The Letterboxd Show 2.08: Marya E. Gates
[clip of Bright Star plays]
FANNY I still don’t know how to work out a poem.
KEATS A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore. But to be in the lake. To luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is a experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the souls to accept mystery.
FANNY I love mystery.
[clip of Bright Star ends]
[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]
GEMMA Hello and welcome to Marya E. Gates. [Marya laughs]
MARYA That was a great summation of my online presence. I love it. [Marya laughs]
SLIM Marya’s Letterboxd handle is Crossing Delancey. Marya has also just published a thirsty piece for Letterboxd about denim butts in movies, in which she writes that she ‘has always been a fan of a nice ass and a pair of tight jeans.’ [Marya chuckles] Clearly a kindred spirit of this podcast. And now… on with the show.
[theme music ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
GEMMA I mean, we only start there right?
MARYA It’s really true. It’s really true. At one point when I worked at FilmStruck we were doing these videos where we would confess like why something in a movie meant something to us and people were doing deep pieces about movies their fathers, you know, introduced them to and stuff. And I was like “can I talk about Dennis Quaid’s butt in The Big Easy?” [Slim & Gemma laughs] And they were like “what?” and I’m like “trust me… it’ll make sense.” I did it and I made it make sense, like why it impacted me as a person. But unfortunately we lost the license to the film and the video never made it to the internet, so…
SLIM Ugh.
GEMMA Nooo! [Marya laughs] Well we’re pleased to have finally provided a platform for this and honestly when I saw you tweet about it I was like “Commissioned!” [Marya & Slim laugh] Straight up!
MARYA I really appreciate it. I feel like it found the exact right audience, the exact right platform for what I wanted to say. And it was such a long list that having it live on Letterboxd where people could literally add it to a watchlist right after, it’s just… it was perfect. I couldn’t ask for a better place for it to live.
SLIM The list is insane. I was going through it when it posted this week. What is it about the human buttock that lends itself so well to denim on film? [Gemma laughs]
MARYA There’s just something about the way that jeans just… form fit. You know, even before they started adding, you know, stretchy material to jeans, jeans just… it’s just perfect. You know, and it was started for—like Levi’s, I think, was started for gold miners here in California and because the denim is so…
GEMMA Rugged.
MARYA Strong—yeah, rugged is a good word. It was good for gold miners and the kind of stuff that you know, pioneers were doing and then you know, morphed into this like sex symbol, which is kind of what I wrote about in the piece. But, it started out just because it’s such a strong material. [Marya & Gemma chuckle] But… you know, butt—dun-nuh-duh—
GEMMA Ba-dum-chh! [Gemma & Marya laugh]
MARYA The butts in those material, you know, they were the nicest butts because they were, you know, they were working man butts. And, you know, just kind of kept going that way. [Marya laughs]
GEMMA Right. So there were fit butts!
MARYA Yeah. But I also firmly believe—firmly [Marya & Gemma laugh]—how many of these can I do? That almost anybody’s butt looks better in a pair of nicely fitting jeans than anything else. I used to ride a lot of buses in San Francisco and one of the things I would do to like, you know, whittle away the time was just look at people’s butts and think about were they wearing jeans that fit well or were they, like, why were they wearing khakis? Khakis are not good. Khakis don’t look good on most people.
GEMMA ’Cause in your piece, you wrote about—was it Wesley Snipes?
SLIM Patrick Swayze?
GEMMA Patrick Swayze, yes! And how both of them, in two of their movies that you mentioned, that the fit of the jeans was a little too loose for probably yours and mine—I don’t know about Slim’s taste. [Slim & Gemma laugh] We’re about to find out. And yet, they were well cut jeans, right? And they still look good.
MARYA They still look great in them! Like I don’t know how Wesley Snipes managed to make that cut of jean look as good as it did because it’s such a boxy cut, but I think it’s because he’s so athletic and so is Swayze that even though they aren’t all that tight, you know they have these great bodies underneath and they make the jeans—
GEMMA That roundhouse kick that Wesley pulls off.
MARYA He jumps over a fence and into a roundhouse kick in one… like… one movement. [Slim laughs] I don’t know how he did that. That has stuck with me.
SLIM That’ll stick with anybody when you see it happen on screen. But if you’re still on the fence about reading this, we’ll have it linked in the episodes notes. You have to read it. I coming upon the Road House segment of the article, and I was howling because just like Gemma said, you pointed out how they weren’t the ideal cut, but they still look great. And even in that movie, his ensemble selection in that movie is really out of sight.
MARYA Yes!
SLIM He wears like silk shirts that don’t even look like they fit correctly. I think even silk pants, he’s so wild in that movie.
GEMMA I feel like this, weirdly, this episode is a beautiful ing of two people with some quite common interests here. We’ve got Marya with your denim butts list and we’ve got—you know what I’m about to say. We’re going to try and slip this list into every episode. [Slim laughs] We’ve got Slim with his Man Ass list.
MARYA Oh nice.
GEMMA And then we’ve got Patrick Swayze, who just, you know…
MARYA Does both.
GEMMA Plops right into both of them.
SLIM I’m trying to if we even see his bare ass in Road House. Do we?
MARYA Oh, we do. Oh yeah.
GEMMA We do.
SLIM That was a very sensual scene with him and that gal in that barn, if I correctly.
GEMMA And she’s looking, right? She’s looking.
SLIM Holy cow.
GEMMA So what happened—this rarely happens Marya—but when we commission something and then our Director of Social, Aaron, goes “Oh my god, I have to make a video to go with that?” [Marya & Slim laugh] And then so I was like—I had to go back to Marya and go “I know we said we were going to publish in July but we’re pushing this to August because Aaron is currently gathering up all the 4K butts he can find.” [Slim laughs]
MARYA Yes, as he should have. So I’m grateful for it.
SLIM 4K butts. [Gemma laughs] Should we finally start with Marya’s favorites? [Marya & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA I was gonna say, there’s not a lot of butts in your favorites—
MARYA Not in these favorites, no. [Marya laughs]
GEMMA Yeah! And I was looking for something that kind of ties them all together, apart from the fact that they’re all helmed by a woman and focused on women’s stories. It’s that there’s a chasteness to all of the love in these films. Shall we start with the most romantic, most chaste, least consummated of all? And that is Jane Campion’s 2009, John Keats, Fanny Brawne, fateful romance—Bright Star. [music from Bright Star fades in]
MARYA Bright Star. It’s chaste but it is incredibly erotic because Jane Campion knows how to make any scene erotic. She is one of the great erotic filmmakers. [Marya laughs] And somehow made a highly sexually charged PG movie about a romantic era, doomed lovers. [Slim & Marya laugh] Like how’d she do that? I don’t know.
SLIM Do you the first time you saw Bright Star, what your experience was seeing this?
MARYA Absolutely. I have a story. So I moved into the back of my parents house at the end of 2009 during the recession. They live in the middle of nowhere. The only theater playing this was like seven hours away. I didn’t get to see in theaters. I’m actually finally going to see in theaters thanks for the Academy in a couple months. I’m very excited. So I had to wait till it came out on DVD. I knew it was gonna mess me up. I had already seen The Piano. You know, I love Ben Whishaw. I was like ready for it. Love Keats’s poetry. I thought I was ready for it. Let’s put it that way. [Gemma laughs] So the disk comes from Netflix. I’m planning to watch it by myself because I knew I was gonna cry and I don’t like to cry in front of people. I don’t mind crying in a movie theater, people can’t see me, but like I watch things at home by myself.
GEMMA Just want to say about our podcast—I’m sorry—but our podcast is a no judgement crying zone.
SLIM Yeah. This is the cry circle.
MARYA Okay good!
GEMMA Feel free to go there. You can—Marya asked if she could swear before we started recording. [Slim & Marya laugh] And I forgot to mention, yes, you can swear, you can also cry.
MARYA So I’m watching it, I’m watching with my mom. And I’m like, oh, man, I’m gonna lose it. I had just gone through a really bad breakup too. So that’s important information to have. This is part of how I ended up living in the back of my parents house, was just, my entire life was just destroyed. I was so upset. So I’m watching this movie. It’s sensual. It’s so deeply romantic on like, every level of what the word romantic means. And ends, and I’m like not crying because I don’t want to cry from my mom. She’s already seen me cry too much over the stupid boy. She doesn’t need to see more of it. So I’m like, “Mom, I’ll take this back to the post office!” Post office from my parents' house to home should take about six minutes. They are so close to the post office. I was gone for almost an hour. My mom was like “Are you okay? Where’d you go?” So what it was, I went to the post office and I did put the disc in the slot but I also then drove up to the mountains and sat in like the wilderness and like sobbed like heavy, heaving, sobbing in my car for like 45 minutes up in the mountains. Because I grew up on a mountain. In the forest, no one could see me, primal crying. And then I came home—well then I had to like make it look like I hadn’t been primal crying. [Marya & Slim laugh] And I immediately bought the DVD on Amazon like, as soon as I went home, I didn’t really have the money but I was like, no, I need to like watch this movie over and over. And so then when it came I subsequently watched it I think, two or three times a week for like a year.
SLIM Geeze!
MARYA For like all of 2010, this is all I watched. Anyone who followed me on Tumblr back then knows that this is literally all I watched for like a year. [Marya & Slim laugh]
GEMMA Oh my god. I just want to say that, yeah, I’m glad you brought up Tumblr because that means I can bring up Bright Star gifs.
MARYA Oh yeah.
GEMMA Specifically, the two which are Fanny and John Keats separately stroking that black and white cat.
MARYA Oh yeah!
GEMMA Yeah, that image of Ben Whishaw with the cat sitting on the floor looking up… ah!
MARYA Yes, it’s so good.
GEMMA It’s like, Jane Campion, you made a man petting a cat erotic! This is insane! [Slim laughs]
MARYA There’s this scene in it—so like, I also firmly believe that one of the most erotic things you can ever film is two people’s hands touching. And there’s a lot of that in period films. And she does it in two sequences in this film, so like better than anyone’s ever done it. One, when they’re like, having tea. And he’s like, “invite me to Christmas” and they’re like looking at each other. And he’s just like, kind of stroking her finger a little? It’s like barely finger to finger and you’re like oh my god! What is happening?! [Gemma laughs] It’s so intense. And then later when they’re finally together, they’re, you know, there’s a really great closeup of them with his hand on top of her hand and their hands are sort of completely, completely combined. But that first moment where it’s just barely finger to finger , and you’re like, oh my god, what is he doing? He’s being so forward. It’s amazing. I love it.
SLIM So we watched In The Cut in an earlier episode, because that was one of Gemma’s favorites, Jane Campion.
GEMMA Yes!
MARYA That is a good film.
SLIM That was my first Campion experience. [Marya gasps]
MARYA Wow!
GEMMA Wow. So you’ve had two Campion experiences in the space of basically a month.
SLIM Yeah, it’s been a busy month for me for opening my eyes. I actually think I like In The Cut. Jane Campion’s doing some like serious flexing visually in this movie. I feel like.
MARYA Yes!
SLIM Like I was really stunned by some of the moody movements from Abbie Cornish. Like there’s a lot of silence in this. And just visually her like behind the like drapes in her house.
MARYA Yes!
GEMMA The curtains. Yeah!
SLIM Just the framing of the movie. It’s just absolutely stunning, I thought, when I was watching this. I was blown away.
MARYA There’s a few images that I think she uses in her a lot of her films—Campion’s my favorite director, by the way. It’s Campion and David Lynch. Those are my two—I love them. The imagery of someone behind, like, kind of lost in their own pain behind a curtain is something that she’s done since at least Bright Star, they’re very similar the way that she frames them because they’re both kind of going through a very violent reaction to first love. The one thing I think you can see in all four films is is that even though they’re chaste, and they’re all like PG movies, there’s a lot of like emotional violence in all four films. Campion is I think is the queen of emotional violence.
GEMMA Oh my god, the soundtrack is as a thing of beauty and wonder, given how young and inexperienced the composer was. But she also makes a decision—and I’m sorry, I’m gonna spoil the movie for you. But if you don’t realize that John Keats is dead—
MARYA Somebody, a friend at a bar, once told me that I spoiled history because I told them about this movie. [Gemma laughs] And I was like, how do you not know that John Keats died? That is not a spoiler!
GEMMA I mean, he was born in 1795, so he’s dead, right?
MARYA It’s not a spoiler!
GEMMA No, the spoiler is that he died at the age of 26. Like way too young and poor and, you know, the whole conceit of the film is that they fall in love but he has no money to keep her as a wife. And that matters at that time because her family has no father, there’s no head of the household. So one of the things I love about Jane Campion bringing Carrie Fox back from An Angel at My Table and putting her in the role of the mother is that, our romantic hats are going ah, just get over it and let them be together. But the pragmatic side of our brains is going of course, of course you can’t commit to having your daughter marry this poor man. Because that’s you know, that’s not how it’s not how you save your family from ruin.
MARYA Yeah.
GEMMA So when we find out that John Keats is dead, other filmmakers in the Hollywood system might throw a whole lot of violence at that scene. Instead, there’s just silence and Abbie Cornish is just wailing.
MARYA The wailing.
GEMMA The wailing! Oh my god, the wailing. The wailing, the heaving.
MARYA How she didn’t get every award that year just for that scene alone, it’s like… nobody went that raw.
[clip of Abbie Cornish crying in Bright Star plays]
GEMMA And calling for her mother, because that’s what you would do!
SLIM Oh yeah.
GEMMA You know, not to, you know, bring personal experience into it. But I’m going to. I specifically a moment after my father died, which was the same year this film came out, which is why I didn’t see it for about five years, because I knew there was death and pain in it. And I just specifically my beautiful big little brother catching me as I fell. And when I see that happen on screen, I go, you know, you have known pain, whoever was involved in this, you know pain. It’s not polite crying.
MARYA No, it is like raw, primal, crying. The very same kind of crying I did after the movie up in the woods. [Gemma & Marya laugh] And you know, I know that like, you know, looking back at the relationship that failed, that ended up with me living in the back of my parents house, like, that was definitely never gonna work out. But it was, I think the first time I had felt those feelings for somebody else. And what I love about this film is I think she captures what it does to Fanny, not just—to some extent, Keats—but really what it does to Fanny to feel something real. Other than her father dying, like her father dying, and this experience with Heats are probably the two most like alive she ever was in her young life. And I think Campion really captures how something like that can completely change you as a person.
GEMMA 100%. Also, just as we were heading into record this, we got news from Criterion that one of their first 4K restorations will be The Piano.
MARYA Yes!
GEMMA So it’s a big day! It’s a big month for Campion news. It’s very exciting.
MARYA I my mom wouldn’t let me see the piano when I was like going through, you know, my like Merchant Ivory period film phase because she thought it was… I don’t know. She thought I couldn’t handle it. Not knowing that I had seen like Trainspotting. [Gemma laughs] And a lot of other like actually disturbing films that I rented on my own. So when I finally saw it in college, and I guess she was trying to shield me from Harvey Keitel’s penis. [Gemma & Slim laugh] But it was like, Mom! I’ve seen a dead heroin baby on a wall, like this is nothing. [Marya laughs]
SLIM The Campion love fest, we need to pause it I think, to get to our next movie on the list. [music from Under the Tuscan Sun fades in] Under the Tuscan Sun. There are 106 other people on Letterboxd that have this in their faves right now, in their top four. And Diane Lane after a rough divorce takes a tour of Tuscany at the urging of her friends and eventually buys a villa there.
MARYA She buys a villa.
SLIM And at least for me, this is a famous DVD cover. I seeing this in the video store that I worked at when it had come out so this is around that same timeframe for me at least, discovering Diane Lane, the queen. IMO.
MARYA Yes!
SLIM But what was your experience seeing Under the Tuscan Sun back then?
MARYA First of all, Diane Lane is the queen and should be treated as such at all times. [Slim laughs]
GEMMA Undisputed.
MARYA And yeah, she has never given a bad performance. She’s been in some stinkers, but she’s never given a bad performance. So I missed it in theaters. But I it was really rainy day and I had gone to like CVS or something, the pharmacy, to get Kleenex or something and it was in the DVD rack for like $3 or whatever and I was like “Oh, I love Diane Lane!” because I think I just seen Unfaithful. So I was like, I’m just gonna get it. And it completely changed my life. I was like, this is the sunniest movie. I like to call it like a like a hug. Like a cinematic hug.
SLIM Right, right.
MARYA Because it’s not really a romance. You know, spoiler, she does eventually find somebody. But it’s incidental. Like she gets happiness from building a life for herself outside of romance and really leaning into who she is and learning who she is. And unfortunately, like a lot of women, she has to do it kind of late in life. She’s in her 40s. But it was great for me to see it when I was like 20 and go, oh, this is a good lesson. I should—I mean, I didn’t always, I haven’t always listened to that. But it was a good lesson that like friends and your ions outside of romance are equally as important to building who you are, from a thematic standpoint. But from just a visual standpoint, it’s in Tuscany. [Marya laughs]
GEMMA Oh my god.
MARYA Like Lindsay Duncan is in it and she’s utterly fantastic as this like literal Fellini character come to life. She talks about how she supposedly knew Fellini as a teenager and that’s why she now lives in Tuscany. [Gemma laughs] She eats gelato like 17,000 times in the movie.
GEMMA She’s incredible. I love that fountain scene when Diane—
MARYA Agh, she’s so good!
GEMMA Quietly sorted out. So this is adapted from Under the Tuscan Sun, the book of the same name. Which is a real life story by a woman called s Mayes.
MARYA Same name as the character.
GEMMA Yeah, who actually did this. Except that—
MARYA Everything else has changed.
GEMMA Everything else has changed, because she was happily married to a lovely chap named Ed. And they bought the house together and did the house up together. And then she essentially created the industry of Tuscany. Everything, everything Tuscan came after this in the world.
MARYA I read the book, it’s basically just like, Tuscany is awesome. Here’s a bunch of recipes. [Slim & Gemma laugh] Like, that’s the book!
GEMMA The really good part of the book is the detail of the doing up of the house. Like if you’re into house porn, it is it is an excellent book on that front. But one thing I love when I was reading about it was that like Ed, in 2019, he told CBS News, “The book is about to happy people who come to Tuscany and become happier. There’s no movie at all there!” And he was talking about how he was totally fine with all of the changes that were made for the film. He just thought it was wonderful and lovely. I loved it. I love Ed.
MARYA The screenwriter and director is Audrey Wells. She went to the same college as me, she’s a Berkeley alum, so that got a shout out. Go Bears. But she obviously graduated like 30 years before I did. But she just took, you know, she took the germ of a place basically, and then created—almost single handedly—created like a whole new genre of divorce women movies, because there weren’t really a lot of—like Nancy Meyers started to do it a little bit later too. But there weren’t really a lot of movies about like women in their 40s starting over.
GEMMA I think it was like Shirley Valentine and that’s about it right?
MARYA Yeah, that’s about it. Like most of them were more like their lives are terrible and then they stalk men or something like that. Right? [Gemma & Slim laugh] Like that was kind of—like if you’re over 35 and you don’t have a man…
SLIM Game over.
MARYA You know, you’re killing people or something.
GEMMA Boiling bunnies. Yeah. [Gemma laughs]
MARYA Yeah, whereas this movie kind of started a whole new genre of like, looking at life from a different lens. She gets really sad towards the end because she’s lost, you know, another really hot dude in Positano. Which the shots in Positano are also lovely. She finds a kitten on the beach, like, how do you not love that? You know, she ends up opening up her home to her friend with the baby and like the neighbor’s daughter and an immigrant worker. And like, she makes the world around her a better place for everybody. And then that makes her own world a better place. And I think that’s just a lovely, lovely message. So I usually watch this movie when I am feeling kind of depressed or sad about world events or whatever. And I watch it and it just it gives me a big ol' hug and like makes me recharged to try to be a good person and put out good energy in the world. Which sounds really cheesy, but it is. So… [Slim laughs]
SLIM This movie, maybe when I first had watched this, it was like one of my earliest memories of like a mainstream movie, where, you know, true love maybe isn’t the end goal of this film. Where like, I’m not used to growing up. Because she does have a few suitors that as I was watching it last week, I was like, wait a minute, who does she end up with here?
MARYA Yeah!
SLIM Like, then at the end, like when she visits her beau, who has another gal there, I was like, oh shit, I don’t that. Maybe this is the end! Maybe this is the message. [Slim & Gemma laugh] Maybe you don’t need to find someone at this moment. But with that said—spoilers for Under the Tuscan Sun, which is maybe a sentence that no one has ever uttered on a podcast. [Gemma & Marya laugh] You know, she does meet up with that other writer. And you’re kind of wondering, will they get together? And then his hand comes into frame at the end there at that dinner party? Oh mamma mia. That was some waterworks right there.
GEMMA Oh. My. God.
MARYA I like that what it shows Is that she has this complete life and a little cherry on top. But you also know that like, maybe she’s happy now, maybe this is her partner that she’s always been looking for, another writer, another person that is, you know, her equal? Maybe not! But you’re pretty sure regardless of how that dinner works out and how the future works out that she’s probably going to be… she’s fine now.
SLIM She’s Diane Lane. She’s gonna be great!
MARYA Yeah. She lives with Sandra Oh and their baby. [Gemma laughs]
SLIM She probably says that in the mirror every morning. “I’m Diane Lane. I don’t need to worry about anything right now!” [Gemma & Marya laugh]
MARYA Pretty much!
GEMMA She’s amazing. She reads about poetry every day. She’s so special. I have a few cute things I’d like to share about George of the Jungle is playing on the TV.
MARYA In Italian!
GEMMA In Italian. And Audrey Wells, in case you don’t know, and by the way, she died way too young at 58 a few years ago. She co-wrote George of the Jungle!
MARYA Yes she did.
GEMMA That’s super cute. I also love the incredibly economic storytelling at the start. And you know, this is another moment where someone falls down out of despair and grief and rage. Within three minutes, we know what’s up. We know her husband as a philanderer and her life is basically falling apart. At the eight minute mark, she’s in the divorce hotel and just collapses on the floor. And it’s just like, oh my god, like eight minutes in, everything has to change from here. It can only get sunnier from here, right? I just adore that.
MARYA And it show like the power of Diane Lane as an actress too, because so much of the emotions are just on her face. She goes from, you know, an okay face in the first scene where her protege has published a novel or whatever. And then she hears this bad news. And then it cuts to you know, to your point, three minutes in. Her face is completely downtrodden, everything is sad, bereft, there is not an ounce of happiness in that face. And it kind of stays that way until you get to the end. And when she meets the guy who’s like the cherry on top, she’s got a serenity about her and this entire journey is done through her face mostly. It’s a stunning performance.
[clip of Under the Tuscan Sun plays]
S Do I know you?
ED Not really. You reviewed one of my books once.
S Did I like it?
ED Not very much. [Ed laughs]
S Oh no!
ED Don’t worry, it was…by far the very best bad review I’ve ever received.
S You’re kidding.
ED I’m not. It helped me get to my next book. Anyway, I’ve been traveling around Tuscany. Someone said that you lived up here and… I’m Ed.
S Hi. I’m s.
[clip of Under the Tuscan Sun ends]
GEMMA Yeah, yeah, she’s pretty cute. There’s a lot of great slapstick involved in it. On Letterboxd, I’ve got some Letterboxd facts from Jack about Women have superior taste.
MARYA Aw!
GEMMA It’s on plenty of Christmas and LGBT lists. But it’s also on a list called Ladies Getting Head… as it should be. [Slim laughs]
MARYA Yes!
GEMMA Walking idly through European cities. My favorite recent list, which has just come up in the last couple of years, cottage core.
MARYA Oh yes!
GEMMA I would say the ultimate cottage core film, right. But I just want to like, it’s such a beautiful, sunny, rom com. And then there’s one scene that I’ve always been completely befuddled by and that is the special effects with the washing machine and the thunderstorm. [Marya chuckles] Like what the actual—what is going on there? [Gemma laughs] It’s like, suddenly we’re in a Joe Dante film? I don’t get it.
MARYA There’s actually two scenes with special effects. There’s that weird use of special effects, where you’re like, why did we even need that shot? And then later when Lindsay Duncan’s character has Zeus the Greek painter living with her—it’s a special feature on the DVD, so if you have the DVD, I recommend watching it. He’s actually naked when he walks by the first time she sees him and it’s his butt. And the producers were like we’re gonna—I can’t if it’s an R rating or PG-13 rating, but it was gonna bump the rating just for this butt. So they had to use CGI to add man panties. [Slim & Gemma laugh] This goes to your love of man butts! They had to add these like man panties to his butt. So the special feature shows both versions. [Slim & Gemma laugh] The way it was shot and then the CGI panties.
SLIM Should have given him CGI denim. I don’t know if that would’ve made the article.
GEMMA Oh… my god.
MARYA She like grabs his ass too. So they had to edit it with the CGI butts under her arm. I don’t know how they did that, must be very expensive I would think.
SLIM Had to calle ILM in. [Gemma & Marya laugh]
MARYA Probably!
SLIM Sees his work Revenge of the Sith and on this underwear scene.
MARYA It’s nuts.
GEMMA I have realized another theme that ties all your four favorites together. And of course, it’s it’s bookishness.
MARYA Oh yeah!
GEMMA These are all, bookish, bookie people. So we’ve got the poets in Bright Star. We’ve got Diane Lane’s character s is literally an editor and a writer in Under the Tuscan Sun. And we now move to the kind of bookstore you very rarely see in the world anymore, particularly in New York City. This is New Day Books.
MARYA New Day Books.
GEMMA Which is where Izzy works in Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 romance Crossing Delancey.
MARYA I love Crossing Delancey so much.
SLIM This is a 3.6 average on Letterboxd. It has 33 other people besides Marya that have this in their faves.
GEMMA Both of those numbers feel too low.
MARYA It feels way too low.
SLIM I think it’s availability. This is another one that maybe if it was on—
MARYA I have been harassing Criterion for years.
SLIM Get the 4K out. 4K pickles Criterion.
MARYA Crossing Delancey, we need it!
SLIM Tell us about your experience with Crossing Delancey, your first viewing? [music from Crossing Delancey fades in]
MARYA The first time I saw it was in 2015, I did a project called A Year With Women where I only watched films directed by women for the entire calendar year except for Noirvember. But during Noirvember, every film I watched had a female screenwriter to try to make it close. But the rest of the year, including rewatches ,I didn’t watch a single film directed by man unless it was during Noirvember. And it was a very, it was like doing a juice cleanse. It was great. It was such a good year. It got me very unplugged from like, caring about Marvel movies and anything other than like amazing female directors. So at the same time, Turner Classic Movies did a partnership with women in film called Trailblazing Women. And they did three years of this and the first year was just an entire month of film struck by women. I think was every Tuesday and Thursday, they showed five or six films every night directed by women. I had seen about 75% of the films at that point. But there were a handful that I hadn’t seen, one of which was Crossing Delancey comes on, I’m watching it and I’m like, how is this the best movie I’ve ever seen? And I’ve never heard of it? Like what is happening? Everything about it is perfect. The romances are so perfectly calibrated. The Bubbie. The lady who plays Bubbie is like the funniest grandmother ever. The Pickle man is—other than the lead of the next movie that we’re gonna talk about—probably the most charming romantic lead in a movie ever, at least in of what I look for in a person. [Gemma laughs] So, take notes. Be like the Pickle Man.
GEMMA So this came out in 1988. And I watched it for the first time in 2010 when I moved to New York and my one like, New York’s a city of immigrants, but there’s always one friend who was born and bred there and who was like, deep generational New York and I have that one friend, Jennifer. Then she was like, okay, you’re living here now, you need to watch Crossing Delancey until I watched the film, and as you know, has to do with this incredibly deeply embedded Jewish community that’s around the Lower East Side. And in the film, so that’s where Izzy has grown up, but it’s not where she wants to be in society. So she’s moved uptown. She’s working in a bookshop, probably above 14th. But she’s 33. And her friends are getting pregnant and having babies like there’s a lot of symbolism in this film. You know, she’s always opening a door, and then eight pregnant women are walking out. [Marya laughs]
MARYA Yeah!
GEMMA Or going to visit a friend. And it’s time for the photo session of the cute little baby that the friend has been beautifully breastfeeding in the rocking chair. And Izzy, in that scene, she’s so gorgeous. She gets out of the chair and she hands her friend the pillow. And then she just sits there watching. And you can, you just know what’s going on in her head at that point. So there’s all this symbolism around what it means to be 33 and want to be I guess, in the literary world and have higher ambitions for yourself, professionally and romantically, but still want the things that are only available to women within a certain biological timeframe. And so her Bubbie knows this. So she’s pulling her back downtown to, you know, try and get to meet some nice local Jewish guy. And it’s not what Izzy thinks wants. And that’s the whole premise of the film. But it’s so grown up, like Izzy’s occasionally having sex with this married dude who comes to her door, she’s being led down the garden path by some asshole European writer who’s just a dick!
MARYA Absolute idiot. The thing I love about the two main men that she’s oscillating between—The Pickle Man and this just navel gazing idiot of a writer—is the way that Micklin Silver writes, the way Izzy acts around the two of them is really, really, like precise and smart. Because you know, Izzy’s always herself. And she’s always trying to talk about herself and the things that she’s ionate about. When she’s with Anton, the writer, he is never listening to her. He never replace anything she says, he’s just waiting to impress her with the next thing he’s gonna say. But whenever she’s with the Pickle Man, whose name is now escaping me. He is always so actively listening that the next time he sees her he’s got something based on a conversation they had. And I think it’s such an important thing to look for in people that I think I think women in particular have a hard time going for people who actually listen to them as opposed to the flashy kind of people. And when I first saw the movie, I didn’t quite like get it. And then I dated somebody who was a lot like Anton. [Marya laughs]
GEMMA Oh, we’ve all been there.
MARYA I was like, oh my god! How did I do this? How did I do this to myself? Actually, I was rewatching the movie like after that all fizzled, and I was like, oh my god! [Marya laughs]
SLIM You lived it.
MARYA This is exactly how we had convos!
SLIM I personally would love to own a pickle shop. It looks like a great business to have on the street.
MARYA Yes!
SLIM I thought she was wrong to judge him so swiftly.
MARYA Those pickles looked amazing. The sound design!
SLIM She put that hat on to go visit him and then once she saw him slinging pickles… c’mon Izzy! Come on!
MARYA Hears the pickles! That’s why I love that scene because you hear her disgust of the pickle juice. And it’s frightening!
GEMMA I just know that Slim is putting that particular sound effect right in the middle of this part of the conversation as soon as we’re finished. [Slim & Marya laugh]
SLIM This episode, ASMR fans rejoice because you’re gonna love that scene.
[clip of Crossing Delancey pickle scene plays]
SLIM The last note that I had was for anyone who’s like me that grew up on a totally different set of movies. But the potential love interest writer is the crime boss from Dolph Lundgren’s The Living Daylights. So if you want to get an idea of who this potential suitor was, and not just be totally disgusted, there you go.
MARYA He’s also Drew Barrymore’s dad in Ever After.
GEMMA Ohhh my gosh. [Marya laughs] One of the greatest Cinderella adaptations.
MARYA So good!
GEMMA Speaking of adaptations, yeah. [Gemma & Slim laugh]
MARYA Yes!
GEMMA There’s always a segue somewhere.
SLIM Check that off in segue goals of the year: speaking of adaptations. [Gemma & Slim & Marya laugh]
GEMMA Speaking of adaptations, it took 126 years from publication, for an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, to be directed by a woman. So in 1994, we get from the wonderful Gillian Armstrong, the Winona Ryder version of Little Women. [music from Little Women fades in]
MARYA What is so great is it’s not just directed by a woman, it is produced, it is written by, the bulk of the crew with women. It’s one of the very first Hollywood backed big budget, relatively big budget films, where almost all the creative control was women. It’s stunning. And you feel it! You can feel it in this adaptation. So much so. It’s amazing. I saw this one—to your question about how did I come to this one—this one I actually saw in theaters. It’s one of my earliest film going memories. So it came out December of ’94. My hometown gets movies very late. So I probably saw this closer to the summer of ’95. At which point I was not quite nine. So I was like, mid eight. And I just being like what??? Like my mom loved this book. I hadn’t read it. So she was dragging me because she loved the book. And I wanted to go because of Winona Ryder, and I, you know, I knew her from like Beetlejuice. And everything about this movie and what it stands for, who Jo is in this movie and how Winona Ryder plays her is who I am as a person. Like if I hadn’t seen this movie, I would not be who I am today, and I firmly believe that. I’ve seen it… gotta be 500 times. I don’t know. I don’t even know, I’ve lost count. [Gemma laughs] I wore that VHS out. I have it on DVD. I’ve seen in theaters, in rep theaters. I watch it often and every time I watch it, I find something new to love about Jo in it. But also, you know, kind of the opposite of Under the Tuscan Sun, Professor Bhaer in this version—so in the earlier versions, like the Katharine Hepburn versions and these others, Professor Bhaer is a bit creepy and in the book, he is still a bit creepy.
GEMMA At one point he’s he’s played by William Shatner?
SLIM Excuse me?
GEMMA To Susan Dey. I mean, it’s bad, right?
MARYA Yeah. And the TV adaptation, it’s bad. He was you know, Louisa May Alcott didn’t want this character in there. And you can tell that that’s not what she wanted her characters, but you’re stuck with him, right? And what I love about Robin Swicord’s screenplay is she crafts the character—she takes him and makes him somebody worthy of Jo. She makes him an equal. She doesn’t make him paternalistic like he comes across in the novel. And in most of the adaptations. He is just a fellow artist who respects the talent he found in her and they just—like there’s a line “your heart understood mine.” It’s from the German opera they’re watching or whatever. But like that’s what she wrote. Because this because Jo is one of the great characters and she kind of gets, you know, I think Louisa May Alcott was not into romantic love, I think, and that’s part of why she gets these two really shitty dudes. [Marya laughs]
GEMMA Yeah, and that’s something that I like that Greta Gerwig’s version made really clear early on, is you get the publisher played by Tracy Letts going “make sure she’s married by the end” and you’re like, no! She’s like, “no, no, no, no!”
MARYA But in this version, you know, to make it this cozy, you know, Christmas movie. It is about romantic love. But not just romantic love. They’re like, great friends too. And so you get a little of everything. So I feel like for me as a kid watching it, it felt like a very aspirational—I think this is probably why I’m mostly single at 35 is like I haven’t found somebody that both intellectually and emotionally fulfills who I am the way that Professor Bhaer does for her. And it’s like, if I can’t get that, like what is the point?
GEMMA So your DMs are open?
SLIM Gabriel Byrne. Are you listening?[Marya laughs]
MARYA If Gabriel Byrne is listening, yeah… [Gemma laughs]
SLIM I know for a fact he’s listening right now this to this episode. I know he fires it up every week.
MARYA He’s also just really hot in this movie.
GEMMA Oh my god. Oh my god!
MARYA Like, incredibly hot in this movie.
GEMMA And can I just say like, sure, they talk about he makes a strong coffee and I love Winona’s acting when she tastes that coffee for the first time. [Marya laughs] I’m imagining it was real hot, strong coffee. But, sure, the coffee. Sure, the Transcendentalism chats. Sure, you know, Shakespeare. But it’s when he comes upstairs and a few scenes later when she’s, you know, furiously writing, and just silently puts down the tea and the beautiful cake and then walks away.
MARYA Yes!
GEMMA And I’m just like that, that is the height of opposite of toxic masculinity! That is it, men! That is all we need to do! Tea and cake and shut the fucking door and leave us alone to write.
MARYA And like, let me do what I’m doing. [Gemma laughs] It’s just.. he really gets what that character is, or at least that version of this character. And then they have such great chemistry together. And you know, this was one of the early “team this, team that” movies. Everyone was always team Laurie and they’re always, because it’s Christian Bale and it’s like, I get it. But one, as a young person I was never attracted to people close to my age. I was always like, even at like eight you had to be at least 35 before I thought you were attractive. [Slim & Gemma laugh] So that already through Christian Bale out. But also like, Laurie is not—he’s so immature. [Marya laughs]
SLIM What about that goatee he grows later in the movie?
MARYA Oh my god! It’s so bad!
SLIM Doesn’t that show his maturity? And the end of this? [Slim laughs]
MARYA No!
GEMMA No! Can I just say that trolling the Letterboxd reviews of the Gillian Anderson Little Women it’s pretty much every first review is Winona Ryder forever. Every second review as what is up with Laurie’s facial hair? [Gemma & Marya laugh]
MARYA Yeah, it’s not good. We had Gillian Armstrong at the TCM Film Festival a few years ago, and I was not supposed to approach talent on the red carpet as a, you know, staff or whatever. But at one point, she was like, unattached. You know, she wasn’t talking to anybody. She was just standing there. And so I was like, I’m doing it! So I went up and told her how much I love this movie. It’s my favorite movie of all time. And she was like, so gracious about how much fangirling I was doing and then mentioned that—because the Gerwig version hadn’t come out yet—that there was no way that we’re gonna have a cast as hot as Gabriel Byrne. [Gemma & Slim laugh] And I was like, I’m glad, I’m very glad that you agree that like… She casted him because he’s a great actor. But what I love is when, especially women directors, it that they cast somebody that they thought was hot, you know, because a lot of times women aren’t allowed to have desire that way, you know? And it’s like no! Women should get to hire men because they’re hot and they want to direct a hot man and that should be okay. [Gemma & Slim laugh] Men I’ve done it for 100 years.
GEMMA I’ve seen Gerwig’s Little Women maybe three times now and I cannot for the life of me what the professor looks like. I got nothing in my head.
MARYA I haven’t seen it.
GEMMA Whaaaat?
SLIM Whaaaat? Cut the recording. Shut off the mics.
MARYA I’ll tell you why. I didn’t really like Lady Bird. [Gemma gasps] I know.
GEMMA That’s like…
SLIM This is a safe space.
GEMMA This is a safe space.
MARYA And I don’t like the novel. And I don’t like the novel. Like I don’t like the other adaptations. It’s not the source material. It is literally this movie that I love. Right? So the Gerwig version has multiple things going against it. I didn’t like her first movie. I don’t like the adaptation, I don’t like the source material. So why would I would I want to see another adaptation? And I don’t particularly like Saoirse. I don’t particularly like her as an actress either.
SLIM The new one, the Greta one, it was my first introduction to Little Women stuff. I actually loved it. And so this was the first time I had seen this OG—well, I consider OG Little Women in my era.
MARYA This is like the the seventh or eighth adaptation. [Marya & Slim laugh]
SLIM I know! When Gemma posted like a list, the article, the long form article of like all the Little Womens that exists.
MARYA So many.
SLIM I was like, holy shit. Why is there so many?
MARYA It’s like Jane Eyre, there’s like 15 versions of Jane Eyre also.
SLIM And now I have to see the William Shatner one because that one sounds like the silliest thing in history. [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA You really don’t. [Slim laughs]
SLIM But all this to say, I mean, I had been told from a few friends of mine that grew up on this version with their sisters. And they still, like they swear by it, that they were the same way. I’m not sure if I’m gonna love this new one because this 90's really holds a special place in my heart. The cast in this one is insane. Ryder, Danes, Dunst, Sarandon and Bale pre-goatee.
MARYA Samantha Mathis at the height of her career.
GEMMA At the height of her career.
SLIM I thought the final scene, you know, I’d been steered clear of pretty much everything about this movie outside of Winona Ryder being in it. That final line that they share about his hand being empty…
GEMMA Oh my god. I’m gonna cry.
SLIM Are you kidding me?! [Gemma laughs]
MARYA That is directly the dialogue from the book.
GEMMA Say it, say it Slim.
MARYA It’s not how the book ends though, it’s in the middle of the book.
SLIM I’m not gonna say it, Winona will be in here saying the line. But I was like it dead in my tracks. I was kind of like working and I was like watching Little Women. And then that scene and I started like choking up! And I was like, what the fuck is going on right now? Like this scene is insane.
[clip of Little Women plays]
PROFESSOR BHAER You have me.
JO With all of my heart!
PROFESSOR BHAER I have nothing to give you, my hands are empty.
JO Not empty now.
[clip of Little Women plays]
MARYA Yes, it’s goals! So knowing that, you know, knowing that the initial source material was shoehorned in with a romantic ending, and that’s why it’s a little klutzy. Um, that’s one thing you put it aside, right, knowing that this movie was crafted to be sort of a pro-romance movie, but romance on a level that I think not all romances go for. Because a lot of times you the movie ends, your characters to get together and you’re like, I still don’t know why they like each other. Like, you know, a lot of of romance movies don’t establish characters well enough for you to understand like do they have a future? Mostly because I don’t think most movies care. Once it ends, the characters are done. This movie truly cares about its characters, truly wants you to believe that they have found their match and that they are going to live a life and have a school together. And it’s amazing.
GEMMA Can we just take a vote right now on our favorite cat shots in all these films? [Slim laughs] In Marya’s four favorites, what’s your favorite cat moment?
MARYA Well, definitely the cat in the bonnet in Little Women.
GEMMA I’m gonna say Ben Whishaw stroking that cat. [Gemma laughs]
MARYA When he’s sitting on the floor, yeah, it’s good.
SLIM We need a cat working at the pickle shop.
MARYA I know!
SLIM That would have been my pick.
MARYA There’s gonna be a cat somewhere in the neighborhood for sure.
SLIM That is probably the day manager—
GEMMA Surely there was a cat in the what I call the Sad Deli, which is the deli where all the single women are getting their sad salads to take home and watch TV alone.
MARYA There’s probably a cat in the bookstore too, because most bookstores have cats.
SLIM Oh yeah.
MARYA There’s gotta be a bookstore cat in there.
SLIM That cat was g a book on Thursday. That was the one they were preparing for. [Gemma laughs] We’re rapidly running out. of time, but I think we should spotlight some of your work for noir Noirvember.
MARYA Yes.
SLIM Which is rapidly approaching.
MARYA Yes. Noirvember Twelve. It’s shocking. [Slim & Marya laughs]
GEMMA Wow!
SLIM That’s a mouthful!
GEMMA 12 years.
MARYA 12 years.
GEMMA 12 years of spinning a month diving, 30 days diving into Noir. What brought that on?
MARYA I, as I said, was living in the back of my parents house and I wasn’t really working. It was the recession and I have a lot of time. In 2011 I watched almost 1,200 movies.
SLIM The dream.
MARYA I wasn’t doing a lot! The year before I think it was like 600 or 700 it was a lot. So I was filling in gaps and things were watching a lot of TCM. And one of the gaps I realized I had was Noir. I was using IMDb at the time. And their top, I think was the top 50 list. However IMDb got it. I don’t know if it’s s, I wasn’t really scientific about this. And I noticed of the 50 I had only watched like 10. And most of them at the time, were actually streaming on Netflix, because this is back when Netflix in the US had a lot of classics in their library, when they were first building the streaming library. When they bought, you know, it was cheap.
GEMMA I miss those days.
MARYA It was a good time. So between TCM, streaming discs, and one very nice person who found Body and Soul starring John Garfield in a jumble in London, and ripped it and sent it to me because it was at that point not available in any other way, I managed to watch the entire, like 40 movies. The first year it was 40 movies that I was watching. But I implored people to try to do all 50 if they could and to me and I think I had two friends watch some movies with me. And that was it. But now twelve years later, there’s like rep cinemas that do whole months of programming around it. Lots of libraries, libraries are the first ones to sort of hop on. And they’ll have little displays in their libraries. And there’ll be a mixture of DVDs and the crime novels that inspired the genre. And it’s lovely to see. And then the hashtag, I’m pretty sure—it’s somewhat morbid—but I’m pretty sure if I died today, that hashtag would pop up every November regardless of whether I used it or not. And so that’s kind of fun to think that like it is truly beyond me at this point. But I never, I had people ask like why didn’t I copyright on the phrase or whatever. And like, I don’t want to own it. I don’t want to make money off of it. It was never about capitalism. I try to avoid capitalism if I can. I can’t because, we’re stuck in the system. But I created it, because I found that I love the genre. And I wanted more people to do it. And I wanted an easy way for people to find other people who were doing it. And you know, it was the early days kind of film internet and people were just starting to do like 30 Days of Halloween and stuff like that. And I was like, this is a pun, it works. Let’s do it. And so I just want it to be whatever people want it to be. It doesn’t have to be a movie a day. That’s what I still do. But it can be literally whatever. People do flash fiction, there’s comics who write, who do like a one quick drawing, Noir inspired drawing a day.
GEMMA Amazing.
MARYA It’s morphed into a lot of things. And whatever people want it to be, it’s fine by me.
GEMMA I guess denim and noir is maybe a little too early. I don’t know, but I’m just thinking what are the hottest butts in noir films?
MARYA I feel like most of the—you’d have to find it in Neo Noir. I’m sure there’s a lot. Like The Big Easy is Neo Noir, and that’s sort of the route of jean butts for me. [Marya & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA And so we come full circle! Back to Dennis Quaid and his peachy, peachy butt. [Marya laughs]
SLIM So let’s say there’s a bunch of people listening that have never gone on the Noirvember member journey. And I’ve seen your #Noirvember Written By Women Letterboxd list, which we’ll have a link to in the episode notes. But what’s one suggestion for someone that maybe hasn’t taken the dive to experience films like this?
MARYA Laura.
SLIM What’s the elevator pitch for that one?
MARYA Twin Peaks.
SLIM Oh wow.
MARYA Both Lynch and Mark Frost, there’s a lot of parallels between both plot points and visual references in the film that if you’re a Twin Peaks fan.
GEMMA Does it have a hard-boiled no-nonsense detective?
MARYA Yes. That is Dana Andrews.
GEMMA Okay. [Gemma laughs]
MARYA He’s great in it. He calls women Dames.
GEMMA Yes! Tick!
MARYA He chews gum.
GEMMA Tick!
MARYA He like wears a fedora like nobody’s business.
SLIM Yeah, but does it have a Pickle Man? [Gemma laughs]
MARYA It does not have a Pickle Man that I can .
SLIM I’m not watching it then. [Gemma & Slim laugh]
MARYA There are several good food moments. It has some food moments.
SLIM Okay, I’m back.
GEMMA You guys have just ed something really important. I wanted to tell—wrap this all up by telling my favorite Jane Campion anecdote.
SLIM Uh oh, we’re coming full circle.
GEMMA Which is when she turned up at a Film at Lincoln Center for a chat. We needed a retrospective of her films just a few years back. She talked about not only being inspired by novels and diaries and letters, but also by going to the places and history of the writers that she loves. And she’s particularly obsessed with the Bronte sisters. She’s gone to their Bronte house many times. And one time she went with their sister and they dropped E and just hanging out on ecstasy at the Bronte sisters house and I am not telling you anything out of school because she told an audience full of people this Film at Lincoln Center and I just, I just cannot love Jane Campion more.
MARYA That’s an amazing story. That is exactly what you should do when you’re at the Moore’s.
GEMMA When the pandemic is over, right? Going to the Moore’s, dropping some E, visiting the Broncos. Oh my god.
MARYA You know, a list I need to create is the Jane Eyre rankings. I’ve seen, I think, 11 of the Jane Eyre adaptations, something like that. I have thoughts on the Jane Eyre adaptations.
SLIM Which Jane Eyre adaptations to watch on E. [Gemma laughs]
MARYA You should watch all of them on E, I think, actually! [Marya laughs]
[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker plays alone, fades out]
GEMMA Thanks so much for listening to The Letterboxd Show and thanks to our guest this episode, Marya E. Gates for championing the cause of denim butts, women directors and slow burning ion.
SLIM You can follow Sophie Shin for the all new episode transcripts, and to you for listening. The Letterboxd Show is a TAPEDECK production. If you are enjoying the show and have guest ideas, be sure to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Quick shout out, I don’t know if Gemma has even seen this yet, to AndyInColor for the review on Apple Podcasts. “Amazing season. Love the format. Thank you, Gemma.”
GEMMA Aw! Thank you AndyInColor. I love that for me. [Slim laughs]
SLIM No mention of me, AndyInColor, okay? [Gemma laughs] But that’s fine. We’re gonna let it slide.
GEMMA And that is the show. I’m off to Laurie’s house because it’s dull as tombs around here. [Slim laughs]
[clip of Crossing Delancey plays]
IZZY Good tags, very clean. The most important thing I look for. Forget the lighting, forget the fancy locker rooms, forget the hair dryers. Just give me scrupulous clean. Oh, with all the disease going around today, how could I relax if I’m imagining all sorts of sick Amoeba swimming into my ears?
[clip of Crossing Delancey ends]
[TAPEDECK bumper plays] This is a TAPEDECK podcast.