Ryan Sheely and Matthew Wrather consider what Gossip Girl is “about” (as well as the metaphor of aboutness itself) with reference, of course, to The Wire. Also: Are these teenagers really f***ing? (This is a long episode, so strap in.)
Make sure you subscribe in iTunes or via RSS.
There will be no spoiler warnings and there will be many naughty words. If either of those things bothers you, don’t click!
Reactions to the show? Email us or call 20-FAT-JOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401).
» Download TFT Episode 9 (MP3)
References
Matt: I like Showgirls. And I don’t mean I like it in the “so bad it’s good” way I like The Postman. I actually think Showgirls is a good movie. There, I said it.
Notice I didn’t say it was a GREAT movie. Certainly, it’s nobody’s favorite Paul Verhoeven flick (unless you grew up with a major crush on Jesse Spano). But you know what? I like it better than The Hollow Man.
Showgirls tells the story of Nomi Malone, a tough blond who hitchhikes into Vegas with nothing but a single suitcase (which immediately gets stolen). But she’s got two things nobody can take away: a great body, and a gift for dancing. Nomi starts out at the seediest strip club in town. But soon she breaks into the chorus of Goddess, a lavish stage show at a big casino. There, Nomi faces off with the queen bee, Cristal Connors, who either wants to befriend her, destroy her, or turn her into a sex toy.
Nomi may be a topless dancer, but she repeatedly insists she’s not a whore and she’ll never be like Cristal. But (surprise surprise) the higher she climbs, the more she becomes everything that once made her seethe. It’s a story as old as All About Eve, but with the sex jacked up to eleven. This is the most-expensive NC-17 rated film ever produced, and you will see more breasts than Frank Perdue.
It sounds fun, right? It IS fun, damnit. But for reasons I don’t fully understand, conventional wisdom firmly believes that this film is one of the worst of all time. It has an abysmal 14% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it won the un-coveted “Worst Movie of the Decade” award at the 2000 Razzie Awards. In fact, Showgirls has won more Razzies than any movie ever made. It’s a cinematic punching bag. And I don’t think it deserves it.
Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and John Perich and special guest Amanda Marcotte to revisit l’affaire Polanski and talk about the trivializing of sex crimes and then proceed to trivialize sex crimes by segueing to David Letterman, Robert Evans (the movie producer), Bob Evans (the restaurant), the Arbys Logo, and the Dialectic of Bruce Springsteen.
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401.
Download Episode 66 (MP3)
I’m going to try and keep this post SFW. But since it’s all about sex, I’m not sure how successful I’ll be.
I don’t need to lecture you all on the importance of proper branding. It can take a bad product, like a cheap cologne, and make it popular. It can take a good product, like a music player, and make it into an icon.
I’m sorry to say that right now, sex is an amazing product that needs a marketing makeover.
I’m not talking about marketing that uses sex. There’s plenty of that, and it’s just peachy. What I’m talking about is considering sex itself as a product. If you wanted that product to fail, could you think of any worse names for the two major sex positions?
In 1965, the Hearst newspapers in San Francisco refused to print movie advertisements containing the words “cuties, flesh-a-scope, girlie, homosexual, immorality, lesbian, lust, naked, nothing on, nudies, nudist camp, nymphs, pervert, professional girls, prostitute, rape, scanty panties, seduce, skin-a-scope, sex, [...] sex rituals, sexpot, sexsational, strippers, and third sex.” (This is quoted from an essay by the film historian Eric Schaefer, which you can find in this book right here. The list of terms was originally published in Variety.)
Okay: really, Hearst newspapers? I mean, really? You’re going to go with “flesh-a-scope” on this one? REALLY? Has that ever been used to advertise a movie? But actually, the main thing that this list of banned words tells us is that EVERY ONE OF THEM has been used to advertise a movie at some point. Still, putting “flesh-a-scope” into google image search yields zero results, and a regular google search just leads back to another quote from Variety. (FYI: A google image search for “scanty panties” yields 116 hits, and while some of these are pretty much what you’d expect, you also get…
Belinkie, Wrather, and Fenzel analyze presidential and gubernatorial sex scandals throughout American history, touching on Eliot Spitzer and “Kristen” (Ashley Alexandra Dupré), Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Hugh Grant and a cut rate Sunset Blvd. hooker, and Grover Cleveland.
Excuse the bad Skype connection and light production values. This is Episode 4 of our podcast, and as our podcasting kung fu becomes mightier, we have been trying to use musical bumpers, get good sound quality, and so forth. But we wanted to get this up while it was still relevant.
Download Episode 4 (AAC Format)
