Queer Projection
This is a movie podcast about finding queer themes damn near everywhere. Hosts Alethia St. Joan and Danny Carroll share a 30+ year friendship that has been bound together by a shared love for movies. A trans woman and a gay man respectively, Alethia and Danny explore what these movies meant to them while they were young and closeted, and what revisiting these movies means for the actualized, arguably maladjusted adults they’ve become. It’s a heady, often crass and sometimes crude blend - part nostalgia trip, part queer theory, part film criticism. Check it out!
Queer Projection
The Virgin Suicides
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We take another dour and sexy walk down the twisting roads of suburbia with Sofia Coppola's directorial debut. Let's reflect again on the miserable state of being a teenager, and watch Kirsten Dunst cement her place as the existential dark comedy queen. Enjoy!
Okay, first, I have to get this right. Is it Kirsten Dunst? Kirsten?
SPEAKER_06I believe Kirsten is how you say it, yes.
SPEAKER_07We have to get it right, so okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, Kirsten. Figure it out at some point. Kirsten dun Kirsten Dunst. Kirsten Dunst.
SPEAKER_07I'm really excited for Kirsten Dunst today because our movie is going to be Virgin Suicides. Uh wait, right? The Virgin Suicides?
SPEAKER_06Uh yes, The Virgin Suicides, the 2000 film adapted from the Jeffrey Eugenidas novel, directed by uh uh Sophia Copla, her film debut as a director.
SPEAKER_07Now, of course, this episode is going to include candid discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation. Listener discretion is advised. If you're struggling, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline, available 24-7. Um, with that in mind, let's get into this uh sort of sexy dour little film.
SPEAKER_00And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
SPEAKER_04Sophia, as you mentioned, this is your first feature film, which is an incredible accomplishment. You were 29 when you made the film. Um, but this wasn't really your first career necessarily. You had gone to art school, you were acting in some of your father's films and others, you had a career as a model. Um, but what was it that about all of those previous experiences that you think maybe informed your decision to start making movies and to make your own movie?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think because my growing up on film sets and having my family in film, I wanted to do something different and didn't want to be so obvious to go into the family business. And I I went to art school and I knew I wanted to be a visual artist, and I uh I was really frustrated because I had so many different interests and I didn't know what I I I couldn't pick one. And then I made a short film and and I thought I realized it's a combination of all the things that I really love with photography and music and design, and and so I really I loved that, but I I still wasn't thinking of really doing that. And then when I read that the book of the Virgin Suicides, I love that book. You know, my dad always talked a lot about screenwriting and adapting, and so I thought I would just try as an experiment to adapt, you know, a few chapters of how you do it as a film because I heard I heard someone else was making it uh um into a film and I heard they were making it really dark and all these things, and I thought, like, oh no, I love this book. I don't want them. I like I had an idea of how I thought it should be as a film, but I never thought um I would do it. And then I just I kept writing it and I had the more I got into it, the more I ended up writing a whole screenplay for something I didn't have the rights to, which my dad was like, don't ever do that. So don't do that. Um but then I I met the producers and they were these cool indie um art people producers that were open to hearing my um how my approach and I just said if you ever, if it doesn't work out with the other director, will you please consider me? And eventually they said, Okay, we'll we'll give you a shot, which was just very cool of them. And I think they they saw that I had a, I had made a like a reference book of how I knew how I wanted to look, and I hadn't, I really had an idea, and I and I just loved the the book so much. So I kind of had this blind faith that um I would know how to do it, and then and we had a very it we shot it like in 28 days, and yeah, it and there was it was a lot of pressure of it being very low budget, and that we would um we shot on film and and the scenes like where they're hanging out in the bedroom, we would just let the film roll and roll, and the producer's like, you have to stop, we don't have enough money for all this film, and I was like, just keep letting it roll, let it roll. And that's like just it had to have that feeling that they were just lying around forever. And um, and I had a great DP Ed Lockman who really supported me. Um, and as my first film, he was really um helping me find the way I wanted it to be.
SPEAKER_06Joan, and this is Danny Carroll. Hi, Dan. Hello, hi, how are ya? I'm great, Dan. How are you?
SPEAKER_07I'm good.
SPEAKER_06Okay, and this is the podcast in which we revisit the films of our closeted queer youths in the 90s and 2000s, and we re-examine them as arguably maladjusted queer adults in this totally normal year of fucking Christ, it's 2026. 2026. We've been best friends since 1997, people, and in our looks back into our celluloid pasts, we're finding queer themes damn near everywhere. Join us, won't you? Let's get started, Dan.
SPEAKER_07Yes. I think we could st streamline that spiel at some point, but you know what? Let's just go into it. So, okay, yes, today, the Virgin Suicides. Now, in terms of our like uh viewership history as friends, I am my if my memory serves me right, this was like uh on college break viewing for the two of us. Because I know I saw this in college, and I'm pretty sure it was during that kind of a period, which probably means we were blitzed out of our minds watching it.
SPEAKER_06I definitely saw it in high school. Perhaps we watched it together in college. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think so.
SPEAKER_07I would probably have avoided this movie just because of the subject matter. When I was younger, the sort of frank discussions of stuff like suicide in this way, and I don't know, it just made me very uncomfortable, you know?
SPEAKER_06It's it's very it's very upsetting. I mean, uh particularly the the the first suicide in the film, like d that girl like impales herself on the fucking fence. Yeah, it's it's it's bad. Because because she witnesses some boys that are at their house for that party making fun of the kid with Down syndrome, I believe, and she just is like, fuck this, and she kills herself.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Exactly. That kind of stuff, uh, I didn't really have the stomach for at a certain point in my life. And so I do remember coming away from this viewing in a sort of in the sort of way that I come away from like Lars von Trier movies, in that I recognized that it was extremely beautiful, but was not happy with what kind of baggage I came away with. But so yeah, so but you know, before we started, I said Kirsten Dunce is one thing I'm really excited for because this is her young, this is her, you know, really playing the kind of part she was made for at this moment, you know, a dour cigarette smoking teen. And but for me, you know, listeners will recall that I am a big history geek. This is such an effective time and place movie, if I recall correctly. And specifically it's a kind of time and place that my grandparents were very much in. Now, I know that the people in this movie are sort of of like a white, uh upper class, waspy American wealth. And, you know, my grandparents were a little bit more like middle class wealth in sort of White Haven, Long Island type thing. But but the aesthetics of it were very similar. And so as a result, I'm very excited for that. Hairstyles and makeup and and champagne coupes, you know, it's gonna be great. Oh yeah, absolutely. But so, okay, TS up here. I think it's important to talk about Sophia Coppola. Give me the education on the sort of dynasty here, because I think uh it's she's arguably one of the most famous Nepo babies of all time.
SPEAKER_06What do you think? Oh yeah, she she is definitely a Nepo baby, but she's also an artist in her own right, and she I I mean she wouldn't she wouldn't have the career that she's had uh just out of just due to nepotism. I mean, there's there's Okay, you you don't need to defend Nepo babies here. Just explain the way she was one. Okay, well don't fucking interrupt me. So she's obviously she's the daughter of uh the great Francis Ford Copla, and who she's been involved in filmmaking her entire life. Her childhood was, you know, spent on the sets of her father's films. Like she fucking like she practically grew up on the set of like Apocalypse Now. She's the baby at the beginning, uh getting baptized at the at the end montage of The Godfather when everybody's getting shot. She eventually became most infamous before she became a director for her widely panned turn as Al Pacino's daughter in The Godfather Part Three. Right. Which I mean, it's not a good performance. It was, I think, very irresponsible to cast her in that. It was supposed to be Winona Ryder, and I don't know, I think it's very unfair.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, that for some reason that scene where she gets shot has been going viral lately because of how poorly she sells the moment. But yeah.
SPEAKER_06So she somehow got the rights to this book. I believe it was being developed uh with another writer and another and for another director elsewhere, and that didn't work out. And then somehow, I believe her dad got I'm gonna rely on my good friend Wikipedia here to get these facts right. One second. So yeah, she wrote it was already uh it had been greenlit by another studio, and uh there was a script by a guy named Nick Gomez, but it wasn't brought to production because Muse Productions, who had bought the script, were dissatisfied with it, and she got the rights uh herself after the rights lapsed. And she said she was inspired to write the film after reading the source novel, and uh she's quoted as saying, I really didn't know I wanted to be a director until I read The Virgin Suicides and saw so clearly how it had to be done. I immediately saw the central story as being about what distance and time and memory do to you, and about the extraordinary power of the unfathomable. And it's very, very interesting because this is a multi-layered narrative, and I think this is where we can really try to pull some queer themes out, because it's a story about girls filtered through the very warped memories of these now middle-aged men reflecting on their teenage years. Yeah. So it's a depiction of this girls through this like very, very romanticized and inaccurate, like warped vision. And then there's another layer of storytelling on top of that, on top of that, which is Sophia Coppola's vision. And I have not read the source novel, so I don't know how like intensely male gazy the source novel is. I don't know if there's like another aspect of the narrative that counteracts that kind of like there is in the movie, I think, because Sophia Coppola depicts the girls at once from the boys' point of view as being like more conceptual and kind of ethereal and not like real girls. And then we also get other scenes inside the abusive home where we see all the real and extremely unflattering moments. We see them just as the real human teenage girls in all their messiness and you know. So this was her first movie. Yes. Uh how old is she? Uh she was too fucking young. Um she was born in uh she was born in 1971, so she was like almost she was like twenty-nine. Okay, alright.
SPEAKER_07That's fine. Twenty-nine is fine. But you know what, that's interesting because I would have thought younger, because you know, I think a lot of her movies are really meditative about, you know, teens that are sort of stuck in certain class traps, wealth traps. You know, I I think there's probably gonna be a lot of parallels between this movie and Marie Antoinette and the point she was trying to make about certain bubbles in culture that people can live inside, because I I don't think it's a you know difficult thesis that she probably lived inside one of those bubbles for a long time and came to recognize it with a very specific point of view, which I think is very interesting. What do you think?
SPEAKER_06Uh I think that's right. And also, like, she um had been touched by tragedy growing up. Her brother died when she was young, Francis Ford Coppola's son. How did he die? Uh, it was like a it was in like a boating accident or something, I think.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. One of those like rich people deaths.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean not to devalue it, but No, I I know.
SPEAKER_07But yeah. So it's always gonna be like fell off the yacht or something. I don't know. I don't know why I'm being so cynical today.
SPEAKER_06Uh keep going. There's another quote from Sophia Coppola about this movie. She says, The Virgin Suicides is about how deeply people can affect you and how little images can get the biggest importance and never go away. Which is very interesting. This movie, this movie is crafted as a piece of writing and as, you know, a visual experience. Uh it's it's calibrated to evoke the feeling of memory, like the feeling of uh experiencing the past through like a photo collage or something.
SPEAKER_07And that's one of the things that I'm really, really excited for because the it is gonna be, like you said, that there's this frame where it's a reflection. They're looking back into the past, and so things about the past are gonna be really underlined, and I always get a thrill from that. So that's what I'm excited to see again, because that's a taste that I have gained over time that I don't think I really had as much when we first saw it. And and yeah, no, I'm I'm I'm excited to be challenged by the ideas again when it's just like I again, I just suicide is a tough one. Especially, you know, if it's really like I I don't think this movie necessarily glamorizes it, but I think it does take a sort of frightening point of view where it's like, listen, these girls had an option and they took it. And I've always found that kind of disturbing. So I'm excited to be challenged by that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, this movie, I mean, even aside from the suicide aspect of it, outside of the terms of that, like this movie is still desperate a desperately sad film. Oh yeah. It's about religious abuse, these girls are religiously abused. And they're and there are scenes like even sadder than any of the suicide depicted in the film, like the scene where Kirsten Dunce uh loses her virginity on the football field with Josh Hartnett, and then they fall asleep together, and she feels like she she f she f I don't know, like probably feels like in love or whatever, and she wakes up the next morning fucking alone in the cold, like just like foggy morning in the middle of a school football field all by herself. And just like has this like very melancholic like taxi ride home. I remember that just being like the most heartbreaking thing in this film to me. Yeah, it's uh okay.
SPEAKER_07This is gonna be a rough one. I might not be able to watch it today. We'll see. Yeah, uh, I mean, I am excited. I am excited. Okay, well, let's keep this brief. You know, we're again this season we are trying to, you know, keep it rolling along a little bit, especially, you know, if it isn't such a huge has such a huge place in our heart, like E.T. or Magnolia. Uh so let's just jive let's just dive right in. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, let's take a watch. See you in a few minutes.
SPEAKER_01Okay, next movie. And our next film is Sophia Coppola's haunting and mysterious The Virgin Suicide, which is told from the point of view of neighborhood boys who recall a summer 25 years ago when the five Lisbon sisters kept them all entranced. Lisbon girls are great beauties, especially Lux, the most daring, who is played by Kirsten Dunst. Keeping an uneasy eye on their blooming daughters are Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon, played by James Woods and Kathleen Turner.
SPEAKER_05Uh, Peter, are you on on the football squad?
SPEAKER_03Um, no, I play, but I'm not actually on the team.
SPEAKER_05Oh. Oh, I I see.
SPEAKER_03Not a team player.
SPEAKER_05Do you like to wrestle?
SPEAKER_01You okay? Josh Hartnett plays Tripfontaine, a brave local boy who tells Mr. Lisbon he'd like to take his daughter to the dance.
SPEAKER_03You see, my wife and I have certain rules. They've been the same rules for the older girls, and I can't very well go and change them now for the younger ones. Even if I wanted to, the wife wouldn't let me.
SPEAKER_01Mrs. Lisbon has grave doubts, but finally, reluctantly, she relents. Wait, once we didn't know what you were wearing. The guy. Our guy said that I wouldn't do it anything.
SPEAKER_05I'm glad you got way.
SPEAKER_01I think you can kind of guess the ending of the Virgin Suicides from its title, but you won't guess the tone or the mood of the movie. It reminded me of Picnic at Hanging Rock, another poetic film in which angelic young women disappear mysteriously from the land of the living. The movie is wise in not trying to explain reasons or motivations or being too literal. It simply evokes the sense of loss on the part of those boys and the narrator who speaks for them a quarter of a century later. Once they knew perfection, and then it was gone.
SPEAKER_05You know, and I wish that Sophia Coppola had been able to accomplish that sense of poetry in the film, but I felt that these women were sketched in very literally as characters. And so that begged the questions. You know, that that asked, why did they do this? Their parents couldn't have the way their parents behaved couldn't have explained their behavior. I mean, their parents were so terrible. I mean, she didn't really examine it from psychological or sociological reasons.
SPEAKER_01And well, you don't want her to. You don't want psychological reasons into the same thing.
SPEAKER_05Well, if you're not going to go there, I think then you have to find a way to make it seem mystical and poetic.
SPEAKER_01I think they do by the fact that it's being thought back on over 25 years, and that at that time what happened has now been turned into myth by in the memories of these boys. The narrator is what makes this work. Because, of course, film makes things very literal. So the film actually looks at these girls and sees them as flesh and blood, but we also see them in a different way.
SPEAKER_05I almost forgot there was a narrator, and that's how much the other story took over so much of the time. Maybe if the narrator had been more present, I would have had that sense of looking back.
SPEAKER_01I think the whole point of view of the film is the eyes of these boys. See, you're a girl, so you didn't think about the fact that the guys are thinking of things.
SPEAKER_05That would have been that's interesting. That's a different film. It's also part of this film.
SPEAKER_01Okay, coming up next, my video pick is the best film of 1999, according to me, anyway.
SPEAKER_06Aletia, how was that for you? This was such an extraordinary, just beautiful rewatch. I mean, very desperately sad film, but my god, like it brought back it brought back even more from that, you know, uh from late later adolescence when I was getting into films like this.
SPEAKER_07Desperately sad movie. And and frighteningly sad movie, and I remember it really bumming me out back in the day, knowing it was beautiful and everything like that. But this time I think my relationship with death is a lot more healed, so I think I was like ready to go where the movie was trying to take us. But gorgeous. And I think a a really exceptional examination of teenage sexuality in a way that was rightly identified as I think kind of brave and invasive in a way that even today, perhaps even more so today, we have trouble talking about teenage sexuality because it requires looking in that direction, and everybody's you know, th there are too many predators apparently lurk lurking around every tree that like everybody just avoids a very crucial conversation about development.
SPEAKER_06Aaron Powell And also just the unquestioned like behavior uh and conduct of young men that just doesn't that just that just completely bise bypasses criticism in in our society. Like even in in a in a much more cartoonishly inflated way now.
SPEAKER_07So let's get right into it with that as an uh uh um you know as a way in. Because in in one of the first few you know moments of the film after the discovery of the youngest daughter's first attempted suicide, you have this moment where the first moment of what I've called called the male conspiracy of the movie, which is where you know they're you know, I think leaning against a car hood and all you know getting close and sharing information. This kid talks about you know spying on her in the bathroom and manages to make himself the hero of a sexual harassment scenario.
SPEAKER_06One of the most beloved American films of you know, our childhood is is is is completely predicated on that fucking notion. Back to the future. Like we love that.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, peeping toms. Yeah. But right, peeping toms. The idea was like, these days it's like that that that is a serious invasion of private. That's a crime. I think our relationships with private. It's a crime, it's a crime, it's a crime, of course it's a crime. But like there is a reason why it has had to evolve into that place. And I think again, talking about the innocuous space it used to exist in is all part of that male conspiracy where it's like it's okay if I'm just looking, you know.
SPEAKER_06Can I say one quick thing about the male gaze, as it were, in this film? And I don't mean just the narrative of the story, I mean like visually how how the film goes about depicting that. The opening shot of this film is all it's almost it's like remarkably almost unmemorable, but very striking and a brilliant way to start it. It is it literally feels like an outtake. It's a shot of Kirsten Dunst standing sort of Lolita-esque on the side of the street and you know, the sun sucking on a popsicle. And instead of it doing uh what you think it's gonna do, instead of it being like a sexualization or you know, titillating in some way, it immediately shows her like scarfing the entire popsicle and like looking as if she realizes she's being filmed and then walking out of the shot. That's literally how the film opens. And it's and it's so quick and like quiet as to to almost like blink and you miss it, or it's something that most people probably won't even remember. But I just I can't stop thinking about it. I think it's such a strong and full of conviction way to start this particular story. It's such an odd choice, but such a brilliant one. And thus began the career of Sophia Coppola.
SPEAKER_07And I think. It demonstrates that she has this ability to pack the thematic questions and answers she's grappling with into visual imageries, in a into visual imagery in a way that is like fundamentally the art form.
SPEAKER_06It's her greatest talent as a filmmaker.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, but uh but demonstrating that right away, I think. It must have annoyed so many people that she came out the gate with just like, oh yeah, you you speak this language full.
SPEAKER_06On the criterion Blu-ray for Virgin Suicides is this short film she made the same year that Virgin Suicides went into production, and it's kind of a mean girls kind of thing called Lick the Star. And while there's like a lot of amateur acting in it and stuff, and it's janky in the way like a 16mm first short by somebody would be, you can tell you can tell right away she had it. Like it's it's her talent is there. I love that. You know, in a way that intimidated me, to be honest.
SPEAKER_07Well, I mean it should. Again, it's like the thing is when you when you see people who come from a dynasty and you know and you see that it's like, oh, like somehow they have a transitional ability to pass this talent down. That is a that's that is frightening to know that they live that life and you live this.
SPEAKER_06They're like a a slightly better functioning version of the Tenon Bombs or something.
SPEAKER_07Sure. But so I want to get back to the stuff about the male gaze. Because one of the things that I think because she comes in, especially in the visual language in these moments with the boys just in this conspiracy, there are times when it's a little heavy-handed about like men are the enemy and they just like there's just no way around it. I I do think she does a good job of demonstrating how these young boys themselves are sort of trapped in these patterns as much as This is not like a full indictment of maleness.
SPEAKER_06This isn't a movie that h hates men. I think it isn't.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it's it it is absolutely about how innocence and desire can ha lead people into absolutely the wrong-headed place, you know, and and men more than women do that, where they're like, okay, this makes sense. I I I hear from my boys that this is how this goes. I'm just gonna, you know, like I I've got a plan for how to get it. Get it.
SPEAKER_06But also, there's like a little micro version of that at the beginning of the movie where it shows that one neighborhood boy, I believe he's like, and he's in love with that one girl, and when she moves to a different town, he like pledges to throw himself out of the window, commit suicide, but it's just like a silly thing, and he and he gets up unharmed and everybody just laughs at him.
SPEAKER_07Oh, wait, again, it's it's it's her being able to encapsulate so much in a perfect just sequence. It it is adolescence's drama followed by humiliation, followed by walking it off. All in that tiny moment, you know?
SPEAKER_06Like, and he's so funny. He's he's like watching her play tennis or something, and he's he just looks at the heavens and goes, I love her!
SPEAKER_07I know, I love that so much. It's so uh it's so sandlot, but it is so fun. Now I took a bunch of notes in this movie as I went on, but you know, I uh again, let's just like talk about I you know, I do think I want to touch sort of talk brazenly about teenage sexuality and how she speaks that language in this movie. First thing I want to say, again, it it has been I I think I must have been like freshman year of college or something when I watched this. Absolutely, this movie I've had the experience of feeling like, oh my god, these kids looked so much older to me when I first watched this movie. Like in my memory, I was like, oh yeah, it's gonna be kind of like a little twink parade, and it's like, no, these are all these were all children. And I think that is a very good choice because there are trappings in this movie that make it kind of a teen movie, especially the like the real middle, you know, where the goal is losing the virginity.
SPEAKER_06Right before the mother like seriously cracks down on them, it's like a fairly, fairly enjoyable like like teen teen romp almost.
SPEAKER_07Teen romp. And but she does a good job of like avoiding the sort of American pie thing where it's like, oh, we can we can examine teenage sexuality because who we're looking at are actually 31 years old, you know, playing teenagers and sort of like being able to tread that in a sex comedy. Here she's like, no, this is about sex and it's about young people and their and how sex can either destroy them or really.
SPEAKER_06And just considering it logically, like most of these kids, since they were cast age appropriate, like their first experiences within these realms, you know, the realms of the, you know, just learning about your own sexuality and experimenting and stuff, might have happened right on the side of this film.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. I was thinking about that, especially towards the end of the movie there, where they're talking about that fantasy of the boys traveling the world with these girls, which is so sad. You just have this sort of like almost photoshoppy moment of them all just sort of like hanging, chilling at the pool, and you're like, oh, they went out and had that romp to get those shots. They had their like they did it for real, but it was a fantasy in the movie. How gorgeous and heartrending, you know?
SPEAKER_06Like You know who you know who directed those sequences too? The photographic sequences, and then the sequences where they're like posing for the camera, the fantasy sequences, you know, like in the fields and stuff. Roman Coppola, her brother, who who is co-ro who co-wrote a lot of Wes Anderson's films.
SPEAKER_07I will say one one one exception to this, Josh Hartnett. We gotta talk about Josh Hartnett. I mean, like the he like Tiger Heat straight up like Puka Shell necklace thing. I just have in my notes, Jesus Christ, Josh Hartnett. Like, I get it. I don't think I quite remembered, you know, what what made him such a heartthrob, but it they do such a good job. And I love the like early aughts 90s trope of like, of course this kid's good looking. His dads are gay, but you know, he's still a teen boy, so he's full of.
SPEAKER_06Never fucking realized until this watch that that those were his dads. I thought it was like a dad in humble.
SPEAKER_07I know. Oh, I love it.
SPEAKER_06I'm so stupid. I was already on the Josh Hartnett train because like I was super in his first two movies were Halloween H2O and the faculty, so like I was already like on that wavelength. And even that terrible wig that he has to wear in the movie, like totally works.
SPEAKER_07Well, you know, that's realizing it was a wig was also kind of humiliating for me because I realized watching him that, like, oh shit, I'm 38 years old and like I'm kind of going for that look right now. Like with like the shirt and like the 70s pants and everything. Literally, I have in my notes, wait, no, I'm going for the gay dad's look. This movie helped change me. I was like, that's well, part of the humiliation, because I'm like, I walk like that today. I think that's how I look sometimes.
SPEAKER_06And clearly What was it about like really, really evocative, like well-depicted cinematic portraits of the 1970s, like really fucking did it for us at that time. And still do, but like I think people I think people were really feeling themselves. I think Is it because we have like proximity to that time through through our immediate elders? That is a very good question.
SPEAKER_07I don't I mean, we shouldn't put it on ourselves either, because I look around LA right now, and even though we are sort of in a fashion chaos era, I do see a real pull of the 70s in like bell bottoms and flair leg stuff coming back, and there just being a I don't know. I I I think I would say it is honestly just part of the cycles of culture where it had to go out for so long, and because it was so in the periphery, because you know, Gen X recognized it as not cool in a very specific way, it just had to be there long enough to be cool again. Real quick before we get back into the movie, Josh Hartnett at one point says, like, his ass is grass. And I had this revelatory moment, like I I I didn't think it means he's gonna get beat down into the lawn. Like, he's gonna get smoked. Like grass like weed. Like, I'm gonna smoke that guy, I'm gonna kill that guy. Like, I think that's what his ass is grass means. I might be going crazy with that, but I just, I don't know, for some reason I thought I was a genius in that moment by recognizing it.
SPEAKER_06So here's I I want to say one thing uh relating to what you were saying before. The male gaze. There's a great interview with the author, Jeffrey Eugenides, who I totally forgot wrote Middlesex, which is a narrative about an intersex person, which I totally have to reread because I I I remember like reading bits of it in college, but yeah, I remember seeing that book, and yeah, I never I don't think I read the whole thing. There's a great interview with him on the Criterion Disc, and he talks about his impression and his intention for the novel and his feelings about it are thoroughly male. Like he says this is a thoroughly male book in all of its facets, the point of view from which it was written, the experiences that he was drawing from. The great irony is that the book's most hardcore fans are all girls. And it's very interesting. I can only analyze that from the perspective of the film, because I have not uh actually read the book yet, but I do think there's a great dialogue between male and female going on here, and that's why I think another reason Sophia Coppla was sort of a perfect person to do this.
SPEAKER_07Well, yeah, and then and even though I think, you know, women, young girls get the short end of the stick in terms of just the the real disastrous ways that teenage sexuality can go, you know, I think in the book he's probably likely making a sincere argument that men are as trapped in this as women are and this is a cultural thing. Well, yeah. But like but I think when she takes a hold of it, she goes, Okay, sure, but there's also this stuff that men do that are they're not entirely personal self-victim of. They perpetuate it and they could stop it, but they don't. And I think she is clear about that in what you know what she's doing.
SPEAKER_06Exemplified by when when Tripfontaine takes her virginity on the football field, and then she wakes up uh realizing he had abandoned her and just left her there overnight, and he walks away and doesn't think about it again, and just gets to like mentally masturbate over this fucking ridiculous fantasy over this girl that he chewed up and spat out and never really knew. And she goes home and eventually faces circumstances that lead to the end of her and her siblings' lives. Yeah, I so okay. I mean, we're jumping ahead a little bit, but I we hear him reflect on the experience from say 10 or whatever years later in I guess it's a rehab he's in. And he's not really hot anymore. He's just kind of an average-looking loser.
SPEAKER_07He's hot enough.
SPEAKER_06No, he's he's But he's not striking he's not striking in the way that Josh Hartnett is striking and Yeah, no, he's not a he's not a teenage boy throbbing with testosterone. No, but even like there's no lightning, like he's like he's handsome, but there's no lightning to him anymore. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_07No, no, no, you're right, you're right. Well, so I do want to talk about that moment because I I do think it is sort of the center point of the movie, the the losing of the virginity on the field type thing. Because Sophia Coppola is making a very specific point about teenage sex wa sexuality. So looks, you know, you are meant to understand and believe that she she's smart. She is a sincere grasp of what she wants and she is smart enough to know how to navigate it, but she's still desirous. So, you know, when when there's that moment in when they're meeting the boys for the first time, and you have that sort of like insert on in screen where it shows where sh, you know, she has his name written on her panties.
SPEAKER_06Like I love that shot.
SPEAKER_07I know, it's such a great shot, but you know, it is deliberately like freak shit. You know, she sh it is clear that she's saying, okay, she wants sex, she has physical desire. But now here's the thing about teenage sexuality, because there is something worse than simply being objectified. You know, there's something before assault. Okay, you know, it it it like sh I think she was prepared for it could be mid, maybe he'll hurt me. One thing I think you don't think about is uh the casual callousness of abandonment. It's just not something you're necessarily prepared for as an option, you know? And sometimes that can hit even harder and in a more disturbing way. And I think, you know I think that's what Sophia Coppola is trying to say. It's like you can be a really smart kid and still walk right into something that's just gonna mess you up, you know? And that maybe it's part of the human condition and inevitable, so if we don't talk about it the way the parents do in this movie, these kids are just gonna be left alone to process it because we're too embarrassed and too afraid of predation to even mention it. You know, it's it's sad. You know, it really is.
SPEAKER_06Reminds me of that quick scene where you can hear Kirsten Dunce just like pleading with both her parents but more her mom, that like she's suffocating and like what the punishment that they're being subjected to is like completely out of proportion and that she can't take it, and that her mom just keeps gaslighting her and saying, You're safe here. You're not safe out there, you're safe with us. After that terrible scene where she makes her burn her fucking rock records, and she's just like really pathetically dragging them down the stairs while crying like a little kid being made to like throw her dolls away. It's so horrible. And she's like, Aerosmith, not Aerosmith, and oh boy. That really as as somebody who uh loves their records a lot, got to me.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. It it it is really upsetting too because it's like, and I know this has been done in in like I know this is not necessarily the point the movie is making in its sort of central spine, but it absolutely is trying to say something with the mother that, you know, you know, matriarchy using the tools of the patriarchy, you know, uh engaging with parochialism is such a it's like traitor shit. You know, it's a ki it is so cruel. And it is it is it is so very common with the Christian right wing. Oh yeah. And and I'll tell you one thing. If there was a boy in that family, I don't care where he was in the lineup, he would have been gay. Because that was the classic sort of like formula back in the 70s and 80s. Okay, distant father, overbearing parochial mother, you know.
SPEAKER_06Also, I fuck I fucking hate it when James Woods is good in movies.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, he was rough for me in this one because he looked and behaved uncomfortably like my grandfather. Especially the more sort of checked out he gets as his wife gets more intense with the daughters.
SPEAKER_06And the intense the intense obsession with uh aviation and World War II.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and you know, when my uncle was dealing with the the height of his uh paranoid schizophrenic episodes, you know, there was it just like it it's so clear that it was taking them so long to just address the problem and identify the problem, and there was so much classic, I think, just avoidance of like I just like we don't have time for this. This isn't how life is supposed to be. There's no room here for mental illness. So like we're just we can't deal with it yet. There's so much of that going on with that character where it's just like I just can't deal. Not prepared for the lives that are intersected with him. You know, these these yeah, I don't know. Kathleen Turner, how about her?
SPEAKER_06Oh, she's she's just wonderful. It's so weird to consider that she is so convincing in this role as this just oppressive, religiously abusive, deluded, fucked up, sad woman who clearly like loves her kids in a fucked up way, but it's just so thoroughly. That's what's so sad about E2 like Miss Wired. Um that she can play that and also Jessica Rabbit is really remarkable.
SPEAKER_07Right. She also, I always forget, but she does this, uh she has this like multi-episode arc of King of the Hill where she plays Buck Strickland's wife. And she's just phenomenal in that because she gets caught up in a murder mystery. So good. She's just got such a she's just got a unique, classic, eternal voice. Oh, she is so her voice.
SPEAKER_06She is like so cunty and like almost a trans way, even though she's a cis woman, but she has very like trans, like clocky features, which is why she's been cast as a trans woman and say like friends in you know pretty offensive ways, looking at it retrospectively.
SPEAKER_07And and again, I I I'm glad you said that, you know, she does seem to love her kids because so much of what Sophia Coppola is trying to say with in every single character is there is love for each of them because she demonstrates how each and every one of them are trapped by a paradigm, you know, like trapped by this construct that they think is just like how it goes, and then when it doesn't go right, the people fall apart and and um suburbia is so the fountain it it's foundational, the idea that you're gonna put this here and it's just gonna go right and things are gonna just connect and everything is gonna be as fine as they can be. You know, it is the problem.
SPEAKER_06Speaking of suburbia, perhaps the most obvious kind of stylistic and narrative flourishes in the in the story in the film. Uh have to do one with the uh trees that are getting leveled out of their yard, the progression.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, killing trees is suicide.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's a very obvious one. But also, after the girls die, there is that I forget exactly what the uh circumstance is, but there's uh there for some reason there's some kind of uh pollutant that has entered the atmosphere. And literally they photograph they photograph everything in the last 10 minutes as uh through like a green filter. Like just the atmos the atmosphere is just drenched in this like s like it's like soul slime almost. And it the and and the boys have to experience what the world is actually going to be like, uh like moving out of this adolescent fantasy and into the real world. And it's all just you even algae blue. Yeah, you see, and you see that you see that one guy like drunkenly like like joke his uh suicide and like fall backwards into the pool. Yeah. Because they people can't handle it. It's very haunting, Dan. Very haunting.
SPEAKER_07Suburbia is constructed to keep you from dealing with the hard problems of life. Like, what what is death? Why are we here? What is consciousness? What is the self? Suburbia says, Stop thinking about that stuff. You got You made it, you made it. You made it. Your kids, they're gonna go. They're just gonna steal a little schnaps from the cabinet and go have fun little kid adventures. No, it gets way deadlier and more frightening than that for everybody involved.
SPEAKER_06And how interesting that she was able to see this so clearly and sharply, you know, through through the word through somebody else's words, but she was able to capture it and put it on the screen in a way, and and she didn't live that kind of life growing up, as far as I know. No, I believe that she did in some way. I believe that she was probably I mean, she was she was practically born on the set of the godfather, for Christ's sake.
SPEAKER_07Right, but I do believe very much that in Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s, there was a I mean, the the city is a suburb on steroids. So I'm sure that there were trappings of life in Los Angeles that were, i you know, especially for the wealthy, also sort of on steroids, but comparatively aligned with our experience in Clifton Park, less than the experience of children perhaps growing up in New York City, you know, even affluent people in New York City. I just think there's a fundamental neighborhoodness to wealth in LA that when you're a teenager must have had a world unto itself that she was grappling with and trying to understand. I'm sure that she had an experience of riding in cars with boys, you know. But I believe that she saw that she spent her teenage years trapped in a paradigm that as she became a little bit more educated and exposed, she she saw for what it was. I do think that's what Marie Antoinette is about very much. What's that movie so she's like, I Oh yeah. But she's like, I get the Paris Hiltons, okay? I grow up next to the Paris Hiltons. The Paris Hiltons are not the enemy, okay? They're like Marie Antoinette. They're they're trapped. We are surrounded by these cultural traps. And, you know, I think that's where the queerness is in this movie. That like the feeling like you cannot get out of a paradigm. I, as a, you know, when I was 15, 16 years old, fully, completely aware that I was gay, did not want to was not that interested in women in any way, shape, or form, but I knew that if, you know, I didn't say yes to dating the hot girl from Drama Club that was interested in me, that would shine a spotlight on stuff that I didn't want to have a spotlight on yet. And so I was like, well, there's a whole, you know, there's a there's a framework here. I'll just play the game.
SPEAKER_06And it's like I know exactly what you're saying, and I know that was like a fraught thing for you, but also from a certain perspective, it is like the humblest of brags.
SPEAKER_07You know what, Alethea? I have grown into my ability to say that I'm a little hot and hot people like me. I can confirm.
SPEAKER_06Danny, Danny is uh quite the older you get, the better, the better looking you get, I think.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, no, I thought I was gonna age into the Disney Ichabod Crane, but instead I've uh aged into a Bordeaux.
SPEAKER_06One day you're gonna find you've aged to the point where you look like the guy at the end of Last Crusade when he drinks out of the wrong grail.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Cryptkeeper. I'm gonna have the same energy as Cryptkeeper when I look like Cryptkeeper.
SPEAKER_06I certainly hope so.
SPEAKER_07You know, I'm just I'm gonna be very brittle, but I'll still snap.
SPEAKER_06I'm just finding out the Cryptkeeper was male? I thought that was a girl this whole time.
SPEAKER_07Well, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's some gender queer going on there. That's why you know, you're you know, rotting in a tomb, you probably have some uh time to explore. Let's let's maybe bring this to a conclusion because again, this was a this wasn't a huge impactful movie on our youth, so I uh we might have been just sort of walking around some of some of what we were talking about. But I I just think I want to conclude on I think in all of her movies, Sophia Coppola, she really recognizes how beautiful and tragic the intensity of human fantasy lives can be. And especially for a teenager, w when you when when reality doesn't meet expectation, that there is something spiritual going on there, and that there is a gauntlet that no matter who you are, where you are in life, you have to traverse and be faced with that. That your imagination lies, perhaps destructively so. I don't know. I think she gets it, and I think it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_06You know, I saw her once at Film Forum years ago. At like 10:30 in the morning, it was a film forum junior screening of Paper Moon, and she had like 10 little kids with her. Wait, is she like uh Angelina Jolie where she's got like 10 kids? No, I think she has some young children and she just brought a lot of their friends or something, or perhaps maybe their cousins or something. Oh god, imagine if your fun mom was Sophia Coppola. Your friend's. She certainly seemed like fun mom. I was like super jealous of these kids.
SPEAKER_07You're like 13 years old and she's taking you everywhere, and it's fun, and you're just having popcorn and just just singing just pop songs, and then one day you find out she directed Marie Antoinette and it's right there for you when you need it.
SPEAKER_06God, I can only And I'm like, at the very least, one person in this building has won an Oscar. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_07Uh all right, Alethea. Let's wrap it up for today. Um, thank you everybody for watching this video. Yeah, thank you for tuning into Queer Projection. We're probably gonna work on a bonus episode next, but we'll um we'll have something else coming to you. And uh thanks again for joining us.
SPEAKER_06We are slowly but surely putting our third season together, and we promise it will be worth the wait.
SPEAKER_07We're getting we're gonna get ahead of ourselves this time so that you've got a good product. All right, everybody, have a good day. Alethea, I'll see you soon.
SPEAKER_06I'll see you soon, Dan. Bye.