The Haunting of Chill House

But it made me look up where Kevin Klein was from because I realized I had no idea, you know what it could be. Though. It's one of the thing where like, for instance, if you try to do if you're from Boston and you try and do a New York accent, like it's still you know, you're still yeah, exactly. Maybe it's a contrary to popular belief, there is more than one Southern accent. And the Missouri accent is not like the Carolina accent exactly. Well, is Missouri sort of midwesty?

Missouri's the South. It's the South. Yeah, it's not what we would call the deep South. This movie takes place in the Deep South. This movie that we're about to introduce. Yeah, this movie. This this takes some preamble because I feel like followers that know us from the hoodies days have definitely heard us at least make threats to a Big Chill UH Special, a Big Chill super Hour, and we

are finally making good on that. This week, uh two thousand eighteen, we are doing the Big Chill episode, which I proposed nothing really other than the fact that Molly had never seen The Big Chill. And we're I guess officially past spooky season pending election results. Well, this is sort of a Thanksgiving movie. It turns out a little deleted scene of the deleted scene, a notorious deletedorious deleted scene to set up the Big Chill. I've never seen

The Big Chill. What a terrifying movie to watch in your thirties, in your thirties for the first time, because I could think about was how old are these people supposed to be? And I wanted to say they're on the brink of forty, but no, no, no, no, they I looked it up. Jeff Goldbloomers thirty one, Glenn Close and Kevin Klein were thirty six, but it's like it's

they didn't have all those k beauty masks back. It's also just like it's so eighties that the way the way everyone is dressed though, like eighties yuppie American Sloane Ranger kind of style is so ancient looking. Well, it also to us looks like our parents, who are forever old. We will never be able to divorce that look from exactly like my parents never dressed like that. You think they didn't. But there's like a certain amount of the hair dues. One thing I loved how they all have

the same haircut in this movie. Everybody, man and woman has the exact same haircut, a little bit of a flue, a little bit of a flue. Sometimes it's curly, sometimes it's straight. It's growing out. They're all growing out their part. Like speaking of our parents, we definitely respond to this in a different way than maybe even listeners of our podcasts that that are younger that may don't have boomer parents might respond to it, who might just like watch

it purely for the aesthetics. Um, Like this really does feel like the beginning of boomers running everything. This movie, Like it feels like the cultural flag being planted of like, Okay, now everything is going to have to do with like what boomers were into and their college experience and the music that they liked them blah blah blah blah. Um and and boomers just talking and recording themselves talking and

then watching themselves talking and like feedback loop of Boomer interests. Uh. But yeah, it's very Uh it's fun to imagine what this movie would be like about any other generation. Um, but it's also hard too because it's just so boomer. Yeah, it's pretty boomery, I have to say that. So I didn't believe that anyone hadn't seen The Big Chill until we found out while we were talking about it. Um. I don't remember if it was on the air when

we were recording Hoodies or before or after. I was stunned because it's like I was saying, this is like one of Tessa's favorite movies ever, and tests like that came to it late. Man. Yeah, I feel like for the entire time I've known you, since you were a teenager, you've loved like midlife crisis movies. Love them, I love them. I've been having a midlife crisis. You can't entire life.

You just can't wait to be like wearing a camel code and smoking and like arguing on a pay phone about the children a bunch of We're definitely all Donald Sutherland and Animal House. Today's episode of Nightcall is brought to you by Canvas People. We want to know what you're planning on doing for your holiday shopping. I don't know about you, guys, but I take so many pictures on my phone every day, and half of them just disappear.

I don't do anything with them, you know, because of the way that we now live off of our phones, a lot of times we never get to actually look at and cherish and remember some of these photos. Campus People is a service where you can take some of your photos and turn them into keepsake quality gifts for your home and for your loved ones. It's a really cool way to turn photos of your family into art for the wall, framable art, and it makes a great

gift for the holiday season. Now, as a special, very limited holiday offer, canvas people dot com is offering their popular eleven by fourteen photo campuses for free. That's right, for free. These normally selfur six, but for this week only, you'll pay nothing. All you have to do is cover shipping and handling. So to get your free canvas, text call to eight for eight for eight. Just pay shipping and handling. This offer won't last long, so night callers text call C A L L to eight for eight

for eight. That's call to four eight for eight four eight. Message and data rights may apply. Well, but let me lay out the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it. So it's three, which happens to be the year that Molly and I were both born, So the movie belongs to us. And it is a Lawrence Casnan movie about a group of friends who are reunited by um the

death of their one of their other friends. Their friend who died is played by Kevin Costner, but all of his scenes were cut out of the movie, but apparently there's a scene where he was like it was a flashback scene where he's making Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the cast, and then that ended up being cut um. But it's basically this group of you know, friends who get together after a long time apart. They go to a house in South Carolina and they all spend time

together surrounding this guy's funeral. Well, what I learned from the IMDb trivia section that I read expensively after watching it is that the flashback scene would have revealed the information that these people all lived in a co op together University of Michigan, much like Lawrence Kasden who was in a food co op called the Eugene Debs Up, like a socialist food up, which then explains why they are so comfortable living in a house together and sharing

the duties of cooking and making food and stuff was supposed to be. It is a crazy tale. And I was also like, I've known a lot of people who've lived in co ops, and there is that dynamic of living in a co op with people where everybody's like eating together and doing the dishes and like flirting with each other all the time. And I liked this movie. It was sad. Why sad? Well, I mean maybe it wasn't sad. I don't know. It was definitely less like

peak eighties than I was expecting. I realized, Like as I was watching it, I was like, oh, this is like three this is kind of like almost still a seventies movie. It's just kind of like a story about some people with some problems. It's very much like Play. Yeah it is. It's a total play and I thought it was. Also it's kind of like a loose remake of Rules of the Game. He said, it's like a French country estate, but it's just like a you know, a ntry house and some white yuppies who are having

a lot of issues but having fun having their issue. Well, okay, this is what I'm gonna say is I thought the reason I thought it wasn't maybe depressing because I was like, is this like an upbeat ending spoiler alert, Like everybody has sex at the end during like a lightning storm. This movie is very horny. Um. But yeah, I was like, this movie is sort of like it's like, at first, it's all sad about like you've made all your choices and you're stuck now in your life forever with your

like boring life that you chose. Um, nothing like the fun life you thought you were going to have when you were a hippie living in a co op with your cool friends, and now you're confronting it in a funeral scenario. But then at the end, it's like everybody kind of is like, oh, actually, we still can change our minds about stuff still and like let your friend's husband knock you up, which is, yeah, that's one of

that you really wild plot points. I think that's is that the transformative moment though, is that like when when everybody realizes they still have that good old hippie community because they're like, we're going to make a baby together as like a friend. But then there's also the fact that Nick, who's William hurt Um, decides to stay in the house with Chloe's. It is the Haunting of Chill House. Yep, is make Chilly like always always doing stretches and like

like doing contortions and a leotard because she's young and flexible. Yeah, of course, because it's to show that it's the eighties. Well, I mean like flexible metaphorically she's doing more like you know, Well, they don't really. It's funny. They feel like they include her. They're not like mean to her just because she's like the young I mean, Glenn Close is giving her some

side eye. But I think at one point Meg Tilly's character Chloe, they're all like waxing nostalgic, and then they ask her about her past and she's like, oh, I don't really talk about the past because I don't about it as much as you guys. So she kind of represents the like she's not nostalgic yet, because she's still at a point where she's still like idealistic and anything can happen in her life, and like she's just enjoying her she's in her twice. It feels like she's more.

She doesn't have a tight group of friends though like they do. She's yeah, she's a drifter. She's like seems like she's just dated a series of older men and like she says something to the effect of, I don't know that many happy people or something like that. I think she's secretly the greatest character. She is a great character. And like the leotard that she's doing the stretches and at the beginning is like very specifically such an eighties leotard,

like put me in a weird state of mind. Can you imagine how hard it would be to pee if you were wearing a leotard overtights? I mean I remember how hard it was. Yeah, everyone did. Yeah. I mean some of the things that I knew about this movie, the like dancing around the kitchen island and the sixties soundtrack, thing like none of it bothered me in the context of the movie because it was like possible to see it is like, oh, this was the first time some

of these things happened. Uh so so we should maybe like like just do the boiler plate in case people haven't seen this movie. Well, Test, I think set it up that it's like a funeral friend, one of their friends. It's interesting now to know that it's a commune. That's like a that's an interesting Yeah. That made it a lot more more interesting to me. So this friend of there's Kevin Costner who plays corpse in it. Uh he's the funk up, but they're all he's kind of a

funk up. But he's like one of these guys you just couldn't decide on what he was going to be, and he would like you know, drifted around from job's job and then committed suicide while staying at the country home of Kevin Klein and Glenn Close's characters who are or they've kind of made it. They like own some kind of chain of stores. It's going to get store and that up. And it's called Running Dog And it's from a quote. It's from a quote from Maw that

says something about the running dogs of capitalism. Whoa if you weren't there was a socialist subtext to The Big Chill. We found it. It's not even a subtext. It's like in the movie again, it makes it interesting. I think I teamed out because, yeah, they have the shoes delivered from the store so that they can run around and play like five football in the yard and the Yeah, so there's just a tangle of feelings among these seven friends.

Is it seven plus plus Meg Tailling? I guess yeah, Well if you also you have got account Richard husband who eats a mayonnaise sandwich and a glass of milk, and that's all you need to know about Richard. And then he goes and then leaves the next morning. He's like, I'm just here for the mannaise sandwich. Yeah. Um, I was saying to tests, I found all of the men

in this movie very attractive. Who most who? Most of all? Uh, well, you know, I know that it's just like a basic take to be attracted to Jeff Goldbloom, But I was never a person who was attracted to Jeff Goldbloom for many years, and like suddenly I was like Jeff Goldbloom, Wow, what a charming guy, very good at taking imaginary phone calls and movies. Yeah, I'll tell you who I was most attracted to, and that would be Mary kay Place. Oh well, Mary kay Place, Mary Kay plays the maid. Yeah.

The people who were involved are Kevin. We got Kevin and Glenn as Harold and Sarah, and they I read something I don't remember where when I was sifting through all of these big chill takes that you know, some people argue that this is a Southern movie because it's all about like looking back, you know, towards history and

like that. He's the person who's from the South and then went to University of Michigan but returned to his roots and now he's just returning to his past, but everyone else went elsewhere and he's living in like a plantation house. Basically yeah. Um. But then neither Kevin Klein nor Glenn Close wanted like they thought those were the boring roles, and they were a little bit pissed that they were cast that way. Not pissed, but they were like,

all right, everybody wanted to be Mary kay Place. Of course, I mean, who wouldn't. Um. And then we have Tom Beranger as Sam Webber, who is the like you know, kind of accidentally yes, also also also also needless to say, Michael gold Jeff Goldblum, who is the entertainment journalist. He's the one who's all of us unrelatable, trying to get out of con He's trying to get out of content, and he's trying to convince himself at the stories he's

writing for US magazine anything. You know, it's people, isn't it people? It was the US, But he started opening kids in Harlem and like then got into journalism for the money, I guess. Yeah. And he's the one who brought the camera to tape everyone very awkwardly but mostly himself James Spader and Sexless and Video Tape eighties, bringing the camera to tape everybody talking about um and nobody wants to have sex with him, That's what and which

is very surprising. In like a deleted scene, he goes up at the funeral, he's introducing himself, like no one remembers him, which makes me think he was living in the commune. But he was from a younger grade, so I would well, he is a little bit younger, reads, a little bit younger, so I think he was kind of like the interloper who wanted to be cool. He's bringing that new wave energy into this otherwise strictly classic R and B household. And then there's William Hurt. Yes,

obviously Nick Carleton, who's a veteran. He is a Vietnam vet. He he cannot get a boner or some or or does I don't know. My husband is like his dick was blown off. Is that it's not really but I was envisioning the like born on the fourth of July, like pulling your tube out. Yeah, there's something. That's what I imagined. Um. He also does a lot of drugs, and I find him to be the least attractive in this film. He's a babe though still mannerisms wise and

the dryness of his his sense of humor. He is the number one babe number not not exactly, but I like, I dated somebody for a summer who was obsessed with this movie and uh and obsessed with his character specifically, and had the car, had that Porsche like the old Porsche, and um and was very much like like him. But obviously it did something for me. So interesting babe who's drawn to whom I would not have expected that who else we got? Okay, So then we have um Meg

Jones Mary kay Place my girlfriend. Now, um, she is a single, professional woman. She's like, I feel like it's she's she's a professional business she in Los Angeles. There's a point where she's in her office and she's looking out over the in the opening credits when you see how she has to look at the briefs for the account. Yeah, the exactly the briefs. Let's imagine that she works in Century City as a lawyer, because that seems right, and smoking merits and she just seems really cool. And then

we have Karen Bowen's Who's Joe Beth Williams. She's kind of the token like soap opera cold Dish. She's entrapped in a bad marriage to the boring guy, to boring guy Richard Bowen. But she used, she clearly used to be a fun babe in college and this is reminding her of that. Yeah, and she gives a lot of longing looks. Can I uh offer a hot take in opposition to your enthusiasm for Mary Kay Place here? I

don't think that. I don't think there are any like actually good female characters in this movie, and that was that was a realization upon watching it this time, because I didn't think that Chloe was the best character. That's sort of that's that's the hottest take. But I mean I think that if if they had added like one or one or two more scenes with her, I think you would have you would have an a plus character

and a very interesting character. And not to be too like beck Deli reductionist about it, but like they that feeling of like it's me watching Jeff Goldblum just you know, in some of yes, the like the literal facts of his character and his profession everything, but also just like some of the mannerisms and the way he is and everything that for me is not there for with any of the female characters, mostly because we don't again, we don't know what We don't know what Mary ky Place does,

and like everybody else is just like defined by like whether or not they fucked the dead guy, or if they like if they like their husbands or not, or if they want to stay out of their marriages. Like that seems to be the defining crises for most of these characters. And yes, everything comes down to sex in this movie in the end, but like it's always been sex though for all represents not selling out. But I thought Glenn Close had a pretty good like you had

a sense of her backstory. She was involved with Alex, Yeah, Alex, but did she have an affair, Yeah, she cheated on Kevin Klein with Alex, she gets to cry in their shower and the shower early on. But then but then by deciding to encourage spoiler again, Kevin Klein to father Mary Kay places child, and then to have sex, it's like retribution. She's like, now we're even because I had an affair with Alex and I carried that guilt and now I am basically like enlisting you to have sex

with my friend, and now it's even. Steven, I don't know that feels feels that feels like a fairy. That feels such a male screenwriter fabrication, the puppet matter in this drange. No, I was test I like it. No, it was real. It was co written with a woman, a woman, Barbara Coppleson. Let's go with it. Let's go with it because so wild to me that Lauren Kasten wrote this like in the middle of doing Star Wars. It's like, it's like the chaser for Star Wars for sure.

I mean again, that's like what I liked about is I was like, Wow, this was a big hit movie that got nominated for a lot of Oscars, and it's just about a bunch of people having like personal crises. It's not about space Wars. It's just like internal space Wars. Also, I thought it was really interesting that he felt so bad about cutting Kevin Costner out of the movie that then his next movie, Silverado. He was like, come back, Kevin, come on. Kevin was like, alright, fine, I'll do it.

But I mean that it's like interesting because when they talk about cutting his scenes, And what's super weird is that I have the Blu ray with like all the deleted scenes, but you cannot get the deleted scenes of Kevin Costner. They are not to be found. And apparently it's because they felt like if Alex existed in that universe that it would overshadow the impressions of Alex. That

make I think that's the right. Probably the wigs were so bad and the Thanksgiving flashback that people laughed, that's so awesome, Like we can't do it because they're supposed to be like maybe maybe the wigs were, you know, just fate telling them that. I mean, I think it makes more sense to not have him around. I think it's more effective. I think it's a good little like Gotcha and the opening sequence, You're like, who's this dapper gentleman getting ready for a night out on the town.

He's dead. It's a horror movie, you know what scene? Really it's like so cliche and pathetic, but it gives me chills every time. Is the organ doing? Um? You can't always get what you Yeah, it's so good, you guys, It's really like this movie way more than I expected. I've seen. I've seen a lot of things that come

after this. I've seen uh Indian Summer, which I don't know if anyone else has seen, but it's a big chill rip off from the nineties about a group of friends who meet at a camp and then come back to the camp and I'll have sex, uh rekindle old relationships. Um. And this movie was formative to me because it is where I first learned the word boner. Yeah, because somebody gives a long monologue in it about an embarrassing experience they had at camp where they had a boner and

they had to keep. They tried to tape it down and it didn't work. It like just like a long boner monologue. And then because this was the early nineties when when the Internet wasn't a thing really yet, we like asked our friend's mom what boner, what a boner was, and she was like, go ask your parents. Save parenting move was suave. I don't know that I ever did ask my own parents or if I just like probably like went to the dictionary was something I would do.

Has a nerding through the paper Dictionary of Youth, You're like hope that your parents won't be able to tell that you opened up to the paget the word the page for voters, it's dog here. Today's episode of Nightcall

is brought to you by Warby Parker. So when we first started this podcast and we were talking about advertisers that we were interested in featuring, we all mentioned Warby Parker, and I in particular have been rallying really really hard to talk about Warby Parkers because I've been wearing them forever and I love them, and I honestly believe they're

the best classes. Basically, I started getting Warby Parkers when I lost a pair of super super expensive glasses, and I didn't have a back up pair of glasses because they were so expensive, and I was like, funk, what am I going to do? And I ended up finding Warby Parker spending on new prescription glasses and it was

life changing. I'm on my eighth pair. I think they make it super super easy to get the best pair of glasses from their five day home try on, where you can get up to five pairs of glasses, try them on for five days, get other people's opinions, see what works for you, and then send them back, and then place an order for your frames and you can easily upload your prescription. If you don't have your prescription

on handle, even call your doctor. It's awesome. The home try on is free and you don't have to buy anything, so shipping is free. They preprint the return address and everything to you. Order five pairs of glasses, keep them for five days, and it just couldn't be simpler. There are always new styles coming in, so even though I've been ordering for a while, I always do the home

try on um Right now I have the Lucy's. They're very cute and if you're indecisive You even get an email reminder from Warby Parker when you're five day windows closing and you just put the glasses back in their box and ship them back. Also, if you have an iPhone X, there's even a nifty app with a new feature called Find Your Fit. So Find your Fit uses the iPhone x is True depth camera to map and

measure key facial features. Using these measurements, Find your Fit recommends about twelve Warby Parker frames that are likely the best fit for your face. It only takes a second and it eliminates a lot of the guesswork. I know that I have like a weirdly broad face, so it's

kind of helpful to narrow down the selection. Also, they have great prescriptions sunglasses which started a hundred and seventy five dollars, and I have plans to make Molly order those because the other day I caught her wearing her glasses with sunglasses over them and I was like, that makes me very nervous, So that's next on the agenda. We also love that for every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker donates a pair to someone in need, So

go to Warby Parker dot com. Forward slash call to order your free home tryons for five pairs of frames to find the best glasses for you. After you head over to Warby Parker dot com slash call, you can try out the rby Parker app on the iTunes App Store, where you can use the home try on companion feature to snap photos of you and your frames, stitch it into a video, and let your loved ones pick the best ones for you. If there's a tiebreaker, again, that's

warby Parker dot com forward slash call, guys. I spent way too much time thinking about the astrology. Let's start off with Harold Kevin Klein. I'm gonna go ahead and be like Leo. There's just no question for me. The way that he lounges around, the way that he kind of has this like confidence that can come off as a little bit like just obnoxious. He's kind of commandeering. He has his own business, he wears the shirts of his own business just to hang out with friends. That's

totally Leo move. I think he's I think he's an Earth sign. I think I didn't know we were doing I thought we were just going to be like, well, I saw your thread, I started thinking about this and I should I think he's a I think he's a Taurist or Virgo, but I'm leaving Tauris. I could go Virgo because I will tell you who's the Taurists, and that would be William hurt is the Taurus. This is confusing to me. Okay, so listen. Everyone thinks of the

Taurists as like the sturdy, reliable, sovereign. No, but I think like a person who likes their house, like they have two houses. No, they like their drugs and they like their cars. I'm married to a Taurus. He's not a drug addict. Like, but I really like Island Race. It is now Lyndlray over here. I'll just go with

the ones I felt really strongly about. And I want to hear what you thought William Hurt was too, But I'm going to say that the taurusts for William Hurt And then I really feel like, um, Jeff Goldbloom is a cancer. M yeah, I can see that. I feel much debate because he's like, he's kind of capricious, but he also he has like his own motives and he's really bad at hiding them, and he goes after them, and he's pretty charming, so eventually you kind of forgive him.

There's not a lot like what you see is what you get emotionally with him, I think, which exactly, which is what I think of as a as a cancer. And he's tortured. They're very tortured. I think you were dead on. I think you said that that Mary kay places a Capricorn, which I think that's dead on. Okay, thank you. What do you think about Glenn? I said Glenn was either a Sagittarius or a Virgo. I'm leaning towards Sagittarius kind of like I think she's a Libra.

A libra. You guys have such strong feelings. I'm thought Tom Bringer was, Oh yeah, he could be a Libra too. I don't know. I mean he's like I mean, he's the famous person so usually like the famous people in fictional work, sorry the leoso. Yeah, but he's reluctantly famous. That's what I liked about his character. He's a great character. He's he's a fantastic character. He shrinks from himself. Yeah, I like that. Tom Barren from Berenger was a great character.

He was very good. He was sort of I knew nothing about him and he was the secret Ace, although he was on Cheers for like five seconds. Yeah, how did you miss the Tom Berenger connection there? Or you didn't, I didn't know. I didn't put it in context. I'm trying to find the factoid I saw about how they were there was a haunting during the filming. Yeah, I want to know about the haunting. But also so you thought we were going to say who Yeah, yeah, but this is this is what I came to like, this

is my my my take about the female characters. And I was really thinking about who I am, and I'm like, well, I went like for two of the male characters. Uh, I don't know. There was nothing about the female characters where I was like that felt deep enough to be like to even have a strong opinion like oh absolutely no I'm not like that, or yes, I'm definitely like that. So I don't know. That's that's that's how I kind of arrived at that. But so you just identify mostly

with um, with with gold Woman and hurt Uh really? Yeah, I would not have expected that. I mean, I think if you had a little bit more time with MiG Tilly, then I might be able to to lean more towards her, but I think that there their relationship feels sort of recognizable in a way to me. I don't know, Yeah, I think she's a she's a scorpio. You think Chloe's

a scorpio, I said, aquarious. I thought she was an aquarius because it's so hard to get a read on her, and then she just comes out with some crying and you're like what, and then she's stretching and then she's laughing and you're like, this makes sense, total aquarious. I thought that Richard Richard is the scorpio for sure. Richard being a bad husband whose name you can't ever know,

he's not sexy enough to be a scorpio. I've known a lot of really on sexy scorpios, and I mean, I think it's like they just pull out their stinger and you're just like I didn't want that, and then they check out, like they're just like You're like no. I spent literally two hours last night thinking I couldn't turn off my brain. I have like election anxiety, and I was just like, no, I need to think, like you needed to do the chart of yeah, I'm gonna do the chart. I mean, I think like for me,

I'm like sixty percent Mary kay Place. Maybe like Glenn Close, Jeff Goldbloom, can you even is it allowed to split? Which is which is your sun moon and rising? I don't know. That's a whole other evening. Spent a week thinking about this stuff. Honestly, Um, the Big Chill is really good escapism because that's what they're doing too is and the house is like, looks so comfortable in such an eighties way. Like I think I enjoy a lot of things in this genre. Have do you guys like

Wander Last the David Wayne movie. Oh yeah, it's great. I always bring it up because I love it so much and I feel like it's like a gen X Big Chill. You know, it's about people being like, oh, like being a yuppie sucks, Like, let's move into this commune. Uh. I want to I want to talk about what this movie would look like if you if you were to do say for the era that we went to college in, Like,

what would that look like? And if if there's a Big Chill circa say we graduated an average of two thousand five or two elector yeah, the electric Clash of the block House Big Chill, I mean it's really hard, Like now that there's we have a better idea of like the things that we will be nostalgic for as a generation, and like have a clearer picture of a clear hindsight of like what was in the air when we were in college and what shaped us in that way.

I really want to know what the odds college graduate, the millennial, the millennial big chill would look like, like what would be the what would be this on that soundtrack? And and what would what would we what would those characters do? Yeah, definitely the rapture strokes. I mean you could not escape that in college party. I mean LCD sound system. I guess if you're going to have it was so pervasive, I guess it's starting. Yeah, all your friends.

I resented its own its own self announcement is like I'm the music that signifies this time, but because I agree something else. But because of that, you have to like acknowledge it. Maybe it's that everyone maybe they make fun of it. Why, Like what's the stuff that accidentally just became part of the soundtrack? You know. The thing that's most strongly conjures college to me is heyya oh yeah, wasn't that that would yeah, Hey, I was my freshman

year of college. I remember dancing at like a Halloween party that I associate that was senior year of high school. But I'll allow it. I will allow it. Also, Modest Mouse was like in the ether, but that was the bad time of modest time. It was on its way for sure. I mean when did the moon and I guess that was that was minute article or something. Maybe earlier, Um built a spill I think of as being very collogy. Molly and I went to a Bill to Spill concert.

I think freshman year. Maybe this is like colle This was high school for me. But still like deep deep nostalgic buttons being pushed to spill are great. We all still read for Bill to Spill. Five. American Hysteria is a brand new podcast from Skylark and me Chelsea Webber Smith. It explores our moral panics, urban legends, and conspiracy theories, how they shape our psychology and culture, and why we

end up believing them. I'll cover moral panics like stranger danger, satanic panic, and Tinky Winky's homosexuality, urban legends like poison, Halloween candy, and conspiracy theories like the Illuminati secret plan for old domination. I was raised around a ton of wild conspiracy theories, and I know how easy it could be to freak out over the sensational, the rare, and

the untrue. I want to understand why we fear the wrong things, and how these fears shape our past, present, and future in sometimes devastating ways, and also what these bizarre panics might be covering up. I promised to show you a good old time. Well, I try to figure it all out. The first two episodes of American Hysteria dropped November twelve. Head over and subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. Watching this movie is bizarre to me because I did the opposite of like communal living in

college where I wanted to be an adult. I feel like, well, I had like I had like a borderline nervous breakdown my freshman year where I just I couldn't sleep and I stayed up for about five days and I ended up getting a job so that I could move off campus because um, I couldn't get what's called a psycho single, which is when you which is not a nice way of swimming this, but everyone was like, oh, you need

a psycho single. I I still have this thing where it's if I'm around people for too much, I feel like I need to like have like a day or two of solitude um, which is harder communal communal living only children. I yeah, you're both only children. It kind of like just sucks all the life out of the opposite. Yes,

I love the socialize. Well, it was always interesting to visit you because you lived with the same group of people, and I fake lived with the same group of people throughout college because I had to have a dorm room, so I had like a ghost room, you know, until a certain point. And I'm still friends with them and we actually still get together. You do reunion trips with friends from college, and they're very not like the Big Chill. But I mean there is like not like the Big Chill.

You all rent a house together. We rent a house, but we don't all have sex with each other. No, but you all like leave your children upstairs, so you can probably smoke weed. Well only some of us smoke weed. We do. We played, We played a lot of like charades and rounds and stuff. It's very weird. But I find that, you know, I don't know, I mean maybe just because of things like having such a different vibe right now, there's a lot less pleasure taken in nostalgia.

It's almost painful to think back on how different things were when we were in college and where we are as a country now. But it's also like it's very easy to look back at any earlier time and be like it was so great, but like I always have to remind myself like, oh no, like I've never been happy in any time in my life. Politically, when we

were in college, it was a difficult. Obviously, yeah, we thought brings bad and just like there were just times like specifically where I'm like, oh, I wish I hadn't been so depressed, like in the end of college. And then it's just like, I think the thing is that the difference with Big Chills that they were like literally living in the sixties or they were going to college

in the sixties. And I think we use the idea of like the sixties as a metaphor of some kind of like salad days when everybody was optimistic, but that's like literally when they were young and relevant in everything, and the driving plot of Big Chill, if if you see it as them trying to reconnect with their idealistic college days when they were literally in the most idealistic time,

and the twentieth century like we don't have that. It's in a way, it's like it's it's kind of like a mirror image of just ours was so kind of cloaked in negativity. I mean, there are the hopefulness of the sixties and then in a way the hopefulness of the eighties of this boomer kind of idealistic like we're on top of the world, but like diametrically opposed optimism. They're like, we all sold out, but look how much

money we made. Yeah, And what's interesting is, you know kind of how how our experience has been kind of contradicted. We had the recession, so we didn't even have that option at all. So I feel like a lot of our generation is like getting radicalized now because now is the time when people are like, oh, where are all those yuppy things that I was like told all the adult stuff if I followed the rules, and it's like, oh, it's never coming, and everyone took all the stuff and

that's it. Like, well, that's where the depression angle comes in that you were talking about when Molly, when you said, um, that looking up their ages was such a like horrible thing because I think that that I mean to think of like people in their early to mid thirties, and all of them, without questions, seemed to be totally financially stable. Well yeah, he's no, but he's he's doing something for the money. He's got to pitch those stories. He's living

in New York. Man, I don't know if he's able to fly from New York to South Caroline and that club. And I bet being being a columnist for People magazine and the eighties probably was a pretty cushy jobs, especially at thirty one, you know. I mean, and that's what's really craziest to think of how few people can afford to even like the coats that Joe Beth Williams is wearing. Come on, that's Kashmir. Those are dusters like that, you know,

very impressive. I mean, it's they're all it's it's something that's so taken for granted, whereas a big chill movie now would inevitably have to encompass, you know, a lot of economic Yeah. I say, like when I see a lot of old friends, like I feel like sometimes there's a lot of just like class, anxiety baked in all how is everyone doing? And like, who's got what going on? I had a boyfriend throughout call it with two different boyfriends throughout college, but neither of them went to school

with me. So it's well, I'm sorry, but you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know my boyfriend he goes to a different school. He lives in Canada. Is it fair to say you were both too cool for school? I was. I had a cat man, were very cool, and I made a lot of like roast chicken. I moved at a certain point from my like really cute, super tiny studio to um it ended up unbeknownst to me. I was like,

oh wait, is it a retirement community? Into retirement? Everybody I moved into her resire and the only other person did live in a dorm of sorts. Yes, And the only other person who was under the age of fifty was a med student. And he was like thrilled that I was there, and I was like, no, I'm not exciting at all. But they called the people in their nineties referred to me as Britney Spears because I would. I loved it. I love college. It was my rushmore.

I totally, just like I just always wanted to go to college, and then I did, and I was like, this is great. I would like to keep doing this forever. I was so jealous of your college experience. My college

was going back home to Iowa during the summers. Like that was the most collegiate experience for me, I think because I grew up been a college town, uh and so kind of had like got primed on what like the most stereotypical like big ten Midwestern college experience is going to be like, and then kind of had it out of my system by the time I actually went

to college. But then like I would come back home and just go to like the college bars and stuff in Iowa City and then go back to school and just like work and work and work and not hang out with anybody like that. That was my way. So you never went to that that weird brewery in Westwood Village. I went to Westwood Brewery, the Bruco. Yeah, the Bruco. I definitely went to some comedy shows at the Bruco. I definitely had my friend give me her old idea so that I could get into the Bruco. They took

any I did that was actually a heart. I had to be snuck in the back of the Bruco one. Well, the rest of it was in Koreatown, like all the rest of my like early twenties bar going was in kay Town, because that's right. My first apartment in Los Angeles was I'm jealous of that. I'm jealous of both of you guys. Why was I living in a retirement community?

Why why did I do that? Oh my god? I guess on my soundtrack for for for My Big Chill, I would you know what would have to be on there, and it would be the thing where everybody would be like, oh no, not this song, but then realized then I'll start crying and dancing to it. Power out by Arcade Fire, Oh yeah, totally. I listened to tunnels so much when it was like freezing cold and super snowy and I was in my retirement home trying to be like, how

do I get to a bar? And then I was like, oh, look, literally you could dig a tunnel, but you're not going to do that because it's really cold to go out to a bar. I listened to when I was very depressed my senior year of college, I like would only listen to rap because it would make me less depressed, and like indie rock would make me depressed, so obviously, so I listened to some cut by Trillville. Oh yeah, that's my follow that ass in the mall, that is

my my take me away nostalgia. So I went through this weird period where Molly made me. She made me a bunch of mixes. I still have them, and one of them, senior year, had um Paul Barman's cock Mobster on it, and for some reason, when I was really like I'm not feeling not feeling great, I would just put on cock Mobster. And I totally remember being in the car with my mom to visit my grandmother and just being like just letting it play, you know, and

just like inside dying. But it's like worse to change it. It was just a nightmare of an expense, Like Paul Barman is not even cool, no, but to me, Paul Barman is, like it just it packs you up. You're in a mood. You want to listen to a cornucopia of warmthlopia. Oh my god, it's all all of the lyrics are still in my brain ready to come out into the microphone. But I don't want to embarrass anyone who my dandy voice makes the most anti choice Granny's panties voys. And there we have it and we stoop

no lower. This is Big Chill podcast for you guys. But yeah, I like the idea of the underground, the backpack or Big Chill. Yeah. Yeah, we should ask our listeners for any Big Chill thoughts and also our millennium listeners what they think would be on the Millennium Big Chill soundtrack. Um, I think it's like the fifth highest selling soundtracks of all time. It was on the charts for like eighty four weeks. I think it was bananas and I feel like Big Chill never won, at least

never won an Oscar, but was nominated, I think. But the soundtrack was like King of the Soundtracks. If you put the weight on anything, it's just gonna The weight is like a magical there's your rolling Stone song and there's your you have the weight, Like there's a couple there's like a couple of songs that hit more in

the like Jefferson Airplane direction. The soundtrack could go on, but then the rest of it is just like all Motown, which is part of what adds to the like upbeat feeling of the yea, maybe you're the sense of this isn't like necessarily the clearest cross section of what they were listening to at the time, But it's like the thing that they would listen to you to like keep

themselves up. It's the stuff they would pard of morning, the records they would listen to in their co op when they were like all cooking together, cooking their their vegan toss in some romanet give us a nightcall with your with your big Chill memories, slash um reboot ideas. Who you are from Big Chill? Who's the best person in Big Chill? Mary kay place? We'll take it all. Should we all get the big chill haircut together? Know I already have it. I just Emily just got a

fresh haircut. She doesn't. Yeah it looks good. Yeah, I got my anime haircut for the end times. Congratulations. Well, maybe we'll all get big Chill perms for the end times. I don't need always wanted a really Yeah, I got a perm once. I wasn't. I was obsessed with getting a perm for such a long time. My hair is very hard to perm so it took a lot of Um. It took a lot of energy to actually get it

to like fluffy perfection. I can't explain to you what it's like to hear people with straight hair talk about how much they want curly. Oh I've been, it's been

my whole life. I'm like, why straight hair? Why There's like that episode of Fresh off the Boat where they talk about like the status the status perm or like the if they have some name for it, or it's like the family is just projected onto the idea of a perm as being like the way that you show off that you're like a real American family, like to four oh four six night there us a call about perms, about the end times, about the big Chill, about movie soundtracks, Yeah,

any and all were post spooky times now, so now we're getting into comfort material, comfort food material. Oh yeah. Also send us your best recipes for Thanksgiving foods and your least favorite Thanksgiving foods. And we won't talk about the condiment that we dare not speak its name, but I know we did, but we had to. It was part of the movie. It was part of the movie movie. Yeah exactly. Um, but yeah, give us all your Thanksgiving me fall thoughts and stories, and you can also email

us Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook we're Nightcall Podcast. Except on Twitter we're Nightcall Pod. And don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. If you like us, and if you are in Los Angeles around the time of Thanksgiving, come to our nights Giving dj event at gold Diggers in Hollywood the night before Thanksgiving one and we will be djaying.

Tess and I will be there, Emily will be ghost djaying spooky Spirit with Morgjas and perhaps some magic perhaps and definitely some merch. Definitely merch. Thanks for listening, Happy, big chill everybody,