Speaker 1: We're Tom A Lorenzo and this is the Pop Style
Opinion Fest. Hello, KITT's, welcome back to another edition of
the Pso I am the Tea and you're Telo Tom Fitzgerald,
and I'm here with the low and your til Lorenzo,
my cousin. I love the husband. How are you lovely?
Speaker 2: I wonder if I'm ready for four?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes we are. There's a little tiny little bit
of a nip in the air this week. It's got
a little rainy in our neck of the woods.
Speaker 2: I like the fashion. I like everything about it. I
like pumpkin pie. Yeah I don't.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I always find it a difficult transition to
get back into long pants and sweaters and that sort
of thing.
Speaker 2: But I do like it.
Speaker 1: Sweater person, So oh yeah you are. And we have
started the process of putting our Halloween decorations up. And
I say processed because it's like Christmas. Yeah. We are
now the type of people where it's like, oh okay.
It takes a couple of days to get everything up
and running, which.
Speaker 2: Is funny because we had nothing. We had no Halloween. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about this before on the podcast. If you
don't if you're not up on your Telo lure. Last
year we were going away for Christmas. We went to
Germany and the Netherlands and Belgium for Christmas, and so
we weren't going to do an elaborate decorating thing. And
if you again, if you follow your Telo lure, we
we have an elaborate with it's crazy. We decorate a
lot for Christmas. So I was a little sad that
we weren't going to be able to decorate for Christmas.
So I said, you know what, let's let's really beef
up our Halloween decorations. And last year we went a
little crazy and we actually did a post on all
of our Halloween decorations. And then Lorenzo was in I
think you were kind of in a cranky mood. And
when Lorenzo and he needed to go, He's like, I'm
going to go out. And whenever Lorenzo's in a cranky
mood like that, the best thing to do is to
give him something to shop for. So it's like, oh, honey,
go to TJ Max and get me dish heels, because
I know that will calm him down.
Speaker 2: Spinning money shopping.
Speaker 1: Cause said this, I think you said, you were going
to TJ Max And then I said, you know what,
pick up some Halloween stuff. And he said, well, you know,
what do you want and that sort of thing, and I,
you know, if you paid attention at all, you know,
I tend to take control of these sorts of things,
but I really want Lorenzo to be in it, so
a couple of them. We've done this with Christmas stuff,
We've done this with Easter stuff, where I literally send
him out and say, go get decorations, do not ask
my permission, don't even send me, don't send me pictures
or anything. I want to be surprised with what you
come home with. And you know, I want you to
be reflected in our.
Speaker 2: And everything with fabulous and fun. It was.
Speaker 1: He came home with a bunch of things. And then
a couple of weeks ago we had to go to
Ikea to get our twice yearly supply of napkins from
Ikias Napkins Ever Beest Napkins Ever, and they had some
really cute Halloween stuff, so we bought even more. And
now we're in the process of putting it all up
because things need to be hung. There's about five thousand
things that need to have batteries put in them so
it looks cute. We have decals for the front window.
It's all black cats and bats and it's really cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny because I'm not. I wasn't really a
Halloween type of guy, but now I do, like, I know,
I like, I enjoyed the decorations we have and all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've said this before. After my mom died,
I realized we just don't have any We always had
Christmas decorations, but that was it. We never really had
much else. And I never felt I need to which
you know, we don't have children, so I don't need
to be putting out easter bunnies every year or whatever
little scarecrows at Halloween. So it was never a thing
that mattered to me. And then I realized after my
mom died that, you know, every time I went to
her house, and you know, we used to go all
the time, it was decorated according to the season. You know,
like she's a grandma. She was a grandma, she had grandkids.
It was very much a grandma house kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So we had a place to go and you know.
Speaker 1: And mark the passing of the Without that, I was like, oh,
it feels kind of dry. I need some pumpkins. I
need a couple of witches, that sort of thing. And
then it just grew and now it's this ridiculously elaborate
thing where we have about five hundred pumpkins in the house.
Speaker 2: Anyway, but it looks adorable.
Speaker 1: It does look adorable. I just got a really cute,
like gothic Adam's family style candelabra. It's like this black
curly and we're gonna put led taper candles and then
put it in the window and it's gonna look very cool. Anyway,
that's that.
Speaker 2: And he's gonna make me a pumpkin pie.
Speaker 1: Maybe do we need more sweets? I don't think.
Speaker 2: Yes we do. And candy we haven't bought candy.
Speaker 1: We haven't bought candy. I'm well, what I would suggest
we have a couple of really cute candy dishes. And
what I would like to do is get a big,
like five pound bag of eminem Halloween Eminem's. They have
them in Halloween colors.
Speaker 2: Like, well, there you go and.
Speaker 1: Just put those out and eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing if I get like a bag of kit
Kats or snickers or whatever they're all calling it. That'll
be gone. And I have zero drawers.
Speaker 2: I have zero control killing little bols.
Speaker 1: With Eminem's a couple times during the month. That's a
little more manageable anyway. As you can tell, we we
have overthought this completely, as we tend to do most things.
All Right, So this week on the podcast, we are
going to talk about House of Guinness, the show that's
just debuted on Netflix that we've actually been dropping little
bits and pieces about for the past couple of weeks.
Lorenzo loved it. He's watched the whole thing. I like it.
I don't have lots of criticisms, but I don't.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's changed because I thought you were going to
be more negative about it.
Speaker 1: No, that's good.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: I oh was it good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good because I loved it in thes that
I was very entertained by it. I thought it was Yeah,
we'll talk.
Speaker 1: About that'll be this back half of the podcast because
we'll probably get into a couple of spoilery things when
we get into that, but we'll give you warning of that.
And it is also before we get to that, we're
going to do a little retrospective, another movie retrospective. A
couple of weeks ago, we had a discussion about the
fiftieth anniversary of Gray Gardens and what it meant to
us and why Edie Little ed Beale was such an
icon to queer people. And it's also as of today,
I believed it was released on September twenty sixth, nineteen
seventy five in the United States. Is the Rocky Horror
Picture Show. Fiftieth anniversary of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
So nineteen seventy five was a hell of a year
for and Jaws. To write Jaws was fiftieth anniversary as well. Yeah,
I'm gonna be We're gonna talk about it. We're going
to do the same thing we did, and we're just
gonna unpack it. There was a tremendous amount of research
done on The Rocky Horror Picture Show in preparation for
our book Legendary Cheldren.
Speaker 2: To talk about it's let's mention that it's in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll get into that. But before we do
all of that, I wanted to just, you know, check
back in on last week's topic, which was Jimmy Kimmel
getting suspended by Disney ABC because there has been movement
on that, and we said that at the end of
last week's podcast that by the time this thing went live,
the whole thing could have been resolved. And it didn't
resolve itself right away, but it did resolve itself, and
he did wind up back on the air. Well money talked, Well,
that's the thing. A lot of people, I mean, apparently
the talks and everything, the Disney Plus subscriptions plummeted. I
don't even know if our cancelation went through because the
site kept crashing. I tried like fifteen times to control
our subscription and then then they let them back on
the air, and I was like, well, I don't know
if there's I don't know if I'm supposed to follow
through on this or not. I never went back as
far as I know, I think it might have gone through,
and we are camping at the bottom.
Speaker 2: Line is that they were not expecting the type of
backlash that they got. Financially also, right, and that's that's
that's it. If it's about money, then things, you know.
Speaker 1: Right change and not only it wasn't just money. Well,
I mean it all comes to money, I get it,
but it wasn't just the Disney subscriptions. The backlash in
the entertainment industry was apparently something that Disney did not expect.
There was a massive letter from people, you know, actors
and performers saying that they would not work for Disney anymore,
which you know that's big.
Speaker 2: I mean, actress on TikTok, we're talking about canceling their subscription,
like Cindy Nixon was on TikTok.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tatiana Maslani, Yeah, we're both Marvel stars, right, So,
I mean, the backlash was coming from all corners. It
was coming from consumers, it was coming from the industry,
it was coming you know, it was both financial backlash
and cultural backlash. And you know, Disney can't sustain that
kind of backlash for too long. And they they caved,
which is good. I'm not going to give them lots
of credit. In fact, I'm still wrestling with if we
haven't canceled Disney, should we go ahead and just do it,
because they've revealed themselves to be kind of unreliable and
in terms of protecting their performers and you know, supporting
the First Amendment. But so yeah, I'm glad that he's
back on the air. Listen, and I'll repeat what I
said last week. I'm not some huge Jimmy Kimmel fan.
I don't really have a problem with him, but he's
you know whatever, I'm not some huge fan.
Speaker 2: They honestly, I don't watch talk. We don't watch I
only watch what we post on our site, the embedded videos.
But no, I don't turn the DV on at night
and watch doc show.
Speaker 1: I'll watch the clips then, yeah. Yeah, And we talked
about that, that this is a dying form and that
you know, the the administration new to go after someone
like this because he's in a week in state.
Speaker 2: But it's much bigger than that. It's about freedom of
speech and yeah, and other things.
Speaker 1: And ironically, I think this may have wound up strengthening
Kimmel's all the more. Like the ratings for even we
should mention Sinclair Television Group, which was the affiliate you know,
they own all these affiliate stations across you.
Speaker 2: Know, about forty of them, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: And they they were the ones that initiated this whole thing,
that they were making threats and they were going to
pull the show, and then that's turned into Disney basically
suspending him, so Disney brought him back, But all of
these Sinclair affiliates did not run. Sinclair is a very
right wing media company, and you know, liberals have been
screaming about the danger of this affiliate company owning so
much of our media for well over a decade now.
So for me, at least, having read up on the media,
you know, always always, always being on top of what's
going on in the media, none of what happened was
particularly surprising to me. Sinclair has been a problem for
a while. So they're still not going to air his show.
And this doesn't affect us because I checked and we
are not in a Sinclair market, which is nice for us.
But there are a bunch of markets across the country
that are not going to be able to watch this
show because they're right. They want him to apologize, they
want him to donate to Turning Point usl this other bullshit.
It means to be seen what kind of backlash is
going to be needed in order to get them to cave.
Although the if I can, if you are in a
market where Sinclair has preempted this show and this means
something to you and you want to fight it, then
what you need to do is watch the programming that
they put on during Jimmy Kimmel's show, write down the
names of the advertisers, and contact the advertisers. Now, that
is a lot of work that I am putting on people,
but that's literally the only thing that's going to get
is you need to go to the people that are
paying for this stuff and start threatening them with boycotts.
That's what made Disney cave and that's what's going to
make Sinclair cave. But unfortunately, it was a lot easier
to do it with Disney because it was just about unsubscribing,
pressing a button and unsubscribing. But you've got to sit down,
take down names, find contact information, and then contact advertisers.
I am ninety nine percent sure if you really want
to do that, there were places you can go online
to find these lists and these contacts yourself. So Google,
Google this sort of thing. And that's all I can
say about that, because this is going to be an
ongoing problem. The reason we're bringing this up again is
because you know, Disney caved and they gave him his
spot back, and right after that, Apple Caves. Apple TV
had a series about to launch. It was I think
it was going to go out this week with Jessica
chat Stain called Savant and it was about domestic terrorist
at right wing domestic terrorism. And in the wake of
you know, Charlie kirk assassination, they have pulled this show
at the last minute and they have not made it
clear if it's ever going to air. And again this
is a huge issue because again Apple owned by billionaires,
very very wealthy people are deciding what we can and
cannot see, what we can and cannot talk about, what
ideas are acceptable and what ideas are not. And purely
from a I'm sorry, I'm talking a lot to you
want to talk, Go ahead, you're fascinated. Just love listening
to you, right, love listen. I think you're falling asleep.
Take us to be your coffee. I completely lost my head.
Speaker 2: Anyway, The bottom line here is that we have companies
pretty much owning a lot of things, you know, like it.
It's down to as I you know, jokingly said on
the last vodcast, it's down to two people now.
Speaker 1: Two people own all everything.
Speaker 2: Everything, So when they make a decision, it affects a
lot of people. A lot of showed companies, you know,
it's not just one thing anymore.
Speaker 1: I got to get Jessica Chastain some credit because she
immediately spoke out against it and said, I do not
support this at all. And you know there would be
if you recall, and this isn't a criticism of Jimmy Kimmel,
but if you recall, he was dead something radio silent
for several days after this happened. He didn't immediately come
out right right, but she immediately came out and said
I do not s this at all. And I thought
that was I don't want to say overstated. I don't
want to say it was brave of her, but it was.
You know, it took some balls because she's a working
actress and you know, for her to speak out against
a major studio like that is putting future work at risk,
is putting the future of this project at risk. However,
this is why the entertainment industry needs to stand up
to this kind of thing, and it's why people stood
up to Disney last week. It's because as a studio,
you are basically saying that the work of the people,
the work of our creative people, the work of our
actors and actresses, directors, writers, It doesn't matter, will trash
it at the drop of a hat, and we will
not defend you or support you when people come after you, right,
And that is a terrible, terrible, terrible message for any
studio to be sending to its creatives. So I don't
know what's going to happen with Apple TV. And it's
not this, you know, it's not like Disney.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The thing is that Jimmy Kimmel thing was a perfect storm.
It's why everybody immediately said, oh, they fucked up on
this one, because that's the one guy you can't go in.
I mean, I'm not saying he's untouchable, but the combination
of Jimmy Kimmel and Disney made it a very easy
thing to grasp and to boycott. How do you I mean,
who's gonna boycott Apple TV? Plus most people don't even
remember it exists, it's not one of the bigger streamers, right,
And I don't think people are likely running to.
Speaker 2: And what are you gonna do? You're gonna you're gonna
drop your iPhone and get a different phone. I mean,
because it goes, you know, right, a lot deeper than
just than just Apple TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't even know how to combat this one,
but I mean, I will speak out against it, and
I do think it's pretty awful that these major, major,
major entertainment companies are bowing to the slightest bit of
pressure from the public or the administration. Anyway. Yeah, have
we exhausted that, Why don't we take a short break? Yes,
and we'll be back and we will dive into the
Rocky Heart Picture Show. We'll be right back. We're back,
and now we're going to talk about the Rocky Horror
Picture Show, which is near and dear to our hearts,
but on an intellectual level, not on a personal level.
I will start off by saying.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. I was going to say the same thing.
Speaker 1: We are not we are of the generation, we're jenets.
I mean, Rocky Horror really was a baby boomer thing originally,
but by the time I was in college, it was
a thing like everyone I knew was going to midnight
screenings and stuff. It wasn't something I really latched onto
when I was young, and I'll be honest, I think
part of that is because I was scared of it.
You know, when I was young, I was in the
closet and that was so scary and exactly and but
that that actually touches on a bunch of reasons why
this was so important. But go ahead give me your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Well, I was too much into other things at that age,
so I didn't know. I wasn't interested in it. I
think I started thinking about it and getting more interested
when it was on Fame, the movie Fame.
Speaker 1: Really well, yeah, they all went to it. That's right,
that's right, guys.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a musician playing the violin and I
was very interested in the face.
Speaker 1: That's what popularized it for jen X is that movie.
Speaker 2: Because the movie was like I was like, oh, okay,
and then I got I knew about it, but I
wasn't really that interested. But after that I was like, oh,
now I have to look it up, find out more
about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah we should. Let's just I'm not gonna give you
a total history lesson. I would never claim that I'm
an expert on the show. But The Rocky Horror Picture
Show started as a stage show in London or in England,
and it was an underground cold head it was. It
was written by a Queerman named Richard O'Brien who actually
starred in it as well.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: I think culturally speaking it it exists on a seventies
continuum that includes things like cabaret and pink flamingos and
believe it or not, Greece. It's like on a continuum
between those films. If you look at I've always said
this that e Liza Minellen's classic mine Hair look, you know,
the Derby and the black hotpants and everything, and Tim
Curry's Rocky Horror Picture Show look are only about a
half step off from each other. They're very, very similar
if you were to put them. I don't mean they
I mean he's wearing like lingerie, but it was very
much in that sort of pre punk glam rock mode.
Both of those costumes. They would both highly sexualized looks.
They both had to deal with things like garters and
boots and heavy eye make you know that sort of thing.
I do think Cabaret, like Rockyhard, dabbled a little bit
in drag. It had a little bit of drag aspects
to it. Joel Gray's MC was based on, you know,
the dandies of the nineteen twenties in Weimar, Germany, and
even the Chorus girls and Liza herself. The makeup had
that very very heavy Now it was appropriate for the
nineteen thirties in Germany, I'm not saying it wasn't. But
you know, films get made, even period films, and they
reflect the times in which they were made, just as
much as they reflect the times that they are talking about.
And there's a lot about Cabaret that's historically accurate, but
there's a lot about it that is strictly purely nineteen
seventy four. You can't get a way from the nineteen
seventy fourness of it. And I'm only bringing that up
because I feel like, you know, Rocky Horror is on
that continue and part of the reason it became so
such a cult favorite is because it was operating within
a cultural moment where it made sense. And the reason
I attributed to something like Grease, which came out like
three or four years later, is because they're both nineteen
fifty style musicals. The music's the music in Rocky Horror
is almost completely indistinguishable from the music in Greece. You
could switch some of those songs around and they would
fit perfectly. So that's my point is that the show
arose because at that moment in the nineteen seventies Poststone Wall.
It's about seven or eight years post Stone Wall. Baby
Boomers were dealing with duel. I've always felt this about
baby Boomers, especially during that period. They were dealing with
both nostalgia for the past and a driving need to
push towards the future. So you had these nineteen fifties
style rockabilly shows like Rocky, Horror Picture Show or Grease.
But at the same time, in the nineteen seventies, at
the height of the sexual Revolution, you had people dealing
with gender nonconformity and bisexuality and different forms of queerness,
and that was all being pushed on people. Even Greece
was a movie and a story that dealt with all
of the esthetics of the nineteen fifties while promoting an
extremely nineteen seventies point of view about sexual liberation and
that sort of thing. So all of these things were
happening roughly in the same decade, three to four years
apart from each other, and I have always felt that
they were connected. And I bring up Pink Flamingos because
even though esthetically there's not a lot that are connecting it,
it was the other huge queer drag film of that period.
And both of those films Pink Flamingos on The Rocky
Horror Picture Show were I mean influential on the culture
in a way that almost can't be measured. Every drag
Queen owes, every modern drag Queen Owes divine a debt
popularizing not just popularizing drag, but pushing the art form past,
you know, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe impersonation and into
something expressive and dangerous and and a little you know,
something that you should fear. Rocky Horror was doing the
same thing where it was, you know. And this is
my point that I wanted to make about why, as
a closeted kid, a closeted gen X kid, I was
I didn't go and see it. Rocky Horror was scary,
and it was meant to be scary, And I don't
mean scary like jump scares, and I mean.
Speaker 2: It was scary, well, no, it was.
Speaker 1: It was scarying you with your own feelings and your
own thoughts because here's a male presenting person who is
very lacibious and very sexually open, but he is in
pretty much full drag and it wasn't like female impersonation drag,
which is again before Divine, this was how people understood
drag the general public was you dress up to look
like Marilyn Monroe or Judy Garland or Barbas streisand it's
female impersonation. And then Divine And then Tim Curry came
along as Frankenfurter and said, no, it's about expression. It's
not even about being pretty, and it's not even about
being feminine. It's about being in your face and expressive
and scaring you with your own attraction to this person.
Speaker 2: I agree. Tim Curry actually gave an interview of the
La Times, I believe, and he talked about how it
took a lot of courage even back then, Yes, oh
God to come out to your first scene and you
dress like.
Speaker 1: That in the same card.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it even for the time, And he
talked about he joked about how twentieth century Fox probably
didn't know what they were doing. Yeah, let that, you know,
let them do what they did. The costumes and the
crazy characters and the house and the liberation, the freedom
of everything, you know, all that that was kind of
like shocking in a way, as you said, right, and
but a lot of people felt represented. Uh, you know,
and they still do even today. And I think that's
why people love the movie so much. It's because they
see themselves, and especially back then, and that's.
Speaker 1: Why people fear it as well, because they see themselves.
Speaker 2: And I think, especially back back then, you didn't have
that kind of representation in traditional media. I mean, you
have a little more today, but not, you know.
Speaker 1: Not that kind of queerness.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: We I've told this before about you know, when we
were writing Legendary Children and our editors said, you know,
they we had come up with a cover concept, does
you know, cover design concept, and it was going to
include a bunch of drag queens front that are in
the book, drag queens and gender nonconforming performers, and so
our editors said that you need to put a list
together of who you want on the cover, And a
lot of thought was put into that cover because we
wanted it to be as diverse a representation of queerness
as possible.
Speaker 2: And also people that met her, you know, like, well,
yes they had to be up.
Speaker 1: Yet they weren't chosen just because they checked off a box.
They were highly influential people. But in the case of
frank Enferter, who does appear on the cover Tim Curry
dressed as fran Conforter.
Speaker 2: Is that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to represent a queerness that wasn't homosexuality, like
Frank Conforter is. By modern standards we would probably call
her pan sexual, but in the in the parlance of
the time, she was ac DC or bisexual, and I
wanted someone who represented something other than homosexuality or transgender
or there were lesbians on the cover as well, but
I wanted that. I wanted a bisexual or pan sexual
person who was gender non conforming, and possibly even by
the standards of today, we might consider Frank Conforter non binary.
They wouldn't have used that language back then, but that
character pretty much represents non binary status. They are neither
male nor female. They switch back and forth between presentation modes.
Not that that's I can't define what non binary is,
but that certainly does fit the description, right.
Speaker 2: I think I think it's it's it is truly a
phenomenon because this movie is insane. I mean the fact
that they show the show the movie at midnight somewhere
and they all dress like the characters, they go dancing,
they jump on stage and all that. I think that
that's an insane experience. Yeah, for a lot of people. People.
My understanding is that the longest continued theatrical release in history,
in the history of cinema, I believe, But it's just insane,
and I don't think I'm quite sure that nobody knew
that was going to become such a thing it still is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, it was a cult classic when
it was a stage show, so and it had the
same effect on people where people were coming in knowing
the lyrics to the songs and dressing up as the
characters and interacting with the cats. Not to the level
that the movie became, because it would have been really
disruptive for a stage show, But I think they understood
that they had something I don't Obviously, no one could
have predicted that it would become this international phenomenon that
last fifty years. But I do feel that they made
the film because they understood they had something that people
were responding to. And that's the other thing that I
want to that makes this film so important, Like, honestly,
very few films had the kind of cultural impact and
personal that a film like Rocky Horror has. And it
was the point that we tried to make in our book,
and part of the reason it was included in the
book is because I don't think a single cultural document
led more people to the realization of their own queerness
than Rocky Horror, because people were going to the shows
dressed as the characters. And what this meant was a
whole generation of men who probably wouldn't have had the
nerve otherwise were putting on garters and mascara and lingerie
and going out in public and expressing themselves among a very,
very supportive community of people cheering them on. And I mean,
I wish I had come to my own realization under
those circumstances. What a great way to just slam that
closet door open. And it cannot be counted the number
of men now. I have no doubt that this film
also allowed a lot of trans people to come to
their realization and allowed a lot of queer women to
come to this. So I think it's just queerness across
the board and self expression that really allowed the people
in the audience to become a part of that expression.
Speaker 2: I think. I think that's the great thing about things
like that. I remember when I was it was the pandemic,
and I was very deep into physique magazines from the
fifties and so, and everyone was saying everything I read
and everybody was saying that, you know, before those magazines,
when the magazines start coming out and they started buying
those magazines, the first thing that people you know, thought
and thought to themselves were like, oh my god, there's
people like me. There's people like me out there. And
I think that that realization that there are people like
you out there means that you are not you know,
you're not abnormal. You know there are other people like
that like you. And I think the same thing with
a movie like this. I was actually watching in PR
this morning and they were talking about this movie and
they were there were interviewing people who still go see
the movie all the time, and they were saying that
when they saw the movie, the first thing they thought
was like, oh my god, there's a whole world out
there that is bigger than I thought, you know, a
representation much bigger than what we see in front of us.
And that's I think that's company. I think that's that's
so great for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: The gay writer David Sedaris once wrote something that I
never ever, ever ever forgot he's a few years older. Well,
he's more than a few years older than me. He's
pretty much a baby boomer. But he talked about growing
up in the seventies as a young gay kid, and
he said, my parents knew. I mean, he wrote, and
I'm obviously paraphrasing, my parents knew. You know, a girl
who knew knew a family where a girl had swallowed,
you know, drain cleaner to try and kill herself in
another family. And he just listed all of these scandals
and embarrassments that happened in his suburban, upper middle class,
white neighborhood, all these terrible things that happened in other families.
And he said, but the one thing I never heard
growing up was someone had a gay kid. And I'm
telling that story because I want to bounce off something
you said about people not knowing until they went to
that movie, that there was something like if you were
a millennial or younger, or even if you're a young
young gen X, although I think most gen X understands this,
there was nothing when you were growing up. But there
was nothing. There was nobody out there who was like you,
let alone somebody saying it's okay to be the way
you are, we're very used to. We live in a
world now where these sorts of things are encouraged at
a very young age for the most part. I mean,
obviously it's still controversial. We're still having conversations about trans kids,
but we have an understanding that there needs to be
examples put out and impact. This is what the right
wing is trying to do right now is to remove
as many cultural examples of freedom of expression, queerness, blackness,
you know, all of that. They're trying to remove as
much of that from the culture to make it harder
for the people who are like that to exist.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time, but I'll be very honest
with you, I can still feel the feeling of having
people like you when I was a teenager or whatever,
having friends who were gage just like me, that feeling
that there are other people like you and you can
share things with them, especially back then that I couldn't
tell anybody that was gay. It wasn't that easy. So
just having friends having people that were going through the
same thing like you meant so much to be and
probably saved me.
Speaker 1: Oh, I agree, Yeah, I think it's yes, and I
think we can safely say that The Rocky Hard Picture
Show saved a lot of lives, saved a lot of lives,
quite literally. So here's to the Rocky Harpit. Yeah, maybe
i'll watch it again.
Speaker 2: I know now I want to watch it again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we're gonna take a short break and
then we're gonna come right back and talk about the
House of Guinness.
Speaker 2: We're back and we're going to talk now about the
House of Guinness, the show that on Netflix, that just
dropped on Netflix. I watched it a long time ago
because I was very excited about it because we recently
went to Dublin, and of course I want to see
the show.
Speaker 1: The Guinness Storehouse Tour. Oh my god, you ever go
to Dublin. It was literally my favorite favorite tourist attraction
in Dublin.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I booked everything ahead of time and
I left that for like almost like the last day
of our there, and we.
Speaker 1: Had the most We had the most fun there.
Speaker 2: I don't even drink I don't drink beer, but I
had the best time.
Speaker 1: Not only that, it's a really good for if you're
not Irish, it's a really good way when you come
out of that tour, you have a very good understanding
of how Guinness is not a beer, it is a culturalation.
It is so tied up with Irish culture, Irish identity,
and Irish history in a way that I actually didn't
know until I went on that tour, and it did
actually help me get into this show a little bit.
Now I'm going to let you know that you loved it,
but I just want to say I like it, and
we're going to talk about I don't really have a
lot of criticisms of it. It just comes down to
whether that style of show appeals to you or not.
Let me just say this, A lot of write ups
for this show have quite accurately described it as a
cross between Peaky Blinders and Succession, and those were two
shows I didn't love. So right there, it's it was.
But again, I'm not going to be terribly critical about it.
It's it's a lot of fun. But I'm going to
toss to a.
Speaker 2: Lot of people. A lot of people love Peakles number one,
and so it was. It's it's the same creators, They
same people who did Peaky Blinders. They're you know, now
they're doing House of Guinness. I watched Picky blind the
first season I did, and I again, I watch it
because it's Irish stuff. I'll watch anything Irish and it's
it looked beautiful, but it wasn't really my thing, to
be honest. Towards the end of the first season, I
was pretty much just had I just had the TV
on and kind of watching it. But it wasn't that interested.
So I didn't watch the second season and I forgot
about it. Now House of Guinness, I was interested because
again we went to Dublin, we visited the Guinness House
and all that, and and because of the history, as
you mentioned it. I mean, you go to Ireland, they're
all they talk about. You know, Well, no it's not
there they will talk about, but the Guinness it's it's
all that.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere. The beer it's everywhere, signs, pops everything. That's
what I'm meant. So I was like off car and
then I was and then I wanted to watch the show.
I knew very little about the history of it, and
then I was shocked, first of all, find out they
were all British. It was a British family and the
history behind me, and they were British loyalists. They were
Irish Protestants living in Dublin. They were very, very wealthy
and influential people. So let me just give an overview.
It's set in I believe eighteen sixty eight or something
like that, correct in Dublin, and the story opens with
the death of the family patriarch, and he has left
four children, three sons and a daughter, and obviously the
whole Guinness empire is going to be left to them,
and I do tend to think the succession comparisons are
slightly overstated because it's I will say, I've only seen
five out of the eight episodes, and Lorenzo has seen
the whole thing, so it could go into directions that
I have not encountered yet. But one of the things
that was a big point in its favor for me
was that the four siblings are all contentious amongst each other,
and they bicker, and they have different agendas, but it's
not literally about people trying to fuck.
Speaker 1: Each over each other over for power. They all have
different agendas, but they're not trying to destroy each other.
Let me just say that, Am I wrong? Okay? No,
I agree, And that is echoes a long way towards
making the story more palatable to me because I've ned generally.
That's why I didn't watch Succession. I was like, yeah,
I get it, and I know it was a comedy
and there was a lot about it that was very,
very appealing, but watching really, really wealthy people try and
destroy each other is just not something I find all
that interesting anymore. Having said that, I love this, I
do love this show. I'm not as ecstatic about it
as you are, but because I had to make some
adjustments along the way. But let me just say it
is a historical drama about a family, very wealthy, very
powerful family, and it is also it does an excellent
job of integrating the history and culture of Ireland into
the story. Because when it opened in the first episode,
I was like, I don't fuck I want to watch
this because it was all the family is all wealthy Protestants.
And as I said, my brother asked me about this
show and I was like, I love it, but it's
not about our people. I can tell you that we
were the poor Irish Catholics who were digging for potatoes
in the dirt, and they slag them off like they
talk about the Fenians. And even in the first episode
or two, it makes the Fenians look like these feral
animal terrorists and this family is just so genteel. But
as the story right, the story unfolds, and first off,
it starts showing I mean, when the sister goes off
to that village and meets that old woman, I mean,
that's when it really I was like, here it is,
here's the Ireland I know, or the history of Ireland,
because I mean she takes her on a tour of
like a mass grave of everybody in the village that
died in the famine and everything. So when it started,
I was like, I don't know if I want to
watch fucking doalt mabbe with Irish accents, you know that,
because it's it's really not my thing. But then it
started unfolding, and and I don't like business soap operas,
and I said that, like Succession doesn't really interest me,
or that show industry doesn't really interest me. I'm glad
that while this show does have to do with business
deals and finances, it doesn't get too caught up in that,
it doesn't get too into the weeds of what the
actual business is. Like, I mean, no, it's very about
the family. It's about the family it's about the.
Speaker 2: Family, and I mean it does touch on the rebellion
and religion and all that obviously, but it it and
I wish some every now and then, I wish it
went a little deeper, to be honest, because because I'm
fascinat by the history. Uh so yeah, uh, the the
you know, the family and and and everything that I
didn't know. Then I went online and I kept reading
about the family a little more so.
Speaker 1: It's a highly glamorized, yes, modernized version of their story.
Speaker 2: As your your sisters were asking me about it because
I saw the screeners. I said, it's very soap operas
in a way. But if you liked I go back
and say, if you liked Peky Blinders, then you will
love this because it's kind of the same approach to
a story. The cinematography is absolutely.
Speaker 1: Looks so expensive. I don't even know where some of
this was shot. I know it was shot in London, wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was shot in the north of England.
Speaker 1: Right in Liverpool and Manchester.
Speaker 2: Y's right, because they were trying to find places that
sort of resemble like Doubling at the time, and Doubling
right now doesn't anything like like back then, so they
had to shoot it in the North of England also Wales,
because there's some part of the story that they go
to it. But just.
Speaker 1: The sets and locations everyone. It's all brickwork and gas
lamps and stope, you know, stove pipe hats and everything.
It has a bit of a steampunk vibe to it.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: It has. It's all modern music, extremely modern music, which
is fun. But sometimes that doesn't bother me. But sometimes
that bothers people. When it's a period drama and there's
like rap music on the soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Some people will be bothered by the music. I was
absolutely love for the music. It's all Irish, contemporary Irish musicians.
Speaker 1: I thought it was fans of fiddles and Diddley d
kind of stuff, but it's all sped up and.
Speaker 2: In fact, I put an article today in the Lounge
with that gives you all the music by by episode,
because it is fantastic. The costumes are insane. That attims
are gorgeous, George and they were designed by Edward Edward K. Gibbon,
that's his name. Fantastic, fantastic customes.
Speaker 1: And I think he did a really good job because
nobody everything's historically accurate from my understanding of the period.
But because this show has a modern sort of vibe
to it and has modern music and everything, he still
manages to do little tweaks here and there to give
it that slightly steampunk vibe while still being in the
I mean Edward, the one brother with his stoat and
a big fur collar that he wears that coat, Oh
my god, it's stunning. But the one character I burst
out laughing, what's her name, Ellen Cochrane, the Fenian woman.
They showed her, and I was like, okay, nobody in
eighteen No woman in eighteen sixty eight walked down the
street with her hair down like that unless she was
crazy or a prostitute. But even prostitutes didn't walk down
the street with she has like long, flowing, curly red hair.
And I'm like, okay, that's not how women wear their
hair back then. And the women all say things like
fuck you to the men, and so you know, it's
all this very very very modern way of speaking modern music.
But I do think I do think for the most
part it does. It doesn't fail at depicting the period.
I actually think it depicts the periodod very accurately.
Speaker 2: It makes real real stuff with fiction, really really well. Yeah,
so you get the bits that are real. If you
go online, you find out that that that shit really happen. Yeah,
But at the same time they just.
Speaker 1: Go they tweak it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I want to get into I'm not spoiling specific
plot porm. Well, I mean, I'm going to tell you
something about the oldest brother, because a lot hangs on
the oldest brother. So if you don't want to know this,
it is revealed. I think in the first episode I
can't remember or by this early second it's not some
massive twist, but I'm the oldest brother's gay.
Speaker 2: Or the historians like to say he was bisexual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did look him up. He apparently had a
marriage of convenience and it was a long marriage, but
they had no children. So a lot of plot points
hang on the fact that he is this. Uh oh,
I gotta say, Anthony Boyle. It's not that I think
he's gorgeous, although he is very good looking, but Jesus,
what a face for acting, because you cannot take your
eyes off of him, and when he cries, you want
to cry, and we lapse you want to laugh.
Speaker 2: I think the cast is awesome. The cast is.
Speaker 1: Very very good. But he because he was in Saying
Nothing earlier this year or late last year, and I
loved him in that as well. He just has a
face that looks like it's never seen a so phone.
I mean he that is a black and white Daguero
type of a face. And anyway, so he plays the
oldest brother and he's gay, and he inherits everything and
he's in charge, and you know he's everything's being put
upon him and all he wants to do was be
with his snotty English boyfriend. And that's interesting. But the
minute the minute, the minute the minute they introduced that
plot point, I was like, Okay, here we go. I
always had a problem with, for instance, Downton Abbey, uh,
with the way it depicts a homosexuality. They had a
gay butler, and he lived his life with an openness
that simply would not have been granted to him at
that time, Like openly the staff talked about Thomas the
butler and his ways. This is not how it would
have been. And this is kind of my issue with
the way his homosexuality is. It's just too many people
openly talking about something that nobody back then talked about,
and the story gives you reasons why, and people are
they're very uncomfortable and we shouldn't be having these conversations.
We shouldn't be stating this over And the fact of
the matter is you wouldn't have been stating this over right.
Speaker 2: I think it's a fine line because again I go
back to my Physique magazine, that people were reading the
fifties with all these men and stuff, and would they
used to write letters to the magazine, and that the
creator of the magazine tried to be a little political,
putting stuff about what was happening, people dying, gave people
dying blah blah blah, and then the writers the readers
were writing letters that God, can we just drop all
this and have a good time? Right? But my point
is that I do believe that people had to be very,
very very cautious. But watching interviews online of very old,
you know, queer people saying that, you know, it was horrible,
we could get killed, go to jail, but we still
managed to have a good time. My point is that
I'm sure that he had his adventures and had his
stuff going on.
Speaker 1: But I don't think the whole family was sitting around
talking about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's why I Yeah, it's hard to tell,
to be honest for me, I think if it really
happened or not, or how open he was, I.
Speaker 1: Don't care about the accuracy. Yeah, of his life he's
dead one hundred and twenty years or whatever. I just
mean that. And this is just a minor bugaboo that
I have with how to me if you depict a
gay person in eighteen sixty eight pretty much leading an
open gay light semi open gay life, and other people
are openly discussing his gayness. His sister, his brother's employees
of Guinness are openly is at well spoiler, his wife
openly discussing these things. And I just feel like, I
don't want to be too inflammatory here, but it's it's
like showing a benevolent version of slavery in the American South,
version of it that just didn't exist for the people
in it at the time. So, I mean, granted the
show was not making the point that he lived an easy,
open life, it does make the point that he could
go to jail for this, that the company could be
ruined with it. That's why he's pressure to get married
exactly all that's fine. It's simply the way it's handled
in like the dialogue and the story where I just
I hate when I say it because I think it
gives modern audiences a very, very inaccurate view of what
queerness was. It was an abomination that right thinking, well
bred people not only didn't discuss they didn't know about it,
that it was so not discussed that people could go
through their entire lives, sophisticated, intelligent people go to their
entire lives having no idea that it even truly existed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why we don't have so much written history
today because everything was burnt. Everything was burned, the family
when when that person died, everything got burned. The family
burned everything.
Speaker 1: It's not really a criticism of the show. It just
sort of it's one of those things that sticks in
my cross sometimes with queerness and how it is portrayed.
Prior to the twentieth century, it was, as you said,
people lived their lives and they were able to people
fell in love, people had life long gone and you know,
relationships and I'm not saying these but they happened in
the in the darkness, you know, they happened on the margins.
People in society were not sitting around on their set
tees drinking tea and talking about the problem of their
brother's homosexuality. Like scenes like that. I'm like, okay, right,
not how this would have been handled, Yeah, I can
see that. But I will say Anthony Boyle is probably
the best part of this show. Like you cannot take
your eyes off him at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's really good.
Speaker 1: He's very very good.
Speaker 2: The sister is also very good.
Speaker 1: Oh she's another one where I don't have a problem
with this on the same level as queerness. But she's
like this proto feminist character in eighteen sixty eight. She
has plans, and I mean her aunt. That scene with
her aunt where she starts laughing at her, She's like
women with plans, like she does laugh at her. I know,
I know, And to me, I was like, well, that
actually is the more accurate point of view. I'm not
saying a young woman in eighteen sixty eight who has
apparently been educated and came up of means. I'm not
saying she would not have ambitions of her own. You know,
women in the nineteenth century actually did have ambitions. But
she talks like a twentieth century feminists.
Speaker 2: Because I think because we need the visuals, because I
feel like back then, at that time, women didn't talk much,
but they were very They did a lot of things,
you know, right behind the scene, right and didn't get
any recognition for whatever they did or influence. But they did.
I mean, the last they did something, it's just at
you know, it wasn't talked about the way it is
on a show or you know, visually present like it
is on the show, because you need there, you need
that visual anyway.
Speaker 1: But so the whole cast is good across the board.
Like I said, Anthony Boyle is great. James Norton, who
I don't think I've ever seen him play a piece
of shit before. Yes, and he's really good at it.
Speaker 2: It's good.
Speaker 1: Actually, I don't think i've ever he's never been hot.
He's so hot because he's such a piece of shit.
Speaker 2: In the first episode, I was like, oh my god,
you're an asshole.
Speaker 1: Absolute asshole. He doesn't normally, I mean maybe he does.
I haven't followed him that closely, but I can't recall
ever seeing him be such an asshole. I also have
to say Lewis Partridge, uh oh again. First off, I
am shocked. He's twenty two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Gage, Oh no, no, it's not gay.
Speaker 1: No, i'd heard he was dat.
Speaker 2: Oh he's not gay. He's dating. Oh never mind, sorry, No,
he's not dare dating somebody else? Never mind, he's not gay. Uh,
but he is excellent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was shocked that he is so young, because
he doesn't come across that young. I mean, he's very boyish,
but I actually did think he was about five years
older than that. He's very, very commanding on camera, and
in some ways, at least in the first five episodes,
he has the biggest role, Like he has the central
role because a lot I mean Anthony Boyle's character. His
older brother obviously plays a big part in it as well,
but it seems like Edward the younger brother is constantly
working to save his older brother or prevent him from
showing himself.
Speaker 2: So, just to add here, you're right, he's dating Olivia Rodrigo. Yeah,
but he I was shocked how good he is because,
as you said, he's very young.
Speaker 1: He's very young, and he doesn't he comes off older,
even though when I saw when I saw that he
was twenty two, I was like, oh, I guess, yeah,
he just I guess because of the top hat and
the big coats, he looks so much more commanding and old.
Speaker 2: But again, the set's the costumes.
Speaker 1: I mean, if nothing else, if nothing else, I really
was blown away by how beautiful it looks. It looks
extremely expensive clip show it does.
Speaker 2: And I was shocked and please because again we went
to Doubling, and we went to the Guinness House and
the the gate. We saw the gate. We have pictures
in front of the gate, so that's the first thing
you see first episode, and I was like, oh, it's
a reconstruction though I know, I know, but it's awesome.
Speaker 1: It looks just like it though. All right, So I
would say that this is recommended. This is a highly
recommended show. It's very entertaining. It's soap opera a, but
the cast is fun.
Speaker 2: I have to say, if you don't know anything about it,
the first episode might be a little too much for you,
but just keep watching. Because I was a little overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Well there's some violence, not I mean there's no violence
at all, but the whole.
Speaker 2: History and everything, what's going on. I was like, what
is going on here?
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Irish history. Yeah, and I was
pleasantly surprised by the at and it does a really
good job of integrating it, not just history but culture.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, at one point the ann mentioned to extremely obscure,
but I guess not if you're in Ireland Celtic gods.
That I was like, oh wow, they're really going into
Irish culture. So it's not all shamrocks and whiskey. They're
going into you know, the mythology, the history, the religions.
Speaker 2: So no one watch it again because I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to finish it. I have three more
episodes to go. But it is recommended, that is Telo recommended.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So I believe that's it for us. We'll be back
next week with whatever crosses our eyes across as our desks.
Until then, take care of yourselves, love you mean it.
Speaker 3: Bye bye bye I t TE