Speaker 1: On the bel cast, the questions asked if movies have
Speaker 1: women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start
Speaker 1: changing it with the beck Del cast. Lay better than
Speaker 1: I so like a cat that sounds sick. Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to the back dol cast. La La la that's scary.
Speaker 1: That's pretty creepy. Maybe too young. It sounded like a baby.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I'll speaking of babies. That's relevant. Hey, good transitioningway.
Speaker 1: This is the Bechtel Cast. My aunt Jamie Loftus, my
Speaker 1: name is Caitlin Darante, and this is the Becktel cast.
Speaker 1: La La la La La La La la La. We're
Speaker 1: talking about La La Land. Just kidding out. I'm not
Speaker 1: ready to talk about Lalla. I will never be ready
Speaker 1: to talk about La La Land. Not today. The movie
Speaker 1: we are talking about the is Rosemary's Baby, and we'll
Speaker 1: jump into that in in a moment. Before that, we'll
Speaker 1: just give you a quick overview what the show is.
Speaker 1: We talk about the portrayal and representation and treatment of
Speaker 1: women in movies. We use the Bechtel test as a
Speaker 1: jumping off point to initiate that larger conversation, and the
Speaker 1: Becktel test is, of course, a media metric created by
Speaker 1: cartoonist Alison Bechtel that requires that two female identifying characters,
Speaker 1: they must have names, they must speak to each other
Speaker 1: in the story that they're in, and that conversation cannot
Speaker 1: be about men. Right then for us, it's just like
Speaker 1: a two line exchange. Let's let's demonstrate it, alrighty, Hey, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: Hey Jamie, how did you really feel about the La
Speaker 1: la laws that I was serving? I felt that, um,
Speaker 1: I have some notes, Okay, Okay, I'm ready to receive um.
Speaker 1: I think it just like keep practicing and you'll see improvement. Okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yes, that was a really compelling I
Speaker 1: think that's maybe our most compelling. Like there was some
Speaker 1: tension because I'm not good at receiving criticism. There was
Speaker 1: a lot going on. Sure, it was a very rich conversation.
Speaker 1: It was good. It was good at this. Okay, Rosemary's Baby,
Speaker 1: we should introduce our our guests before we go any further,
Speaker 1: and asked me too. She is an actor. You know
Speaker 1: her from many films, including both Suspiria films as well
Speaker 1: as My Favorite Year, and she has a new podcast. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a ten episode memoir of her childhood called Winnetta.
Speaker 1: It is Jessica Harper. Thank you so much for being here,
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Of course, we're so happy
Speaker 1: to have you. And we're talking about Rosemary's Baby. So
Speaker 1: tell us your your history, your relationship with this movie.
Speaker 1: I first saw it, I think when it came out,
Speaker 1: which was, oh my gosh, this dates me. I was
Speaker 1: a fully grown person, and I was trying to remember
Speaker 1: yesterday how did I react and my reaction to it now,
Speaker 1: of course having rewatched it yesterday, which was so much fun,
Speaker 1: But my reaction to it, I believe was so different
Speaker 1: to what it was because in sixty eight, prefeminism, you'd
Speaker 1: have a very different take on this movie. So, um,
Speaker 1: in sixty eight when I first saw it, I was
Speaker 1: just simply horrified, and yesterday I was horrified. With a
Speaker 1: whole lot of interesting side notes, which I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: get into indeed, But um, it's a fabulous movie. It
Speaker 1: is a well crafted, really well crafted, so well written.
Speaker 1: The direct is incredible, even though there are some people
Speaker 1: who might not like the director anymore. Well, you will
Speaker 1: talk about that as well. Pretty some strong cases. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my history is I saw it for the first time
Speaker 1: in college as a as a young film buff, and
Speaker 1: so that was probably around fourteen years ago, and I
Speaker 1: think I only saw it that once before revisiting it
Speaker 1: for the podcast. But I remember thinking, I remember really
Speaker 1: liking it because as far as horror films go, I
Speaker 1: not such a huge fan of slashers, but I love
Speaker 1: anything that has to do with the occult and like
Speaker 1: kind of like satanic stuff. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: never revisited it, but yeah, I just I really enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: but it was just that one time that I had
Speaker 1: seen it. What about You, Jamie, I had not seen
Speaker 1: this movie before. It's and it's like one of those
Speaker 1: movies that has been you know, recommended to this show
Speaker 1: and to me specifically for years. But I think it's
Speaker 1: just I think by the time I was aware of
Speaker 1: this movie, I was also aware of all the Polanski stuff,
Speaker 1: and I kind of avoided it for that reason, which
Speaker 1: is like, I mean, it's so it's so weird because
Speaker 1: going into this movie, I was almost like, I kind
Speaker 1: of hope I don't like it, because then it will
Speaker 1: be a lot easier to have the I mean, it's
Speaker 1: always easy to have an art artist discussion if you
Speaker 1: don't like the art anyways, and you're like, oh, well
Speaker 1: it sucks and he and he sucks. Usually he uh sucks,
Speaker 1: and so put it all in the trash. But it
Speaker 1: was like, I mean, this was like a challenging watch
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways because I did there's a
Speaker 1: lot about this movie to love it. I had been
Speaker 1: avoiding it because I was aware of all of the
Speaker 1: allegations before, and so I just I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just try to navigate around. There's a million movies
Speaker 1: you can watch anything. But yeah, I enjoyed it, and
Speaker 1: I feel and I feel weird. I know, I have
Speaker 1: such complicated feelings. Usually, like before we even start the episode,
Speaker 1: I have a fairly good idea of like what nipple
Speaker 1: rating I'm going to give it, I have no idea,
Speaker 1: Like I think it's going to take, like whatever discussion
Speaker 1: we have to, we're going to have to We're going
Speaker 1: to have to dig really deep because I just I
Speaker 1: feel very conflicted and challenged by this movie. And this
Speaker 1: is a yeah, and it's aligning, and Jessica, you were
Speaker 1: starting to get at it. I think that there's like,
Speaker 1: so much context to this movie that's important to how
Speaker 1: you interpret it. And it's like, I can't imagine seeing
Speaker 1: this movie ten years ago. Like I it's yeah, because
Speaker 1: when I talked for the first time, if anyone was
Speaker 1: talking about Roman Plansky and his horrific crimes, I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of it. I didn't really know. It was years
Speaker 1: later until I started hearing things about that. So what
Speaker 1: year was that? That was much much later. I was
Speaker 1: just going to say the Sharon Tate murders and all
Speaker 1: was here. It's the year after the murders. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the big sympathy for Roman hadn't really kicked in yet
Speaker 1: when this came out. If you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: right right, there was a whole big, poor Roman era,
Speaker 1: right right, which when morphed into something entirely new, much lighter. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Tape murders were in nineteen sixty nine, and then like
Speaker 1: his allegations start I think in the late seventies. That
Speaker 1: sounds right, and then he is still technically I don't
Speaker 1: know what the word is for what he's He can't
Speaker 1: come back to this country without getting or arrested because
Speaker 1: he admitted that he committed and we'll talk about somewhere.
Speaker 1: There's so much okay, so with how much further too,
Speaker 1: I'll get through the recap as quickly as possible. Feel
Speaker 1: free away in at any point in the recap because
Speaker 1: this movie is crazy. It's crazy, and it's long. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So we are introduced to a married couple. Rosemary that's me,
Speaker 1: a Pharaoh's character, and guy that's John Cassavetti. Jo hot,
Speaker 1: so hot, My god, it's upsetting. I mainly learned about
Speaker 1: him a bitch. It's like, how long did it? Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll get it. How long did it take him to
Speaker 1: sell that first baby to the Like twenty seconds? He
Speaker 1: was like so fast? Yeah, okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 1: I mainly knew about John Cassavetti's through like film school,
Speaker 1: like textbook stuff and and all of his directorial work.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, wait, no one told me
Speaker 1: he was hot. Unfortunately, he is hot, so hot. Okay.
Speaker 1: So they're looking for an apartment together to move into
Speaker 1: in New York City. Ever heard of it. They're looking
Speaker 1: at this one giant apartment. I don't know how they
Speaker 1: end up affording it because he is a struggling actor
Speaker 1: and she is a homemaker, Like, who can live in
Speaker 1: it's the Dakota, which is overlooking. Yeah, so's this like
Speaker 1: enormous apartment icon they can afford it somehow, Even before
Speaker 1: they get mixed up with you. There was a little
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief there. Maybe just rent on haunted apartments
Speaker 1: is really low. Maybe. So one of the first things
Speaker 1: I noticed about this apartment is that there is a
Speaker 1: closet that's blocked by a large piece of furniture, and
Speaker 1: that will become important later, believe it or not. And
Speaker 1: Rosemary notices too. Yes, she's she's so active in the movie.
Speaker 1: I was always I was so ready to be like plankey,
Speaker 1: she's so yeah. So then a friend of There's Hutch
Speaker 1: tells them that this building that they're moving into, called
Speaker 1: the Bramford, had a bunch of weird shit happened in it.
Speaker 1: There were sisters who cooked and eight children. There was
Speaker 1: a guy who practiced witchcraft and who have claimed to
Speaker 1: have conjured up the devil there. So they're like, whatever,
Speaker 1: we'll move in anyway, happens every time you move somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's like there's every every place has its statue, everybody
Speaker 1: has some child eaters in it. So they move in
Speaker 1: and then Rosemary meets one of her neighbors, Terry, and
Speaker 1: one night, poor Terry Terry Y. Yeah, they have this
Speaker 1: great spoiler alert Bechtel test passing huge in the laundry room.
Speaker 1: Even if it was about doing laundry, let's not forget
Speaker 1: that still domestic overte Y Terry. It was I was
Speaker 1: in the middle. I was like googling stuff in real
Speaker 1: time as I was watching, and I was like in
Speaker 1: the middle of looking up Terry and then can you
Speaker 1: find out what happens to Terry? And the person that
Speaker 1: Rosemary mistakes her for actress and model? Name was it Vicky?
Speaker 1: It was some anyway, that's actually who plays that character.
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. I forget the name. So this isn't
Speaker 1: a good story. But she's like, hey, aren't you like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you super producer Sophie. She's like, aren't you Victoria
Speaker 1: Vettry And she's like, no, I'm not. But guess what
Speaker 1: Victoria Victory plays that part. There's so many little credited
Speaker 1: as a different a different name. But anyway, A fun
Speaker 1: fact about that is that I was like when I
Speaker 1: saw her in the game, I was like oh, I
Speaker 1: recognize her from something. She was a playmate Model of
Speaker 1: the Year under a different name, um, the year this
Speaker 1: movie came out, which like a lot of playmates would
Speaker 1: do back in the day, is like use different names, um.
Speaker 1: But she was Angela Dorian, same lady right on wild Okay,
Speaker 1: r I p Terry do all kinds of snaky references
Speaker 1: and yeah, tell me about it, um. And then so
Speaker 1: after they've moved in, Rosemary and Guy here some like
Speaker 1: strange chanting coming from next door. And then a short
Speaker 1: time later, Terry commits suicide by jumping out of a window.
Speaker 1: And she had said, oh, I live with this older couple,
Speaker 1: the Cast of Vets, which is confusing because John cast
Speaker 1: sa Vettius is in this movie and their name is
Speaker 1: the cast of it. Anyway, She's like, yeah, they were
Speaker 1: a family to me. They brought me in. And then
Speaker 1: she commits suicide. So something is amiss here. And then
Speaker 1: they meet this couple Roman, and she commenced, he said,
Speaker 1: we don't really know what happened. We don't know. We
Speaker 1: never we have her suspicions, though, suicide not being one
Speaker 1: of them. And she has this necklace with a charm
Speaker 1: on it stace stinky necklace. I love the detail that
Speaker 1: the necklace stunk. Yeah, especially when that receptionist at the
Speaker 1: end is just like, yeah, everyone in this office smells crazy,
Speaker 1: like you're just like So then they meet Roman in
Speaker 1: Many cast of It and can I just entergect One thing?
Speaker 1: So in this little babble, this jewel that's hanging around
Speaker 1: her neck. Inside it is a route called Tannis Root. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is very important because later Rosemary holds this thing
Speaker 1: up to the mirror and she says, Tannis anyone, which
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite lines in the movie. She
Speaker 1: she talks to herself a lot in this movie. I
Speaker 1: know I'll either her, It's either her Minny and I
Speaker 1: mean I'd pick me over many. Who can she trust?
Speaker 1: She can't trust anyone, but I mean Ruth Gordon and
Speaker 1: she's so great. Yes. So um, they made the Neighbors
Speaker 1: and Rosemary and Guy go over to dinner at the
Speaker 1: cast of Vettes and Guy is like reluctant at first,
Speaker 1: but then they start hanging out with them more and
Speaker 1: more and the castavettes are getting a little clingy. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Guy is like, Rosemary, let's have a baby, and then
Speaker 1: she's very excited because she wanted that, and then she's
Speaker 1: about apparently, yeah, it seems to be her one the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I was like, we don't know a lot
Speaker 1: about her. I don't know to be a mother so interesting.
Speaker 1: Why is that? Maybe because it was written by men. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, by the way, right now, So
Speaker 1: the more time they spend with the cast of vettes,
Speaker 1: the more weird things are happening. Like guy who is
Speaker 1: an actor and who was up for a part gets
Speaker 1: it because the other guy who was up for that
Speaker 1: part suddenly goes blind. And then many brings over this
Speaker 1: dessert which she calls chocolate mouse, which is just moose,
Speaker 1: and it makes Rosemary all loozy and she notices this
Speaker 1: like chalky undertaste, and then she eats a little bit
Speaker 1: but not all of it, but then she passes out anyway,
Speaker 1: presumably from having eaten this. And then there's this dreamlike
Speaker 1: sequence in which she is surrounded by naked people who
Speaker 1: are chanting and that she they're tying her to a bed,
Speaker 1: and her husband guy or is there, and the cast
Speaker 1: of vettes are there and they're all participating in what
Speaker 1: seems like some sort of demonic ritual. They're nude, but
Speaker 1: they're also talking to each other. It's like it was
Speaker 1: like is this chill or not? Like I know it's
Speaker 1: not chill, but they were all just like standing in
Speaker 1: the nude, like, hey, is she awake? And then it's
Speaker 1: very casual, very chill, and then a demon looking guy
Speaker 1: rapes Rosemary. Yes, and then she wakes up. She's covered
Speaker 1: in scratches, and then Guy is like, like, I happen
Speaker 1: to watch the scene like four or five times. It
Speaker 1: is we have to. We will spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time in packing this scene, I'm sure. But basically he's like,
Speaker 1: I had sex with you last night while you were sleeping.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to miss baby night. And she was
Speaker 1: like oh and then no problem. Marital rape is legal
Speaker 1: in New York. Okay, yeah, so yeah, well we'll spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time on packing that um. And then
Speaker 1: Rosemary goes to a doctor, doctor Hill, and finds out
Speaker 1: that she's pregnant, and then Guy insists on telling the
Speaker 1: Castavettes right away. It's like the first thing he does,
Speaker 1: and then they recommend it. She see a different obstetrician, Dr.
Speaker 1: Sapristein and then she's having a lot of pain with
Speaker 1: her pregnancy, she's losing weight. Everyone keeps telling her that
Speaker 1: she looks like shit. Everyone keeps telling her she looks
Speaker 1: like everybody's look like chalk, you look like death warmed
Speaker 1: at one after the next. So it's and and it's
Speaker 1: like the one and I'm sure what we'll get to
Speaker 1: this too, but like the one choice that she makes
Speaker 1: without consulting anybody as her hair cut, and everyone is
Speaker 1: so mean to everyone the haircut we have to that's
Speaker 1: another unpacking about the haircut, Like what the one? The one,
Speaker 1: but it's like the one thing she does without checking
Speaker 1: him with anyone, and everyone's like yeah, even her friend,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So then Hudge comes back and
Speaker 1: he wants to talk to Rosemary, but he does hate
Speaker 1: her haircut and he comments on her weight a lot.
Speaker 1: Was just to like him, right, But then when she
Speaker 1: goes to meet up with him because he feels that
Speaker 1: something's wrong with this situation, And when she goes to
Speaker 1: meet up with him, she discovers that he has suddenly
Speaker 1: fallen into a coma. And then her pains are getting
Speaker 1: worse and she wants less and less to do with
Speaker 1: the cast of Vets, and she doesn't want to go
Speaker 1: to dr Sapristine anymore. She stops drinking the herbal drink
Speaker 1: that Minie has been making her and then Guy does
Speaker 1: not react well to this. He is furious. And then
Speaker 1: at a party that she insists on throwing and insist
Speaker 1: on not inviting the cast of ITTs to or the
Speaker 1: Sapristines are like anyone, her friends like give her a
Speaker 1: regular drink, and then the pain goes away. It's unclear
Speaker 1: exactly what causes the pain to go away, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's witchcraft for not sure, we don't know, but
Speaker 1: it goes away because she's threatening like I'm never going
Speaker 1: to go to sapristine again. And then suddenly the pain
Speaker 1: vanishes and we get a brief scene with her and
Speaker 1: her friends, which I was waiting for the whole time,
Speaker 1: like where are her friends? She didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: any best use anywhere, right, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there they are at the party. There they are. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what did we learn what their names were? But either way,
Speaker 1: there's a good scene. It's like they're immediately responsive to
Speaker 1: her pain. They're immediately like, no, this doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: what should be happening. They make sure Guy stays out
Speaker 1: of the room, and that interaction empowers Rosemary a little
Speaker 1: bit to stand up to Guy, who immediately is like,
Speaker 1: you're never going to see your friend the end, sorry,
Speaker 1: you know, like, and calls them dumb bitches and I'm
Speaker 1: at icon guy. He is literally guy, And then we
Speaker 1: cut immediately to a few months later, and now she
Speaker 1: is gregnant as Hell's thriving and yeah, she's they're making
Speaker 1: preparations for the baby. They're making this nursery and everything.
Speaker 1: And then her friend Hutch dies and his friend gives
Speaker 1: Rosemary a book that Hutch wanted her to have called
Speaker 1: All of Them, which is Ye. And then Rosemary has
Speaker 1: told that the name is an anagram, and she figures
Speaker 1: out that it's not the name of the book, but
Speaker 1: it's the name of someone in the book, Stephen Marcato.
Speaker 1: And anagrams too, Roman Castavet, why are you criminals got
Speaker 1: to keep using that? Criminals should just stop doing anagrams,
Speaker 1: just makeup. It's so interesting too, because, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: his last name is very close to Cassavetties, and that's
Speaker 1: obviously a thing they thought and laughed about before they
Speaker 1: shot the movie, right and then you know which came first,
Speaker 1: the name or the anagram. So they go, Okay, the
Speaker 1: title is going to be this, so let's see, how
Speaker 1: can we wait here? And there's so many name games
Speaker 1: in this thing. The Roman, I mean, the bad guy
Speaker 1: next door is named Roman, of course, and which can
Speaker 1: play into this whole thing about what happened later in
Speaker 1: the seventies and how the devil man. And and then
Speaker 1: of course, as you said, her husband's name is guy
Speaker 1: was totally generic word for dude, right, And she's Rosemary,
Speaker 1: like the virgin Mary. Oh my god, it goes on
Speaker 1: and on. Rosemary is also an herb. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of herbs, herbs, stinky herb. Also, this is a great
Speaker 1: time to point out that my name, Caitlin Darante anagrams
Speaker 1: to a number of things. You've got Latin d answer
Speaker 1: U T I that we've got um cat turd in line,
Speaker 1: you've got there's there's a bunch. Well, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: do anagram myself. Fun. It's really fun anyway. So in
Speaker 1: the book, she learns that Romans father was a witch
Speaker 1: who performs rituals and uses like baby's blood because it's
Speaker 1: the most powerful blood. To use. Sure. So Rosemary tells
Speaker 1: Guy about all this and then she's like, I never
Speaker 1: want to see the cast of Its again. My baby
Speaker 1: is in danger. We're gonna move out. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: she goes to Dr Sapristein and tells him about all
Speaker 1: of this, and he tells her that Roman is ill
Speaker 1: and then he doesn't have long to live and she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well maybe this will solve my problems. Uh if they
Speaker 1: he just dies and is out of the picture. So
Speaker 1: Guy and Rosemary see the cast of vets off because
Speaker 1: they're going to be traveling to all these different places
Speaker 1: because he's a world traveler. And then Guy throws out
Speaker 1: the book that Hutch gave Rosemary. Um, So she goes
Speaker 1: and gets more books about witchcraft and sort of confirms
Speaker 1: suspicion that she had that the coven was responsible for
Speaker 1: the other actor being blinded. She basically hacks pre computers
Speaker 1: which is going to a bookstore just doing some research.
Speaker 1: Major hacking scene, definitely. So she realizes things are really
Speaker 1: a muck here and she packs up her things and
Speaker 1: she goes see Dr Sapristein again, but then she realizes
Speaker 1: that he's on in on it. Too because of this
Speaker 1: thing herb. He's got the Tannis to Tannis anyone feminist icon,
Speaker 1: the receptionist. He's just like, you smell bad, just like
Speaker 1: my boss, Like it doesn't say that when you're walking.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, maybe a little unprofessional, but helpful
Speaker 1: to the plot. So she runs out and she goes
Speaker 1: back to Dr Hill and tells him everything, like she
Speaker 1: thinks the guy has promised the coven her baby in
Speaker 1: exchange for his success as an actor. And then it
Speaker 1: seems like Dr Hill is going to help, but instead
Speaker 1: he calls guy and Dr Sapristein and then they come
Speaker 1: and get her. She's hysterical, right, yeah. They take her
Speaker 1: back home and then she tries to get away, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. She goes into labor and then Sapristeine
Speaker 1: gives her sedative and she passes out. She wakes up,
Speaker 1: the baby has been born. She's like, where's my baby.
Speaker 1: They're like, the baby died, sorry, and she knows that
Speaker 1: they're lying, but you can hear a baby in the
Speaker 1: other room. I was like, do you guys not have
Speaker 1: a second location to go to? Not a full proof plan?
Speaker 1: And then guys are like, you have the pre part
Speaker 1: of the Crazies got so yeah. She hears the baby crying,
Speaker 1: and then she remembers that closet that the big piece
Speaker 1: of furniture was in front of. She's like, let me there,
Speaker 1: you go. She goes into it and she realizes that
Speaker 1: there is a door behind this, like I guess partition
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And she goes into this creepy apartment
Speaker 1: and the coven is there, including Guy and the cast
Speaker 1: of vets and a satanic bassinet. It's all black. That
Speaker 1: must have been fun for the art director Richard Silbert,
Speaker 1: by the way, incredible. And then there's a baby in
Speaker 1: the cradle. She looks into it and we see her
Speaker 1: horrified reaction and she's like, what have you done to
Speaker 1: its eyes? And then Roman is who is not dead,
Speaker 1: by the way, and who is not traveling, and he's
Speaker 1: like he has his father's eyes. Satan is the father,
Speaker 1: not Guy. Satan chose you because you're the cutest woman
Speaker 1: in New York. That's not everyone that people should say
Speaker 1: that on dinner day. Satan chose you. You're the most
Speaker 1: Jovan girl in Los Angeles, apparently the most clueless too.
Speaker 1: And then guys like the guy at the end is
Speaker 1: very I mean, I guess if we're going like a
Speaker 1: reverse Nativity deal. He liked. Joseph is pretty thrilled to
Speaker 1: be cooked by a higher power. Yeah, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not my baby. He just didn't care nearly enough,
Speaker 1: not hardly at all. Yeah, just take a take a
Speaker 1: close guy. We can make more babies. Love to Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: Have babies there, Oh yeah. And then they're chanting hell
Speaker 1: Satan and then Roman is like, hey, Rosemary, why don't
Speaker 1: you be a mother to this baby. At first she's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, but then she's like okay, and that is
Speaker 1: the end of the movie. Yes, don't, don't, don't don't.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and then we'll come right
Speaker 1: back to discuss and we are back. I mean, where
Speaker 1: to begin. I don't know. There's there's so we've we've
Speaker 1: all three of this have established that we enjoy the
Speaker 1: movie and admire the crafty and we just just say
Speaker 1: one thing. The music Christoph Komada, I'm sure I'm pronouncing
Speaker 1: that totally wrong. The music, the score is incredible, and
Speaker 1: I guess going into the behind the scenes lore surrounding
Speaker 1: this movie, he died a pretty brutal death less than
Speaker 1: a year after this movie came out, the composer, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like strange stuff. What's one of those
Speaker 1: one of those? Well, yeah, I mean so this is,
Speaker 1: you know, a highly regarded prestige horror, psychological thriller. Like
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, it was selected for preservation in
Speaker 1: the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It's
Speaker 1: still shown in theaters. Like, trying to reboot it with
Speaker 1: ZOEI Saldana didn't work out. Also, should we just tackle
Speaker 1: the art versus artists right at the top and then
Speaker 1: we can talk about the characters, because I feel like
Speaker 1: if we don't talk about it now, it will just
Speaker 1: haunt the rest of the conversation. In terms of Roman Plansky,
Speaker 1: the director of this film and the writer of the film, Yes,
Speaker 1: he wrote and directed it, and it was adapted from
Speaker 1: a novel written by our eleven who will get to
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know anything about him, so I'm
Speaker 1: interested to learn about that. So Roman Polanski, he had
Speaker 1: a troubled past. You know, he was a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 1: His parents were taken in raids during the Holocaust. A
Speaker 1: year after this movie comes out the Manson family brittlely
Speaker 1: murders his wife, Sharon Tate and some of his friends.
Speaker 1: And yes, definitely went through some ship, but it is
Speaker 1: no excuse for what he did, which is he statutory
Speaker 1: raped a lot of underage girls and he admitted it
Speaker 1: at least convicted in eight I believe, of statutory rape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seventy eight he was arrested and charged with drugging and
Speaker 1: raping a thirteen year old girl. Uh. And then a
Speaker 1: short time later he fled to Paris after learning the
Speaker 1: judge planned to imprison him other than just give him
Speaker 1: some other lesser punishment. But um so, he's been a
Speaker 1: fugitive for about forty years, several decades, and in that
Speaker 1: time he has one another Oscar. Is that correct? If
Speaker 1: he won for the pianisto um so, that's fun. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: since that time, several other women have come forward saying
Speaker 1: that he raped them while they were underage. So good lord.
Speaker 1: He's also been celebrated in the recent years in Europe
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, he doesn't stop getting awards. No,
Speaker 1: he doesn't stop working. I mean it seems like he's
Speaker 1: very infrequently stopped working at all. Um he Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did win an Academy Award in two thousand and two
Speaker 1: UM for the pianist. Like he has continued to work,
Speaker 1: he just can't come back to the United States. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until last year that, like post me too,
Speaker 1: that he was finally room moved from the Academy. UM.
Speaker 1: But that's not even to say that that's a permanent thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, yeah, as as so many people who
Speaker 1: perpetrate stuff like this get is just a brief time out.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the fact that the worst thing that
Speaker 1: has happened as a result of all of this is
Speaker 1: that he couldn't be in the Academy forty years after
Speaker 1: being convicted and confessing a crime like that is just absurd.
Speaker 1: La la la. Yeah. His punishment is basically that he
Speaker 1: still gets to keep working and living in Europe and
Speaker 1: he lives in Paris. It's it's just it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like one of the more upsetting examples in an industry
Speaker 1: that is, you know, littered with them. Can I also
Speaker 1: read a quote of his that I found, Oh sure,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's the same way. Yeah, he is
Speaker 1: speaking to Clive James this in four he says, women
Speaker 1: these days where a virtual armor, tights, panties, blue jeans,
Speaker 1: belt as though they were afraid of constant aggression. There
Speaker 1: must be something psychological at the bottom of it. I've
Speaker 1: got another quote from him from when he's seventy nine.
Speaker 1: He said, the pill has changed greatly the women of
Speaker 1: our times. It masculinizes her, it chases away the romance
Speaker 1: from our lives. And then he says, um trying to
Speaker 1: level genders as quote idiotic. It's crazy that he made
Speaker 1: this movie if that is how he feels. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is code of ethics, because I mean, I think there
Speaker 1: are a few different reads of this movie, but largely
Speaker 1: this is a story about a woman who's been emotionally,
Speaker 1: psychologically and sexually abused and who is trying to regain
Speaker 1: agency over her body and her pregnancy in her life. Right,
Speaker 1: she doesn't do it successfully, but also again having as
Speaker 1: I said, being the person in the road here was
Speaker 1: the ground up in sixties six she was, and it
Speaker 1: really was. I'm not pre feminist entirely. Obviously feminists lived
Speaker 1: long before that, but but before it became you know,
Speaker 1: before say Miss magazine was published, which was my aha moment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember the day I read the first
Speaker 1: issue of Miss magazine, and I'm sitting in the steps
Speaker 1: outside my apartment I reading it, and I got so angry.
Speaker 1: I went into a fury, and I've never stopped the
Speaker 1: fury anyway. It was but sixty six it was still like,
Speaker 1: as I said, I saw the movie, and that woman
Speaker 1: looked like people I actually kind of knew, like she
Speaker 1: had no ambition, no career, no employment, no interest in
Speaker 1: any such thing. And by the way, as we pointed out, no,
Speaker 1: not like besties. I mean, she didn't even She had
Speaker 1: nothing except this craving to have a baby, which sets
Speaker 1: you up for her willingness to ex up this poor
Speaker 1: little devil baby. But it works for the story. But
Speaker 1: it's just you know, again, looking at it now versus
Speaker 1: looking at sixty Oh, that reminds me of my friend Heather.
Speaker 1: Now you look at it and go, I don't know
Speaker 1: anybody like that. This is the sane and you know,
Speaker 1: he takes the book away from her and he's he's
Speaker 1: just so dominating and she's yes, sir, yes, sir yes,
Speaker 1: or to her husband. There's a scene where he wakes
Speaker 1: her up and he's like, it's nine o'clock. He doesn't say,
Speaker 1: make me breakfast, but that's what's applies. Yeah, She's like
Speaker 1: go eat out and he's like like hell I will,
Speaker 1: so like, yeah, she is just like this very traditional
Speaker 1: like homemaker housewife type and women who want to be mothers,
Speaker 1: women who are homemakers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: that if that is the life they choose. The fact
Speaker 1: that she has given no other characteristics or interests or
Speaker 1: it's just hires. It's treated as a given and that's yeah.
Speaker 1: And she doesn't even have any hobbies. So in a way,
Speaker 1: she's kind of i mean really kind of one dimensional, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd think there would be some something. Everything
Speaker 1: we see her do is is very domestic. I mean
Speaker 1: she's preparing the nursery, she's like redecorating the house and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And again those things, those activities are
Speaker 1: all fine to do. But the fact that we don't
Speaker 1: see her and it's frustrating because I think that, like
Speaker 1: the story at so many times indicates that she is
Speaker 1: very smart and very capable because she, you know, sees
Speaker 1: through this huge ruse and she like I'm listed out
Speaker 1: all the different times that she clocks things and notices
Speaker 1: things that other people don't and then follows up on
Speaker 1: it later and tries to get more information. It seems
Speaker 1: like with this character that the big hurdle for her
Speaker 1: is that she wants to figure out what's going on,
Speaker 1: but she wants to do it in a way that's
Speaker 1: polite and doesn't hurt anyone's feelings. And so at the time,
Speaker 1: I was just like Rosemary. Now like where after she
Speaker 1: figures out right away it when she's given the chocolate
Speaker 1: moose by Many and she's like, this tastes wrong, like
Speaker 1: something is You're they're not poisoning me correctly, and you know,
Speaker 1: guy starts to gaslight her immediately. It's like it's always
Speaker 1: something like you gotta just eat it whatever, And she
Speaker 1: goes back the next morning after she is raped and
Speaker 1: knows that, but she goes back to Many and brings
Speaker 1: back the dishes and it's like, thank you, I really
Speaker 1: liked it. It It was really good. And it's like she's
Speaker 1: part of what really like broke my heart about her
Speaker 1: character is that she always knows that something is wrong,
Speaker 1: and she's always aware of her own pain but is
Speaker 1: allowing herself to be talked out of it because she
Speaker 1: doesn't want to hurt other people. Or because she's like
Speaker 1: doubting her own because because women are conditioned to be
Speaker 1: accommodating and polite and and all that. And I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't ignore the cultural and historical time that this
Speaker 1: comes out in this movie. That's that it's set in.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's set in sixty into sixty six, and
Speaker 1: you know, second wave feminism was kind of jeering up
Speaker 1: starting Yeah, yeah, as you said, Jessica, like, she's not
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of women of this time. So we
Speaker 1: me watching it now, I found myself very frustrated by
Speaker 1: her just constant accommodation of people, and even when she
Speaker 1: senses that people are doing wrong by her, she's still like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to offend any Constantly everybody is doing
Speaker 1: things wrong, at the minimum annoying her and at the
Speaker 1: maximum raping her. Yeah, but then we also see, I
Speaker 1: don't know, there are so many parts of this movie
Speaker 1: that even when I was frustrated with Rosemary, I felt like,
Speaker 1: in most cases, the story explains to you why this
Speaker 1: is her reaction, Because the times that she does say something,
Speaker 1: her situation gets worse almost right away. Where Like when
Speaker 1: she does assert herself and she's like, I'm throwing this party.
Speaker 1: Guess what, I have friends, they're coming over, Scary people
Speaker 1: are invited. Um and like you know, makes that happen.
Speaker 1: And then when she speaks up for herself right after
Speaker 1: the consequences, she's cut off from access to her friends
Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't know, they're like seeing her
Speaker 1: try to accomplish something and then be immediately set two
Speaker 1: steps backwards by like the oppositional forces, like I don't
Speaker 1: I worked for me story wise, and it made me
Speaker 1: really sad. Yeah. And then another example that is when
Speaker 1: she's saying that she's no longer going to see Dr.
Speaker 1: Sapristein anymore, the like this pain that she's been having
Speaker 1: for months now is not going away, like something is wrong,
Speaker 1: and she's saying, I'm not going to drink the herbal
Speaker 1: drink Mick flurry. It's like vanilla milkshake. I kind of like,
Speaker 1: I was like, damn drinking. And then the husband is
Speaker 1: so mean not getting a second opinion. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so she will. We see her stand up for herself
Speaker 1: different times, and then she's shot down, and then in
Speaker 1: the next scene we see her drinking the drink again.
Speaker 1: So it kind of makes for reasons that I don't
Speaker 1: think the narrative quite needs in like changing her mind,
Speaker 1: and it might have to do with all of this
Speaker 1: emotional and psychological abuse that she is undergoing by everyone
Speaker 1: around her. I remember when I first learned about just
Speaker 1: the concept of gas lighting, and like first hearing that
Speaker 1: term and learning what it was, I remember thinking to myself, Oh,
Speaker 1: like what Rosemary's husband does to her in that movie,
Speaker 1: like that connection because I was like, oh, that is
Speaker 1: exactly what gaslighting is. That was like kind of my
Speaker 1: frame of reference for that. But like, like we already
Speaker 1: kind of touched on. There's so many times where he
Speaker 1: is just like textbook abuse of behavior in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, gaslighting her, Like no, that chocolate mouse doesn't
Speaker 1: have chalky undertaste, just eat it and like so much.
Speaker 1: But it's also you see that so much in modern
Speaker 1: movies too. I mean the movie doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: dated movie unfortunately, really, you know, you see I think
Speaker 1: it was the was it The Shape of Water with
Speaker 1: Octovia Spencer Just that just popped in my mind about
Speaker 1: her abuse of the relationships for example, you do see
Speaker 1: these all the time. Unfortunately, still the submissive woman on
Speaker 1: the abusive husband the chocolate the chocolate mouse scene while
Speaker 1: we're on it. Yeah, that that was a scene that
Speaker 1: felt like pretty true to the marital rape scene just
Speaker 1: blew my mind on a number of people. But the
Speaker 1: moose scene, it was like a little bit different of
Speaker 1: you can sort of see the like mechanics of what
Speaker 1: he's doing, but I also sort of understood why. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to have this conflict with this person
Speaker 1: I have to be with no matter what, because that's
Speaker 1: how she viewed her life, and like, what is what
Speaker 1: are my options? What is it easier to do? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I've been in relationships like that
Speaker 1: where you're picking your battles kind of exactly where you're like,
Speaker 1: finally the fucking moose like and that's sort of what
Speaker 1: she ends up saying because he finds, I think, in
Speaker 1: the space of that scene three different ways to blame
Speaker 1: it on her, where he's like, nothing's good enough for you.
Speaker 1: Why are you being mean? She worked on that all day,
Speaker 1: You're being rude, and like, you know, like and she
Speaker 1: pushes back a couple of times. It's not like immediately
Speaker 1: she folds. She's like, it's gross, it tastes weird. I
Speaker 1: think the Ruth Gordon is weird fair um. But then
Speaker 1: eventually when he starts to raise his voice, she is
Speaker 1: like final fucking eat it, which is like stuff, I
Speaker 1: I know that I have done. It's I recognize that
Speaker 1: in my parents marriage. Like that scene hit for me
Speaker 1: especially because it felt normal in in a weird way.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, exactly. I mean in the movie, of course,
Speaker 1: he has an agenda behind this, which says he wants
Speaker 1: to provide the world with this devil baby and because
Speaker 1: it helps his career, he'll become a movie start tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and so he's invested in her reading the Damn Moose.
Speaker 1: But in real life, these things happen all the time,
Speaker 1: and the man has no other agenda except to keep
Speaker 1: his wife submissive. Of course, so it's just an act
Speaker 1: of random violence abuse. And so that's why it seems
Speaker 1: it's the scene seems normal in the movie. It's, as
Speaker 1: I say, it's a whole other story. But but nonetheless
Speaker 1: it's a sad reflection of all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: happen like that all the time. And it's like as
Speaker 1: a viewer, it's almost like easier and like more easy
Speaker 1: to understand that someone would do that to you because
Speaker 1: they're working for the devil exactly other than that is
Speaker 1: just what they think is okay to treat Somewhere in fact,
Speaker 1: you almost I mean, as a movie watcher, you go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I see he's doing that because he wants so you know,
Speaker 1: it's not at least you say, I see he's got
Speaker 1: a motivation rather than just random misogyny. You know, well,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think that. Like in the scene
Speaker 1: where they first go to dinner at the cast of
Speaker 1: Vets Roman is like complimenting guys, I'm oh, you did
Speaker 1: all this great hand gesture and you're working this play
Speaker 1: was so and it's just like, oh, he got complimented
Speaker 1: one time, and now he's going to sell his baby
Speaker 1: to the devil. He literally goes and she goes into
Speaker 1: the kitchen with many for a minute, and literally by
Speaker 1: the time they come back two minutes later, this decision
Speaker 1: has been Yeah, okay, sure, bastard, you lazy bastard. My
Speaker 1: people will get to your people. We'll take care of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, it's just like it also makes
Speaker 1: you kind of want like this is an indication that
Speaker 1: this guy had a serious character of law to say
Speaker 1: the lazy wouldn't she have picked up on us at
Speaker 1: some point in their marriage? Kept thinking that it takes
Speaker 1: her so long to figure and again, I mean, but
Speaker 1: their relationships seems to change pretty abruptly in the movie too,
Speaker 1: Like they're in the first couple of scenes, they seemed
Speaker 1: to be generally getting along. She's like, like, she even
Speaker 1: seems it's it almost seems like she's like, let's make
Speaker 1: love even yeah, Like she she's like, I want to funk.
Speaker 1: He's like okay, Like it's it started to seem like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a I did not know anything about
Speaker 1: this movie. It's like they're kind of a nice couple, right, well,
Speaker 1: seems that way at first. Then he turns in yeah,
Speaker 1: but see, like why why did it take this long
Speaker 1: for them for her to figure out? Especially with the
Speaker 1: doctor Sapperstein thing, it takes her so long to realize
Speaker 1: that he's on it because he's also doing like classic
Speaker 1: like abuse of things, isolating her from her friend, Like
Speaker 1: she's like, don't talk to your friends about their pregnancy,
Speaker 1: don't read books. He literally don't read books, don't talk
Speaker 1: to your friends. You're like no, yeah, like it you're
Speaker 1: a doctor. What are you saying, And she well that
Speaker 1: that's like a transition into like the whole like one
Speaker 1: of the big themes of this movie. And it's like,
Speaker 1: it's weirdly now looking into knowing what we know about
Speaker 1: how Roman Polanski used women, and then if you look
Speaker 1: into Ira Levin's work, where he was not the monster
Speaker 1: that Roman Polanski is, but his work sort of had
Speaker 1: a general theme that he He also wrote The Stepford
Speaker 1: Wives was his other major work of he was really
Speaker 1: good at writing villains that were normal men, and that
Speaker 1: was what makes the story scary, is that it's like
Speaker 1: the devil you know, basically, but you know, also makes
Speaker 1: a lot of women and his narratives pretty submissive and
Speaker 1: not I wouldn't say he is a feminist, but he
Speaker 1: wrote some interesting stories about women. So it's weird. I
Speaker 1: guess all that to say, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: of these themes are done intentionally and how like Ira
Speaker 1: Levin said about this book that it's about atheism and
Speaker 1: the people who see feminism in it are just seeing
Speaker 1: what they want to see. He's interesting. He's like, it's
Speaker 1: about how how people go too hard with Christianity and
Speaker 1: then they're like, but don't you think any director makes
Speaker 1: a movie without necessarily realizing what things people are going
Speaker 1: to see in it, Because I mean, I can't imagine that,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody has notions about a movie they've seen
Speaker 1: that the director knew knew they would, you know. I
Speaker 1: just I don't think that the way art works. I
Speaker 1: think you know that stuff inadvertently affects people. They find
Speaker 1: things that well, really that's what you saw, okay, And
Speaker 1: now that seems to be like some of the main
Speaker 1: takeaways that people have from this movie watching it now
Speaker 1: is like one of the bigger themes of just like
Speaker 1: ignoring and minimalizing um women's physical pain, which happens throughout
Speaker 1: this entire movie. I mean it feeds into the gas
Speaker 1: lighting thing as well. But there's that moment where me
Speaker 1: and Pharaoh is standing outside and New York and she's like,
Speaker 1: pain begun, I will have no more of the as
Speaker 1: like she is she like that was in a side Yeah,
Speaker 1: that between Dr Sabristeine and Guy, they're constantly like she
Speaker 1: is saying, I'm in pain, this hurts. Something's not right.
Speaker 1: And then people who obviously couldn't possibly understand what a
Speaker 1: pregnancy feels like are saying, no, it'll go away in
Speaker 1: a day or so, you know, ad nauseum, don't read books,
Speaker 1: don't talk to your friends. And that is like such
Speaker 1: a proven, I mean exaggerated version of like how women
Speaker 1: are treated and by doctors. There's been studies. I have
Speaker 1: a study here from a book called Doing Harm, The
Speaker 1: Truth about how bad medicine and lazy science leave women dismissed, misdiagnosed,
Speaker 1: and sick. Um. It's a researcher named Maya Douson Barry
Speaker 1: says that quote, the tendency to not believe women's reports
Speaker 1: of their symptoms is definitely connected to these larger, broader,
Speaker 1: could true stereotypes about women as emotional and irrational and
Speaker 1: hysterical in the colloquial sense of the word. Women are
Speaker 1: stereotyped as more ready to seek care. So basically like,
Speaker 1: women are more likely to point out their own pain
Speaker 1: and therefore it is more likely to be dismissed by
Speaker 1: makes perfect profession um, which I'm sure was even more
Speaker 1: so in the nine and the sixties. Yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 1: you know, having seen it back then, I don't remember
Speaker 1: having any thoughts about any of these things when I
Speaker 1: saw it I mean maybe a slight annoyance and how
Speaker 1: dominated she was because I was kind of a rebel
Speaker 1: at that time. But it was the sixties after all, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, just totally different now perspective now because of
Speaker 1: all this stuff, you know, and the eight million studies
Speaker 1: that have been done since then, and all the advances
Speaker 1: of feminism and everything else and all the and all
Speaker 1: the the meat too. Yeah. I mean an example of
Speaker 1: that that we see in the movie is the scene
Speaker 1: where she goes to Dr Hill after or she's discovered
Speaker 1: that like Dr Sapristein is in on this coven. That's
Speaker 1: another heart that that is like a heartbreaking on par
Speaker 1: for me with the you weren't raped by the devil,
Speaker 1: you were marritally raped, okay scene and the gas lighting
Speaker 1: scene with the chocolate moose, because it's just like they're
Speaker 1: like shades of real life in that. Yeah, it felt
Speaker 1: very authentic. Yeah, it's and it's and it sucks. The whoever,
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me find the name of the
Speaker 1: actor who played Dr Hill, but I thought it was
Speaker 1: very well. Charles Groden, my man Grows. I thought he
Speaker 1: gave a great performance because you know, in that scene,
Speaker 1: me and Pharaoh is laying out all this research she's done.
Speaker 1: It does sound a little bit out there. I would
Speaker 1: be worried about her if if someone just came in
Speaker 1: cold and was like, I'm pregnant with the devil. Everything
Speaker 1: is sucked up. But you can tell she means it
Speaker 1: so much and it's something is wrong and she needs
Speaker 1: someone to leave her, which she tells him. She's like,
Speaker 1: no one is listening to me. And he says what
Speaker 1: any woman who desperately needs to be believed is. He says, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do something about this. Like that's like and she's
Speaker 1: got them, and she's so relieved the relief it's like
Speaker 1: palpable can feel it, and and then he leaves and
Speaker 1: it sucks like this just so many versions of this
Speaker 1: happen all the time of like you want to keep
Speaker 1: someone calm and then you call their abusers to come
Speaker 1: and pick them up, like that happens constantly, and it's
Speaker 1: just so But there did you I maybe I was
Speaker 1: like reading too much into it, but I really liked
Speaker 1: the shot where Dr sabristein and Guy enter the room
Speaker 1: and Dr Hill is in the back of that shot
Speaker 1: and you can almost see that he knows he's doing
Speaker 1: the wrong thing, or he'd like, there's this look of
Speaker 1: dare I say doubt too that the name um, there's
Speaker 1: like a look he has a I don't know if
Speaker 1: Charles Grodin's got a weird resting face. But I was like,
Speaker 1: I felt, I was like, this motherfucker knows he did
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. But and this I think is against
Speaker 1: something that's like real life sometimes the way that men
Speaker 1: interact with each other. They would rather sell out a
Speaker 1: woman than seem weird to other men totally, because if
Speaker 1: Dr Hill is the one person who's like, I do
Speaker 1: believe that all this freaky devil ship is happening and
Speaker 1: aligns himself with her, I think that he is afraid
Speaker 1: of doing that and would rather sell her down the
Speaker 1: river and literally, you know, force her to birth the
Speaker 1: devil than be think go out of his comfort zone
Speaker 1: socially right. And for a split sec and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: is the implication that he's also in on the coven thing?
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's it at all, and I
Speaker 1: think it much just I know, I think it's just
Speaker 1: that like he sees this woman, even as the medical
Speaker 1: doctor that he is, he sees a woman who appears
Speaker 1: to be hysterical and who he perceives to be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: she's pregnant, so and like pregnant women be hormonal. That
Speaker 1: she is like out of her mind and needs to
Speaker 1: be put back in the care of the men who
Speaker 1: are actually abusing her, because men can be trusted and
Speaker 1: women can't be trusted with their feelings basically. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that was I mean, it was a very effective horror
Speaker 1: moment in the movie when when Sta Christine and Guy
Speaker 1: come back into the room. But it hurts my heart
Speaker 1: to be like, like, Dr Hill, I thought you were
Speaker 1: a good guy, like right, I mean, and it's like
Speaker 1: he oh, it's so devastating, to the point where it
Speaker 1: almost took me a second to get back into the
Speaker 1: action after that, because that is such a gut punch,
Speaker 1: and then she immediately has to like literally go on
Speaker 1: the run to get away and it doesn't work right,
Speaker 1: and it makes me so sad. Oh gosh, we got
Speaker 1: to take another quick break, so let's process her feelings
Speaker 1: a little bit and then we'll come right back and
Speaker 1: we're back. Can I just say, Also, Anthea Silbert, the
Speaker 1: wife of Richard Silbert, the designer. She did the clothes,
Speaker 1: and can we talk about her clothes for a minute.
Speaker 1: The little I mean they were all literally dresses like
Speaker 1: you would see on a three year old small child.
Speaker 1: While those are the lace collars and then the little jumpers.
Speaker 1: Nothing was fitted. Her body was completely you know, like
Speaker 1: those little lampshade dresses. But literally, think about it, there
Speaker 1: were children's clothes. It's just so even when she's pregnant,
Speaker 1: she looks like a little girl, a little girl. It's
Speaker 1: very strange. Yeah, I mean the art direction in the
Speaker 1: costuming this movie is also cool, and I mean the
Speaker 1: movie looks incredible. Yeah. I mean that's like an attempt
Speaker 1: to infantilize her and make her seem virginal, so almost
Speaker 1: like equating her to the virgin Mary. But also the
Speaker 1: little you know again, it just it just you can't
Speaker 1: help but have parallel. Yeah. Absolutely. The haircut that Rosemary
Speaker 1: gets makes her be the baldest woman in charge, except
Speaker 1: she's not really in charge of anything, including her own life.
Speaker 1: It's aspirational. I think spiritually it makes sense. She gets
Speaker 1: the haircut, She's like, I'm in charge now, and everyone's like, no,
Speaker 1: we hate it bad. And it affects her negatively. She
Speaker 1: wasn't ready for the haircut. That haircut should have aligned
Speaker 1: with her becoming more in charge of her life. I
Speaker 1: mean a different version. Yeah, It's just it's so it's
Speaker 1: so frustrating to watch every like, everything she tries in
Speaker 1: good faith that in a movie that we're kinder to
Speaker 1: its protagonist would result in something. The last thing you
Speaker 1: wanted to say about the just like the minimizing pain
Speaker 1: is of course, the only people she talks to who
Speaker 1: believe her are other women, yes, who are then immediately
Speaker 1: removed from her life. I think she tries to call
Speaker 1: one right before she is forced into going into labor,
Speaker 1: but they take her seriously immediately they believe her. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's get this fixed. And then they are also ostracizing,
Speaker 1: removed from her life, and then we never see them again,
Speaker 1: and they can. I just say, Also, that scene in
Speaker 1: the phone booth is incredible when she's she's trying desperately,
Speaker 1: she's trying to reach her friend A and the doctor
Speaker 1: B and she's in a phone booth and it's degrees
Speaker 1: and people are coming in and it's just like and
Speaker 1: the camera holds on. I lost track of how long
Speaker 1: it was. The camera held one position and it went
Speaker 1: on for like eight minutes. There's no cuts, no cuts,
Speaker 1: and she was and she was sweating, and and it
Speaker 1: was literally like her life in that phone booth. She's
Speaker 1: trapped in this small space, nobody's responding to her on
Speaker 1: the phone or otherwise. And and then at the very
Speaker 1: end of the scene, this man appears outside the phone
Speaker 1: with his back to her. So there's always it was
Speaker 1: like a living hill literally in her brain in that
Speaker 1: it was. It was an incredible scene. It's a very
Speaker 1: effective horror movie. Yeah, and the a Farrow like her
Speaker 1: performances like insanely good. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: we got to talk about the rape scene. We do
Speaker 1: something that the rape scene. Um, so there's okay. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that maybe maybe they in to
Speaker 1: talk about that scene is to talk about the scene
Speaker 1: that comes immediately after, because the way it is stylized
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's it sucks that we see raping
Speaker 1: movie so frequently. I don't think that it's especially like
Speaker 1: worth discussing. Um there is. I mean, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of nude Satanists there. She gets raped by satan. She
Speaker 1: does call out one at one point, this isn't a dream,
Speaker 1: this is really happening, right, And then we cut to
Speaker 1: the next morning. Yeah, I think the next day is
Speaker 1: I found that far more disturbing, even though I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously the previous scene is very disturbing, but it's disturbing
Speaker 1: in a way that's kind of unfamiliar because it's there's
Speaker 1: a room full of nude Satanists also in that scene,
Speaker 1: so much fantasy that you can kind of you and
Speaker 1: and the just the horror and uneas we feel during
Speaker 1: that scene is like, that's the intention of that scene.
Speaker 1: But then the next scene, Jamie, as you said, is
Speaker 1: disturbing for a different reason, is because so I have
Speaker 1: the dialogue exchange, Oh, I have it written, now, who
Speaker 1: do you want to be? I don't want to be Guy,
Speaker 1: but I don't want you to be Guy. Um, nobody
Speaker 1: wants I'll be guys. So that we So the next morning, Um,
Speaker 1: she wakes up next to Guy. She's kind of disoriented,
Speaker 1: she's remembering what's happened to her in real time, and
Speaker 1: she realizes that she has these like pretty severe scratches
Speaker 1: on your body. Yes, so Guy says, kind of gesturing
Speaker 1: to his fingernails, don't you know, I already filed them down.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to miss baby night. And the first
Speaker 1: and the Rosemary says while I was out, and then
Speaker 1: and then he's in the other room and he says,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of fun in a necrophile sort
Speaker 1: of way, and just like any any sympathy. And in
Speaker 1: the previous scene, um where you see Rosemary being in
Speaker 1: and out and in and out, and then it cuts
Speaker 1: to the devil raping her, he's not acting that way.
Speaker 1: He's saying, we'll have sex another day, It's okay to
Speaker 1: go to sleep, and and so that, I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't know what happened immediately after, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's something, you know. But then the next morning it's
Speaker 1: a total one eight. He was like, yeah, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course I merritily raped you. It's still legal in this
Speaker 1: in most states when this movie comes out. And then
Speaker 1: Rosemary says, I dreamed someone was raping me. I don't
Speaker 1: know someone inhuman. Then he says thanks a lot, like
Speaker 1: he's already over it, and he's and she's calling him.
Speaker 1: She says nothing, and then he tries to touch her.
Speaker 1: She pulls away and he's like I didn't want to
Speaker 1: miss the night, and she says, we could have done
Speaker 1: it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn't the only
Speaker 1: split second, and then he wraps the scene up by saying,
Speaker 1: I was a little bit loaded myself, you know. So
Speaker 1: he he admits that he merritally raped his wife, even
Speaker 1: though he said in the previous scene, go to bed,
Speaker 1: it's fine. And then where the story gets really complicated
Speaker 1: is that he didn't maritally rape his wife. He brought
Speaker 1: her to the devil so that she could get raped
Speaker 1: by the devil. But the fact that all the fantasy
Speaker 1: should aside the fact that this scene plays out the
Speaker 1: way it does and it's realistic, it's just insane to watch.
Speaker 1: Where he's like, yeah, of course I did that. It
Speaker 1: was fun. Then she also acts like it's kind of
Speaker 1: no big deal. She's she's visibly upset by it, but
Speaker 1: she just kind of has to accept it because, yeah,
Speaker 1: as you said, like marital rape wasn't even considered rape.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, you're married to a man. He
Speaker 1: can have sex with you whenever he wants, including while
Speaker 1: you were sleeping and not able to give consent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she that seemed to go right by or Actually I
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of alarming, to say the least,
Speaker 1: and to see her like she pulls away a little
Speaker 1: bit and but still is Oh, it's just a very
Speaker 1: but that was very much with the culture too, as
Speaker 1: you say, like, man, you know, whenever you want, you
Speaker 1: just take it. You know, would anybody have thought that
Speaker 1: the devil raping this childlike virginal young woman would sort
Speaker 1: of have this creepy mirror effect as to you know,
Speaker 1: Rouman Polanski's activity. I mean, it just has a whole other,
Speaker 1: whole other level of creepy. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, God this
Speaker 1: And I'm like I understand after watching it, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I understand why I avoided it for so Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then I mean, I'm not a mother, so I can't
Speaker 1: speak to mothering instincts. But I'm just curious if there's
Speaker 1: anyone out there whose mothering instincts are so strong that
Speaker 1: when you learn that your baby is the devil, do
Speaker 1: you still like, yep, I want to be the mother
Speaker 1: to this devil baby? Is that? Well? I can a thing.
Speaker 1: I have been a mother. I mean, I am a
Speaker 1: mother ahead still am did you quit? I got fired?
Speaker 1: My daughters fired me. They turned to wedding um, and
Speaker 1: I have to say it's it is an overpowering Okay,
Speaker 1: it really is. Neither my daughters are a devil, although
Speaker 1: sometimes I wonder. But so I can't really speak to
Speaker 1: that exactly. I mean, it's not a real thing, but
Speaker 1: you know, and I can a sort of bought it
Speaker 1: because I know what that's that feeling is like when
Speaker 1: your baby first shows up. It's the most incredible thing,
Speaker 1: unless you're a person who doesn't like babies. But and
Speaker 1: also because we've been set up through the movie where
Speaker 1: she has no other interests or no other nothing else
Speaker 1: she's passionate about except that, so she's all her juice
Speaker 1: is going towards being maternal, so you can sort of see, well,
Speaker 1: he's mine, and maybe I better. She's rocking the cradle
Speaker 1: too hard, she says to the woman, don't rock that
Speaker 1: cradle so hard any consort of I don't know. I
Speaker 1: thought it was an interesting ending where it doesn't it
Speaker 1: would be so it would be super lame if the
Speaker 1: movie outright said and now she's going to be a
Speaker 1: mother to the devil baby. But the fact that she
Speaker 1: it like does line up with her character that she
Speaker 1: would consider it and then also I don't know. I
Speaker 1: was like in a hotel room in Indianapolis, just like
Speaker 1: staring at the ceiling, like what would I have done?
Speaker 1: But if you think about like no one asks to
Speaker 1: be born, right and this baby is in a predicament,
Speaker 1: it seems like, you know, this baby could really use
Speaker 1: some good influence. I mean, there is that great maternal
Speaker 1: rush right when I'm born. And she said, so, she's
Speaker 1: good doing this towards her infant. The thing that across
Speaker 1: my mind was like, but what happens when he's a teenager? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna and he starts like starting wars and
Speaker 1: whatever all that ship the Devil does. Then what is
Speaker 1: she going to think Jee's adoption might have been a
Speaker 1: better option. This could go very We need to talk
Speaker 1: about Kevin later exactly. I guess my mind went to
Speaker 1: one of our very first discussions on our on our
Speaker 1: very first episode was the kill Bill discussion, where like
Speaker 1: she learns that she's pregnant, and I think the implication
Speaker 1: is just that every woman has such a strong mothering
Speaker 1: instinct that no matter what her circumstances are in life,
Speaker 1: she's gonna like drop up everything to be a mother
Speaker 1: that was more darring to me in that movie because
Speaker 1: we knew that she had she had her The whole
Speaker 1: movie was about her other interests with Rosemary. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a flaw. I don't even know if
Speaker 1: it's a flaw, but it's we don't know anything about
Speaker 1: her other than she is a sweet little lady from
Speaker 1: like Ohio. So it's like implied that she is naive.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have a large support network in New York,
Speaker 1: and she wants to have a baby, and that's sort
Speaker 1: of all we know. That really does make your skin
Speaker 1: call a little bit, doesn't know when somebody says everybody
Speaker 1: is such a strong mothering it because they don't. Actually
Speaker 1: I don't have one whatsoever. I mean, like you might
Speaker 1: have a baby popped out. But it's something I sometimes
Speaker 1: I think people don't know where they do or they don't.
Speaker 1: But they said definitely a lot of people don't write.
Speaker 1: And that's always been a thing that's been pinned on
Speaker 1: women that it's like a falsehood, definitely, and that's never
Speaker 1: asked of just like no one has ever what about
Speaker 1: the about like strong Let's make that movie also with
Speaker 1: Sharon Stone. Um, is there anything else that anyone wants
Speaker 1: to talk about before we finish. So the villains of
Speaker 1: this movie are we I mean, we have male and
Speaker 1: female villains basically all the all the Satanists are. And
Speaker 1: it's also worth saying culturally that this is like base
Speaker 1: level satanic panic, which will only increase going into the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and nineties even And a lot of
Speaker 1: that has to do with what happens to round Plansky's
Speaker 1: wife the next year, because the man's and family is
Speaker 1: so steeped in that. Yeah, it's just a whole fucking
Speaker 1: like this. This movie weirdly foreshadows. And also there were
Speaker 1: a lot of I forget what, there was like a
Speaker 1: list of in the late sixties. It was like The
Speaker 1: Omen came out. There was a lot of like evil
Speaker 1: baby movies. The Bad Seed came out in the fifties,
Speaker 1: which it was a movie that's to scared the ship
Speaker 1: out of me. So it's like taking place with that.
Speaker 1: But many, for all of her satanic shortcomings, is a
Speaker 1: fun character, really fun to watch. Every time she's on screen,
Speaker 1: You're like, fuck, it's Ruth Gordon. She's got charisma, she's
Speaker 1: got look at that head scarf, look at that blouse
Speaker 1: like she's got blue eyeshadow on. She's really going for it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that just is like something that
Speaker 1: we come across a lot, where Mini's character has nine
Speaker 1: thousand times of personality that Rosemary does, which is I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's almost like in high school musical. If
Speaker 1: you listen to our matron of them in high school Musical,
Speaker 1: it's like how Gabriella is the main character, but she's
Speaker 1: kind of boring. And then Sharpey, the female villain, has
Speaker 1: all this personality and we're supposed to hate her, and
Speaker 1: it's like, but she's more fun to watch. It's just
Speaker 1: another thing. And then when you get to fucking Louie
Speaker 1: Louie laur Laura Linney, it wasn't the character there, Laura Louise,
Speaker 1: Laura Louise. She's in one scene and she's just she's
Speaker 1: She's in a bunch of scenes. I want to spin
Speaker 1: off with her. I want to spin off with her,
Speaker 1: and she's just yelling. She's also got a wild blast.
Speaker 1: I'm like Mini and Laura Louise. Okay, a sitcom with
Speaker 1: two older female satanists who are best friends. I love
Speaker 1: that it's someone by it it's like Laverne and Shirley,
Speaker 1: but like they're saying, Well, that's another thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to say about this movie, which is that a lot
Speaker 1: of movies and a lot of media about which is
Speaker 1: have a very specific way of depicting which is, and
Speaker 1: it's usually that they are evil and bad and praying
Speaker 1: upon innocence. But these days, anyone who identifies as a
Speaker 1: which is just you know, charging their crystals and not
Speaker 1: doing harm to anybody. Same thing with Satanism. The way
Speaker 1: Satanism is depicted in this movie and many movies is like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get together and help someone rape a woman and
Speaker 1: steal her baby and stuff like that. And obviously anyone
Speaker 1: who's doing anything like that is horrible. But modern Satanism
Speaker 1: is nothing like that. I don't know if if you
Speaker 1: or our listeners are familiar with like modern Satanism. But
Speaker 1: the members of the Satanic Temple are cool. They are
Speaker 1: very like progressive. They're very like pro reproductive rights, they're
Speaker 1: very pro science, they're very pro like separation of church
Speaker 1: and state. Their agenda is is very progressive as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, I guess we should, yeah, we
Speaker 1: should make clear that when we are goofing on Satanism
Speaker 1: in this movie. It's the version of Satanism that is
Speaker 1: projected in this and throughout the Satanic panic. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: shout out to all our Sataness and I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's like it's so fit interesting because it's like it's
Speaker 1: always the not always, but in some cases, like the
Speaker 1: subcultures that just have a negative stigma attached to it
Speaker 1: because of media like this, that end up being like
Speaker 1: very lovely progressive people. I would also lump in Juggalos
Speaker 1: to that. Juggalos are if you look at their platform.
Speaker 1: We gotta get some Jugglers in office. They're so progressive,
Speaker 1: they're so they preach love, they march on Washington, They're
Speaker 1: out there doing the work, they are gathering. They're also
Speaker 1: really good hack shout all our Juggalo listeners. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: main thing here is that the way that like Witchcraft
Speaker 1: and Satanism is portrayed in this movie and different other
Speaker 1: movies around this era is not reflective of like modern
Speaker 1: Witchcraft and modern uh Satanism and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: worth noting. Oh we did get around to the artist
Speaker 1: art thing. Oh yeah, we never concluded that maybe just
Speaker 1: too long a discussion there. I mean, this, this is
Speaker 1: one of the harder cases I've ever en. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I doesn't get harder than this. Yeah, well, how does
Speaker 1: everyone feel? I mean, I'm fine with not seeing this
Speaker 1: movie again, or really any movies that we know have
Speaker 1: been made by the autours who are criminals. There's so
Speaker 1: much other stuff out there that isn't made by sex
Speaker 1: criminals that I am happy to watch instead. But it
Speaker 1: is tricky because this is a well crafted movie, and
Speaker 1: I like, I hate to admit this, but I like
Speaker 1: another of Polanski's movies. It's called The Ninth Gate. It
Speaker 1: is not a good movie, but I still like it.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm like, I can't watch this anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. It's it feels like it's it's such an
Speaker 1: individual decision, and it's like the sort of thing where
Speaker 1: I think when the me Too movement was first happening,
Speaker 1: I was very I think, along with like a lot
Speaker 1: of people are very quick to just be like nope,
Speaker 1: done by see garbage bad. And I still feel that
Speaker 1: way fundamentally, But it's like, now that we are having
Speaker 1: these conversations more, it's like, Okay, it's not as black
Speaker 1: and white as that, especially when it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't be upset with a friend of yours if
Speaker 1: you have a friend who loves Rosemary's Baby and is
Speaker 1: not quite ready to part with it, Like that's that's
Speaker 1: a thing that that means, that's like what when are
Speaker 1: I mean, there's millions of people out there who aren't
Speaker 1: going to want to part with Michael Jackson's music, you know,
Speaker 1: Like so I still don't know. I think what my
Speaker 1: hope is is that we come to a point in
Speaker 1: just the entertainment that's available to us that so much
Speaker 1: good stuff has been made by talented people who are
Speaker 1: not predators and sex criminals, that we can just just
Speaker 1: enjoy that and kind of forget about the stuff is
Speaker 1: made by the bad people. But also, but there was
Speaker 1: also a lot, for example, to look at this movie now,
Speaker 1: it gives us, just on this discussion, it gives us
Speaker 1: an interesting perspective on not just you know, the movie
Speaker 1: itself and how it's craft and how women in it
Speaker 1: look different than they would have when it came out,
Speaker 1: but also on the issue we're talking about about on
Speaker 1: Roman Polanski and his behavior, and it makes you go,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it can be productive in a
Speaker 1: way if you can use it to better better understand
Speaker 1: your own feelings about about the whole thing, about all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. Yeah. I mean it's like I wish
Speaker 1: all Sex Predators works were so like, absolutely unquestionably bad art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that it would be a much easier discussion, but it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a lot of people are processing
Speaker 1: how they feel. Um, I think, I mean, the only
Speaker 1: thing I think that we can all agree on is
Speaker 1: the fact that Roman Polansky got convicted of this crime
Speaker 1: and continued to work for forty years is absolutely unexactly
Speaker 1: that's horrible. That's horrible. I mean, while other people are like,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, two people have said he did
Speaker 1: this or he did that and their lives are completely over,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, like you just don't get it. Just
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense that he is thriving in Paris and
Speaker 1: a lovely fuck him. It's definitely like an individual journey. Listeners,
Speaker 1: we encourage you to continue to explore your feelings about
Speaker 1: stuff like this, talk to your friends about it. It feels,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's uncomfortable to talk about, but it's
Speaker 1: even having talks like this is feels helpful. To process.
Speaker 1: I had one more I don't know this movie because
Speaker 1: this was the fifty at anniversary of this movie last year. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of media around it. And there's
Speaker 1: a female horror director, UM named Karen Kusama my favorite
Speaker 1: movie she's directed as Jennifer's Body Love. But she's she's,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the only prominent female horror directors.
Speaker 1: And so she was asked about this movie and UM
Speaker 1: she I'll just read what she said. She said, what
Speaker 1: one thing to add here is that Roman Polanski has
Speaker 1: made one of the greatest feminist parables of cinema. And
Speaker 1: yet we have to struggle with Polanski the man and
Speaker 1: the things he did, the crimes he committed. But that,
Speaker 1: to me is the enduring possibility of art, that it
Speaker 1: can stand apart from its maker. And I believe we
Speaker 1: have to judge Rosemary's Baby on its own merit. I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily agree with that statement, but the fact that
Speaker 1: that comes from a very progressive female horror director I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting, so worth mentioning. Well, it's just about
Speaker 1: one fift so we got to wrap up. I don't
Speaker 1: go see Dr Sapristin. Oh No, before you know, we
Speaker 1: can fanis anyone does this movie pass the Bechdel test?
Speaker 1: It does? Um? Can I just say all they did
Speaker 1: whenever more than one woman in the scene, Let's talk
Speaker 1: about recipes and saying getting a second opinion, That's all
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, there wasn't really any substance exchange, not really, no, no,
Speaker 1: but that's pretty par for the course. For all the
Speaker 1: conversations that we see. You got to put in my
Speaker 1: clothing stuff in a fabric, laundry, babies recipes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And in almost every scene there was an additional conversation
Speaker 1: about what does your husband do so yes, or your
Speaker 1: husband is very hot. That was one thing where like
Speaker 1: Rosemary repeated her husband's resume to like four or five.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, loser and shot to kill
Speaker 1: an apatross. That's not what she was like, he's in this,
Speaker 1: in this and yeah, things aren't going great right now,
Speaker 1: but they will be going good soon. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh god, that seems exhausting. Um, just I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't walk around just being like my boyfriend is not
Speaker 1: sure about his life direction Like that sounds exhausting. Well,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of exchanges between Rosemary and Mini Rosemary
Speaker 1: and Terry Laura Louise that the brassy queen of the Devil.
Speaker 1: Um it passes the Devil's Nanny. The Devil's aren't, but
Speaker 1: she in most scenes with women it passes at least once,
Speaker 1: but the kind of exchanges are very domestic. Also, question,
Speaker 1: does the movie pass the back to test if Mia
Speaker 1: Pharaoh talks to herself because I won't feel pain ever again?
Speaker 1: Pain begone? Feminist test heard it here first. Um, so
Speaker 1: let's rate the movie on our nipple scale. It's zero
Speaker 1: to five nipples based on its portrayal of women. Um,
Speaker 1: I just don't know. I think I'm going to give
Speaker 1: it like just right down the middle, like a two
Speaker 1: point five because or is like, on one hand, this
Speaker 1: is like a movie whose journey we see is a
Speaker 1: woman who's dealing with all this abuse and who is
Speaker 1: trying to you know, she has agency and she's trying
Speaker 1: to reclaim her agency even further. But I think this
Speaker 1: story would be a lot more powerful and authentic and
Speaker 1: probably maybe would have ended differently, or or the story
Speaker 1: would have been unfolded a little differently if it had
Speaker 1: been you know, written and directed by women, especially a
Speaker 1: mother who knows what a pregnancy is like, and not
Speaker 1: a man who is a known rapist. I think I
Speaker 1: might be wrong about this nipple writing, but I don't
Speaker 1: really know. I still just don't know how to really
Speaker 1: process this movie. So I'm just gonna do the two
Speaker 1: point five and, which is still an f when you
Speaker 1: think about it. But but yeah, I wish there was
Speaker 1: just a slightly different version of this movie in which
Speaker 1: she's maybe more triumphant at the end, or we know
Speaker 1: more about her character. I don't feel empowered by this movie.
Speaker 1: I see the read that it is. It could be
Speaker 1: a feminist text, but looking at it through the lens of,
Speaker 1: you know, our culture in two thousand nineteen, like I'm
Speaker 1: I don't really see that so much. I wish the
Speaker 1: way this story had played out was that she catches
Speaker 1: on to all this Devil Covens stuff, sooner she does
Speaker 1: her research, she figures everything out, she gets away, she
Speaker 1: has an abortion, and then she just lives the rest
Speaker 1: of her life away from all the scary people. So
Speaker 1: that would be lovely. So at two point five and,
Speaker 1: I'll give two of my nipples to Mia Pharaoh, whose
Speaker 1: husband at the time, Frank Sinatra, left her during the
Speaker 1: shoot of this movie because he's like, you're still working. Well,
Speaker 1: then that's not what I wanted and I'm going to
Speaker 1: divorce you. Well, he wanted her to be in a
Speaker 1: movie with him, and then she bailed on the movie.
Speaker 1: And then the movies came out the same day and
Speaker 1: Rosemary's Baby did like five times the amount of business.
Speaker 1: So that's the triumphant. That's a marriage killer. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so um too to Mia Pharaoh, and I'll give my
Speaker 1: half nipple to the black cat that you see at
Speaker 1: the very end for a split second in the coven
Speaker 1: um and cats also have eight nipples as cat facts
Speaker 1: with Caitlin anyway too and half nipple as the end. Jessica,
Speaker 1: you're you're rating, Oh gosh, I'm I'm torn about my nipples.
Speaker 1: Sounds very uncomfortable because I know Rick does, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Because again, I mean when you said, like the horror
Speaker 1: director considers this a feminist movie, in a way, you
Speaker 1: have to look at Rosemary. You could look at Rosemary
Speaker 1: as getting exactly what she wants ultimately, which is a baby,
Speaker 1: and um, this is the Devil's baby. But you're not
Speaker 1: going to take this baby away from Hofs but yeah,
Speaker 1: herby she got what she wanted in a way. It's
Speaker 1: just I'm so uncomfortable about how she's treated. I mean
Speaker 1: it's because you know, I'm from that generation. Um my parents,
Speaker 1: you know, the greatest generation grew up and you know,
Speaker 1: we're I mean we're married and had children the fifties,
Speaker 1: and I watched the dynamics between them and they were
Speaker 1: you know, there's the echoes of that just made me
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable. On the other hand, I do think the
Speaker 1: movie is beautifully crafted. It's incredibly written, it's so well acted.
Speaker 1: It looks gorgeous, and she's terrific, you know. So there's that,
Speaker 1: So there's great artistry. There's just so much to make
Speaker 1: you uncomfortable. And I'm a little ambivalent about the feminist
Speaker 1: thing too, Like, really, I don't know if that's really
Speaker 1: what I would call a feminist outcome. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what is that? What would that translate in terms
Speaker 1: of nipples? Like what do you think two and a hat.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm with you, Maybe it's doing it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I give a big nipple to to the scene on
Speaker 1: the phone booth was just create like Hitchcock kind of Jamie.
Speaker 1: What about you. Um, I'm going to go with two
Speaker 1: and a half as well, Uh say, complicated choice. I
Speaker 1: I don't think it's weird. I don't think we come
Speaker 1: across stories like this very often. Where I disagree with
Speaker 1: Karen Casama. I don't think that this is like a
Speaker 1: feminist film, but I do think it's an effectively told
Speaker 1: story about a woman. Uh. That made me feel a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's an effectively told story about a woman where
Speaker 1: for all of the failings of Rosemary's character writing wise,
Speaker 1: where we don't know anything really about her family, we
Speaker 1: don't really know anything about if she has interested, she
Speaker 1: go to school, how did she guide me? Like? There
Speaker 1: there's so many things we don't know about her that
Speaker 1: we do know about guy. But for the things we
Speaker 1: do know about her, she does seem pretty smart, getting
Speaker 1: through like a mire of gas lighting from everyone around
Speaker 1: you and still being able to do research. She's constantly
Speaker 1: seeking out allies who can help her out unfortunately most
Speaker 1: of the world. And I think the scene that upset
Speaker 1: me most is the scene with Dr Hill at the end. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I think you see that she does everything she possibly
Speaker 1: can to gain agency over herself, her life, and her body.
Speaker 1: The reason I don't think it's the feminist film is
Speaker 1: because she's not really successful in doing that. So I
Speaker 1: don't know. The way this movie rolls out is just
Speaker 1: like it's I'm still I feel like I'm still processing it.
Speaker 1: It's so I've never seen a movie be this cruel
Speaker 1: to its protagonists but also make it clear to you
Speaker 1: that the protagonist has done everything she could poss a
Speaker 1: bleed do to try to save herself and it does
Speaker 1: not work. It's just like it's usually if you see
Speaker 1: a movie that's cruel to its female protagonists, it's like
Speaker 1: the protagonist is so severely underdeveloped that they seem stupid
Speaker 1: and like completely unable to help themselves. But it's like
Speaker 1: Rosemary is intelligent, she's observant, she's doing everything she possibly can,
Speaker 1: and the movie does not give her an inch. It's
Speaker 1: just wild, which I mean, I think. I think it
Speaker 1: just has a lot to do with the era and
Speaker 1: the cultural context when this movie came out and takes
Speaker 1: place and stuff, and for for all of its problematic
Speaker 1: history that goes along and all the baggers that comes
Speaker 1: with this movie, it does feel worth mentioning that it
Speaker 1: is like movies like this that allow It's like I
Speaker 1: famously said before we started recording Rosemary's Baby walked so
Speaker 1: that Baba Duke could run. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: less troubling, more endings. You were just talking about movies
Speaker 1: made in the past couple of years alone with Boba Duke.
Speaker 1: And then you've also got hereditary um that explore to
Speaker 1: varying degrees of success, but like explore a woman's psyche
Speaker 1: and have that be a part of where the horror
Speaker 1: comes from. So this movie, while very flauded, think it
Speaker 1: was at least it's influence all good stuff to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it seems like just like very surface level read
Speaker 1: it seems like in spite of her trying to and
Speaker 1: like intelligently trying to save her own life at every turn,
Speaker 1: it ended up the way that they want it, and
Speaker 1: that is I didn't feel uplifted or she does not
Speaker 1: come out the victor in this story. And and it's
Speaker 1: like that's a difficult thing to watch that I don't think.
Speaker 1: We see a lot that is true to life in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Um, not necessarily what I want
Speaker 1: to see reflected in media, but you know, like someone
Speaker 1: who does everything and the oppositional forces are too much
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't happen. Um, this movie fucked me up.
Speaker 1: I'll just go two and a half just because I
Speaker 1: love my friends and I want to be like them. Um,
Speaker 1: two and a half I'll give I'm going to give
Speaker 1: one to what's her name again, Louie Louis. I don't
Speaker 1: give what to Laura Louise because I was like, what
Speaker 1: is going on with you over here? Which, by the way,
Speaker 1: Roman cast Avent is like, oh she and many are
Speaker 1: too old to take care of babies like those those
Speaker 1: broads will fuck them up, like you're just like just
Speaker 1: but yeah, but like I know, but guy is to
Speaker 1: just Satanists in general shouldn't be raising children. I think
Speaker 1: we can agree. Um yeah, I'll give one to Louis Louis,
Speaker 1: one to Terry r I p wish I knew you better,
Speaker 1: and then I'll give a happy to Ruth Gordon because
Speaker 1: my god, what a fucking performance and she was turning
Speaker 1: a look in every fucking scene. Yeah, Jessica, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here. This has been such a delight.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. This is so far. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: is there anything you would like to plug talk about
Speaker 1: your podcast. I want to just once again plug my
Speaker 1: new podcast. It's called Winnetta. That's spelled w I n
Speaker 1: n E t k A, and um, it's about my
Speaker 1: childhood growing up there, which of course took place during
Speaker 1: partly during the era that this movie covers and has
Speaker 1: all the all the ups and downs represented in that movie, um,
Speaker 1: except for the double part. Anyway, you can find it
Speaker 1: wherever you find your podcast and it's a memoir and
Speaker 1: then go on Instagram to Jessica Harperama or go to
Speaker 1: Winna Pa podcast on Instagram or Twitter. I'm on Facebook
Speaker 1: to Jessica Harper. Awesome, I mean great, Yes, follow her
Speaker 1: in all the places and listen to Thanks guys, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming so you have to see
Speaker 1: or just a quick note, Jessica did have to leave
Speaker 1: a little bit before we were done recording the episodes.
Speaker 1: If there are sections of the episode it was like,
Speaker 1: are you just talking over a legend. No, she just
Speaker 1: simply was not here for those night here and we
Speaker 1: love her so much. Yeah, she was amazing. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if there are large chunks where Jessica is not talking,
Speaker 1: we recorded those after she had to leave, and then
Speaker 1: edit them into the episode. So with that, let's plug
Speaker 1: our little plug doubles. You can follow us online on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: Facebook at Bechtel cast Um. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: our Patreon ak Matreon Yeah to bonus episodes among five
Speaker 1: bucks a month, and then you get the backlog so
Speaker 1: you really get like thirty episodes um. And then check
Speaker 1: out our Tea Public store, get some merch at t
Speaker 1: public dot com, slash the macdeal cast, and as always,
Speaker 1: we love you so much, thanks for listening. Yeah by