Oh folks, it show die.
People say good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want clothed sodas, pop popcorn in no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Got it off.
By the time I was sixteen years old, I was notorious as a kid with a terrific knack for theft. Foster homes would no longer take me, and I was sent to the Boys Reformatory of Batans. There, in the counterfeit world of men among men, I found my true family.
At Batten.
I was astounded by the discovery that each male had a male of his own, and that the world of force and manly beauty loved in that way within itself from link to link. It was from then on, when they merged in shadow, that each group offered me a puzzle. The stiff, silent males possessed the violence of love, and my life's study would be to find. Sixteen years had passed when the maximum security prison of Fontana brought me face to face.
With my deliverance.
Jack bowman age twenty eight, one hundred and seventy five pounds seventy five inches, formerly a captive of Batan.
Welcome to the Projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joined me once again is Ms Rain Alexander.
Hi, everybody happy to be here.
Also back in the booth is mister Kyler Faye.
Hi, everybody.
We are kicking off twenty twenty five and kicking off a month of Patreon request with one from Kyler Fay himself. Poison, this first feature film from director Todd Haynes nineteen ninety one's Poison is I'm prized to have a trio of stories, Hero, Horror and Homo and we'll be talking about these three diverse interweave tales and ruining them as we go along. So if you don't want anything, run please just turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen Poison.
We will still be here. So, Kyler, I'm very curious why did you choose Poison as your Patreon pick and when did you first see it?
It really brings back some memories and I hadn't watched the film again. It's been several years since I had gone back to it. I saw it when it was brand new and I was a young kid abroad in England as a student. Still a teenager, and it was released in the UK in October of ninety one.
I saw two movies almost back to back.
One was Derek Jarman's Edward, the second which was dazzling and wonderful, and then the second one I saw was Poison, which just really punched me in the face in like a good way. I could hardly believe it. I had never seen anything like it. Granted I was a very unsophisticated film watcher at that time.
I was just a kid. I hadn't seen a lot of stuff.
But I had not seen anything put together like that, anything that looked like it, and I had seen nothing. Really was such a frank depiction of gay intimacy and it like ever honestly, I hadn't even seen any porn yet really at that point, because the Internet was not then what it is now, so it wasn't accessible. You used to have to spend one hundred bucks on a
tape or something back in nineteen nineties dollars. But it just absolutely amazed me and just stuck with me all those years, and then periodically over the years when I would try to show it to somebody else and it wasn't always that successful. I couldn't really get anybody else to quite share my enthusiasm. So it's fun to talk to a couple of people who actually want to discuss it and rain how about yourself?
So this came out just as I was leaving college. Yeah, I graduated nineteen ninety one, and I had just really come into myself as like this really angry, radical, queer, feminist person. This wasn't the first time I rewatched it recently. I rewatched this every so often. But it really strikes me how it seems so impossible to explain what it was like before this film, the world before this film.
And it's not just that this film changed the world, because it did, but also it didn't, as we're as going to talk about, I think, but there was just nothing at all like this before. We were still living in a world where it was very fraught to even show two people of the same sex kissing on television or even in movies, like it was still so difficult
to even show something like that. I was coming out in the early nineties, and I was not just coming out as queer, I was coming out as trans, which was not even an easy thing to do within the queer community. So to see this when it hit was just such a blow. Was like it showed me so much possibility. When I had knewn a little bit more about Todd Haynes through reputation by the time this came out, this was a time when I still couldn't really easily
see Superstar. So when this came out, I still had not seen Superstar right that had not been made accessible to me. This big My first Todd Haynes was really just you know, it opened my world and knew in ways that like I'm still enjoying now.
Yeah, this was probably my first thought Haines as well. I eventually caught up with Superstar The Karen Carpent dis Story. I think I ordered it from video search in Miami, maybe ninety five, ninety six, something like that, and this one I do remember picking up at the video store. Surprisingly enough, it was actually stocked at Blockbuster. And I saw this probably ninety three, ninety four something like that, probably watched it while I was in college, and it
just blew me away. Just absolutely loved it. The way that the stories are told, the way that their inner cut was something very radical for me. I had never seen anything like that before. The mixed mediums I thought was fantastic. The way that you know the Jennet section, I believe that's the homo section. Just how gorgeous that looks, the wonderfulness of the horror section, and just the playing up of the cheese factor with that, the science fiction
culty cheapness of it was wonderful. And then the use of the documentary style footage for the hero section where you don't know exactly what's going on, and I love that this whole movie is just set up in such a way that you don't know what's going to happen to any of these stories. And they are really teasing you with the editing because you might start to get invested in one story and that moves on to the next story, and then it will come back to that story.
And I love that the editing style is not just one story, two story, three story. We vary that because otherwise it would start to feel like a waltz with that one two three one two three one two three rhythm. And I'm just like, I love that we go back and forth between the stories as needed, and we might get hero and horror going back and forth, and then we might slip into Homo in there, and then we might go Homo to Hero for a few and then go back into the horror section. I'm just like, this
is fantastic. But I do before we even start to talk about the movie, I do want to talk about the era that this was made in nineteen ninety one. You know, Rain, You're talking about how you're just coming out as queer and as trans at the time. To set this in the proper historical context, I mean, this is pre Ellen coming out. It's still a horrible mark on your career. You might end your career if you come out as gay or if people like catch you
being gay all. And it's just like this is right around the time of independent film really starting to make a mark. Like we're one year before Reservoir Dogs. This is like sex liize and video tape time. So this is like the perfect time for this movie to come out, and this is the time when we're starting to actually see of course, there have been gay filmmakers since film has been made, but very open challenging the status quo
gay filmmakers. It's starting to happen right now. I mean, of course, yes we have John Waters and things, but like this with this movie, with Swoon, with Gregor Rakis films. I mean, this feels like a real golden age of queer cinema is starting right now.
Yeah, and I think a real repudiation of the way stories had been told. I mean, this is put out as a foundational film for new queer cinema, and that's a great label. This is a queer film. I hate to fall back on what feels like an academic kind of jargon at this point in history, but it really did shift the way storytelling was done. There's an interview
that I saw with Todd Haynes. Wrory says, you look at these other films that are arguably gay stories that are in the history of cinema, but they're told through a straight lens. They're straight stories. Cruising is a straight story, he says, This is not this is queer. This is explicit, and that's why it was so challenging politically.
It relates to the point when a lot of people had it with the failure of society to deal with as also, right, you said, so the still enrages me when I think about horrible like the Reagan government was during that period, and then you had groups like act Up formed outrage in the UK, and a lot of people were like, fuck this, We're not going to disappear and we're not going to just be defined by this,
and we're going to do something. And these kinds of films were I think these filmmakers saying, yeah, we're not going to just clean or act up and be real acceptable to you because you're associating us with this disease.
And it really did. It really changed some things.
A lot of people now don't I don't know if everybody really appreciates just how wildly vicious homophobia was in those days too, because this was that the like that nineteen ninety ninety one ninety two, you're right at the worst part of the AIDS epidemic when that we did not have very good drugs yet the treatments were not very good yet a lot of people were still dying, and the attitude of a lot of society was like, yeah, you probably deserve.
It, you have it coming.
It was so awful and a lot of younger queer people now, I think of particularly young like gen Z gay men now in particular, have no concept a lot of times of what that was. And I'm glad they don't. I'm not one of these old people who are like, you have no idea how bad it was. You got it so good now. I'm glad that they are not living through that. But at the same time, I get pissed off when they do stupid shit like vote for
Trump or something. We didn't go through all this hell, so you can help us like regress into fascism at this point.
And that's the interesting thing to me about this is that in some ways this feels like it's absolutely coming out of this Reaganist era, and specifically about the Reagan's non response to AIDS and HIV, and in a way we can be like, Okay, I'm glad we're not in
that space any longer. But I'm seeing the same tactics, the same material conditions being deployed against trans people now, and ultimately as a transperson who has been in this fight for this entire time, especially when I hear gay people say, oh, this is a new thing, the trans thing is a new thing, I'm like, no, We've been
here all along. I fought that fucking battle in the eighties and in the early nineties, and fighting that same fucking battle with the same fucking tactics now where this social pressure is to define us as pariah's anathema, as to be eradicated, to be quarantined, the we're spreading disease. All of these tropes are still functioning, they've just been shifted. And it's interesting to me that we're in a place historically now where we're seeing AIDS and HIV being arguably cured.
Right we're seeing these news stories what was the fifth person where maybe it's actually been completely eradicated from their system, And this is a beautiful moment we should all be celebrating, because what a beautiful moment for humanity, for science, for everybody who's been marginalized by that disease historically. And now we're onto a new thing. But all those same actors, all those same right wing religious paranoiacs, are still driving the same bus.
Even recently, what's her name in Congress, Marjorie Green, when the monkey pox outbreak was going on a couple of years ago, she was like posting on social media all the time. She somehow got hold of pictures of mostly gay men at a clinic or something lining up to get vaccinated and yeah, and repeatedly posting this trope that these queers are spreading this disease again, and I'm like, we're not gonna if this spreads out of control. We're
not taking the blame for this one, you know. And I was glad to see a lot of people got vaccinated because it was also at the height too of anti vacs all of a sudden becoming socially acceptable as well, which is still lows me away HIV doesn't actually cause anything. That's what he'll say. If that mad man actually gets to do anything, it's gonna be bad.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
I'm waiting for RFK Junior to announce that he's going
to you know, take prep off of the market. Going back to some of the stuff that you guys were saying, I mean even right now, like the election this year twenty twenty four, the year that we're recording this, so many because Michigan was a battleground state and we just had so many literally anti trans ads, and it was all of this horseshit about well Kamala is paying for so for prisoners to get sex changes, and oh, you go to your kid might go to school a boy
and then come home a girl, and all of this kind of malarkey, and I'm just like, what the fuck are you guys doing with this? Like this is And I remember it was like, you know, Trump is for you, Kamala is for they them, And I'm like, oh my fucking Christ, I can't believe it. Even the liberal media was shocked. Kamala supports taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.
Every transgender inmate would have access.
Kamala is for they them. President Trump is for you.
I'm Donald J.
Trump, and I approve this message. We are still dealing with the age crisis here in nineteen ninety one. We are still we're in the Bush era, which might as well have been the Ragan era, because it was just same shit, different days, different dude, different dim witted dude who's out there just like, yeah, I'm clueless, I have no idea what to do with these weirdo's and they're
weird disease, you know, it's like, oh my god. I mean, and we don't necessarily get exposed to what this world was like other than through now like television and movies and things like pose and stuff, where it's just like, okay, yeah, this is what the world was like. But I think they even kind of gloss over that it's way worse than what we're seeing.
And it doesn't provide the full picture of the various kinds of ways of being queer, the ways of being trans and there's no one thing that's ever going to capture all that, nor shouldn't it attempt to. That's not what we're doing here. But what I think is really interesting about this historical moment that we're in is that
this is a beautiful opportunity for people. If they're using the same tactics to find it against us, we can use the same tactics to respond, which means that the people that are making the poisons of this era, whether it's like Vera dru making the people's joker, etc. Etc. These are the ways that we're able to respond, so we can respond in kind.
Before we move on to the movie too, I just want to talk a little bit about how this was actively attacked. You know, how people again tend to forget the whole idea of the national adoment of the arts or any sort of arts grants, and how those are a thing of the past a lot of times because of what happened during this era where Oh my god, they're using money for queer art and they wouldn't call it art even, they would just call it pornography. And they're just like, look at all this stuff, Look at
piss Christ, look at these photos from Robert Mapplethorpe. How awful is this? And this was one of the things Poison was one of those hot you know, the firebrand issues where what's the guy's name, Donald Wildman.
From Wildman and Jesse Helms. May they both rest in piss forever. Oh my god, this has brought all of that back to it. There was at my college a small Maplethorpe exhibit a little bit during this period. Just remembering all of this again as something else.
At the time, after this movie came out to right to I think every was it, every congress person or yeah, and just say do you know that your that federal money is funding this pornography? And just yeah, of course I'm sure they're looking at the Jane stuff because the other stuff is there, but they probably too stupid to notice it type of thing. But it's just like, oh my god, this is yeah, just outright attacking. How dare these people try to make art?
You know?
This is wrong because we're using federal money for this. It was probably like, you know, a dollar twenty five. But yet it's like, good lord, any any money coming from the government going towards this basically deviant art. I mean, it's the same kind of stuff that Hitler didn't want to fund back in Germany in the forties.
Around this time, three of the NEA four came to my college to perform. All of them except Karen Finley came and they did a performance for me. I was really ready for Poison to be there for me. It was a really catalyzing film and a really catalyzing historical moment. The thing is they wouldn't look at it. There's clips of Pat Robertson talking about like how pornographic Poison is and I haven't seen it, and I'm like, I understand.
You in habit a world. There's definitely things I don't want to see and I can be aware of there's a thing that I don't want to see, But Poison is not part of that. This movie is not that part of that category. I don't want to watch a
snuff film. I don't want to see that, right. I'm channeling Valerie Cherish from the comeback, I didn't need to see that, right, If I want to intellectually engage with something, even if I find it antithetical to my political position, I really think it's important to look at it and engage it on its own terms so I can at least argue against it. And Pat Robertson refused. He wouldn't
look at it, which means he's getting it filtered. He's getting the interpretation filtered through what, through who, we don't know. And he would never admit to it. He would just be like, oh, it's pornography. There's not really pornography. Maybe a little bit, but yeah, I arguably it's even in that the one of the most intense scenes, the one in the Jena section, it's all Jenei section, in the
Holms section where there's a rape scene. Effectively, right, we're not seeing genitals, we're not seeing it's all we're seeing in that is faces. But we know what's happening there, and it's incredibly effective. And it goes back to that old oh what's his name? I forge the definition of pornography. I know when I see it that when you see it. But you can't buy those other definitions of what pornography is where you see genitals, fluid, where you see these things.
It's not defined by that, it's more defined by what you don't see.
Yeah, there's like the brief glimpse of a man's penis, which I think is just a prosthetic penis. I don't even think it's the real deal. But oh my god, you know we have to cut that out. And then what was it? I think it was during the rape scene they're like, you have to make this shorter, and it's like, well, do you object to any particular shot? No, no, it just needs to be shorter, like you can't go on this log.
Yeah, it was like just the It wasn't a specific part of it, it was just the I guess the total effect of it was just too much to get the because they were trying to get Was it a cut to try to get an R rating so they could be in theaters?
Was NC seventeen a thing yet at this point? Did it get it?
Yeah?
Right around this point, Yeah, that's.
Not really any better than an X really, because at as soon as NC seventeen started, the theater chains and Blockbuster and stuff wouldn't carry those films anyway, So you needed an r get to get out there.
But it gets to this question like how long should a rape be? How long? How long?
Just let me know, rape should go on as long as they have to.
Thank you MPAA for clearly defining that for us, because I prefer it at a zero A zero. This is what I would like.
I love the structure, like I said, of this movie and just the way that it's put together, and I
love that. If you were to go through and if you're some sort of maniac and do a fan edit of this movie and take all of these chapters and put them into chapters, like make three short films out of this, I don't know why you would do that, but you would find that they are missing major portions, like it is necessary to watch these films in the way that is presented by Haynes and by his editor is to see these things, and because you're missing little
pieces as you go along, like we are skipping time, we're going past events, We're you know, even doing like flashback type of stuff at times. We're not telling the story completely linearly, even though it seems very linear with the way that it's going. And a lot of that is because it takes the other two stories to give you context for the main story, and which is brilliant
because these things couldn't be more different. You know, this absolutely beautiful color footage of this you know, prison scenario that they have, plus you've got the flashback to the earlier prison stuff in there, which is shot in a different film stock looks even more gorgeous. And then, like I said, the cheapy look of the horror section, the almost shot on video nests of the documentary you know
investigation footage that they have. I just love that they just keep moving along and the way that one will talk talk to the other. We'll talk to the other, and yeah, it's it's brilliant that they move along this way.
A lot of these cuts are very like short too. It'll be as I was going through it, we would be with your drop into the hero segment for forty five seconds or something, and then they don't move on. But it just flows so perfectly from one thing to the next, and it doesn't in the whole film as a totality.
It just rolls along.
It just it feels like it passes in no time. It's not a long film anyway, So the eighty five minutes or so. It's not a very long movie, but it just it just blows by, just relentlessly, and it's amazing.
And of course there are things that tie these chapters together directly, things like people going out onto ledges or bodily fluids. I mean, there's a lot of spit in this movie. You know, there's also other secretions that are going on, and it's like, yeah, this is great. The way that these tied togethers is loose, but you see those connections, especially the more you watch this. I mean, it's funny because my memory of this film was so
completely different than going back and rewatching it. I had pictured that it was three chapters, just here's this one, here's this one, here's this one. I forgot about the editing style. And to revisit this and to be like, oh, oh yeah, that's right. It is all intercut. It was so nice to see that, and so nice to see the way that they, like I said, speak to one another.
And I think though, we should probably focus on each of the chapters as we go along, just because it would be a little too confusing to jump back and forth in time. Because this is not a visual medium. I would love to talk maybe about the horror section first, just because I love horror and it just plays with those conventions so much. Oh, I love how cheap this looks, and just how arch the acting is. I mean he's hitting it. He's hitting it perfectly.
With the tone of this he's not doing He's hitting that tone perfectly, but he's not doing like a broad charity. It's like he understands the genre that he's getting at here, is doing this with kind of respect to the material that's inspiring it, and he just hits all these like just awesome details like the little montage of the guy with all his test tubes and Bunsen burners and that's how you do science with all these like liquids.
And then the very dramatic and music and it's so cool.
Yeah, it's like James Whale filtered through Fastbender, which brings
such seriousness to it. Rewatching it for the podcast again, Like one of the things that struck me for the film as a whole, but especially the horror set, was it reminded me a lot of my own childhood experience just watching the daytime television, because I would watch an old monster movie and then i'd watch like a weird documentary and then maybe I'd watched something that I didn't quite understand, maybe it was foreign or something like that, because TV used to be like that, especially in the
weird upper echelons of the UHF. You can click over there and just see some things and you didn't understand what was going on, but maybe you could explore a little bit. So it had a little bit of that vibe. But of course the accessibility of that horror section, which is that Edwood, James Whale, that texture, that film texture, that visual language, of course spoke to me. It was like this like budding cinophile in the early nineties and this queer who's like trying to figure out where I'm
fitting in the world. So many of those other horror films I don't think that I really had. I certainly didn't know them. James Wayale was this big queer filmmaker. I had no real sense, but I had that lack of language that drew me to those films, so that I understood what was going on underneath all of those films right and here it was being made explicit again here in Todd hands.
It gives outer limits like a lot too. Remember, like original outer limits, especially with the way in the narrator voice drops in and make some kind of pronouncement on the lesson of what you're seeing here. I thought that was really cool too, because I love that stuff when I was a kid, and that'd be something that would appear on TV, like late at night in some weird channel.
Yeah.
I love things like when we have our main scientist, doctor Graves, and he's got his new I want to say, she's the assistant that's coming in, or another scientist, Nancy Olsen, coming in there, and just the string of gobbledegook science nonsense that they spew at each other. It's so great.
Ever since evaluations the molecular suspension of hormonal conductivity appeared in the Science journal at MIT, your discovery of the white cellular clotting predominance in your senior completely altered my understanding of conditional bioflavnor in your pathology.
It makes no sense also that when she appears, when Nancy, doctor Nancy Olsen, when she shows up and he's I wasn't expecting a woman that is so common in the films of that era that he's referencing. There's always that the main female protagonist in all of those movies is like the woman that's not expected to show up, and it's that's just great too that she ends up being there, really the protagonist of that segment.
And just this whole thing how he's trying to capture the spear of sexuality inside of a liquid form and then he just accidentally drinks it and then you've got that whole like the pinwheel effects going on, and he's got those you know, he's just like, oh my god, what am I doing? Like it's like that Spider Man Italian Spider Man reaction type of thing where he's just like, ah,
I don't know what's happening. She's the only one that understands him because and she's the only one that accepts him, because after he takes this dose of sexuality, he ends up breaking out into these big, massive sores. Kind of reminded me of Rusty Nails is acne because of the cheapness and the black and white and everything, and especially all the goo. I mean, he's there's parts where like his head is seeping and he's got all these nasty, you know, sores all over them. But at the same time,
I'm just like, Okay, this is AIDS. You know, this is what I saw with AIDS patients and the big open sores that would open up on their faces, and it's just it broke your heart every single time saw that on television. I did not experience that in real life, but I was so far removed in my little suburban world.
But I can't even imagine what it was like for people who had friends that were dying of AIDS and to see just the deterioration, and you're watching this guy deteriorate through this entire horror chapter.
But even apart from that, I think this is one of the things that gets that what I wanted to talk about in terms of people not understanding what it was like before because you didn't have to see Koposi sarcoma in the late eighties. Personally, all you knew was like there was this disease that was there and it was invisible, that anybody could have it, anybody could be gay, anybody could be There was that old joke, what's the hardest thing about having HIV? Telling people that you're Haitian?
There was that joke that was like there and these were insidious moments that created so much paranoia and so we didn't have to see these things just to be like constantly on alert about them and worried that anything was going to happen, happen at any moment, and it ultimately it was not only going to kill you, but it was going to mark you in a way that would what make you lose your friends, lose your family,
disown you. And if people like Donald Wiwman had it away be quarantined on an island where you would never be seen again, that was the fucking culture.
Well they call this guy the leper killer, you know, and that's basically what it was, was modern day leprosy, where it's just like, yeah, get these people out of here, we don't want to see this, we don't want to
deal with these people, Just get them out. And I just I remember being so ashamed by just to hear people just flip it like you know, you're talking about like the jokes and stuff, and to even like punk rockers, like I remember Mod had that anally inflicted death sentence song, and I'm just like, you guys are fucking punk rockers, What the fuck are you doing being so insensitive to people?
It makes me ashamed? And I was filled with so much shame, with so many people that just didn't understand and who just had these knee jerk reactions and just thought it was all a big joke, and who just thought, oh, well, it's just affecting the gaze. It doesn't affect anybody who I really care about, and it's just like fuck off. Yeah,
and this you know, guy going around the city. It again, it feels that the cinema style of it is it almost feels like a like a Kids in the Hall skit at times, you know, like the one where the where Bruce McCully lost his pen. You know, like some of those things. It just is so out there. But to your point, Kyler, it isn't. It isn't played strictly
for laughs. There is a real underlying you know. It's kind of like watching the old fifties horror films sci fi films where you're like, oh, this may look really shitty and might have some very arch acting, but it's actually telling a pretty important story, you know, like to see what's happening here. It's like, oh, there is a
metaphor for this. They are really telling something larger than the story of a guy who's running around murdering people quote unquote with this rampant sexual disease that he has.
So at the time the films that we're dealing with HIV when they were made, when they were being seen, they were of that long time companion variety where there was like a pathos to the whole thing, and like this even maybe even a purity aspect to it. So we've got this more or less innocent victim who's living a more or less wholesome life, who just maybe just
happens to be gay. But we've got this other We've got this character here in poison who is not obviously gay, might even actually just be a straight person so far as we know, but really through complete happenstance, through accident, infects himself and it becomes this becomes known as I don't think we had really seen somebody like depicted as like a killer by virtue of happenstance in the way that we were being accused of at the time.
That was a lot later, actually, right, I mean this was how many years I mean, this was right around the time of Matthew Shepherd, right.
That was some years after. But yeah, was.
That later that whole thing of like oh, he's not gay.
Mike has confused the names Matthew Shepherd with Ryan White. He'll ramble on a bit more apologies.
I remember the whole thing where it was like, oh, no, they have aids, but it's not from gay sex. It's you know, it was a transfusion or even heroin. It was like heroin was seen being a heroin addict was being seen as being better than being gay.
There were plenty of other gay people being killed at the time. There were plenty of other cases that we could point to around a time, and plenty of other legislation. Colorado right around this time was putting legislation through to eliminate gay people from public life.
Right.
That was happening then. But yeah, Matthew Shepherd was like ninety eight ninety nine somewhere in that time print, so we've still got like a full almost a full decade before that murder happened.
The thing that kills me about the horror section is when they're walking down the street and those two little girls are there and they spit right in his face, and it is the most spit that I've ever seen anybody spit until later in the film. And we'll talk
about that, but just that flowing down his face. And then so shortly thereafter they're having the hot dog scene and all of this stuff is seeping out of his face and he's just you can tell how embarrassed he is and just how awful he feels about this, you know, and he's like trying to hide behind the dark glasses and everything, and it's just not working. People are stopping and staring and pointing.
It's so sad that, yeah, there's that group of people that are staying off the side, just literally just staring at them while they're trying to eat.
It's just horrible.
Now, the dripping hot dog scene, you know, it's super disgusting for many reasons. All the spitting scenes throughout the entire film are you know whatever, They really get at you. But it really does bring to mind what the question is, like, why are we so disgusted by this?
Like?
What is it about it? Just to jump to the almost section for a minute, the spitting scene and there the very notorious spitting scene there in the commentary track for the film, Todd Haynes. People kiss all the time, they're swapping, spit all the time. What is it about this? That makes people so disgusted. We're shedding skin and hair and fluid all the time, Like I'm doing it right now. Things are falling off of my body in my own house right now. But I'm not thinking about that. I'm
not attempting to be discussed about it. But I could spend a lot of time being disgusted and repelled by what I'm just doing normally. All this other stuff is really just an extension about ideally we're not dripping. Since somebrity sores into our own hot talks. This is one of the things we're trying to hope to do as a human species. Maybe, but at the same time, it's a human thing ultimately. I think what really mortifies people about seeing a film like this is their own humanity.
Yeah. You get that scene towards the end of the horror sequence where he is out on a ledge ready to jump and basically giving his I'm not an animal, I'm a human being type of speech, and all of those people looking up at him, looking up at him, and it's it's it's that it's elephant man. It's also a hunchback of Notre Dame a little bit, where you're just.
Like it's the Substance.
It's this Okay, I haven't seen The Substance either.
I hear good things though.
I just watched it last night before I watch Poison again, and there's a real strong dialogue happening between those two films. For sure, double feature The Substance and then Poison. If you can handle it.
Almost couldn't handle Poison when I rewatched it because of that homot scene. But well, we'll talk about that as we go along. Before that, I really want to kind of jump into the hero section because that, to me, is the most opaque of the sections as far as he's handing us something, but he's not telling us everything. He's definitely not being very open about stuff. And the whole thing is that the whole section is about secrets to me and just what really happened to this little
boy who apparently flew away. And I love too that at the beginning of the movie, it's you know, the first shot I think we see after the title card is the cops at the keyhole, and you get that great fish eye lens effect of them, so like he's playing with time with us because he's not showing us. The end of the sequence right here, but he's showing us stuff that's happening in the later part of that sequence,
and eventually, I mean, I think it's all POV. From the doctor's point of view, and the way he goes out to that ledge, it almost looks like what happens to what's the character's name, Richie the kid that flies away, And it's like marrying those two things together. It's like the person going to the window all POV. The screen goes completely white, and then we move on to the next area and I'm like, oh, well, that could be the doctor or it really could be Richie as well.
Yeah, it's almost we never see the kid.
We don't really know what did this literally happen the way it's being presented to us, because we don't really see what's going on at that At the end of that, it's almost like he takes a camera away with him too. It's and it just leaves the whole world behind. It's Yeah, that section is very the least readily comprehensible as far as what we're supposed to take away from it is did the kid I want to believe that, Yeah, he really did go to the legend he flew away like
a bird, or but did he though? Or is his mother nuts?
I don't know.
There's all kinds of different ways you can look at this, and is this a horrendous child a story?
That's what it feels like. It feels like this whole thing is all about child abuse. It feels like the father is fucking the son.
Yeah, she calls it like a and it feels like the son is acting out because of that and trying to get the other kids in the neighborhood to basically reenact the dynamic that is at home, and he wants his one friend to spank him.
Do you see later on there's a spanking scene, and we'll definitely talk about spanking as we go along here, But there's the spanking scene, and there's the part where the mother is talking about the look that's on his face when he's being spanked, and it's the same look that he had on his face when he walked in and caught his mother with the Spanish gardener.
You had it in your notes, an oath in another language, and it's just it's very unsettling, and I'm just, yeah, there's just.
So much going on, and I know that we want to talk a little bit about Dottie gets spanked, and some of these other things that Todd Haynes has done outside of this, But this is one of the things that really attracted me as this theory nerd watching this film, as this queer theory nerd at this point in history, we're talking nineteen ninety one, nineteen ninety two, when I first got to see this was a way that you
could put theory into practice. Right, as they might say now on Twitter or a Blue Sky, this is praxis right. This is the way that you're making theory accessible and legible to the masses that's not just buried in psychoanalysis or whatever that theoretical language is. So this is a way to look at what Jane is writing, what Freud is writing in a Child is being beaten and operationalizing
that and finding ways of having hope in it. For me, looking at the end of hero In, that moment was like an act of pure queer liberation, right, because I'm like, is the child jumping out of the window Superman or is that geekboard falling to his death? Is it one of the two. Maybe it's Icarus, right, maybe it's both, Maybe it's both. Of those things at the same time. Well, interestingly enough for me the viewer at that moment, it's
coming at the same time as Thelma and Louise. This movie and Thelma and Louise, they have the same ending for me.
It's almost supernatural too, the way that these other kids will talk about Richie, like there was something about him that made us want to beat him up. And it's like they could see or sense the difference of Richie and they couldn't really put their finger on it, but they just knew something was wrong with this kid, something's different, and I think that difference was the queerness. But they didn't have a word for it, and so they just were like, whatever this is, we need to destroy it.
Yeah, they couldn't stand it. And the one kid that I guess gets induced to spank him like he describes, I just couldn't stand it. I just I just did it because he was driving me nuts over the top of reaction that he has because he can't explain what it is that made him feel this way about this kid, and it's yeah, it's just it's really intense.
Well that's what I think is going on about gayness at the time, and transis now. A lot of people are really disturbed at this moment now in history about what trans means, even though it doesn't really materially affect them at any way. But like all these fears are being activated and they're being exploited by all these terrible actors who are achieving political power through it.
I mean, we didn't even mention the whole bathroom controversy that just happened with the one transsenator and the other senators. Just like the picture of her pointing to like the men women sign on the bathroom. It's just like, oh, fuck off, yeah, because we're so concerned about what's going on inside of other people's pants that we can't even pay attention to everything else that's going on in the world.
Well, Number one, I want to see this in the House rules package. I want to make sure that no men are in women's private spaces. And it's not going to end here. This shouldn't be going on on any federal property. If you're a school or an institution that gets government funding, this kind of thing should be banned. I think it's sick, it's twisted. I have fought like hell for women's rights. I mean twenty five years ago.
This year, I became the first woman to break the glass ceiling and graduate from a military college that was formerly all male. And to see the way that I've been attacked today and last night for fighting to protect women and girls, it's ridiculous. So if that being a feminist makes me an extremist, I'm totally here for.
Is this teffort in response to congresswoman that drives coming to Congress?
Yes, and absolutely, and then some that.
One Republican congresswoman spent days doing nothing but.
Tweeting about that.
It was like hundreds of posts on nothing but that topic. Is what the fuck is wrong with you people? I don't I do not understand.
Yeah, it's like, what's that line from me and girls? Why are you obsessed with?
I am trans? I don't think about being trans that much, not as much as that person does.
To go back to the hero section again, the way that it's structured, and that's where you know, I was really noticing this idea of us missing little pieces of things. But at the same time, it's perfect for the way
that it's set up because these are little vignettes. There are just quick snippets of interviews quote unquote with these actors that are inside of this and just to see, like the way that the neighbors reacted, the way that the school reacted, the way that the teacher reacted, and just that this is all being told from a point of view in the future, and that they're all looking
back on the past. And that's we have the flashback inside of the Janet section, inside of the Homo section, and I'm sorry, I just been calling it the jene section because that's the most obviously Jenee of everything. But we even have inside of the horror section. There's little tiny flashbacks, like when he is about to drink the formula,
he is imagining her. You know, she's already left the room, but he's imagining her, like fixing her hair and being right next to him, and he's distracted by her when he drinks the formula instead of the coffee. And I'm like, okay, each one of these has, like whether it's a few seconds of flashback or a few minutes, or the entire section, because the entire section of Hero is all looking back at this incident and the incidents that led up to it.
I mean, the one woman where she talks about how he made a BM in front of her and she's just completely you know, horrified, and I'm like that, I don't know why, but that just makes me laugh every single time.
All the little accounts in that section, there's some great little character bits in there, like those ladies sitting on the couch talking about.
They're like I heard every shot.
You just don't know what people are like, and that was fantastic.
This is a genre that he's sending up. I mean true crime. Obviously we know in twenty twenty five, we know true crime. I mean it basically took over the entire podcasting industry for a while, and it took over television for a long time too. I mean I have coworkers that will go to sleep to true crime stuff and I'm like, I don't know how you can do that. It's very disturbing to me. But whatever, I'm not going to yuck your yum kind of thing. But it is everywhere.
I mean Netflix basically became the true crime channel for a while. I mean you've got True TV and some of these others where it's just like, Okay, what's the latest case we're going to look at. It's just wild and this is exactly. This is the template.
I love horror fiction and horror movies and stuff like that. I can't get enough of it. In the most extreme of that, I'm fine with. But the dwelling on the true crime story is just that I can't. I just can't quite do it. It's it's because, I guess, because it's too real. But yeah, a lot of people just can't get enough of that.
It just feels so prescient in this film that I forget exactly how long it had been since I There's a long gap between when I'd seen it in the nineties and when I started rewatching it again in the last few years. I mean, now I'm watching it even without the podcast side. I'm probably watching it every couple of years. Anyway. I've started to do this just in
his decide. This Queer Horror class just a lecture for a friend of mine who teaches a class and film for a little arts high school, and so this is part of my curriculum. Like I'm talking about poison, Which is amazing that I get to talk about this to like high school students who are really invested in this, but they're already up on it because I ask these questions like, okay, so in twenty twenty five, let's talk about what it means. What does the word queer mean,
what does the weird horror mean? Because Poison arguably isn't just a queer film. It's not just a horror film. So maybe it's neither of those things, but it is very much about those things because it's talking is engaged with those dialogues, and it's really actually very heartening to talk with these students because they're like they are in it. They understand, they've got clarity about what these things mean, and so I'm learning from them when I talk about it.
So I do watch this pretty regularly now, and I get to see it with these constantly new eyes as well as my own nostalgia for what its me at such a a visceral in pivotal time.
And the one thing that Hero doesn't do is reenactments. And I like that they don't do the reenactments, but instead it's it's a flashback again inside of the story. But then the flashbacks are so stylized. I love this whole thing about it. Sounds like they basically hung up a sheet and we're rear projecting super eight onto the back of the sheet, and then they had a little kid.
What was it like he couldn't see anything without his glasses, so like they have him standing there in front of a door, and then they have like the primal scene basically going on on the sheet where he walks in on his mom and the gardener. And then you also get that same thing repeated when it's like the dad beating on the mom, and these aren't you know, it's not the actors. You know, it's not We're going to do a reenactment of the beating scene or the sex scene.
It's the people that were doing it in the first place. Of course, it's all actors. I understand this is not reality that we're watching, but I love that it's the
people themselves. And I love that it's so super stylized and just how odd it looks and feels because you can see the movement inside of that, you know, the way that it's being projected, or they'll like cut to a close up so it almost looks like the you know, the mom is suddenly closer to the little boy, and I'm just like, this is really wild and.
It looks so cool.
Oh it's so great, man. Oh, It is like the best cheap process shot I've seen in forever, because yeah, we also get that same thing with it, and it's almost like the next shot, like I think we cut back to the mom and then we go back to when the sun is being when Richie's being spanked, and obviously not a real hand that's spanking him either, which
adds again to the oddness of that scene. It just feels like it's, you know, a mannequin arm almost a smack, and I'm on the underwear butt and then the mom in the background again being projected onto that sheet. It looks so good.
I think it speaks to what memory does I think about the violence that I experienced as a child. It is cartoonized in my own memory because sizes are different. I'm a larger person now, but what things seemed larger to me. Of course, maybe a thing is going to feel like a giant cartoon hand at this point in my own life, right like it almost has to be, and that distance that comes from it, or like even that thing where one of the great parts about cartoon
violence is that you survive it. So if you survive it, like maybe your own violence becomes a cartoon doesn't excuse it at all.
I've never gone through and timed these sections, but it always feels like the prison section, the Homo section is the longest the three, and I don't know if that's just because it's shot so different from the other two. It's such a just a lyrical narrative. You know, we talked a little bit before we started recording about the music. The music is perfect for all three of these chapters. I really love the overdone music for the horror section again,
but it is so gorgeous. The Homo section, the music for that is just beautiful, especially when you get to the flashbacks within there and just the use of the flute and everything. Oh, it is so good. And just that whole section, it's like, Okay, which Todd Haynes do you want? Do you want the Todd Haynes that does horror, that does hero or that does Homo, because this guy can do everything that feels like and it just it's
so nice. And again, that's it's probably the most straightforward, straight ahead narrative that we have, even though there are those flashbacks in there, but it really tells a very complete story with these prisoners, and you know, following this guy,
and this is the only one. Like we do have voiceover to your point from earlier, Kyler, we have voiceover in certain parts of these, but this is you know, our main character having a voiceover, giving him that privilege that none of these other characters have had.
Some of the sections of the Homo story do run a bit longer on average, and some of the scenes in the other two stories, but I didn't time a lot of the stuff, but I did check time on a couple of them, and the scene in the prison at night where they're sleeping and the erotic scene I'm talking about, were and that goes on quite long compared to to like really a lot of the other.
Scenes in the whole film.
If it's good, I feel like it's a good three four minutes or so of the of that, which is a pretty long take in this cause a lot of these, a lot of these sections are very short, some of them cut off at a minute or less sometimes throughout it, So you're lingering with that for what feels like a while. It's real sexy if that's your thing.
Too, prison sex. Is there any better sex than prison sex? Come on?
I did think it was interesting that in some of the commentary that I read from Todd, he was like, I don't find Homo to be like a real sexy scene, but other people do just the storytelling of it, and I guess I can see, well, I can understand that it is a languorous it's slow paced, but it seems like jail would be like everything stretches out longer. In jail, you're not going anywhere, You're just stuck there, and so
time would extend. We think about the ways that we all inhabited quarantine during the pandemic pandemic time, we just stretched in these really bizarre ways, and I think we're still dealing with that. But I think that kind of thing is going on in that section as well. But rewatching it for the podcast again, this time, I was really thinking about the ways that what is it that makes a Pat Robertson or a Donald Wildman uncomfortable about it?
Film like this, and some of it is just this lingering on male beauty, right, so you're just looking at it and they're not really moving the way that the movie industry would cut, especially in the eighties. Let's think about what the eighties was in terms of what film was intended to deliver commercially. The eighties was the apex of the boob shot, right, all of that. So there's really we're not seeing naked women in this. We're not seeing boob we're not seeing we're not even seeing like
hints of that. We're not seeing bush, we're not seeing anything remotely like that. We're just seeing these long, languorous shots of men who were both masculinized and feminized. But there's still men, right, They're in that space. And this thing was not done. Yes, Fastbender movies existed, other movies like that existed, but they were not being seen in
the same way that this was. And this was getting this was getting the Sun Dance Award, and this is getting Robert Redford speaking out on their behalf and so this was breaking containment at the time.
And like the pat Robertson's of the World and whatever, they wouldn't have known anything about any European art house stuff from But before that, when this comes along, it's, Yeah, I guess it's just really rattled them. And I guess it gets to the kind of the Jennet of it all actually, the being very forthright about it. Yeah, we're I don't mind that I am offending you with us with this presentation, which is very much the attitude in his work, which Haines is obviously working with here too.
Absolutely here look at this. Why do you deal with your feelings about this?
I can't say that this was making me uncomfortable, nor can I really say it was turning me on too much, because there's the threat of violence that hangs over all three of these sections, but especially for me the Homo section, just because it really starts pretty violently. I mean, we do get to see the interview at the prison before he goes into general population, but once he does, then it is just bullying, and you know, for sodomy and
all of these things. I'm just like, wow, this is pretty scary, and you don't know how he's going to react, Like during that scene where the one prisoner is basically fondling the other prisoner and he's like is he awake? Is he not awake? And I just keep wondering if he wakes up, what will he think? Will there be violence? And I'm just afraid of the violence, and of course rape is violence. Then we do have the rape scene
later on. Up until that point in Homo, there's not a lot of bodily fluids, and we don't see the bodily fluids at that point, but he does talk about that and it's just like you know your mine now, like I have ejaculated into you, like you're you're my bitch basically, and it's like, okay, you know, Like it's a very very powerful, powerful moment. But I have to say,
the most powerful moment of this whole movie. And I actually had to fast forward at the last time because I couldn't watch it again because it was burned into my brain from the very first time I saw it was the spitting scene, and my god, it is so disgusting but so beautiful all at the same time. It's amazing.
It is incredible.
That was the thing when I first saw it when I was a kid, seen it in England when it was a new movie. That was probably more than anything else. She's like, I cannot believe that I'm seeing this on film.
Because it's yet.
It's terrifying and disgusting, but it's just it's also the way it shot is gorgeous and ecstatic, and I think maybe I discovered a kink I didn't know I had or something at the time, but yes, but also just really scary too. And and the way that it just proceeds when he goes to his knees and is looking up and reaching up and it's just absolutely just battered. It's amazing. But yet it's not easy though, to not easy to take.
No, it's not. I mean it's because basically it is so this is this film is pressed in so many ways.
Yeah, the way that this is shot kind of reminds me of Careful. Just the use of the color. It's not that same too stripped technicolor that guy Madden used, but just the theatricalness of it, I suppose, And especially there's the spitting going on, and you're cutting back from the guy who's being spit upon versus the prisoners, and you get that great shot basically of the sky with just them popping into the frame, which is wonderful. And then you start to get the flower petals coming down.
But it's the guy who's over to the side looking at all of this stuff. That's what reminds me of Careful the most. For whatever reason, the way that the spit and the flower petals all mixed together. Oh my god, it is so breathic. And like I said, that was the moment I remember the most from watching this film, and that I was like, Okay, I don't know if I am ready to do this, you know, thirty thirty five years later or whatever. I'm like, I don't know if I can handle that.
But it's a moment that collapses objection and transcendence simultaneously.
Right.
It's the same thing as jumping out the window and flying or falling, Right, it's both and neither at the same time.
Yeah, And it's interesting that with Homo, there's just the I think there's just the one scene after that where you just hear about what happened to the other prisoners, and it stays with the main guy. So the guy who he was I think is Jack Bolton. I think it is the character that our main character was in love with. Basically, he escapes, but then he gets shot on his escape attempt and that's it, you know, and then we cut back to the hero section and kind
of wrap that up. I mean, it's interesting where we start and where we stop with all of these stories, and that you've got the Jena quotes throughout the entire thing. I mean, just you know, the last one a man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur,
and dreaming his nursed in darkness. And that's over, Like Richie's Flight Away, and the whole thing starting with what's the beginning one about the whole world is dying of panicky fright, which takes us all the way back to the beginning of our conversation where we were just talking about how the world was at this moment. The whole world was dying of a panicky write.
The Jena quotes in the director's commentary. I was kind of surprised that they had a Apparently it was a big deal to get approval to use this Jena content from the estate, which I just I don't know. For some reason, I didn't think that would be like so difficult. I felt like almost that Jenay is a recent enough figure that I guess there would be there would be that to some extent, he almost seems like a figure that you could just it's just part of history and
literature or whatever that you could draw from. But apparently this state they found very difficult to work with for whatever reason. And then finally they found somebody that they guess they showed the film and then got approval to use these quotations directly rather than have to try to paraphrase or camouflage it somehow.
I think they said that they needed to translate it to English and then back to French again to actually use it, which I think is just such an interesting thing, and it's definitely worth delving into that commentary track for that history alone, because I think they talk about like how difficult it is to even see jene on film. Now this is a place where the estate is really kept, Janet's legacy from for better or worse, being filmed and
being delivered to a mass audience. Yes, this gets talked about in their early part of this like kernel of what Janey is about, which is me going to prison, is me rejecting the world that is rejecting me, So it's taking agency. It becomes this very broad understanding of what it means to go to jail. Ultimately, but how is it possible that I'm finding freedom in prison? And yet this is what this is specifically, what this transfer is I am rejecting the world that is rejecting me.
What a powerful message.
Have you seen Janey's film? That is I'm blanking on the title now because makes want to think of the prison section obviously in Poison a lot, and it's I think it most particularly that if you remember that that kind of remarkable part in it with the cigarette smoke where the where the prisoner on the one side of the wall blows the smoke through a straw to the other and it's yeah, super super cool.
But all right, let's go ahead and take a break and we'll be right back after these brief messages.
Hello everyone, this is Malcolm McDowell. I just want to say that this is a request to listeners of the Projection Booth podcast to become patrons of the show via Patreon dot com, p A t R e o N dot com slash Projection Booth.
That's pretty simple. I think you can do that.
It's a great show and Mike he provides hours of great entertainment. So now it's time to give back my little drovies. Settle down, take a listen, and have a sip of the old molocco and then you'll be ready for a little of the.
Old in Out, in out real horror show.
Bye bye.
All right, we're back when we were talking about Poison, and I imagine that everybody has seen Superstar. I'm pretty right.
I haven't super recently, but I have seen it. It's a yeah, they have a decent memory of it.
Yeah, it's funny to me, And this is just a little pot shot, but it's funny to me that the titles in Poison are as tough to read as the titles in Super Black. On the use of the black over dark colors or the scripty font for Poison is really tough to read, especially on like you know, bad copies of the film. But yeah, my god, Superstar, Oh,
I just love that movie so much. And again just to take that other style, to take the movie of the week type of style and transform it, and to transform it and I don't want to say Barbie dolls, because they were not officially Barbie dolls. I'm trying to remember. They were like, I don't know, Stacy or something, some
other type of dolls. But to transform the movie of the week with those dolls, and to make you feel so much for these fucking dolls, and to present the best version of the Karen Carpenter story that I've ever seen in my life, and to also inject it with you know, the whole idea of Downey and I love how often he uses white as his character's names. You know, there's whites in this one. There's Carol White in Safe
as well. But like to have the use of Downie and what's under the surface of Downey because it's like those idyllic, you know, houses that were going by at the beginning, and you get that same thing here in Pois and with the hero section of here's these beautiful houses, what kind of horrible shit is going on behind the facades? And you get I want to say that there's more spanking inside of Superstar. There's I've always felt, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always gotten the
message from Superstar that Richard Carpenter was gay. There's like a whole thing where she's talking, Karen's talking to him and like, I know what you do, Richard, And I think it's probably drug use. But I always got this whole feeling that she was accusing him of being gay, and I'm just like.
Yeah, I've wondered that too, because I know that I know that he had a bad drug problem for a long time. Quayludes, classic seventies drug addiction.
I wonder if that's ever going to come back.
I don't know.
Trying, man, let me call me up.
I need some I know, really.
Can value make a return as well.
It doesn't really matter whether it was gay or drugs or like whatever. It was a secretcy I mean it was in secrecy. That was the issue. Of course, Karen's dealing with her own anorexia, which is secrecy. I mean everything is secrecy. What's southern California but a bunch of fucking secrets, right, secret, secret, secret secrets. What's America? But all these secrets that are like suppressed and hidden. That's
what that whole thing is about. And I don't, I honestly don't think you can make superstar with people.
No.
I mean I've seen the movie of the Week that was very similar, but it was nowhere near as powerful. I mean, to see the way that he carved away at her arms and made those arms skinnier and skinnier. I mean, I don't need to see the vomiting. I don't need to see that kind of stuff, But you
get the implication of everything. And again, that movie starts, now that I'm thinking about it starts with like I want to say, it's like a POV shot of them finding Karen's body and you hear the mother like Karen, Karen, what's going on? You'll call the ambulance or whatever, and
then it's like flashback to what brought her here. It's very much that hero type of thing where it's like, all right, we're now, we're adopting this storytelling method and going through all this, and I want to say, there's again talking about how tough it is to read, but the title cards that they use and superstar and everything, and I just love that he was playing around with this stuff. I mean, even going back to one of his first student films with the film Suicide, he's playing
with the form so much. I want to say that that shot in at least three different film stocks. There's at least two color versions, and then there's the black and white and the way that we're moving from one to another. I will admit I haven't really kept up with Todd Haynes like post Safe. I don't think I've seen very many, if any of his works, which makes
me feel very bad. I just have never said down to watch any of like the Melodramas or even Vil the Goldmine, have been wanting to watch that seen it. I just have never said treat yourself. I still haven't said that. It's great, I have it. It's it's it's sitting upstairs and I'm like, I just need to sit down.
Yeah, treat yourself. Just take a fucking weekend and go to town. There's so much.
Does he do the same thing with the mixing of formats, because I love that what he's doing in these first then these early films not.
As much really, I mean it hops from film to film, but like for the most part, once he's in a thing, he stays in a thing. Now, but it's always so lush, and so even when it's a film, I'm a little less like a wonderland like his relatively recent excess. It like a really accessible thing which I went in. I'm like, it's it's fine, it's not it's not in my top ten or whatever. But we I mean, I guess I'm not there. Really does that one hops around? You know?
That one hops that? That's probably the hoppiest. I am drinking a beer. It is the hoppiest of the more recent, more recent I'm talking about it. I'm not there as if it's a recent film of Toddyes, like.
Even far from Heaven is not a recent film, but it's one I haven't seen, so I'm like, yeah, it feels like it just came.
You're you're just you're just in for treats, Galore, Mike, you really.
Are the thing that I did do know about. Far from Heaven is again our main character opening up a door and then catching somebody, catching her husband with another man, and it just feels like there's so many door swings that happen in all of these movies where something is being revealed to us, and even suicide starting with the door being closed, you know, having this whole thing, the
door repeatedly being closed. More stories of bullying and you know, and the outsideer, the game outsider, and the way that he's trying to basically vivisect himself with these scissors. I mean, it gets real bad, real fast, very very disturbing film, but wonderful.
I'm going to make you a deal Mic right now, because I did just watch Substance last night and then Poison I also again last night. Dennis Quaid is on my mind. Who did play the husband in Far From Heaven, so who is like harboring a secret? Dennis Quaid appears as the agent in the Substance, and he also recently
played fucking wrong O Reagan. So I will put you to the challenge on the Projection with podcast if you want to do a three movie Dennis Quaid, like, hold that man's feet to the fire, look at the Substance, look at Far from Heaven, and look at Reagan and make him accountable for his actions.
Do I have to.
Do?
I have to watch Reagan because he knows it's going to be so fucking whitewashed and not talk about Iran Contrast's not going to talk about, you know, the AIDS crisis. It's not going to talk about the trickle down economics. I'm sure, I mean the way he gutted healthcare.
I don't want to do it either, but I will have you have you have you ever been challenged on your finals?
I don't think. I mean I might have been challenged to a fight once or twice, but that was mostly over Last Action Hero.
Yeah.
That's a lot to ask to sit through that you can honorably decline.
It's kind of like when people tag me for those music challenges and I'm just like, yeah, no, I don't do that.
No, no, no, no, that's that's that's an advanced level. That's that's a final boss level kind of ship right there.
Me with the first two, I mean, can can we switch it up to do Dreamscape instead?
Sure?
Okay, well there you go. All right, that that challenge I accept right there, because I've been wanting to rewatch Dreamscape for a while.
But you know, one thing I want to say about super Star, and I really wanted to, like I want to skirt like the kids these days kind of thing. But like another piece, like another like emotionally absent piece here is like that pursuit of something you can't get too easily. And now, like it's very easy to find Superstar on YouTube, you know, and it probably will be for a little while. It'll be a while before these things become inaccessible. But you know that, I mean, we know,
we know what it was like. All three of us know what it was like to like have to wait and to really like do some digging to find a thing like that that we know is out there, that we know is going to challenge us. And I'm sure there are plenty of things that are like that now in various in various ways. But you know, just like that that transcendence, right, that comes from like finding that thing and finally being able to access it and be
informed by it. In some ways, I hope that never comes back, and at the same time, like, I really would love to make sure that people understand how important that moment of finding that thing is going to fulfill you is.
Right kind of along those lines. When it came to Dottie Gets Spanked, I knew that it was out there. I knew that I had played on PBS. I couldn't find it forever, and so I actually wrote to like our local PBS affiliate, or it might have been like the Washington DC PBS. They actually sent me a VHS copy of that one. So I was fortunate to be able to experience that. And just man, oh man, I love Dotty Get Spanked. It's so simple but so powerful.
And I mean I still quote from that movie, you know, I think about that line my sister says, You're a feminino.
That was a new one to me.
I just I watched it last night that I thought for the first time, get getting ready to talk about it now?
Yeah, I love it.
And just to explore a kid of that age and the confusion and the taking of all of these different things and putting them all together, and it's just like, this is how fetishes are made, you know, but we don't want to talk about that stuff. But this is so great to have this little kid who's what like seven years.
Old, six and three quarters?
Thank you, thank you, Yes, I forgot that. That's what he tells Dottie when he meets there again. The layers of reality where it's like, this is the actress that plays Dottie and then here she is behind the camera looking in there being super like not as aggressive, assertive and just like okay, yeah, we need a wedge here, we're going to do this, and like so she's super in charge of all this stuff, and then the way she puts on the wig and then starts getting spanked
by Adam Arkin. Yeah, and then the way that we have, you know, the little kid than doing the pictures and everything, and the way that he's like showing her the picture book and everything, and he's just like so expressive that way, and I love that. This is Todd Haynes. He did a commentary track for this one too, if you guys check out that MKV. He talks about how a lot of these drawings were his drawings, and he talked about how he just had like Lucy, who was a Lucy.
It was Julie Andrews who he mentions in this, and there's one other person. I'm trying to remember who it was, but it was like almost all like queer icon type of stuff. Not surprisingly, it wasn't Judy Garland. I know about you, Gays. I know how much you liked you.
I was in a dean mode.
And Frank Sinatraus Sandwich and Frank Sinatru's penis was so bid when I was doing a line of proke off of it, I had to stop halfway through to catch my read.
He liked the comedians, and that's the that's the interesting part about this, like that queer comedy connection. I mean, I know I talked a little bit earlier about Vera Drew's People's Joker, and I think there's very much some dialogue that's happening here, both of them, both People's Joker
and Dottie Get Spanked being very personal films. Even before listening to the director's commentary on Dottie Gets Spanked, that felt like probably Todd Haynes's most autobiographical and personal film, and then you listen to that track and you find out they're like, oh, he actually did visit the set of the Lucy Show. He did get to meet Lucille Ball when he was a child.
Oh, that's it. I had not heard.
I didn't hear the commentary track, So he actually did that.
That's cool.
Yeah, we really met Lucille Ball when he was a child.
I really identified quite a bit with with this kid in this movie because I was kind of I was I was kind of like that, like, uh, old TV shows like that.
Like like I've watched I Love.
Lucy when it was not when I was a kid. It started all those shows that are getting rerun all the time on like when we first got cable TV, and you know, they'd be chanting like TBS and whatever to have or those channels like that would have those things on all the time. And then my grandmother, I spent a lot of times with my a lot of time with my grandparents and just and it was fun for her too, because all the TV she remembered from
back in the day was back again. And I always had these interests and enthusiasms that were not masculine enough for some people. Probably, so I totally, I totally get where that six and three quarter year old little kid is coming from there.
Just how uncomfortable his dad is.
Uh huh, yeah, yeah.
I did like that Haynes was saying how supportive his parents were, though. I was very glad about that. I'm trying to remember the name of the artists we talked about him recently. I can't remember if it was Unknown Man of Shangador or what it was. But Haines is mixing formats in here, and we get the color stuff. We also get some you know, shots of television, you know, so it gives it kind of a video effect, but
it's really all film. He does that in color, and then he does these fantasy sequences in black and white, and this whole thing it almost looks like pair Ubu with the way that he's got that huge crown and everything, and sitting above, you know, it's very expressionistic, sitting above Dottie and the way she's pleading with him. But then you've got the other thing that's going on where you see a man and I want to say, it's the
father banking him. And that's what I'm talking about, Like the painting painterly quality of it, where you see like the portico is going out into infinity and there's the closer one near us. I'm like, this is very much a reference to an artist, and I can't remember their name right now.
Mike is trying to think of the artist Giorgio de Chirico. He recently made a reference to this artist on the five Thousand Fingers of Doctor t episode.
But my god, what a beautiful, beautiful shot. And especially when he comes back and the man is laying there, I guess dead and he's got one arm up and you get the harsh shadows. Looks so beautiful. And to see this, like, because I only saw it as a VHS tape, looked really darn good to me there. But to see it now like in a more modern blu rayish dvdish type format, I'm like, this looks just beautiful. Yeah.
I was really glad to have seen that because I had not seen that one before and I really liked it.
So I guess I know which Haynes I'll be starting with. It sounds like I'll be taking you up on your challenge here, Rain, and I'll be watching Far from Heaven first.
I'm here for you.
Though, I don't know, I kind of do want to watch Velvet gold Mine first though.
Fun, it's all fun. Yeah, you've got a velve a gold mine ahead.
Oh very nice. Yeah, Actually, I take it back. The last one I saw of his was The Velvet Underground. I did watch his documentary.
Yeah, that was good.
I thought it looked wonderful.
Of course, of course.
All right, we're going to take another break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Hi, I'm Tony Wilson. This is the trail off for twenty four hour Potty People. It's the incredible but true story of a man behind the scene that defined the decade. This is not about sex drugs in rock and roll, although they are and it looks. Look, it's not about me.
Plus four.
It's about music. This is the moment when even the White Man starts dancing. It's about people with impossible dreams. It's like Scooby doing it because they like they had a buster. It is a little bit like Scooby do. This is Manchester and there are guns. Really ought to be careful for that show. You can do text on Zions, the.
Name of the film company director's credit the glocal plays me typle graphic twenty four hour Party People release dates, silly bit at the end, the pity you didn't sign the smith's but you're right about me football, His music's rubbish and his a gens fucking plays website and credit block that nobody ever reads.
We're finished?
Can I keep this suit? That's right. We'll be back next week with another Patreon request. It is twenty four hour Party People. Until then, they want to think by co host Kyler and Rain. So, Rain, what is the latest with you?
You know, I am taking We're recording this around the holiday time. I'm taking a little bit of a chill pill. I've got some travel ahead of me, but I'm coming back in twenty twenty five with some big and exciting things. So check out my website Rain dot com, r Ahne dot com and see what I'm up to.
When you hear this, cool and Kyler, what's going on in your world?
A couple of months ago, my.
Newest novel, The Vampire Circus, was released. I haven't done a bunch of fan fair about it yet because I've just been too busy with the day job. That was a lot of fun to write. So that's out there. I got some other books out there. I'm easy to find on the Amazon is easy. You can look me up there, and I got a couple. I got a
couple other writing projects coming. There's one that's kind of cool that I can't really talk about out too much yet, but a little bit interesting in that has kind of made me have to try my hand at writing a screenplay, which I had not really done before. The format kind of intimidated me, so I went at that. So yeah, that's what That's what's going on. So just working and living and yeah, working in some writing when I can
and if anybody wants to catch up with me. I have a website that I never do anything with at Kylerfay dot com. I swear that twenty twenty five is the year that I will use my website for something, but I swear this will be the year otherwise. On social media, I'm a blue Sky person. Now I'm leaving Twitter.
Yay, what I would you leave Twitter? Come on?
And it is always Twitter. It will never be x. X is not a thing. Stop trying to make X a thing.
But with that now being owned by an actual member of the Trump administration. I'm gonna leave my account sitting on there so my name doesn't I don't know, yes gets stolen by a Nazi or something, but blue Sky I've started to find some of my people there again, so that's been fun.
Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community, of which Kyler is a proud member. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
All luck my town.
With a little drop of toys and nobody no, they're line enough to go and sing I'm all alone. I smoke my friends down to the field too, but I feel much cleaner after real.
And she left in the fall. That's a picture of the garden. She always had.
That little drop of toysm did the devil.
Make the world her God was seeking?
You'll never get a wish from the bone.
Another ron, good pie.
And a hurry said.
That deep blue sky is smile, and she left in the fall.
That's a picture.
On the wall. She always said that can talk of coils.
And rat always noise.
When he's in with whe's rooms.
Here you lose a little every day.
Well, I remember boom.
And a million mons, a million they all have raised to make you pink. And she left in the phone. That's a picture on the wall. Always said that lit the top of poring, And she left in the phone. That's a picture on the wall.
I always said that it's a drop of torhing