 1:47:17Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  From Dick Tracy and You Must Love Me.

• 1:47:19Yasi Salek?

  And You Must Love Me, both of which are not her songs. I think Sooner or Later might have also won. I'm happy that, I think she got to have. Did the costumes win for Evita? The costumes are. They were really great. I think it, I think it only won that Oscar. Okay.

• 1:47:34Speaker 02

  Five nominations total. One won for You Must Love Me.

• 1:47:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Was not nominated for costume, but was nominated for art direction and cinematography. Costumes were great.

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  This is the end, I think, of Madonna movie star. She, she appears in movies after this. She makes more movies. But weirdly, even though she did pretty well in this movie, she won a Golden Globe.

• 1:47:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  People went out and saw the movie. You can, people, you can still remember.

• 1:48:01Yasi Salek?

  I think.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  Don't Cry For Me, right? Like, that's a moment.

• 1:48:03Yasi Salek?

  Really understand, or like, at least get a whiff of her psychology from this? Because Madonna's an achiever. So like, she achieved it. She, I think in her estimation, and I don't want to like psychoanalyze this person I don't know, but like, I can, looking back from the arc, like, okay, you made a movie that was unquestionably good. You won an award for your performance. Everyone said you were good, you know? And it's like, okay, although she's, you know, she's pushing on 45 now. I don't know, if you know about Hollywood?

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, she just doesn't have her Purple Rain. She doesn't have her A Star Is Born. She did, just, she's just missing, she's made some good, really good movies. But she's missing that one iconic movie that when you think Madonna and the movies. That's why I say Truth or Dare. You know, which is, but that's really just her.

• 1:48:54Yasi Salek?

  Or maybe it's just really a thinking Susan. Even though she's not the main thing, she kind of is.

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  You know what I mean, though.

• 1:49:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  Like Beyonce doesn't have to see it, though. Like Beyonce tried.

• 1:49:02Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  With Dreamgirls and Austin Powers.

• 1:49:05Yasi Salek?

  I think Beyonce and Madonna have a very similar thing, which is, again, they're perfectionist achievers. That is not the same as being an actor.

• 1:49:16Speaker 02

  That's the thing with Purple Rain is it's just, the best parts of Purple Rain are him performing onstage, but they like make the movie something iconic and unforgettable. And I don't know if she could have pulled that off. I mean, she does have it with Truth or Dare, where she's performing in that movie, and you get that.

• 1:49:32Yasi Salek?

  I think if things had played out differently, maybe with different collaborators or different, like, you know, situations. Also, you know, she's quite busy. Like, it's during that time. It's not like she's just making movies.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  It's a sideline.

• 1:49:42Yasi Salek?

  Right. Going on like six-month world tours or whatever. I was unable to watch The Next Best Thing because it is, for whatever reason, completely unavailable anywhere to watch. And Sean was at Disneyland and couldn't loan me.

• 1:49:54Speaker 02

  I have it on DVD.

• 1:49:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:56Speaker 03

  So you didn't re-watch it.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  I didn't re-watch it. I saw it. I might have even seen it in theaters. It's directed by John Slusinger, who made Cowboy, which is like fascinating that they... And you know, I'll tell you one of the reasons why they enlisted him. This is obviously a story, to your point, about gay men and gay friendship and her close relationship with Rupert Everett's character in this movie and their desire to...

• 1:50:16Yasi Salek?

  They were also best friends in real life.

• 1:50:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:50:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  And that's why the movie exists, and John Slusinger was a gay man.

• 1:50:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  And I think, as I recall, having watched the movie, there is something a little like rom-com-y in a good way?

• 1:50:31Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  Like comforting about the movie?

• 1:50:32Yasi Salek?

  I was 18. I loved it. I loved Madonna. It was a fun rom-com. I think it's critically not.

• 1:50:38Speaker 02

  Not well-liked.

• 1:50:38Yasi Salek?

  Not well-liked.

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  I don't think people were kind about it. I remember seeing it, I think, also in theaters, because this was also after my best friend's wedding.

• 1:50:46Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:50:46Speaker 03

  So I was familiar with Rupert Everett. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:50:49Yasi Salek?

  One of the first actors to come out as gay in Hollywood.

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  I mean, one of the only men who could be the first face on a poster. We were talking about this, maybe off-mic, about Jonathan Bailey recently, right? And we were like, oh, it still does not happen.

• 1:51:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Speaker 02

  The movie's fine.

• 1:51:05Yasi Salek?

  It's fine.

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Feels like she did it just because she really wanted to.

• 1:51:08Yasi Salek?

  I think she did it because River Ever really wanted to and she really loved River Ever and she was like, I'll do this for you. There was a funny tid about, there's two funny tids, because John Schlesinger is like 75 years old at this point or something.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  He's had a 50 year career making movies at this point.

• 1:51:22Yasi Salek?

  Apparently Madonna like, like had completely shifted in how she was, she was married, I think she was either with Guy Ritchie or married to Guy Ritchie at this point. And she like couldn't, she wouldn't do a hetero, she wouldn't do a sex scene. She was like, no heterosexual sex scenes. John Schlesinger, or probably not John Schlesinger, obviously, the studio wouldn't do a homosexual sex scene. So there's no sex scenes in the movie. And even when she had to like make out with Benjamin Bratt, one of the hottest people ever, she had to drink. And so apparently she would keep having a few drinks and then ad libbing and John Schlesinger was getting like increasingly agitated with her ad libbing. And at some point, there was like some scuffle and he fell and broke his coccyx.

• 1:51:59Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:52:00Yasi Salek?

  John Schlesinger. So he kind of hated the experience, I believe, of making this film.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  Tough one.

• 1:52:04Yasi Salek?

  Tough one. I didn't see Star. Did you see it?

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 1:52:08Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  You want to explain what it is?

• 1:52:10Yasi Salek?

  It's a short film that she directed and appeared in.

• 1:52:12Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  She's getting ready to start directing her own features.

• 1:52:16Yasi Salek?

  But first, we have to do something abominable. 2002's swept away.

• 1:52:25Yasi Salek?

  Do you know it was Stephen Weber's idea? You did, because I put it in the doc. Stephen Weber, who, one of the hot guys of my youth from Wings.

• 1:52:31Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:52:31Yasi Salek?

  Him and Tim Daly. He was friends with them and said that they should remake the Lena Wirtmuller 1974. Have you seen the original?

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  Certainly have. Giancarlo Giannini, yeah.

• 1:52:42Yasi Salek?

  Meant to watch it before so I could see the good version, but I didn't.

• 1:52:47Speaker 02

  We did a 1976 movie draft that's coming out later this month and Lena Wirtmuller's Seven Beauties was nominated for an Oscar like a couple of years after this, after, but this, Swept Away was really like her breakthrough, I think, to, to audiences beyond, beyond Europe.

• 1:53:04Yasi Salek?

  Madonna was actually, I guess I should have brought it earlier, but it's worth bringing up now. She was kind of a deep cinephile, like since college. She loved film and films of like, you know, every like prominent filmmaker, art house filmmaker.

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  I mean, you can see that in the. The tour direction and the

• 1:53:21Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:53:21Speaker 03

  music videos and everything, like every other iteration of what she creates as a pop star and all the visual aspects of being a pop star.

• 1:53:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Speaker 03

  That she has control over.

• 1:53:33Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:53:33Speaker 03

  Like have immense film references.

• 1:53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, German Expressionism, old style Hollywood.

• 1:53:38Yasi Salek?

  Her greatest film is her music videos.

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:53:41Yasi Salek?

  As a whole.

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  I assume that's where we, how that would be the end of this conversation.

• 1:53:44Speaker 03

  Those are.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  Just look at Vogue.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:47Yasi Salek?

  I mean.

• 1:53:48Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  It's a great film.

• 1:53:48Yasi Salek?

  Bedtime Story, Frozen, Chris Cunningham, I mean, like, she has made some of the best music videos that have ever existed.

• 1:53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56Yasi Salek?

  Um, anyway, Swept Away is not one of them. Swept Away is just, uh, insane.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  It's incredibly annoying.

• 1:54:03Speaker 03

  I would say it is, it is probably the worst performance from Madonna.

• 1:54:08Yasi Salek?

  You know what?

• 1:54:08Speaker 03

  It is uniquely bad.

• 1:54:11Speaker 02

  She's very unpleasant.

• 1:54:11Speaker 03

  And they, and has made a choice to be really aggressive, but the aggressive tone is not matching with anything that's going on in the movie. And no one says it, no one fix it, fixes it. No one pulls her aside and is like.

• 1:54:26Yasi Salek?

  What's the Charlene, the Chocolate Factory character? The, the spoiled girl?

• 1:54:31Speaker 03

  Veruca?

• 1:54:32Yasi Salek?

  Veruca Salt, like her whole tone the entire time is.

• 1:54:34Speaker 02

  Super bratty.

• 1:54:35Yasi Salek?

  I want it. You, me, you're bad. I hate you. Give me this.

• 1:54:39Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:40Yasi Salek?

  And I'm like, dude, Guy Ritchie, were you not there? Were you asleep? Is not your job to direct and tell her to be different?

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  It's consistent with the performance by the actress, Mary Angela Malato, who plays the character in the 74 film. Like it is, they are doing the movie. It's just, it's not a good

• 1:54:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:54:57Speaker 02

  version of the movie. It's, it's a tough one. You know, you had some unkind things to say about, about Guy and like, this was really weird that this happened. Like I, and it kind of fascinatingly like derails him as a filmmaker for a minute too. Cause he's done locked.

• 1:55:12Yasi Salek?

  Swept Away or the?

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  Swept Away.

• 1:55:14Yasi Salek?

  That they got married.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  Well, I'm, I'm not sure about that part, but I mean, he makes Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and, and Snatch. And if you were in the crime movies. When these two movies hit like a bomb, they were just like, this is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen. I'm obviously riffing on a lot of shit from the seventies, but his dialogue was really funny and fast moving. He was immediately pulling in the Brad Pitts and Benicio del Toro was like right away. He was, he was a real phenomenon.

• 1:55:38Yasi Salek?

  You know why? Because he's not a kid from the east side who was poor his whole life as he purported to be. He was a boarding school kid with two parents who married aristocrats.

• 1:55:50Speaker 02

  I got, I got no thoughts on his personal life or his background. I don't even know that much about it. I do know that what after, after Snatch, we were like, is this like British Scorsese or something? Yeah, like, and, and obviously wasn't even close to what it turned out to be. And I think he has actually redeemed himself in the last five or so years with like a certain kind of movie that he's gotten really good at. But this is so far away from what people thought he was good at. And he did it obviously because he fell in love with someone, right?

• 1:56:16Speaker 03

  It's so unclear to me like why this film was made.

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  One assumes she wanted to make it, right?

• 1:56:22Yasi Salek?

  And he, I mean, everyone had to want to make it.

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like immediately if this movie's over, he goes right back to making crime movies.

• 1:56:26Yasi Salek?

  From my study of Guy Ritchie, he doesn't do a lot of things he doesn't want to do. So, you know, he had to want to make it too. He lights her beautifully.

• 1:56:36Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:56:37Yasi Salek?

  Sort of. She's, she looks stunning in this film. Again, much like Shanghai Surprise, I'm like, I hate every minute of this film, except that she looks so stunningly beautiful.

• 1:56:46Speaker 03

  I do think that this is when I started to Google like Madonna PEDs.

• 1:56:51Yasi Salek?

  What's that?

• 1:56:52Speaker 03

  Like, like performance enhancing drugs.

• 1:56:54Yasi Salek?

  Oh, because she was so ripped?

• 1:56:55Speaker 03

  Because, yeah, the, and it's when, you know, obviously, um, she's getting older. We as older women know, you have to start doing your strength training, like some of it is just, it's about, and she's, she's, she's an athlete and she's always been really ripped.

• 1:57:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:07Speaker 03

  And bone density is important, but then like you can start seeing like the veins a little. And this 2002 is also like the.

• 1:57:15Yasi Salek?

  This is Tracy Anderson method though, I think.

• 1:57:16Speaker 03

  Sammy Sosa era, right? Yeah, I just like, there were.

• 1:57:19Yasi Salek?

  You think she was, you think she was doing steroids?

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  You know, I was just kind of like, I don't, I think I could work really hard.

• 1:57:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Speaker 03

  And it wouldn't look like that.

• 1:57:27Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's worth noting that Guy Ritchie literally never made another movie again that centered a woman, period. Every single movie he makes is about men.

• 1:57:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it is worth noting though.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  It's one of the reasons why the movie doesn't work. It's like, he doesn't understand how to make a movie like this. It's not something that interests him. So that's why it's such a weird choice.

• 1:57:43Yasi Salek?

  I think part of it, from my understanding, and I didn't see the original, but I read up on it, is that part of, you correct me, part of what makes the original work is the political aspect of it and the like, really heavy leaning into the classism and the fact that the woman is like, a fascist.

• 1:58:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:01Yasi Salek?

  They can, not completely, but like, they really neuter that in this movie. And all it comes down to is like, a few like, loose chats about capitalism that are like, completely forgettable. And you don't, also, there's a, there's a scene of sodomy in the first one that is like, kind of driving that point home of like,

• 1:58:22Speaker 02

  How you get fucked by the rich.

• 1:58:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but like, but inverting it, that's completely cut out because Guy Ritchie didn't want to do that, allegedly. So I just think the, the premise is, is neutered. It's not gonna work anyways. The guy was hot, though, the son of the original actor.

• 1:58:36Speaker 03

  He's okay. They don't have any chemistry. So this is,

• 1:58:38Yasi Salek?

  They don't, but he's, he's quite good.

• 1:58:39Speaker 03

  She's in London at this point.

• 1:58:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:42Speaker 03

  And she's friends with Gwyneth Paltrow.

• 1:58:44Yasi Salek?

  She's friends with Gwyneth Paltrow.

• 1:58:45Speaker 03

  I think so. I was just, I was Googling this.

• 1:58:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:49Yasi Salek?

  And Stella McCartney.

• 1:58:50Speaker 03

  This was a fun Gwyneth era.

• 1:58:51Yasi Salek?

  There's a really,

• 1:58:52Speaker 03

  I mean, a fun, a fun Gwyneth era, but a fun Madonna era.

• 1:58:54Yasi Salek?

  Great era.

• 1:58:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:55Yasi Salek?

  There's a really weird commercial that also comes around, around this time, a BMW commercial that Guy Ritchie directed. Do you remember this?

• 1:59:01Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:59:01Yasi Salek?

  Which also, I was like, do you hate her? Like, because the premise is like, she's like, again, this like, really bitchy pop star. That's like a massive cunt.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  I feel like she was very comfortable leaning into some of this stuff, though. That's sort of what I was saying, where she's kind of, she provoked.

• 1:59:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, I think it fits back into her like, comedic thing. She's like, oh, this is a funny one-note comedic actress. Okay, oh, uh, Clive Owen is in it. So it's, it's her up against Clive Owen, and he's like, the driver. And the whole thing is like, he drives like a psycho to like, beat her up in the car. Like, she's just like flying or flopping around the car. And at the end, he like, ejects her onto a red carpet. And it's like, shown that she pissed herself. And I was like, why would you make your, why would you have your wife do this? This is crazy.

• 1:59:48Speaker 03

  They didn't stay married, so.

• 1:59:49Yasi Salek?

  No, he did, he did take ninety-two million dollars of her money though, when he left.

• 1:59:54Speaker 03

  And that's what funded all your favorite movies.

• 1:59:56Yasi Salek?

  Ninety-two million dollars, all, every league of, or, or, club of extraordinary gentlemen, or group of extraordinary gentlemen.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Himself. There was a Guy Ritchie profile.

• 2:00:06Yasi Salek?

  My friend Patrick was like, I was like, what's Guy Ritchie? He's been making movies. And Patrick started listing films. And I was like, wow, I have an entire bear and stay in bear situation with Guy Ritchie where I did not, I've never heard of any of these films. And he's just been cranking out two films a year for twenty years.

• 2:00:20Speaker 03

  And also TV shows at this point?

• 2:00:22Yasi Salek?

  And TV shows. I did see the Sherlock one, which I did quite enjoy, but I didn't know.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  The Sherlock film?

• 2:00:27Yasi Salek?

  I just love Sherlock Holmes.

• 2:00:29Speaker 03

  Was it that's because it didn't say Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes in it, much like Guy Ritchie's the Covenant?

• 2:00:33Yasi Salek?

  I love Robert Downey Jr. And I love Sherlock Holmes. What could go wrong?

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  I don't know what to say. Guy Ritchie makes a lot of good movies. He's made a lot of good movies.

• 2:00:39Yasi Salek?

  I don't know about.

• 2:00:40Speaker 02

  Christopher Nolan, I've been talking about him for twenty years.

• 2:00:42Speaker 03

  I'm open to it.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  It's really good.

• 2:00:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Aladdin, famously, one of the big pictures.

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  Not as good.

• 2:00:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, remember when he started crying because the genie fucks?

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  Well, that was an unusual choice to give him a romantic and love interest.

• 2:00:54Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry, I've just chosen my person and Madonna.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  There's a crazy, a really funny Esquire profile of Guy Ritchie from two thousand nine that Tom Ciarra wrote, back when Esquire would like, write these really abrasive, chatty kind of profiles, that really, I think, shows you what, what was going on with Guy at post Madonna.

• 2:01:12Yasi Salek?

  You know what? To be fair to both of them, I just think it's a crazy pairing. Like, I think it would be difficult for any male mortal to be with a woman like Madonna, because it's the classic thing. Like, she's so powerful and such a like luminous, iconic, rich, like everything that emasculates a normal man. And then you're a director on top of it and you need control. Like, it's not a good pairing.

• 2:01:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:35Speaker 02

  I had Guy on.

• 2:01:36Yasi Salek?

  I think they were very much in love though.

• 2:01:37Speaker 02

  I had Guy on the big picture early on in the show.

• 2:01:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  And it was for the King Arthur film that he made.

• 2:01:43Yasi Salek?

  Don't know about it. Never heard of it.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  Where King Arthur is like a samurai swordsman. Weird movie with Charlie Hunnam. I kind of enjoyed it.

• 2:01:49Yasi Salek?

  Been men in blacked about everything that Guy Ritchie does, everything. I don't know anything about it.

• 2:01:52Speaker 02

  But he came in, and honestly, he was really cool. Like, I don't know what to say. He was extremely polite. He was funny.

• 2:01:58Yasi Salek?

  It worked on you.

• 2:01:59Speaker 02

  He was dressed like he was gonna go hunting with his dogs immediately after the pod, you know? He just, he was given British estate lad. And, uh, I enjoyed it. I had a nice time. I don't, I, hopefully they're on good, nice terms.

• 2:02:11Yasi Salek?

  I think they are.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:02:12Yasi Salek?

  I think they are. So, I have to wait, should just be.

• 2:02:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  Deleted.

• 2:02:16Speaker 03

  Deleted, yeah.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  Not a good film.

• 2:02:17Yasi Salek?

  I enjoyed her in Die Another Day as Verdi.

• 2:02:20Speaker 02

  Did you watch this?

• 2:02:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I rewatched. I mean, I've seen Die Another Day. I just rewatched the cameo.

• 2:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty funny.

• 2:02:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  I had totally forgotten it's Rosamund Plank.

• 2:02:28Yasi Salek?

  Me too. She's so young.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:30Yasi Salek?

  She was great.

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:31Yasi Salek?

  It's a great movie, actually.

• 2:02:32Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 2:02:32Yasi Salek?

  I, I loved it.

• 2:02:33Speaker 02

  It's, and it's a very, very dumb Bond movie, but it's entertaining.

• 2:02:36Yasi Salek?

  Are they not supposed to be dumb?

• 2:02:37Speaker 02

  They are, but not dumb.

• 2:02:38Yasi Salek?

  I don't understand films. I had such a fun time. I was like, this is fun.

• 2:02:40Speaker 03

  Well, I think that's actually exactly what it's supposed to be. You were the correct audience. And also Madonna showing up in a Bond movie is kind of the right way to use Madonna.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  She's great.

• 2:02:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:50Yasi Salek?

  Well, also, that was the first ever Bond theme that wasn't a ballad. Done by Madonna, Die Another Day. It's an electronic song. It's, it's awesome.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:02:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:58Speaker 02

  She's a, she's pretty good.

• 2:03:00Yasi Salek?

  Do I not understand? Do I not understand good films? Is it not good?

• 2:03:03Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 2:03:03Yasi Salek?

  What is a Bond film? Is it supposed to be like more elevated?

• 2:03:06Speaker 03

  Well, he doesn't like the Bond films, so that's part of it. Yeah, and sometimes.

• 2:03:10Yasi Salek?

  But you like Mission Impossible, which is a different way.

• 2:03:13Speaker 03

  Because they jump out of planes.

• 2:03:15Yasi Salek?

  They did some cool.

• 2:03:17Speaker 02

  This Stephen Hunt is American.

• 2:03:18Speaker 03

  Oh, okay, that's, yeah.

• 2:03:20Speaker 02

  No, I like the Bond movies. That's not true. I, I was not raised on them, though. So I don't have the same emotional connection to them.

• 2:03:25Yasi Salek?

  Sure, yeah. Sean Connery is my Bond. Also, I was explaining to my roommate, because she had never, she's never seen Finding Forrester. And I was like, you're the man now, dog. The way we used to say that to each other all the, I don't remember what the movie's about, nothing. I remember there's like a basketball-playing teen who has befriended an old reclusive author who's like based on J.D. Salinger. Is that right?

• 2:03:45Speaker 02

  You've just nailed the film.

• 2:03:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, damn, okay. There you go. See, you do know films.

• 2:03:48Yasi Salek?

  What I remember the most is, you're the man now, dog.

• 2:03:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  It's in every trailer and commercial for the film.

• 2:03:53Yasi Salek?

  It was, yeah.

• 2:03:55Speaker 02

  Die Another Day is, it's not the greatest Bond movie.

• 2:03:57Yasi Salek?

  What's the greatest Bond movie?

• 2:03:58Speaker 03

  You say Casino Royale, I say Skyfall.

• 2:04:00Speaker 02

  No, that's not what I say.

• 2:04:02Yasi Salek?

  I do like Casino Royale quite a bit.

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  I think it's from Russia With Love is the best one.

• 2:04:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:04:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:04:06Yasi Salek?

  That's Roger Moore.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  I'm more of a Skyfall person than a Casino Royale person.

• 2:04:09Speaker 03

  Oh, you are? Oh, that's nice. I don't think that's always been the, your tune, but welcome.

• 2:04:13Speaker 02

  It's not true. We were on the Skyfall Rewatchables together.

• 2:04:15Speaker 03

  I know, and, and that was beautiful. But even then, you were like, well, the real people think it should be Casino Royale.

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  Have you noticed that they, they're keeping us apart on the Rewatchables? When's the last time we did a Rewatchables movie together?

• 2:04:25Yasi Salek?

  We would be too powerful together.

• 2:04:29Speaker 03

  Every single episode, you know.

• 2:04:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:04:30Yasi Salek?

  Maybe we don't, they don't want to replicate the big picture.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  Wait, so what, Desperately Seeking Susan would be your number one pick?

• 2:04:37Yasi Salek?

  If we're not, if we can't pick Truth or Dare?

• 2:04:39Speaker 02

  Wow, that would be interesting. I don't, I don't think a documentary has been done on the rewatchables.

• 2:04:43Yasi Salek?

  Oh, no, for the rewatchables?

• 2:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, for rewatchables.

• 2:04:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I, you know what would have been, and they already did it, is, um, John Cusack at the record store?

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  High fidelity.

• 2:04:52Yasi Salek?

  High fidelity.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  I know, I wasn't on that one either.

• 2:04:54Yasi Salek?

  Respect to the people that were on it, because I love Joanna and I love Rob, but that should have been me. Who's more suited to be on them?

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  I mean, The Ringer exists because of high fidelity. It's a bunch of people who are high fidelity people. Even if they're not, even if like I hate high fidelity, but they have their own, you have your own version of high fidelity stuff.

• 2:05:10Yasi Salek?

  You know what would be my number one gross point blank?

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  It's an amazing movie.

• 2:05:13Yasi Salek?

  Because that's my, probably my favorite movie of all time, or at least top four. And I know it inside and out, and I love it, and I can speak to deep lore about it.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  It's a five star classic.

• 2:05:23Yasi Salek?

  It's a five star classic. And I think I unconsciously based a good deal of my personality on Debbie Newberry.

• 2:05:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Minnie is cooking in that movie.

• 2:05:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so, Bill Simmons, if you're listening.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  He's not, he's not.

• 2:05:36Yasi Salek?

  You don't have to say that. We could just let, an air of mystery for the listeners.

• 2:05:39Speaker 02

  He's not listening to the big picture either, don't worry about it.

• 2:05:41Yasi Salek?

  We don't know.

• 2:05:41Speaker 03

  Did they do a Casino Royale rewatchables?

• 2:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did it.

• 2:05:46Yasi Salek?

  I was, I don't know.

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  Maybe it was me and Chris.

• 2:05:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, see, that's the thing.

• 2:05:49Speaker 02

  You didn't do it? You did it, I thought.

• 2:05:50Speaker 03

  Oh, I did do it. Okay, sorry. Hi, Bill, thanks for having me.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  He's not, literally not listening.

• 2:05:57Yasi Salek?

  Sean, allow some mystery for the listeners who believe that we're all friends and we all listen.

• 2:06:02Speaker 02

  People want to hope that Bill is listening to hour three of the Madonna Filmography Pod?

• 2:06:05Yasi Salek?

  In the sauna.

• 2:06:07Speaker 02

  I mean, I would be listening. I listen.

• 2:06:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, on triple speed.

• 2:06:10Speaker 02

  Two acts.

• 2:06:12Yasi Salek?

  Listen, I listened to all the big picture episodes, even the Star Wars draft, to which it was pure ASMR for me. It was just my friends' voices bathing my brain, because I have no idea what the fuck y'all are talking about.

• 2:06:22Speaker 02

  Have you seen A New Hope?

• 2:06:23Yasi Salek?

  I haven't seen, I've only ever seen the first Star Wars movie.

• 2:06:26Speaker 03

  That's A New Hope, yeah.

• 2:06:27Yasi Salek?

  Is that the first one?

• 2:06:28Speaker 02

  That came to the theater. A New Hope.

• 2:06:30Speaker 03

  But you know what?

• 2:06:30Yasi Salek?

  Is that what it's called?

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  It is now.

• 2:06:32Speaker 03

  I have found myself explaining that to like other non-Star Wars nerds, but like people who know about Star Wars. And know a lot of stuff, they just aren't of the generation where they caught on to the rebrand.

• 2:06:42Yasi Salek?

  But was it called that in the beginning too?

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:06:44Yasi Salek?

  Oh yeah, so I only saw, I saw it when I was 18 and that was the only time I saw it. I saw Spaceballs first. So I came to start with being like, oh, that's.

• 2:06:52Speaker 02

  Spaceballs 2 coming out next year.

• 2:06:53Yasi Salek?

  Oh my God, thank God, it's one of my favorite movies of all time. That's another rewatchables I would do. I know every Mel Brooks movie inside and out.

• 2:06:58Speaker 03

  Oh, can she come on the Mel Brooks episode? Yeah, we're doing.

• 2:07:01Yasi Salek?

  My parents read me on that. That's like, that's like our shared love language. Like, we, I've seen every single.

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  We're gonna rank every Mel Brooks movie on the big picture.

• 2:07:08Speaker 03

  You're booked.

• 2:07:09Yasi Salek?

  Oh my God.

• 2:07:10Speaker 03

  That's exciting.

• 2:07:10Speaker 02

  That's great. There's only 12 movies.

• 2:07:13Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's so good. Oh my God, Blazing Saddles. I can't wait. Okay, I didn't see Phil and Wisdom, I'm sorry. I thought we weren't gonna really talk about directorial stuff, but I, but I do want to, because I did see WE.

• 2:07:22Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it either. You, you saw it?

• 2:07:24Speaker 03

  Phil and Wisdom?

• 2:07:25Yasi Salek?

  No, no, no, I haven't seen it. Because you couldn't, it was.

• 2:07:27Speaker 02

  You can't, you can't find it, right? Yeah, I think it's not accessible.

• 2:07:30Yasi Salek?

  We are the best.

• 2:07:31Speaker 02

  Like, I couldn't even find it on like, uh, like archive.org or any like pirated site. Like, I couldn't find it. Maybe it is out there.

• 2:07:37Yasi Salek?

  I do wanna talk a bit about WE to wrap it up.

• 2:07:39Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:07:40Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I really wanted this to be good.

• 2:07:42Speaker 03

  I mean, you wanted this to be good.

• 2:07:44Yasi Salek?

  I'm also, I recently read three books about the Duchess of Windsor.

• 2:07:48Speaker 03

  Sure. And what did we learn?

• 2:07:50Yasi Salek?

  From this movie or from the?

• 2:07:51Speaker 03

  From the three books.

• 2:07:52Yasi Salek?

  Not a lot.

• 2:07:53Speaker 03

  Okay, I think that we did learn that they were both, and he particularly, he being Edward, the former, yes, they were Nazis.

• 2:08:01Yasi Salek?

  In this film, they sort of try to soften that by saying they just had dinner once when they didn't know that Hitler was bad.

• 2:08:07Speaker 03

  Right. Um, and, and Madonna tried to.

• 2:08:10Yasi Salek?

  Hasn't had dinner with a person that we found charming, but ended up to be really a bad person.

• 2:08:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, so the movie spends a lot of time being like, well, they were misunderstood and we don't really know. And I, we know, uh, we, we do know in fact.

• 2:08:25Yasi Salek?

  In fairness, there's quite a bit of chatter around Eva Peron and her husband and some questionable political, I don't know about it because I'm not a historical scholar, but I believe they also had some comings and goings with Muslim.

• 2:08:39Speaker 03

  I would believe that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical Evita is not the truest representation of Argentinian history.

• 2:08:48Speaker 03

  I'm not an expert. I have done a little bit more reading on Wallace Simpson and Edward, the Duke of Windsor. And they were Nazis, but this was so.

• 2:08:57Yasi Salek?

  It's so weird. I'm like.

• 2:08:58Speaker 03

  Abby Cornish is a great actor, but then.

• 2:09:01Yasi Salek?

  But she's given nothing to do.

• 2:09:02Speaker 03

  And it's like built around the auction of their stuff.

• 2:09:06Yasi Salek?

  The transitions are so exactly what I did when I first started even directing little pieces of content where you're like, this is so clever. If I just transitioned from this gloves on sale at the auction to her hands in the gloves. But it does that like 25 times. It's Julia and Julia or Julie and Julia. But applied to this setting where it goes back because her name is Wally. She's named after Wallace Simpson.

• 2:09:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. And she understands what happened between them as like one of the most romantic things of all time.

• 2:09:37Yasi Salek?

  Again, you can see that. I mean, for, I get, I think that is not questionable. Like for a king to abdicate his throne because he loves you so much is like, that's pretty.

• 2:09:47Speaker 03

  That's not what it is. This is, and like.

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  Why do we keep telling this story in movies? This is the fucking king's speech too. Like, why do we, why is this interesting?

• 2:09:54Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think. It's interesting for a man to give up power for a woman.

• 2:09:56Speaker 03

  Because he was also a Nazi. And so if he hadn't given up the throne, then there would have been some real issues.

• 2:10:03Yasi Salek?

  We should thank her.

• 2:10:04Speaker 03

  Well, we care about the future of Britain and defeating Nazi Germany. Well, I know that, I know that you're Irish.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  We came through. D-Day. We did it.

• 2:10:11Speaker 03

  But I think that there were some concerns that if it not, if it had not been Colin first on the, on the throne. Remember in, uh, the physical media draft when, uh, Tim was like, I went to the Clermont Lounge with the guy who was in the king's speech. What was his name?

• 2:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Colin Firth?

• 2:10:31Speaker 03

  Which is definitely how he's identifying Colin.

• 2:10:35Yasi Salek?

  Mr. Darcy. We need Chris Ryan here for this particular part about the war and the Nazis.

• 2:10:40Speaker 03

  I agree. But so anyway, Meghan Markle.

• 2:10:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:45Speaker 03

  And that whole situation and Harry have been compared a lot to Wallace. And no, but I do think that both stories in the popular imagination underrate like how lame the man is in the situation.

• 2:10:58Yasi Salek?

  Wait, do you think?

• 2:10:59Speaker 03

  That those, those are, they're real problems going on there.

• 2:11:02Yasi Salek?

  Simpson was a CIA agent?

• 2:11:04Speaker 03

  Well, that it could be.

• 2:11:05Yasi Salek?

  That would be a cool movie.

• 2:11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:06Yasi Salek?

  Like, oh, actually CIA sent Wallace Simpson in.

• 2:11:09Speaker 03

  You wouldn't want to watch that. Honestly, can I tell you my favorite piece of Wallace Simpson-related pop culture?

• 2:11:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:15Speaker 03

  Is the second, hold on, I gotta, okay, Spy War Red.

• 2:11:17Yasi Salek?

  Sean, you have to stay here till the end.

• 2:11:18Speaker 03

  So it's this second book in a series, the Spy War Red series, which are written by, oh, sorry. We don't have time for this now?

• 2:11:29Yasi Salek?

  No, Sean doesn't care about, much like Guy Ritchie, Sean doesn't care about women's interests.

• 2:11:32Speaker 03

  Okay, so the Spy War Red.

• 2:11:33Speaker 02

  Not see royal family members is not in my interest set.

• 2:11:36Speaker 03

  The Spy War Red is the first book, and it's written by Aline Countess of Romanones. And she was a CIA agent, like, before it was even the CIA, OSS. And then she gets trained, she gets sent to Spain, she does some spying, then she marries a Spanish count. And so she becomes the Countess of Romanones. And then she's reactivated by the CIA and gets sent to Wallace Simpson's house. And I think Wallace, this is after they've abdicated, they're in France. So now she's the Duchess of Windsor, and they're doing, like, light CIA work together. So there is historical, anyway. W E is not good.

• 2:12:12Yasi Salek?

  The point is that the story, despite Sean's belief, is an interesting one, which is why they've made much content about it.

• 2:12:18Speaker 03

  It's not really that interesting. They were just, like, Nazis and not great people.

• 2:12:22Yasi Salek?

  But it is not interesting.

• 2:12:24Speaker 03

  Not a love story.

• 2:12:25Yasi Salek?

  But what's cool in this film is Oscar Isaac is in it.

• 2:12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:28Yasi Salek?

  Very early Oscar Isaac moment. And the costumes are nice.

• 2:12:33Speaker 03

  The Spy War Red is pretty good.

• 2:12:35Yasi Salek?

  That's all I have, that's all I've got for you.

• 2:12:37Speaker 02

  I mean, this is it. This is the end.

• 2:12:38Speaker 03

  And then she's done.

• 2:12:40Speaker 02

  It's been 15 years since W E, and no movies.

• 2:12:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, well, they always cast 60-year-old women in movies 10 times a year.

• 2:12:49Speaker 02

  She is incredibly wealthy. You were talking about funding movies.

• 2:12:51Yasi Salek?

  Maybe she's not interested anymore.

• 2:12:52Speaker 02

  That's the thing.

• 2:12:53Yasi Salek?

  People's interests change.

• 2:12:54Speaker 02

  She fell out of love. She didn't stick with the game, you know? Like, this is, are you a real one or are you not, Madonna? Make another movie.

• 2:13:01Speaker 03

  I guess she didn't want to. I guess she left that and Guy Ritchie behind, and is focusing on the music.

• 2:13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 2:13:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, look, there are some of the best films, short films of our lifetime, that Madonna made, and they're called music videos, like we said before. Go watch some of David Fincher's greatest work.

• 2:13:23Yasi Salek?

  Oh Father is an underseen David Fincher-directed Madonna video. It's quite good and quite weird.

• 2:13:28Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 2:13:29Yasi Salek?

  Really good stuff. What's your favorite Madonna video?

• 2:13:31Speaker 03

  I mean Vogue, but Hung Up really made an impact on me.

• 2:13:36Yasi Salek?

  Phenomenal.

• 2:13:36Speaker 03

  And I liked your recreation.

• 2:13:38Yasi Salek?

  Thank you so much. I thought I nailed the outfit.

• 2:13:40Speaker 03

  You nailed the outfit and the editing on that one was, it was spot on.

• 2:13:45Yasi Salek?

  Corey really, Corey Macaulay really nailed that. Yeah, I mean, there's so, the one with Ali G, where he's the limo driver.

• 2:13:53Speaker 03

  I mean, it's funny that they just, her skills in the music video and the image making, and she obviously works with like other great directors on those, but

• 2:14:02Yasi Salek?

  Jonas Akkerman.

• 2:14:03Speaker 03

  Can be like collaborative and make something so visually memorable that just does not really seem to translate to feature scripted films at all.

• 2:14:14Yasi Salek?

  It's just a different thing.

• 2:14:15Speaker 02

  I think it's probably notable that Evita was so successful for her and that she got good notices for it because it's her applying the same rules, this kind of like over-dramaticized style of performance, which works so well when you're singing, express yourself. And doesn't work as well when you're asked to portray like a kind of quiet nuance in certain dramatic movies or comedy.

• 2:14:37Yasi Salek?

  You know who's a great example of someone who's a big, loud performer and an incredible actress? Courtney Love.

• 2:14:45Speaker 03

  Okay, I thought you were gonna say Lady Gaga.

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  You know, and a lot of her best acting is not necessarily in the mode of how she's seen as a star, too.

• 2:14:52Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying, like People vs. Larry Flynt, she's incredible, and Man in the Moon, she's true, 200 Cigarettes. I mean, she's, she's made some really great films and she's actually a really, really good actress. I think it's, she maybe should have or could have had a bigger and longer Hollywood career.

• 2:15:09Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 2:15:10Yasi Salek?

  If people didn't hate women.

• 2:15:14Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 2:15:15Speaker 02

  Is that what it is?

• 2:15:16Yasi Salek?

  Welcome.

• 2:15:18Speaker 02

  I love women.

• 2:15:19Speaker 03

  It must be nice for you.

• 2:15:20Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:15:20Speaker 03

  Just alighting through the world, da-da-da to the AMC, hello, Mr. Fantasy, welcome.

• 2:15:27Speaker 02

  This one because I'm a man. It's just because I'm there all the time.

• 2:15:30Speaker 03

  That's true. And also because his name is on the Stubbs membership.

• 2:15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have to address me by name.

• 2:15:36Speaker 03

  They check your ID on those. I once saw them trying to check a 12 year old's ID for the AMC stuff.

• 2:15:42Speaker 02

  He gives library card?

• 2:15:44Speaker 03

  They were like, he has to have an ID. I was so angry. I intervened. I was like, let this child experience The Great Works.

• 2:15:50Yasi Salek?

  And the great works were which film?

• 2:15:55Speaker 03

  It was probably like, I don't know. Not Jumanji. What was the other movie with Jack Black and Paul Rudd?

• 2:16:04Speaker 02

  Anaconda.

• 2:16:05Speaker 03

  Anaconda, probably.

• 2:16:06Yasi Salek?

  Anaconda, don't want.

• 2:16:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:08Yasi Salek?

  I'm really jealous. You guys are seeing Sheep Detectives without me. That's how I'll close this.

• 2:16:12Speaker 02

  We're not going to the same theater now. We have to go to a different theater.

• 2:16:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I'm so excited.

• 2:16:15Speaker 02

  I'm sorry to tell you.

• 2:16:16Speaker 03

  It's okay.

• 2:16:16Speaker 02

  I have to go to the west side.

• 2:16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a choice that you made.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  It is. Well, I feel good about it.

• 2:16:20Speaker 03

  Okay. How many movies are you doing now in a row?

• 2:16:23Speaker 02

  I'm seeing three movies today.

• 2:16:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:24Speaker 02

  Right after this. I'm going to see The Sheep Detectives. I'm going to see Pre-Screen Can Film, I can't reveal. And then I'm going to see Mortal Kombat 2.

• 2:16:31Yasi Salek?

  That sounds really harrowing.

• 2:16:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm going to see one and then.

• 2:16:35Yasi Salek?

  Me too. What are you seeing?

• 2:16:36Speaker 03

  I'm also seeing Sheep Detectives and then maybe I'll show my sons some of the great Madonna works in the form of songs.

• 2:16:43Yasi Salek?

  Show them the truth or dare scene where she gives fellatio to a Evian. It's not an Evian bottle. It's a French mineral water, vichy. Sorry, I want to be correct about that.

• 2:16:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:16:58Yasi Salek?

  You guys, what an absolute delight and pleasure this has been to spend this time with you and talk about the filmography of Madonna. Thank you for coming on the Bandsplane Podcast and for watching some, if not all, of these films to do this with me.

• 2:17:12Speaker 02

  Thanks for having us.

• 2:17:12Speaker 03

  It's an honor.

• 2:17:14Yasi Salek?

  Come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplane.

• 2:17:26Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guests today were Amanda Dobbins and Sean Fantasy. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Sarah Reddy. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalvec and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Flavin, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer Emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy, and once again, my king, Goop Kitchen. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:18:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, we did go really, we went fast into that.

• 2:18:17Yasi Salek?

  I did. Well, you know, I thought we were like wasting time. I thought they were waiting for us. Okay, now the green light is on.

• 2:18:23Speaker 03

  Okay.