I am all in again. Oh, I guess you. I Smell pop culture with Eastern Allen and I heart Radio podcast. Hey everybody, it's Easton Allen. I Smell pop Culture one eleven productions. I Hurt Radio, I heart Media, I hurt Podcasts. We're back. We're smelling pop culture. We're taking a big deep breath, and we're smelling another reference. We're gonna get to go so deep into a pop culture reference this week.
I'm really excited about it. So, you know, this one has to deal with what is considered one of the worst movies of old time, and I found that with these types of movies, they're often not that bad. Like there's a quote that says, the opposite of love is indifference. It's not hate. If you hate something, then that means you're giving it energy, you're giving it emotion, you are
remembering it. That's the most important part here. I think truly the worst movies of all time are the ones that just come and go, don't elicit any reaction in you, that don't have any staying power. We're going to talk to the person who wrote a movie that's on this list, a movie that gets, in my opinion, an undeserved amount of hate for the last twenty years. And it has
a connection to Gilmore Girls. I know that we're playing fast and loose with what connects to the show, but this does connect to Gilmore Girls, and we're going to go deep into the world of glitter right after these words.
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You know.
I'm the sound guy here. I always like we've been doing the show for a few years now, and I always make sure the Scott's microphone works, that it sounds good, that his computer works. I do all that stuff. I'm now in front of the microphone and I'm so grateful to be doing that, and I'm grateful for you guys to be in here with me. It's a lot of fun. I need friends. I desperately need friends, and you guys are my friends. Will you come to my birthday party? Please?
What we're doing today we're really excited about this is I smell pop culture and we're going to dive deep into a reference from season two. So let's take it. Let's go back to season two here. This is season two, episode eight. The episode is the ins and Outs of Inns. Lorlai and Suki are trying to start their own in but Lourai realizes that she has to tell me that she's leaving her job to start her own to take
she wants to take over the Dragonfly. In this episode, there's a part where she has to convince Fran to sell her the Dragonfly. There's a lot of moments like that. But while this is happening, Jess has been pulling some
pranks around town. In this episode, he draws a chalk outline of a dead body in front of Docy's market, and since Luke won't do anything about this, they hold a town meeting to discuss Jess's crimes against the people of stars Hollow, and they're kind of going around the room and listing their grievances, like one person says he stole a nome from Babbette's garden. He set off the fire alarms at school and then Lorelai chimes in and says, I heard he controls the weather and wrote the screenplay
to Glitter. The worst crime you could possibly commit is writing the screenplay to Glitter at this point in time. This puts a time stamp of when this was written. Glitter, if you're not familiar, is a movie starring Mariah Carey. It's a it's a it's kind of like a star is born. It's it's about Uh, it's a fiction. It's not about her life. It's a fictional story, but you know, inspired by a lot of her life. But Mariah Carey plays a character named Billy who gets separated from her
mother at a young age. And then she discovers that she has a very powerful voice. And she hooks up with a DJ named Dice and they create a hit song and it kind of she kind of becomes the biggest star in the world.
Uh.
But there are some challenges along the way. There are some relationships that go awry. I have watched this movie. I have watched Glitter. And if you want to watch Glitter, uh, it's on YouTube ad free. You cannot stream this anywhere. You can't rent it on Apple TV, you can't the DVD isn't available. You you got to watch this on YouTube. There are again, there are no ads. Uh So I say, have yourself a good night and fire up Glitter. It's
really interesting. I was always aware of Glitter. Obviously when it came out, it was just the butt of the joke.
It was.
The joke was that no one was watching it. And the reason no one was watching it is because this movie came out on September fourteenth, two thousand and one, and if you can remember back to two thousand September two thousand and one, something was happening in the country. There's a thing called nine to eleven that kind of changed the entire world, and people weren't really going to the movie theater, especially that week. So I think that had a lot to do with how this movie was received.
I think if it had come out six months earlier, it would have been much It would have been held in a much higher regard. But Lorelei says Jess wrote the screenplay to Glitter. He didn't. He did not. He is a fictional character. He doesn't exist. If you go on the if you go on the Wikipedia for Glitter, it does say Jess. Mariano is the writer of Glitter. We're gonna we're gonn to fix that. But the actual writer is a woman named Kate Lanier, and she is incredible.
She has a huge resume. I mean, listen to these movies. She's written What's Love Got to Do with It? That's the Teama Turner story. Set it off with Queen Latifa, I mean set it off. That is an iconic, historic movie. She wrote Beauty Shop, another Queen Latifa joint, The Mod Squad, and of course Glitter. In two thousand and one. She wrote Glitter with Mariah Carey. I think that is incredible to collaborate with a star of that power on her first movie. So we're going to talk to Kate Lanier today.
We're going to get the whole story behind Glitter. We're going to find out how it feels to be to contribute to popular culture, to be I'm going to break the news to her that unfortunately Jess actually wrote this movie. She did not write it. We're going to get into all that. I see Kate in the waiting room right now. I'm going to open the door here and let her in. Kaitlinear thanks to doing this. We're so excited.
Yes, I'm excited to.
So I want to start at the beginning. You've written so many incredible movies. Your resume is just so impressive. Well, how did you first discover that you loved screenwriting? Like, how did you discover that passion?
Well? I actually started as an actor. So I was in you know, a kid. I grew up in Harlem and you know, just because there was nothing, like, we just played on the street. So when I was like, I know, eleven twelve, my mom put me and my brother into different like free acting workshop things around town. So we ended up being in you know, The Sound of Music and all these like off off Broadway theater productions and then by so I did that kind of through high school and then I started doing some indie
movies for like NYU has this great film program Tish School. Yeah, and so I somehow hooked up with these guys who were making shorts you know, for their for their you know, thesises, and I ended up being in this movie that Alan Taylor, who's now a big director.
Yeah, Sopranos, stuff like that, right exactly.
This was his first movie. It was called That Burning Question, and it was me and John like Guizamo and Andrew this other actor and it was like a thirty minute black and white but very clever, very smart, well written piece. Alan wrote and directed it, and that blew up. It was in the you know, New York Film Festival at one a Nissan Focus Award, and he had that kind of big picture experience at being flown out to LA and meeting you know, David Geffen and Spielberg and agents
and whatever. Meanwhile, I had been writing some plays and screenplays, but just like privately, you know, like I just you know, just I had ideas because I'd been acting, and Alan very generously passed on a script that I'd written to this agent at Triad that he was meeting with, Rondi Gomez, and so she ended up calling me and saying, I love this. We can sell it. You know, here, make some changes and we can you know, we can sell it. So I didn't initially really go into screenwriting as like, oh,
this is gonna be my career. I really thought it wouldn't be an actor, and then I just got diverted into writing, which now I'm actually really glad that I did.
You have such a talent for it, but one of your first like big movies. Is what's love got to do with it? Tina Turner story? And you got to act in that one too, Yes, yes, I.
Had a little small part.
Yes.
What was the experience like of writing that script? I mean, do you take this like iconic person and you have to condense their life down into a movie? You know, how does that work?
Yeah? It was, Well, she had written a book it Tina, right, and but it was really dense, and I had to find sort of the emotional through line of what her story was, right, like going from this talented little girl to you know, her success, and then how she was going to essentially reinvent herself get away from I like I could. I just sort of could see the pieces of the arc of it. And so just picking out those those pieces and stringing them together right was was key.
It was like being selective. But then also I did speak to her a few times and she I don't even know, I probably still have these in a box somewhere. She made type recordings where she would talk about her life. Yeah, it was like, well, when Tina was a little good and she talked about herself as a third person. Right, when Tina was a little girl, she loved to have a tall glass of milk after she came back from working, you know, and she she would like give, you know,
talk about these little moments in her life. And yeah. It was fantastic.
I mean, how lucky to be able to hear her talk about her in her own words and you can like learn her voice and like one incredible resource to have for working on that script.
Oh my god.
Yes, and you were on the set when they were filming that, right, yeah, yeah.
And I thought, you know, my, it was like my you know, I'd sold a couple of scripts prior to that, and but it was really my first experience of having a movie made that had like a sizeable budget. Right.
Yeah.
They were you know, the producers and the director. They were all like, come on, be on the set and if we need some rewriting, you're there. And I was like, oh, this is what it's like, you know, be a screenwriter. And of course that is no, it's like you know, in general, you know, directors and producers are like, see thanks for the script. Yeah yeah, later, you know, we're
going to do what we want with it. So it was an amazing experience with the the two producers, Doug Chapin and Barry Cross were phenomenal and so smart, and I ended up from that movie Doug became my manager awesome for thirty years. Wow, were just retired, and he is like a freak literary genius. You know, he could like read something and figure out exactly you know, what wasn't working, what was working, and yeah, amazing. But I met him on the set you know, of What's Love.
Yeah, So I mean, did you, uh, what kind of training did you go through to write these feature film scripts? Was it just like from being an actor or.
H Yeah, I mean, I, like I said, I had written stuff on my own. I was an English major, you know, I did go I got a skullarp to college and I wrote you know, pros like fiction like short stories, right, But I hadn't. I think it's one of those things that you you you just get an instinct for. And I don't think I'm any more talented than the next screenwriter. I just kind of got lucky and who I met, you know, and how like where I was sort of placed in the right time, the
right place. But I think also being an actor, you get a feel and I feel for like what works in terms of dialogue and character. So I think that really helps, you know.
You know, whenever people say like, oh I was lucky, I was in the right place. There's a quote that I love. That's luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Yes, someone else could have been that exact same position and not done what you were able to do because you were prepared and you had all these experiences. Uh so let's you're just lucky, Kate. You you were you know, so you know, you do. What's love got to do with it is Angela Bassett's is a huge movie, and
then what do you go straight from there? To set it off? Is that the next no I wrote, like.
I think three movies at Disney, at Touchstone at that point, and then I got then I wrote set it off. Yeah, so that I got that stat script was originally like a rewrite project, and the original script was not for women.
It was completely different characters, but the general sense of it was, you know, bank robbers who are in a desperate situation in the hood, go rob banks, right, Yeah, But the characters were like, you know, klios, like very much based on my sister Sheiba, right, who's like all boy and completely you know But anyways, the once we knew that Jada and Dana Queen Letsifa had had like joined you know, sign on, then it was easier to kind of figure out who the characters were going to be.
And Yeah, that was great.
I've always been so curious, like how you you know, because I know a lot of screenplays come together before there's an actor attached to it or something like that. But in this situation, you're able to kind of tailor it knowing who was going to be bringing this character to life.
That's so cool, exactly exactly. I've had both experiences, you know, I've had the experience where you know, there's an executive at a studio who says, hey, we want a comedy for you know, X, y Z, Like can you come up with something for her or him? So you get sort of parames to work through, which in a way makes it easier. You know, you have like a sense of like, oh, I know what that actor can do, right, I know the kind of character they can do, so
I know how to write this. Yeah. And then other times you write a script and you know you have no idea who they're going to cast. Yeah, No, it's completely different. Every project is different that way, you know. Interesting.
Yeah, so at the point you come into Set it Off, you said you were brought in for a rewrite. Yeah, how did it feel to watch? Like, because you get you brought in, you put your spin on it. You kind of add, in my opinion, you add the elements that make it the movie that it is. It's a beloved movie at this Like, uh, so I loved Set it Off, like all my friends like still we talk about it all the time. So how did it feel watching it come to get like come to life and
then watching it release in theaters? I'm so interested in that part of the process too.
Yeah, it was amazing, Like, uh, you know, yeah, it was incredible. Part of I remember when they were shooting the rooftop scene. I don't know if you remember, it's like, oh yeah, four the girls were like on the rooftop and I had worked on that dialog, like had changed it like maybe five or six times, you know, because I wanted it to feel like natural but also reflective of who each of the characters were. But I didn't
want it it didn't. I didn't want it to feel kind of stagy and like this is what I feel, this is what I you know, so I worked on that a lot and then that was I remember when I saw like The Daily's and the final foot I was like, oh that works, you know that it really works. And also, you know, the actors were all incredible. You know, every single one of those women was phenomenal. So if you had lesser, you know, lesser talented actors, it wouldn't have been the same same movie.
You know, had you had you wanted to write like an action kind of movie like that before or was it oh yeah, yeah.
Oh totally like I had wanted to do. It's weird because there is like kind.
Of a a little bit of a sexist thing in Hollywood about like, you know, the people have broken through, definitely women who have broken through and directed.
Action, but not very many. For of all, not many directors are women because the culture is, you know, if
you're the director, you're the boss. You got to make all the hard calls, and like a woman can't really do that, right, So the percentage of directors who are women is this small, and the percentage of women who are doing action stuff, you know, for the same reason like oh can't make that call, can't do that, you know, thing I've always loved, like, you know, the ship I like to watch is like violent serial killers on a rampage, you know action. So yeah, I've always wanted to do that.
Is there is there a style or like a genre of movie that you've always wanted to do and you haven't yet.
Hmm. That's funny because I've almost done like every single genre except for like a superhero oh wow kind of film, Like I haven't done that, and I'm that I have a lot of curious curiosity about how you develop, like some of the good ones, right, like spider Man, right that the Toby McGuire one like is my favorite, and the evolution of who he starts out as and then becomes like, to me, that's such a great character arc.
And you know there's something that's such a metaphor, right, Like superheroes are just like pure symbol, but you're gonna have so much fun with what they can do, right because it's so unreal.
Yeah, there's no rules.
Yeah, I've never done that.
Well, I can't wait to see the Kittlinear created superhero. That's that's gonna show it exactly. We have so much more to get into with the great Kitlinear. Thank you so much for for sticking around. We're gonna take a really quick break and we'll be back after these words. Kaitlinear is with us, the U screenwriter behind so many great movies. Set it off. We're just talking about what's love got to do with it? But now there's a big part of your resume that we have to talk
about today. That's a movie called Glitter from Chasen to One. Yes, I watched Glitter for the first time recently, and I was I loved it. I thought it was great. I thought it was great because it has a reputation. Yeah, So I went in, like a lot of the movies that people say are like, you know, the worst movies of all time or whatever, I feel like they're not. Actually they're never that bad, Like like the worst movies are truly forgettable, you know, like you don't think about them.
And so I went into I was like, Okay, let's let's just see what this is. And I was actually had a great time during it.
Yeah, well, let me tell you the backstory please, Yes, Because all right, I was initially approached, you know, to write something for Mariah, not a biopic. She had an idea for a real story right about a character that was not her. And she was working and had been working for years with this acting coach, Sheila Gray. And Sheila is like a famous, famous acting coach. She's coached de Niro, you know, I mean, if you go to her website, right, you'll see her client list is unreal. Right.
She was working with Mariah and they they were just you know, really getting into the craft of acting. And Maria had wanted to act from the beginning. So I met with Mariah and Sheila and the three of us sort of hit it off, and we had she Ryan had this idea of doing a real alan On story like a Star is Born, where like, you know, there's a couple and the guy's so heavy into drugs that everything turns to shit and she tries to save him and gets dragged down but then eventually has to walk away.
But the way that we had conceived of it and pictured it and all the notes you know, I'd written, and we were really dark, really gritty. I spent two years with her, Like I was traveling with Mariah, like wow, oh yeah. We would come up with scenes and she would act them out. Here's the thing about Mariah that people always underestimate her. They think she's this character that she presents as like the diva, right, but she is one of the smartest, most creative people I've ever met.
Like she's sharp and has brilliant ideas. Like she's completely different, you know, one on one, like she is really really on the ball and super smart, super creative, willing to
do anything. You know. We would go like we were staying in some house, you know, a friend of hers house in Acapulco, coming up with these scenes for the movie Wow, which at the time was gonna be called like not everything that glitters is gold, right, working on this stuff, She's improving, crying sobbing, like we're doing all
this stuff. And what happened was, you know, we we finished the script after two years, and Sony, the studio that I wrote it for, suddenly whatever they realized Mariah's audience is like fourteen year old girls, Oh so we have to make this PEG thirteen and they essentially cut everything out of the script. So it became like like when I finally saw it, I went and I saw it with Sheila in a movie theater and we both left like crying because we were like, this has nothing
to do with what we originally had conceived of. Right. Not only that they released it like two days after nine to eleven, it is.
It September fourteenth, I think it came out.
It's like everyone was watching The Towers fall on TV. No one was going to see a movie. But anyway, So that's really the backstory, is that it was really compromised from what it was supposed to be.
You know, I wish we could have seen that original version, that's the thing. Yeah, I would. I mean, I'd love to read that script too, But I wish like that had been made because I I hear you talking about what went into and you can see kind of echo of that in the movie. Yeah, And that would have been such a more compelling story, I think, especially for Mariah to be.
Totally totally and and and it would it would have been more, you know, distinct from her sort of singer persona. Right. She really wanted to do a character who goes through like something traumatic, right, Yes, and all that was cut out. So, I mean it's just what happens in Hollywood. You know, you have like people. It's that marriage of creativity and business. Yeah, there's always one, right, because the business side is like, hey, we need to sell this to thirteen year olds fourteen year olds.
So yeah, was it always going to be set in the eighties? Was that always part of the idea? Or Okay, I love that. I thought that was such a cool detail.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean the music's so fun too.
You know, only I worked in. One of the reasons is that we like I was a bar tender in nightclubs in the eighties in New York. Wow, like this club area, Madame Roses, the Palladium, like I bartended all all these different clubs, right, And it was such New York at the time was such a different scene because you could be like or dirt poor and have like an apartment on the Lower East Side and be an artist and be creative and you know, you didn't have
to have a lot of money. So these clubs were like, you know, people like Zo Michel Bascot and Andy Warhol and mixing with like Fab five Freddy and you know, it was like this great mix of people who were all doing something interesting and creative but not necessarily like super successful yet you know.
Yeah, did you read do a lot of guys like Die the DJ?
Yeah, exactly, exactly totally.
Okay. So my favorite line from the movie is when they're they're making the music video and the director walks over while they're on the setter's confetti raining down and he says, the glitter can't overpower the artists. And I still have been cheered during that par I thought that was a great line. Yes, was that. I don't know if you remember or not, but like, was that that part? Was that anything? Was that? Did it come from you or was that a Mariah idea or Yeah?
I I remember correctly, I had. We did like different versions of it. There were like three or four takes, yeah, where the actor tried different things, you know what I mean, Like I had some lines written and then he also improv some it. So I can't remember like which of the takes was whose, But yeah, it was a general sense of that, you know, pompous whatever kind of director.
Yeah, how did it feel? The movie comes out? You know, again, like we're setting the context here. It's September. The soundtrack came out on nine to eleven. The movie came out on that Friday, and eleven was on Tuesday. It comes out on Friday. There's this there's a scene, there's a picture that goes around of like a glitter billboard with the twin towers like coming down in the background. It's
this really powerful image. I mean, you're you're thinking, like, Okay, no one's going to go to the movie theater, Like, no one's going to go see this. The country is in such a weird place right now. But then it also gets this like it gets a terrible response from the public, like Saturday Night Lives making fun of every It becomes the butt of a joke. How did that feel as a you know, as the creative force behind it? How did how did how did you deal with that?
I would have been I would have called new hole and never wanted to come out. How did you deal with that? At the time?
What was it? You know? Because I at that point written enough movies that I'd gotten enough of a thick skin and the ability to detach, right because a very specific part to blaye in the making of a movie, and then the rest of it is out of my control, so you have to let go of it, you know.
And so I at that point I was used to like having the leg even if I put my heart and soul into a script, I had no idea what would happen once I turned it over, right, So I kind of was used to that, but I will say it was devastating because it was something that I really thought. I really thought Mariah deserved to show her skill and her talent and her ability and also her creativity and smarts all of that, Like she really deserved that because
she worked so hard. And so that was devastating. Like I said, I went, Sheila, and I went, you know, into a movie theater, thinking like, okay, let's just see it like very neutral, not a big red carpet screening. Let's walk into a movie theater and watch it with other people. We walk into this movie theater and it's wrecking empty because it's after nine eleve right, like no one,
no one's going out to see movies. So we're in this movie theater, there's like two other people there, you know, and we're watching it and we both like looked at each other and started crying, just crying, crying, like and it wasn't about like the reviews or the reputation or anything. It was the loss of something that could have been great, you know. And so that was really that felt really sad and really tragic.
You know, Yeah, Marie could have she could have had a like she's a great I thought she was a great perform in the movie, and she could have had like a Lady Gaga, you know style, like career. I think totally. Obviously, Marie Carey is doing just fine, obviously, but Joe recovery, She'll get back on her feet. But how much I want to know how much of your life went into that script, like other story?
A lot? Yeah, yeah, a lot. I mean, just because you know, I had been like a crazy club you know kid. I mean I started like going out to clubs when I was like fourteen fifteen downtown. I started bartending when I was seventeen. I mean the drinking gage at the time was eighteen. So it was a huge leap, right to say, like, oh, I'm eighteen. No one was looking at anyone's ID at that point. But looking back, when I look at pictures of myself at seventeen, I
look like I'm twelve. You know, how anyone could have put me behind the bar, I don't know, But yeah, definitely was a lot of There's a lot of sort of life experience in that in that era.
Uh So there's a There's a social media site that I go to called Letterbox where people like rate movies. Okayeah, yeah, you're probably familiar Letterbox. I went on there to uh to log my review of Glitter, and I saw so many good reviews on there from people that are watching it now and people that are going back and be like, hey what is Glitter? Let's go watch it? And you go like, hey, this is actually this is a fine movie. You know, it's not like terrible.
Yeah.
Do you have how often do you like talk to Do you ever talk to people that are like that, really like realize that you wrote Glitter and have something good to say about it or curious about it. Do you hear people come up? Yeah?
Totally. There was the review of Glitter in the New York Times that came out like if you I don't know, if you can google it or whatever, it's actually pretty good. Yeah, And I can't remember who wrote it, but there was a there was a point that I met him, whoever that reviewer was, I mean it was this is again we're talking twenty years ago, and he was like, you know what, that was not a terrible movie like it has really been, you know, underrated, like it was not bad.
So yeah, thank you so much for your time.
Today.
We have again, we have more to get into. We got to take a really quick break here. We're going to talk about Gilmore Girls. When we get back. It's Kaitlinear. This is I am all in. I Smell pop Culture. We'll be back after these words. Kaitlinear hanging out with
us on I Smell pop Culture this week. So in season two of Gilmore Girls, they they mentioned Glitter, Laura, I mean character they're talking about Jess who is it, who is one of Rory's boyfriends at a certain point, and he'd been pulling a lot of pranks around town. There's a part where there's like a town meeting and everybody's going around listing all the crimes he's committed. And Laura Lai says, I heard he controls the weather and
he wrote the screenplay to Glitter. And as we record this, if you go to the Wikipedia page for Glitter, it says the writer is Jess Mariano, who is the character from Kilmore Girls. And I thought it was so it's such a It makes so much sense to take an accomplishment from a woman and then give the credit to a fictional. Man, I think that, right, that is hysterical. I'm going to change it when we're done here so
that it's accurate. But I did think that was a funny thing to notice, how I mean, like especially you know, after it came out, but like even still today, like glitter pops out, like you'll hear people reference it and in TV shows and movies and stuff like that. How does that feel to like have contributed to pop culture in such a significant way.
I don't know. I don't really know, because there's also like this, you know, there's like also a group of like rabid glitter fans. Like there was someone showed me a website that was like, you know, it was a Mariah website and all these girls were like I love glitter, I love gletter And I was like really, yeah, it was really surprising. You know that people you know have very very mixed feelings, right, so it's waited then the
people who love it. So yeah, it's it's a weird experience definitely, And also to have it it was it was such a quick sort of mention on Gilmore girls, but they're so snappy. Yeah, you sometimes missed stuff, and I was like, oh wait, oh wait, Yeah.
That was been exciting to hear.
Yeah.
So, you know, Gilmore Girls, we always talk on this. This is the Gilmore Girl's podcast obviously, and we talk a lot about you know that that show is about relationships between mothers and daughters. And I know your mother was. She was creative, she was a painter, she was an activist. Were you guys close growing up?
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean she was a Holocaust survivor, so she was deeply troubled a lot of the time, you know, as people who've been through trauma, serious trauma are, but she always she focused that on into her art. Right. So as like my dad was writer, mom was a painter. Like not, they didn't make any money, you know, we were on like food stamps. But I did get like, you know, you can channel your feelings, you can channel
your thoughts, your experience into art, right. So that was like a great, you know, great lesson that I got from her. And yeah, we were super close. She died in twenty sixteen, I believe at ninety two. Wow, And yeah, she was pretty amazing person.
There's there's this there's a moment in Glitter that that got me in my heart where Billy played by Maria was talking about performing on TV and saying like, I, I hope my mom sees this and realizes that we've made it, because my mom will always be a part of me, right, and that that always, I mean, that stuck with me when I when I watched it. But is do you feel like connection you feel like connections with your own mother? Was that? Did that? Did you bring that relationship into that scene or.
Yeah, a little bit. But also it was part of really understanding the psychology of people who get in that kind of elan on situation right where you are trying to rescue someone, okay, and a lot of times those are women or men who have been abandoned by their own parent right and feel or that parent was you know, not present mentally, emotionally, and so they feel like they need to rescue, right, And so that dynamic was what we were trying to go for in terms of abilities
like backstory and so yeah, you know, I definitely related to that and have felt that and a lot of people I've known, you know.
And I appreciate your vulnerability for sharing that. That's uh, it's incredible stuff. Before we wrap things up here, so you say you're a Girlmore Girls fan, Yeah, would you what would you order Luke's diner? What if you got to go there? What would you order from him?
Oh? My god, Like, I don't know, pancakes or something, you know, some breakfast, Like there's always some great like breakfast, you know, a thing on the menu. I mean what I loved and what I appreciate about Gilmore Girls. I mean, now, since it's come out, there have been other shows that have done this, but Gilmore Girls really was the first show where women were not primit merrily there s sex objects, right, they were not just someone's girlfriend, someone's wife right on
someone's they said, smart, witty, you know. Although it was you know, it was a little elevated for reality.
But.
You had the sense of like, oh, these are intelligent human beings. They are not just you know, the other half, right, Like there was something about that that was really surprising and new and hadn't been done really on TV, you know, and that's what hooked me. I was like, oh, okay, oh, it's not only about who she's going to fall in
love with. I mean, yes, there were moments, whether there was a boyfriend or this, but that was not what it was about, you know, about their humanity and there and they're smarts and their intelligence and their relationship and so that was I thought something that was really new. You know, like most think about shows TV shows prior to that, like women's roles were really like either sexualized
or minimal. You know, they were not driving characters for the action or the arc of the show, right, they were like part of some set piece of looking good. You know, not that of course, Gilmore. You know, both the women, both Rory and Laura, are beautiful, but that is not what they're about. You know, that's not what's going for them. That's not what the show's about. You know, I appreciate that.
I mean, we love the show for the same reasons. And you know, you think about like the Bechdel Test, and if for anyone ure's here's a white man explained to you what the Bechdel test is going to be.
That's perfect.
If you don't know what the Bechdeal test is, it's it's a it's a very simple test. You can put anything through that will tell you if it's and it's surprising how few things pass. And it's it's why there's two female characters that have a conversation about something that isn't a man. Yes, and it's wild how often things do not pass that exactly. Yeah, but uh but gimmergirls, you know, that's that's the story and that's why why we love it totally.
And like young Melissa McCarthy, you know.
Yeah right she.
I mean, she's always been brilliant, you know, like from the get go. I was literally just watching on YouTube if you google like funny outtakes Melissa McCarthy. There is the most brilliant like riff where she's clearly improving on This is forty right, that movie and as Paul Rudd and Amy I can't remember her the actress's name, but anyways, it is so brilliant because she's just going off on this insane tangent and.
They're laughing so hard, like you know, you can hear the director yelling cut, but she's just going on and everyone is hysterical.
Anyway, it's fun to see, like looking now seeing the show, like how young she was then and just fresh starting out.
It's one of those things where like you turn it on, you're like, oh, yeah, most McCarthy, this is like okay, you know, this is early in her career. This is really cool to watch. Yeah, you you were working on a lot of stuff right now, and I want to talk about it just a bit here. So you've got a we call it a proof of concept, a short called Lucky that you wrote and direct. You tell us a bit about that.
I mean, well, that came about because I really am sort of obsessed with this line between tragedy and comedy, Like there's a fine line, right, And I had thought of these like very sort of absurd, deluded characters who are actually kind of tragic, but then find themselves in this really comic situation, right, which is, you know, to make a long story short, they believe that this guy's actually a matred d at a restaurant and has been
kicked out by he's sleeping in his car. But he's a good looking guy and they think he's Bobby Kennedy Jr. And they're broke, so they decide to kidnap him, and the kidnapping just turns into total chaos and it turns into a dance party. Anyway, that's the essential story of it. But the theme in the idea, if it were to be picked up as a series, is just the way life is so chaotic that your best laid plans, you know, are often, you know, often turned into something completely different.
And I love the idea of these sort of cringey characters who are you know, like really clueless but funny and tragic at the same time.
Clueless characters getting themselves into going over their head in situations is like my favorite style. I love, I love sort of. I can't wait to see Lucky as it becomes a serious because I'm going to speak it into the world. It's going to happen. Okay, Uh, you have a You've written a feature called Lost and Found. We'll talk a bit about that too.
Well, that's kind of a story, like it's like a crash type story where you have very disparate like you're jumping from you know, a father and his son and the son's having a hard time in school, and then you you're jumping to a guy who's in prison, and then you're jumping to a woman who's a cop and
she's alcoholic and she's you know, on a case. And the very different desperate characters end up impacting each other and changing each other's lives right in a way that is really surprising, And there are connections there that are really unexpected. So yeah, that's what it is, and it's very much it's not a comedy, it's very much a heart heartfelt piece. Yeah.
Well, I mean so excited to see everything coming from the world of Kate Lnear. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
Yes, I loved it.
If people want to keep up with you and see everything you're working on, where should they go. Do you have a website or a social media You.
Probably Instagram, which is you know at Lanear Kate there is. We're doing a website right now for Lucky, So that will be up and a few days and that will just be you know, Lucky, it'll say Lucky the film. Yeah, that's you know, that's it.
Awesome. Well, thank you again for doing this my pleasure. I have a great rest of your day. This has been so much fun.
Yeah, thank you so much. Hey, everybody, and don't forget follow us on Instagram at I Am all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.