Latest / Camp Classics / Jennifer's Body (2009) w Chal Ravens

Transcript

Jennifer's Body (2009) w Chal Ravens · Camp Classics

• 0:00
  Anything where like straight men are being killed, I sort of tend
• 0:03
  to kind of be on board with really.
• 0:05
  Get away from her, you bitch. Classic.
• 0:11
  He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders
• 0:14
  right before she died. No, Hannah, you thought you
• 0:22
  become a prostitute. You're a dog at it.
• 0:24
  I used to love doggy chow. I used to love doggy chow too.
• 0:29
  I'm not even a backdoor virgin anymore.
• 0:32
  I'm Crystal. Oh my God, you give me such a
• 0:37
  wetty. I'm baby lane.
• 0:41
  And welcome to Camp Classics. A thoughtful podcast about
• 0:47
  stupid movies. Every two weeks we are here
• 0:51
  discussing, exploring, raiding, some of the peaks and valleys in
• 0:57
  the genre of camp in the search for the campus of Camp Classics.
• 1:02
  Welcome back, welcome to high school.
• 1:04
  We also have a Gatreon where for only £4 a month you can get a
• 1:09
  bonus episode every month and access our growing back catalog
• 1:14
  of Camp Classics. How many have we done now?
• 1:17
  How many Gatrian episodes? No, how many episodes in
• 1:20
  general? We have covered This is our 22nd
• 1:23
  movie. Oh, happy birthday.
• 1:26
  Yeah, finally 22. What is it for 22 years of
• 1:30
  marriage? I don't think they'd give them
• 1:34
  for odd numbers. Are you sure?
• 1:37
  Yeah. No, actually.
• 1:40
  Well, it is a significant milestone, often referred to as
• 1:43
  the copper anniversary. Apparently, it signifies the
• 1:46
  strength, beauty and resilience of a marriage.
• 1:48
  Copper. Yes, there we go.
• 1:53
  Copper, I'm sorry, but a cab? Oh, Oh yeah.
• 2:00
  Oh. Copper, anyway, I didn't even
• 2:02
  know her or something like that. Yeah, there it is.
• 2:05
  Oh dear. Anyway, Gatreon last month we
• 2:08
  covered Pammy in barbed wire so you can go listen to that and
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  we'll have a new Gatreon episode out soon.
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  member, we can give you polls and quizzes and interact with
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  you, whereas we can't do any of that on Apple or Spotify.
• 2:40
  But whatever, we'll take your money however it comes.
• 2:42
  I was. About to say just take the money
• 2:45
  cha ching. It's pride month.
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  Pay us. Help me, I'm poor.
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  And if you're not in a position to subscribe, well, go give us a
• 2:53
  five star rating on whatever platform you're listening to.
• 2:56
  Otherwise baby's going to come over and stab you in the tip.
• 3:02
  There are quite a few dynamics that are similar between US and
• 3:06
  those characters. I mean, I do think we crossover.
• 3:09
  I don't think either of us own 1 character in particular.
• 3:12
  But I definitely was watching us thinking, Oh yeah, we've both
• 3:15
  been needy. Oh, definitely.
• 3:17
  Yeah, yeah. We, I don't know if you remember
• 3:20
  maybe, but we ran a comments contest of.
• 3:22
  Course, I remember the the well, the tips competition we had to
• 3:26
  delay because of lacking of interest.
• 3:28
  Yes, whatever happened. Having a fun.
• 3:31
  Yeah, well, we've had some interests.
• 3:33
  I'm going to read them out. We have.
• 3:34
  Are you kidding me? Have we actually got interest?
• 3:36
  We've got, we've, we've had some comments.
• 3:38
  Yeah. So well, there's I'll start with
• 3:42
  the one that was disqualified because it was too rude for
• 3:45
  Apple Podcasts. I this, this is Jacob Sullivan,
• 3:49
  who says I did put up a five star review, but it was rejected
• 3:51
  for being in violation of decency standards.
• 3:53
  I said I'm devastated. I may never come again.
• 3:57
  Which is of course a line from Basic and Sync 2.
• 3:59
  So thank you, Jacob. But that was it.
• 4:02
  That was banned. Can't say come I guess.
• 4:05
  No one's fun anymore. Oh for fuck's sake.
• 4:09
  I was hoping we was going to get something really hardcore out of
• 4:12
  that. Miss K, Fantastico says, digging
• 4:18
  into the detail of all my favorite iconic camp films,
• 4:21
  exactly as they deserve, with insight and stupidity.
• 4:23
  Queer joy in a podcast. That's nice.
• 4:26
  That is nice. Ruthie Evans says I was obsessed
• 4:30
  with this film. Made my sister and friends do.
• 4:32
  Light as a feather, stiff as a board for weeks.
• 4:34
  Great pod. Loved this snake emoji.
• 4:36
  I guess that's about the crash. No shit.
• 4:40
  No me, Maloney says. This podcast is better than a 10
• 4:43
  inch Dick. She looks better than a 10 inch
• 4:45
  Dick. And you know it.
• 4:47
  Great, so that's allowed. So you're allowed Dicks, but
• 4:49
  you're not allowed to come. Well, they starred the eye in
• 4:52
  Dicks through the filters. Are you sure it's Dick?
• 4:55
  Could it be a different word? Duck.
• 4:57
  Yeah, yeah. 10 inch duck. You better watch that fucking.
• 5:01
  Duck. Duck Walk and Maxi with lots of
• 5:07
  XS. Says the podcast equivalent to
• 5:09
  the films they analyze. Dumb but fun.
• 5:12
  OK, great, great gowns. Beautiful gowns.
• 5:17
  So who are? You going to give it to?
• 5:19
  Come on, let's think. Yeah, which 2?
• 5:21
  Well, no, I think we need to really think about this
• 5:23
  critically, Crystal, because this needs to drive people to
• 5:26
  listen to this podcast. So it's all fun and games
• 5:28
  writing something funny, but is there anything there that might
• 5:31
  actually engage listenership? I mean, I'm always engaged by a
• 5:36
  10 inch stick. Oh.
• 5:36
  OK, fair. Yeah.
• 5:37
  So we should we give that one then?
• 5:39
  Yeah, yeah. And our runner up?
• 5:44
  Well, I kind of like someone calling us dumb but fun.
• 5:47
  Yeah, I'll take that. Yeah.
• 5:48
  OK, so if you are Nomi, Maloney or Maxi, get in touch on the
• 5:53
  insta and we'll send you a T. Shirt Congratulations.
• 5:57
  Jesus loves winners. Thank you for all that
• 6:01
  engagement. So much, so much.
• 6:04
  Gosh, it's like pulling teeth getting a little tiny compliment
• 6:07
  out of you people. It is.
• 6:08
  It's very difficult. Great.
• 6:09
  Well, there you go baby. Before we go any further, what
• 6:13
  makes a Camp classic? I can't believe you're still
• 6:16
  asking this question after 22 copied filled years of podcast.
• 6:23
  Where's the camp classic? Well, we want something that
• 6:25
  unlocks queer joy. The film needs to have an
• 6:28
  ongoing legacy. It needs to be so stupid it's
• 6:31
  genius. If it makes sense, it's probably
• 6:33
  not camp. It is to feed queer pop culture.
• 6:37
  And we're also looking for flop core energy.
• 6:42
  Yes, I'm going for a new one there.
• 6:44
  Flop core energy. It needs to be rejected by the
• 6:46
  mainstream and resurrected by the gays.
• 6:51
  Like our careers? I'm yet to have the
• 6:54
  resurrection. True likewise, but I feel like
• 6:57
  it's coming for us any day now. OK, great.
• 7:01
  Time is running out, I'm not going to lie.
• 7:04
  We are, of course covering today 2009's Jennifer's Body.
• 7:11
  Cue the whole song written by Diablo Cody, directed by Karen
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  Kusama, starring Megan Fox as Jennifer and Amanda Seyfried as
• 7:22
  Anita Needy. We also have a special guest
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  today. Thank God, thank.
• 7:28
  God, let's welcome back to the podcast.
• 7:31
  Journalist, podcaster and all around smart person.
• 7:34
  It's Chal, Ravens. Hello.
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  Hi, welcome back. So good to be back.
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  I keep thinking it's my third time, but it's only my official
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  second time, isn't it? I?
• 7:45
  Think no, it's your official third time I think.
• 7:48
  My official third time. Yeah, because we did wild things
• 7:52
  and we did love lies bleeding. Oh, of course you did.
• 7:56
  OK. So I feel like it's my fourth
• 7:59
  time, but it's only my official third time.
• 8:01
  And the Cursed in the Vault substance episode.
• 8:05
  Still, which is so good. Still.
• 8:06
  Still, we, we worked really hard on that first one.
• 8:10
  We were just like this one. We're going to do all the
• 8:12
  research. It's going to be really good.
• 8:14
  And then literally couldn't. Couldn't even get.
• 8:17
  We were young and naive. Unlistenable.
• 8:19
  It's unlistenable and that's coming from people that have put
• 8:22
  out 22 episodes of this trash. Does it have flop core energy
• 8:28
  though? Maybe.
• 8:29
  I don't know. I'm not flop.
• 8:30
  Core energy is something I'm trying at the moment as I've
• 8:32
  read it out. I did do like a big fucking hard
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  cringe on myself. I feel as a journalist, Charles,
• 8:39
  you absolutely would not stand that kind of word, would you?
• 8:43
  No. I love her, I love her.
• 8:44
  I love her neologism. And as a music journalist, I
• 8:47
  love anything with core stuck in the enemy as well.
• 8:49
  That's that opens up a lot of doors, you know?
• 8:52
  Wagon Wheel What to see? Well, what's everyone's history
• 8:55
  with this movie? A virgin.
• 8:57
  A virgin with this. Really.
• 9:00
  Yeah, it's. Not funny.
• 9:01
  Well, it it, it seems like the kind of film I would definitely
• 9:05
  have seen and loved when it came out.
• 9:08
  I was maybe a maybe a touch too old for it, but I I think if I
• 9:13
  had seen it I would have liked. It but also as well.
• 9:15
  It's interesting and I'm sure we'll dive into it.
• 9:17
  The way this film was marketed, you know, it's, it's actually
• 9:20
  kind of makes a lot of sense why it might have not gone on
• 9:24
  people's radars the first time around.
• 9:25
  Because I don't, I don't think I saw this when it was released in
• 9:28
  the cinema either. I think I kind of caught this
• 9:30
  maybe a few years afterwards on DVD.
• 9:32
  But this, this on DVD? Wow, way to age yourself
• 9:36
  straight away. Isn't it on on Laserdisc?
• 9:42
  Yeah, tell and I watched this last night with my dad and
• 9:45
  stepmom. So is that, is that the ideal
• 9:49
  viewing combo? I'm not sure.
• 9:50
  I forgot how horny this movie was, but yeah, there's.
• 9:53
  There's a lot of teen sex isn't that sure is how did how did you
• 9:57
  feel about that? I think I was probably the most
• 9:59
  uncomfortable in the room. But, you know, we're all adults.
• 10:02
  Aren't we OK? Listen, Yeah, if you all want to
• 10:05
  get turned on by it, that's fine.
• 10:08
  It was probably, on balance, a good thing to do.
• 10:12
  It reminds me of when I used to watch films with my mum and
• 10:15
  like, it would basically be because she'd be like just
• 10:17
  wanting to watch a film and then I would be like, can I watch it
• 10:20
  with you? And then it would just be that
• 10:21
  thing. I'm sure you 2 didn't have this.
• 10:23
  So if there was a sex scene, my mum would be like close your
• 10:25
  eyes. So I'd always like close my
• 10:27
  eyes. It was like a sex scene.
• 10:30
  How old were you? Oh, like, oh, you know, only
• 10:33
  like at 1011 or something. Yeah.
• 10:35
  And that's why you still close your eyes during sex, now isn't
• 10:39
  it? Well, you would know Crystal.
• 10:43
  Thanks, Syphilis. How did they how did they find
• 10:46
  it? Your your parents.
• 10:49
  Good, I think. I mean, I may have oversold it
• 10:52
  in advance. I was like, it's a feminist
• 10:54
  masterpiece horror movie and we'll get there.
• 11:00
  I'm going to say though, because I'm sure Crystal wouldn't say
• 11:03
  this about her own parents, but cool parents.
• 11:06
  Like they were down with it. They, they were fine with it.
• 11:08
  They, they weren't uptight at all, you know, which is maybe a
• 11:11
  shame. That would have been probably
• 11:12
  more outstanding for me. As I was yesterday, absolutely
• 11:15
  it was very chilly. Babe, I baby, I think I was the.
• 11:18
  Same as me, babe. Don't call me babe.
• 11:22
  Don't call me babe. I'm going to take off my
• 11:25
  stiletto and throw it into your head now if you do that again.
• 11:31
  Baby, I think I was the same as you that I hadn't didn't see it
• 11:34
  at the time. And in fact, I think I saw it
• 11:35
  because you made me see it like maybe about 5.
• 11:38
  Years ago, I made you no. No, but you were like, you were
• 11:41
  outraged. I'd never seen it and I so I
• 11:43
  watched it at your suggestion because I think I was also maybe
• 11:46
  a victim to the marketing, which we'll get on to, won't we?
• 11:50
  So how about some reviews and some contexts?
• 11:52
  So this movie had a production budget of $16,000,000 and it
• 11:58
  earned $31 million at the global box office.
• 12:03
  As we know, movies typically need to make two to three times
• 12:07
  their production budget to break even.
• 12:08
  So this movie was a disappointment, but of a flop to
• 12:12
  be honest. It's got 46% on Rotten Tomatoes,
• 12:18
  which is also quite low. The critical consensus says
• 12:22
  Jennifer's Body features occasionally clever dialogue,
• 12:25
  but it's horror comedy premise ultimately fails to be
• 12:28
  consistently funny or scary enough to satisfy.
• 12:31
  OK, great, great gowns. Beautiful gowns.
• 12:36
  What a load of shit. I know, I know, I know.
• 12:40
  And Speaking of, here's some of like, reviews from the Time the
• 12:43
  Stars. Peter Howell said the film felt
• 12:45
  like something Diablo Cody seems to have dashed off in between
• 12:49
  talk show appearances and updating her Myspace page.
• 12:52
  And sexist. And.
• 12:55
  Misogynist. Can I, can I quickly dive in
• 12:58
  with that very quickly just because I was watching today an
• 13:01
  interview between Diablo and Megan and they were just sort of
• 13:06
  talking 10 years afterwards and they were just sort of doing a
• 13:08
  sort of a conversation together. And actually, because of the
• 13:11
  success of Juno and Diablo in what she says, the only time
• 13:16
  this has happened in her career as a screenwriter was sort of
• 13:18
  given free rein to write whatever she wanted to write.
• 13:22
  And this was the product of her wanting to write a horror movie
• 13:26
  about a woman that eats boys and make it about cannibals.
• 13:30
  And I make it about that. So actually, this is something
• 13:33
  that she was really fucking into.
• 13:34
  So that is a load of bullshit, isn't it?
• 13:37
  It's so shit. It's so shit.
• 13:39
  And I mean, if you look at at all of the review summaries that
• 13:42
  came out, like when it was released in 2009, it's just man
• 13:46
  after man saying things like boring, not enough boobs, not
• 13:51
  scary enough. One reviewer said.
• 13:53
  If you want to look at Megan Fox's body, there are better
• 13:56
  ways to do it than chauvinists and sexist and misogynist.
• 14:00
  So fucking grim. So fucking grim.
• 14:02
  And where does where does this story?
• 14:04
  I know, I know, this is still the review, but whereabouts in
• 14:06
  the kind of like Mean Girls like timeline does this film fall?
• 14:13
  Yeah, I think Mean Girls is is like 2004 if I had to guess,
• 14:18
  maybe 2. 1003 or after? That's before.
• 14:22
  So this was 2009. OK, so.
• 14:25
  So this is this is post Jawbreaker, it's post Heather's
• 14:29
  obviously it's in that it's in that lineage of high school
• 14:32
  movies. But it's weird, you have a film
• 14:34
  like Mean Girls, which kind of did quite a lot for that genre,
• 14:37
  didn't it? And I I don't think that was
• 14:40
  marketed at straight men. I mean, I might be incorrect,
• 14:43
  but I don't don't. But it's just interesting.
• 14:46
  It's just interesting that it it was such as like a yeah, badly
• 14:50
  received. Yeah.
• 14:53
  And then and then, so then there's been a new slate of
• 14:56
  reviews from about 10 years later or think pieces or
• 14:59
  critical re evaluations. And if you look at basically, if
• 15:03
  you look at the Rotten Tomatoes summary, it's like all men in
• 15:06
  2009 writing about this movie, and then ten years later,
• 15:09
  there's a whole new slate of women talking about it.
• 15:13
  So that probably says something about how potentially the film
• 15:17
  critical, the critical film industry has changed.
• 15:20
  But also just, yeah, there's actually an opportunity for
• 15:22
  women to talk about this movie, which it doesn't seem like there
• 15:24
  was as much when it came out in 2009.
• 15:27
  No wonder it was misunderstood. Well, there was another
• 15:30
  interesting thing that came up in this interview that I, I saw
• 15:33
  between the two of them and it, they were talking about how it
• 15:35
  was mismarketed and it was, it's so sad because like Megan Fox is
• 15:40
  so engaging in this interview and just comes across as like a
• 15:44
  really interesting person and an actor that's, that's got a lot
• 15:47
  to talk about. And she just seems so like
• 15:50
  deflated because she knows that part of the reason why it was
• 15:54
  marketed like this was just because of her.
• 15:57
  And she was just, she was just apologetic to Diablo because she
• 15:59
  was just kind of like, it was my fault, wasn't it?
• 16:01
  And it's just so sad to see that.
• 16:04
  And and then Diablo said that when she was talking to the
• 16:07
  studio heads about the marketing campaign, she was kind of
• 16:09
  writing all of these emails sort of defending the stance that she
• 16:14
  wanted to take with the film, like who she thought the old
• 16:16
  film was for, blah, blah, blah. And then ahead of marketing at
• 16:20
  the studio, came back with an e-mail that was 3 words long and
• 16:25
  it said Megan Fox hot. Chauvinist and sexist and
• 16:29
  misogynist and. Chauvinist and that was the
• 16:31
  response she got and and she said it wasn't even like a
• 16:35
  proper e-mail of kind of breaking down the reasons why it
• 16:37
  was literally that was it and then it just.
• 16:40
  Like cave caveman? Yeah, and then test audiences
• 16:44
  were apparently diabolical as well because, again, they'd only
• 16:46
  put like, frat boys in the audience.
• 16:48
  And another piece of feedback that was a part of the data that
• 16:52
  was collected and taken seriously was needs more boobs.
• 16:56
  So it's just fucking wild. Yeah, but also I saw that and it
• 17:00
  apparently didn't even, it said more MOAR boobs BEWBS.
• 17:08
  So it's just like people just being as crass and stupid and
• 17:11
  gross as they can and and somehow being taken seriously
• 17:17
  sexist. I feel like the studio just set
• 17:21
  themselves up for this problem, though, ultimately, it's like,
• 17:24
  you know, if they saw Juno, which is not a film for Fat
• 17:28
  Boys, it's a very kind of quirky, sort of sensitive,
• 17:32
  strange film about abortion or in fact, in the end, not
• 17:37
  abortion, but about, like, what to do about teenage pregnancy.
• 17:40
  And then they're like, oh, OK, well, you've got Megan Fox on
• 17:42
  board. So there's only one possible
• 17:44
  pipe that we can put this through.
• 17:46
  And I watched the trailer. Yeah.
• 17:48
  It's crazy. The trailer doesn't have low
• 17:53
  shoulder. The band, who are like a crucial
• 17:55
  plot point like I've forgotten his names, has fallen out of my
• 17:59
  head again. Adam Brody.
• 18:00
  Adam Brody. I was trying to say, Seth, it
• 18:02
  doesn't have Adam Brodie in it. So you get the sense that the
• 18:06
  film is about Megan Fox at school.
• 18:08
  She's got a hot friend. She maybe has some sex.
• 18:11
  And I say hot friend because they kind of make Amanda
• 18:14
  Seyfried more like a hot friend because they play out the kind
• 18:16
  of possible will they have sex angle.
• 18:18
  And the whole thing is just designed not for the audience
• 18:21
  that it was clearly written about and for.
• 18:24
  So how could it have done anything except fail in the test
• 18:27
  screening? I I don't see how they thought
• 18:28
  it would thought it would work. That's.
• 18:30
  So wise, I've not seen the trailer, but that's so wild that
• 18:34
  they because when this you think now, if you well, I'm sure
• 18:36
  they've re cut it now for like it's re releases and stuff, but
• 18:39
  there's so much fun stuff to put in a trailer right that you
• 18:43
  yeah, sells it as a comedy horror like.
• 18:47
  But they're really I. Think it's more it's like in the
• 18:49
  lineage at that point. I mean, sometimes it's hard to
• 18:52
  really think back to 2009. I think a lot of what I want to
• 18:54
  talk about in this episode is just how far away that time
• 18:57
  really feels. But obviously you're not that
• 19:00
  far off this like long, long spate of like comedy, horror,
• 19:03
  scary movie and obviously screamers even only like 13
• 19:07
  years before or something. So we're still, there's still a
• 19:10
  lot of that going on. And all of that stuff is so
• 19:12
  heavily targeted at teenage boys.
• 19:14
  It's all about violence and tits.
• 19:17
  And I think they just couldn't compute any other way to make
• 19:19
  the trailer other than like, well, it's a horror movie and
• 19:21
  it's got a hot girl in it. So that's the only possible way.
• 19:24
  And the idea of there being like a a women, a female audience
• 19:30
  that you could just market to it didn't add up because that would
• 19:34
  be like a Mean Girls. And that's like a different type
• 19:36
  of film. Whether, I don't know, like
• 19:38
  being girls wearing pink. It's just so weird that as soon
• 19:41
  as there's a horror element, they couldn't understand that
• 19:43
  that could be targeted at women. Even though I think now we think
• 19:47
  the women are almost like the main audience for horror and
• 19:50
  horror fantasy and teenage horror fantasy.
• 19:52
  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's like they they fell into the exact same
• 19:57
  trap that I think the movie is kind of exploring, which is
• 20:00
  people are so dazzled by Megan Fox, they can't see past, they
• 20:04
  can't see past her body at all. And and so there's only, they're
• 20:09
  like, well, we only have one. There's only one thing we can do
• 20:11
  with this and that's. To try and sell it as like,
• 20:14
  Megan Fox hot. It's so crazy.
• 20:16
  Yeah. That trailer.
• 20:18
  You've ever seen Species? That 90s movie?
• 20:22
  Oh. I can kind of see the font.
• 20:24
  Yeah, a while ago. I can't.
• 20:26
  It's not something I can remember particularly.
• 20:28
  But it's I can imagine, I haven't watched the species
• 20:31
  trailer, but I can imagine it's marketed the exact same way.
• 20:34
  And that's about like a hot lady who eats men.
• 20:37
  And that's, and that's exactly what they've done for Jennifer's
• 20:40
  Body. It really, they're trying to
• 20:42
  sell it as a as a horror movie. And this movie isn't very scary.
• 20:46
  And the thing that's not? The thing is as well, it must
• 20:48
  have been like, I mean, you would presume how like horrible
• 20:51
  that must have felt for like all of the main people involved in
• 20:54
  it, A female director, a female writer, two really strong female
• 20:58
  leads, like, you know, the I, I, you would presume that a project
• 21:02
  like this being presented to all of them and being greenlit must
• 21:05
  have felt quite exciting, you know, compared to other projects
• 21:08
  that were probably on the card. So the fact they still managed
• 21:12
  to kind of just disregard all of that is wild.
• 21:16
  Yeah, this is something maybe to come on into a bit later as
• 21:19
  well, but Megan and the director Karen mentioned filming that
• 21:24
  lesbian kiss and how they're like, we're filming this and I
• 21:28
  can just see it already in the trailer being taken out of
• 21:32
  context. I can already tell that it's
• 21:34
  going to be misunderstood. It's it's people are not
• 21:40
  sophisticated enough yet to deal with this case, even though
• 21:44
  their intention of it was really pure about export exploring the
• 21:49
  sometimes hidden sexuality under female friendships.
• 21:52
  It was it made so much sense. But Megan was like, I was doing
• 21:57
  it and I could just see already how it was going to be
• 22:00
  perceived. And that's, that's, that's hard.
• 22:04
  You don't even you knowing you don't get a fair shot at
• 22:06
  something. But it's tricky as well because
• 22:08
  it's not like she's pitched a serious, you know, stinky movie
• 22:13
  like it isn't. It is also meant to be fun and
• 22:16
  in some ways trashy. And it is literally called
• 22:18
  Jennifer's Body. So I think they're ultimately,
• 22:22
  they were trying to do a lot in a very small kind of frame.
• 22:26
  And, and perhaps they didn't have, maybe they didn't feel
• 22:29
  like they had the kind of studio power at that time because
• 22:34
  neither of them were established enough.
• 22:35
  Although, I mean, I guess Diablo Cody got told she could do what
• 22:37
  she wanted. But I don't know.
• 22:39
  I mean, there must be so many elements at play there when
• 22:43
  you're working with the studio and you've got people kind of
• 22:45
  hovering over you like committees deciding what things
• 22:47
  will ultimately look like and edits that you're not in control
• 22:50
  of and everything. Yeah.
• 22:55
  All that said, it's obviously had like a huge re evaluation
• 22:59
  and it's been reclaimed, It's celebrated.
• 23:04
  And I I think Amanda Seyfried basically confirmed a sequel a
• 23:08
  couple months ago. Really.
• 23:10
  Yeah. What?
• 23:11
  No. Yeah, she said.
• 23:13
  Oh my God, she said. It's looking really likely.
• 23:16
  We've got the whole gang back together.
• 23:18
  I'm not confirming anything but it's we're working.
• 23:20
  On it, Yeah, that's exciting. Yeah, so it's cool that it's
• 23:23
  like 15 years on, something's still happening with it.
• 23:27
  I saw it's it's Megan Fox's favorite role she's ever done as
• 23:32
  well. Yeah.
• 23:33
  I mean, I think she was brilliant in subservience.
• 23:35
  But you know, sure, it's your career, her, not mine.
• 23:41
  Should we get into the plot? Go for it.
• 23:44
  Cool. So we've got Needy, played by
• 23:50
  Amanda Seyfried, once an insecure and studious teenager
• 23:53
  living in the small town of Devil's Kettle, Minnesota.
• 23:58
  She's now a violent asylum inmate who narrates the story as
• 24:01
  a flashback while in solitary confinement.
• 24:05
  Since childhood, Needy's been best friends with Jennifer.
• 24:08
  Check Megan Fox, a popular and beautiful high school student.
• 24:12
  Despite the two having little in common, Jennifer often mistreats
• 24:16
  and dominates Needy, who is too in awe of her to stand up for
• 24:20
  herself. One night, Jennifer takes Needy
• 24:24
  to a local dive bar to attend a concert by the indie rock band
• 24:27
  Low Shoulder. A fire engulfs the bar, killing
• 24:30
  several people. Jennifer, in shock from the
• 24:33
  fire, leaves with the band, even though Needy tells her not to.
• 24:36
  Later that evening, she appears in Needy's kitchen.
• 24:39
  She's covered in blood, vomits a trail of black fluid and almost
• 24:43
  bites Needy's neck, but retreats and leaves.
• 24:46
  I mean, I feel like that's just a night out, isn't it?
• 24:49
  We've all been there, We've all been there.
• 24:52
  Yeah, if you ever vomited red wine, it does seem like you
• 24:55
  might be dying. Well, yeah, I will say those
• 24:57
  those kind of shooters that she's a big fan of as well that
• 25:01
  that kind of mixed together could equal the black stuff
• 25:03
  coming out of her mouth as well. So.
• 25:05
  For the the 9/11 twin shooters with the red, white and blue
• 25:10
  layers. So.
• 25:12
  Quite strong for 2009. I feel like that was the
• 25:14
  beginning of being able to like publicly take the piss out of
• 25:18
  911. You know, like not publicly, but
• 25:21
  like like publicly in Hollywood, obviously semi publicly in your
• 25:25
  own life maybe, but you know what I mean.
• 25:27
  Like for that to be a Hollywood thing.
• 25:29
  I don't know, I feel like maybe only like South Park could have
• 25:31
  done that at that point, but I might be wrong.
• 25:34
  Edgy. Next morning at school, Jennifer
• 25:38
  appears fine and dismisses Needy's concerns.
• 25:41
  Appearing apathetic to the fire tragedy, she seduces the
• 25:45
  school's football captain and lures him into the woods, where
• 25:48
  she disembowels and cannibalizes him.
• 25:51
  In front of like the animals of Farthing.
• 25:53
  Word yeah, looking on, I mean. Lovingly.
• 25:56
  That was so nice. I loved those animals.
• 26:01
  A real Snow, a real Snow White moment.
• 26:03
  It was, isn't it? She has got a Snow White quality
• 26:05
  about her as well, hasn't she? True, Yeah.
• 26:08
  I don't know. Why were the animals there?
• 26:11
  It's because she's connected to nature, isn't it?
• 26:13
  That's kind of it's like, which she definitely, yeah.
• 26:17
  Animals get involved, don't they?
• 26:19
  Yeah, you want to go to the school library and look in the
• 26:21
  occult section you're. Funny I'll tell you what,
• 26:25
  British libraries are just shit in comparison, aren't they?
• 26:28
  I've never. I've never come across an occult
• 26:30
  section because I would devour it.
• 26:33
  I absolutely would. We'll come on to that.
• 26:38
  Meanwhile, Low Shoulder gains popularity due to their falsely
• 26:41
  rumoured heroism during the fire, and they offered to make a
• 26:44
  charity appearance at the school's spring formal.
• 26:49
  I mean, they've nailed how offensive that band, like the
• 26:53
  kind of the bit where they compare themselves.
• 26:55
  Do you want to be as rich as Adam Levine from Maroon 5?
• 26:58
  It's like you have absolutely nailed what this band is all
• 27:03
  about. And like that era of music, it's
• 27:05
  so there's such douchebags of like the next level.
• 27:09
  And they're not, they're not hot either.
• 27:11
  There's like nothing about them that you're like, kind of.
• 27:14
  I thought Adam Brody was kind of hot.
• 27:16
  Oh, you're gross. You're losing.
• 27:18
  Both of you are losers. Disgusting.
• 27:22
  I was surprised to be feeling that way.
• 27:24
  I've never thought him hot before, but yeah.
• 27:30
  Yeah, I find him hot in a very, you know, textbook way.
• 27:34
  I'm not, I'm not bothered, but I definitely think he's at the hot
• 27:38
  end of the scale. Wow.
• 27:39
  But he is, I kind of like though that they make he's, he's very
• 27:45
  like boy next door, isn't he? And it's kind of this unassuming
• 27:48
  guy turning out to be the worst man rather than it being like
• 27:54
  stereotypical popular boy or I don't, I don't know that it felt
• 27:59
  like there was a bit of subversion in, in having him be
• 28:01
  the the nasty guy. I just saw him as the complete
• 28:06
  prick from day the first time he went on though.
• 28:09
  Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, he was obviously meant to
• 28:13
  seem like a cunt, but he he wasn't like a Chad.
• 28:19
  No, but I think that says something about this.
• 28:22
  Strange apex of indie culture in 2009, where Chad culture and
• 28:29
  indie culture kind of came together briefly and like The
• 28:32
  Killers or whatever. And it was just so normal.
• 28:34
  And Adam Levine as well, just so, so normal to be like a
• 28:37
  normie hot guy ostensibly doing indie music.
• 28:41
  But actually then their whole motivation is to like get really
• 28:44
  big, make loads of money. Like they're not at all indie.
• 28:47
  They don't really have those credentials.
• 28:49
  Sexist. So then a month later, Jennifer
• 28:54
  becomes ill and listless. She accepts a date with school
• 28:58
  emo Colin Ish. How did you feel about that,
• 29:03
  that Colin representation? I thought, I thought Colin, I
• 29:09
  thought high school Colin was, was kind of, well, he was very
• 29:12
  familiar. There's there's a Colin in every
• 29:15
  high school. Yeah, and they're never, it's,
• 29:18
  it's never the person you want to be.
• 29:20
  Well, it was interesting how they contrasted Colin being this
• 29:24
  like supposedly quite smart guy he was.
• 29:28
  He was like a great writer or something.
• 29:30
  I think Needy is talking about him being a good writer and he
• 29:32
  he obviously looks like he's really alternative because he's
• 29:35
  this big emo with like lip piercing and a little tie and
• 29:38
  all of the accoutrements and eyeliner and stuff.
• 29:41
  But ultimately this is so true to life.
• 29:44
  The girl at school who he fancies as the fucking normal
• 29:47
  girl, The normal hot girl he doesn't fancy, The alternative
• 29:50
  girls he's not interested in, like finding a girl in a band or
• 29:53
  whatever. He's just like, no, I'm just
• 29:54
  going to ask out the hottest girl in school.
• 29:56
  So real. What's the point of being alt if
• 30:01
  you're not going to go out with your own kind, you know?
• 30:03
  Totally. But that's like, yeah, it's
• 30:05
  every man in this movie. There are no one can.
• 30:08
  They're all thinking with their Dick.
• 30:10
  Yeah, because even good old Chip was swayed in the end, wasn't
• 30:13
  it? Yeah.
• 30:15
  Loyal. Damning anyway Jennifer, she
• 30:18
  invites Colin to an abandoned house where she brutally kills
• 30:22
  and devours him while Needy and her boyfriend Chip have sex.
• 30:26
  Needy senses something dreadful has happened and has a
• 30:28
  disturbing vision of a demonic Jennifer.
• 30:31
  She runs home, but on the way is accosted by Jennifer, who is
• 30:35
  drenched in blood. After making it home unhurt,
• 30:39
  Needy finds a revitalized and amorous Jennifer in her bed.
• 30:42
  Oh, amorous Jennifer attempts to seduce Needy by kissing her, and
• 30:48
  Needy's kind of into it. But then she comes to her senses
• 30:51
  and demands to know what's going on.
• 30:53
  And this is where we find out what's happened to Jennifer.
• 30:56
  So Jennifer reveals that Low Shoulder had taken her into the
• 30:59
  woods after the bar fire and offered her as a virgin
• 31:02
  sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune.
• 31:06
  Although the sacrifice was a success, Jennifer was not
• 31:08
  actually a virgin, so she became permanently possessed.
• 31:12
  She became hungry, and Ahmed, a foreign exchange student who was
• 31:17
  thought to have died in the fire, was her first victim.
• 31:20
  She was going to eat needy as well, but left because she
• 31:22
  couldn't bring herself to hurt her best friend.
• 31:25
  But basically when she's eaten, she can withstand virtually any
• 31:30
  injury without pain healing instantly.
• 31:33
  That's some X-Men shit, as she says.
• 31:34
  And she gets some great hair as well.
• 31:37
  Yeah, she gets great hair. I love that shot of her walking
• 31:39
  slow motion down the hallway, which is obviously a staple of
• 31:42
  every teen film, but they've graded it so that she's, like,
• 31:45
  in Technicolor and everyone else is Gray.
• 31:47
  It's like, so it's so good. So that Needy goes to the school
• 31:52
  library's a cult section and determines that Jennifer is a
• 31:55
  succubus who must feed on flesh and can only be killed while
• 31:58
  she's hungry and weak. Now, Yes.
• 32:01
  Any time someone goes to a library or googles something, a
• 32:05
  cult, you were you were in camp territory.
• 32:07
  It's one of my camp clues for sure.
• 32:09
  It's my favorite thing to see. Yeah.
• 32:12
  Why does their library why does this Minnesota high school have
• 32:15
  an occult section in the library?
• 32:17
  There's kind of a similar thing in the Craft, isn't there, where
• 32:19
  they go to like the mall, like a shop that seems to be just like,
• 32:24
  not, not a mall shop, but a very normal looking shop that sells
• 32:27
  like, you know, popery bits and bobs, bits of inserts in it.
• 32:31
  And then a magic book of dark spells is just like tucked in
• 32:34
  there. Yeah, for anyone to get like
• 32:37
  1999. You just have to deal with the
• 32:41
  like woman who works there with a confusing accent.
• 32:43
  Oh, she's fucking crazy, that woman.
• 32:45
  I'm just remembering her now. Yeah, A.
• 32:46
  Natural witch you. Must invoke the Spirit.
• 32:51
  Needy tells Chip about Jennifer, but he doesn't believe her, so
• 32:54
  she breaks up with him in order to protect him.
• 32:57
  Jennifer intercepts Chip on the way to the school dance and lies
• 33:00
  to him, saying that Needy has been cheating on him with Colin.
• 33:04
  She takes him to an abandoned pool and begins feeding on him.
• 33:07
  Needy arrives and Chip impales Jennifer through the stomach
• 33:10
  with a pool skimmer. Jennifer, however, has eaten
• 33:13
  just enough to survive the injury, removes the pool
• 33:16
  skimmer, and escapes while Chip dies.
• 33:19
  Wah wah. I think this climax scene is so
• 33:22
  good. I think it's the best part of
• 33:24
  the movie. I think it looks great.
• 33:26
  It looks so expensive. And the floating, The hovering.
• 33:31
  Yeah, the hovering, not flying. She can.
• 33:35
  Fly. She's just hovering.
• 33:37
  It's not that impressive. Just it's like a good set piece
• 33:40
  moment in the movie, I think. Needy breaks into Jennifer's
• 33:43
  bedroom and the two fight and Jennifer bites Needy shoulder.
• 33:47
  In the struggle, Needy rips Jennifer's best friend necklace
• 33:50
  off her neck and Jennifer stops fighting back and and Needy
• 33:55
  stabs her in the heart with a box cutter my tits.
• 34:02
  It kills her and destroys the demon.
• 34:05
  Jennifer's mother enters and finds Needy on top of her dead
• 34:07
  daughter's body, implicating her as the killer and resulting in
• 34:11
  Needy's imprisonment. Needy manifests some of
• 34:13
  Jennifer's supernatural powers due to the bite and escapes
• 34:16
  Cement of Facility and chases down the members of Low Shoulder
• 34:19
  and kills them. OK, that's the plot.
• 34:23
  Where do we want to start? I got some, I got some plot
• 34:26
  holes, but I mean, do we care about these?
• 34:29
  What are your plot holes? What are they?
• 34:31
  I just have one that does bother me a bit.
• 34:33
  So very early on, they go to this bar called, What's it
• 34:39
  called again, the melody. Melody Lane, Yeah.
• 34:41
  Melody Lane and they're watching low shoulder and Jennifer is
• 34:48
  like transfixed, but not just normal transfix.
• 34:52
  Like I, I kind of fancy this lead singer, but she does seem
• 34:56
  to be somewhere else mentally. And she continues to seem kind
• 34:59
  of somewhere else mentally until the moment she gets in their van
• 35:03
  faithfully and she squeezes Needy's hand so tightly that she
• 35:09
  leaves white marks on her hand when she lets go.
• 35:13
  And then this fire engulfs the bar in a way that's like, not
• 35:18
  like a normal fire just starting and spreading and Oh no, let's
• 35:21
  get it. Just it, it, it spreads like
• 35:24
  it's been planted, like it's been blown up almost.
• 35:27
  And I just wonder if there's meant to be some suggestion that
• 35:30
  there's some kind of other almost like telekinetic power
• 35:34
  that Jennifer is already channelling.
• 35:36
  Because The thing is, when she becomes a demon, she's not,
• 35:41
  she's not OK. So her behaviors changed
• 35:43
  slightly. But like, her personality
• 35:45
  doesn't really change very much. She doesn't like turn evil or
• 35:47
  anything. And I just wondered what we're
• 35:49
  meant to make of the fact that there's this very intense fire
• 35:53
  that happens at the exact moment that they're having this intense
• 35:56
  but kind of violent bond. Yeah, my sense on it is that the
• 36:02
  band who are already tattooed with Like Devil, some kind of
• 36:07
  worship, it's all part of this ritual that they've already
• 36:10
  started at. That I think that's how I saw it
• 36:12
  as well, like, you know, like a kind of how vampires can kind of
• 36:15
  lure in people. Yeah, and like the fire is all
• 36:19
  part, it's like the rituals kind of already underway.
• 36:21
  I think it if that is the case, they could have shown that in
• 36:26
  the flashback too. A little bit just a nod to it
• 36:28
  because I do think the fire does seem kind of weird and then they
• 36:32
  don't really deal with it. That does make sense, though.
• 36:36
  Perhaps it's part of their their sort of satanic skullduggery,
• 36:40
  but they also seem a little bit like they don't know what
• 36:42
  they're doing with. Them you know you have to.
• 36:44
  Print off the ritual on online. Yeah, it didn't.
• 36:49
  It didn't totally work, but. I mean, I don't think the plot
• 36:53
  is particularly realistic. I mean, I'm not an expert but.
• 36:57
  I'm not. I'm not bothered about that
• 36:59
  stuff generally, but I just wonder if we're supposed to
• 37:01
  think that there was some other background sort of demonic thing
• 37:08
  happening because because of this, I guess that you can see
• 37:12
  already that she's violent. But maybe we already know that,
• 37:15
  don't we? We already know that she's kind
• 37:16
  of violent and she just doesn't treat needy with care.
• 37:20
  But it just seems like such a coincidence that she'd be so
• 37:24
  wrapped up and and so full of this intensity that a fire
• 37:28
  starts because she's just so like overflowing with sexual
• 37:34
  energy. That's that is her character,
• 37:36
  isn't it? It's that I guess this is the
• 37:38
  main the main theme that I am reading off of it as someone who
• 37:42
  was once a teenage girl, is this era when girls are hitting their
• 37:49
  kind of sexual, not exactly maturity, but sort of readiness
• 37:53
  and availability at slightly different points as well in high
• 37:57
  school and suddenly having to like understand their own
• 38:01
  friends and their own circles quite differently because of
• 38:05
  basically how everyone's turned out individually.
• 38:09
  You know, like what Jennifer has isn't really within her control.
• 38:11
  Just like even though if needy just took off the glasses, she
• 38:15
  could be Amanda Seyfried and everything would be different.
• 38:17
  But it's not just about like, oh, I'm kind of a dork and I'm
• 38:21
  doing, you know, I'm doing my meek thing over here.
• 38:25
  There is also just the blatant like aesthetic fascism of high
• 38:32
  school where people get deemed the hot 1 and that just shapes
• 38:36
  their personality. You know, it turns people crazy
• 38:38
  and it and it happens to girls just as much like, well, more
• 38:41
  obviously, because being the object of of people's attention
• 38:45
  so much. And I guess I see it as partly
• 38:48
  some kind of fable about how young women deal with becoming
• 38:54
  like, sexual, becoming visibly sexualized and becoming the
• 38:59
  subject of everyone's, you know, the male gaze, but everybody's
• 39:03
  gaze ultimately, and the kind of madness that that inspires at
• 39:06
  that age. Yeah, Well, Megan Fox has said
• 39:09
  she was bullied really badly in high school because people
• 39:12
  thought she was too hot. Too hot.
• 39:15
  Yeah. And like.
• 39:16
  Bullied for being too. Hot and like someone came
• 39:19
  dressed as her for Halloween once.
• 39:21
  Like she was relentlessly bullied, she said.
• 39:25
  Oh, Boo Hoo, bitch. I know it's a big Boo Hoo, isn't
• 39:29
  it? But it is.
• 39:29
  I mean, you know, everyone can get bullied for everything
• 39:32
  because it's not great, blah, blah, blah, but it's also just
• 39:34
  like, read the room, darling. Do you know what I mean?
• 39:36
  Totally, totally, But it. Wouldn't it would have been
• 39:39
  bullying that would have taken the form of like a slut shaming
• 39:42
  as well. It would have been about
• 39:44
  implying things about her sexual behaviour that were, you know,
• 39:49
  may or may not have been true. Sure, of course, right?
• 39:53
  But then at the same time, it's the privilege of being beautiful
• 39:56
  that has given her this. But that comes later in a way
• 39:59
  doesn't. It yeah, but it's, it's all kind
• 40:01
  of pretty privileged links to so much stuff though.
• 40:03
  And it's like, there's such shaming I'm not here for, but
• 40:06
  like, yeah, I'm a bit like, boohoo.
• 40:09
  Yeah, I think, I think she would also recognise that.
• 40:12
  Like it's, it's, it's, it's both.
• 40:15
  But she's she said like about Me Too, for example, that she's
• 40:20
  never she's got Me too stories, but she's never felt like she
• 40:23
  could share them because she doesn't feel welcome in
• 40:26
  feminism, because people think she's a slut.
• 40:30
  People think she's a hot girl. People think she's asking for
• 40:32
  it. And that's like, yeah, that's
• 40:35
  pretty fucked up. And it's kind of what this
• 40:37
  movie's about too. It's it's so interesting.
• 40:40
  There is something very specific about her look, you know, as as
• 40:45
  natural as it is, in some ways, it's hard to describe what
• 40:50
  exactly is about her face that is so much more.
• 40:52
  She's not simply a a beautiful leading actress or a kind of
• 40:58
  what would the word be? You know, she's not pretty.
• 41:01
  She's not sort of an interesting looking face.
• 41:04
  She's not sort of a handsome woman.
• 41:06
  She is like a very. Hot girl.
• 41:10
  Like she looks pornographic that whatever it is about the way
• 41:14
  that her face and body are put together it.
• 41:17
  Yeah, I can see how that is kind of difficult, difficult to get
• 41:21
  out of without changing your face.
• 41:22
  I mean, in in many ways she looks quite natural.
• 41:25
  Like that's obviously her natural face.
• 41:27
  She's got nice hair and everything, but she's not really
• 41:28
  doing extra things to herself to look like that.
• 41:31
  So. But that's kind of the power of
• 41:34
  her as a as an actress. I mean, I remember her coming
• 41:36
  along and being this immediate, huge, like, hit basically like
• 41:42
  the, the, you know, there were immediately posters of Megan Fox
• 41:45
  for your bedroom who have this bedroom.
• 41:48
  And she was like a like Angelina Jolie but also a porn star kind
• 41:53
  of thing. I guess it would be hard for her
• 41:56
  to, I don't know, like, navigate around that while also being an
• 42:01
  actress. Like, what else can you do?
• 42:02
  Yeah. How much can you really change
• 42:04
  your look? It's kind of impossible to talk
• 42:07
  about this movie without talking about like the Megan Fox effect.
• 42:12
  They're so they're so tied in this really interesting way.
• 42:16
  I think she's really good in it also.
• 42:18
  Oh, she's amazing in it. Like, she's so great in it,
• 42:21
  like, like such strong comedic timing throughout.
• 42:26
  And there's like a darkness to her.
• 42:28
  And that kind of makes me think of like Christina Ricci with the
• 42:31
  kind of the way that she plays some of the stuff like, yeah, I
• 42:34
  think for like, considering this is like a predominantly a
• 42:36
  comedy, her performance is actually really nuanced.
• 42:40
  I think it's. Yeah, yeah, she brings some real
• 42:42
  vulnerability at times, too. Like it's really layered.
• 42:47
  But also she just she delivers the lines the way they need to
• 42:50
  be delivered. She need, you know, the kind of
• 42:53
  sort of possessed, crazed sort of power that she's got and
• 42:59
  getting off on it and then sort of mixing that with in with a
• 43:02
  high school kind of, you know, but I'm still socially relevant.
• 43:05
  Those kind of insecurities that kind of not important, but are
• 43:09
  so important at the time. I just think it's she's great in
• 43:11
  it. And I think the connection she
• 43:13
  has with Amanda is again, like, although they're like meant to
• 43:17
  be different types of people and you kind of aren't really sure
• 43:20
  why they're friends. I definitely get like they're
• 43:23
  really watchable together on screen.
• 43:25
  And that's not because I'm just like, oh, they're hot.
• 43:27
  I want them to les off with each other.
• 43:28
  They are. They have like a really great
• 43:31
  connection. Yeah, I agree.
• 43:35
  I agree. Do you know about what happened
• 43:37
  with her in Transformers? A bit, didn't she?
• 43:40
  I don't really know. It wasn't.
• 43:41
  So she kind of BAE or something? Yeah.
• 43:43
  So the second one came out the summer before this movie, and
• 43:46
  she went in the press saying that he was kind of difficult to
• 43:51
  work with, but in a kind of naive way.
• 43:53
  She was 22. She kind of didn't really think
• 43:56
  about what she was saying and she kind of implied that he was
• 43:58
  quite difficult to work with and.
• 44:02
  But she did specifically say to use the a few words that went
• 44:06
  down very badly. Yeah, she just.
• 44:08
  She said he was trying to be like Hitler on his set, which
• 44:11
  she hadn't meant she. Hadn't had her mediation.
• 44:13
  Yeah, exactly. She hadn't meant in some kind of
• 44:15
  anti-Semitic way. She just thought that was the
• 44:17
  thing that you could say. But she was trying to make a
• 44:20
  point that he was difficult. But so then a bunch of crew from
• 44:24
  Transformers wrote an open letter where they called her
• 44:28
  basically a slut, a porn star, an ungrateful bitch, unfriendly,
• 44:33
  graceless, classless, thankless. And he put that on his website
• 44:38
  even though he hadn't signed it. And basically he basically tried
• 44:42
  to trash her career. This all happened two weeks
• 44:46
  before this movie came out. And so she was in the midst of
• 44:49
  this like big public backlash where everyone was being like,
• 44:52
  oh, we knew she was a talentless bitch.
• 44:55
  It's now we're finally getting it confirmed what we all thought
• 44:58
  because there's no way someone that hot could be a good
• 45:01
  actress. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:02
  She must be a bitch. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:04
  And so I think that was a real reason, another reason why this
• 45:08
  movie didn't do well, because she was going through this weird
• 45:14
  public backlash. And the movie was, and the
• 45:17
  people back, the people who were doing that backlash, were the
• 45:21
  people this movie was being marketed to, who they shouldn't
• 45:23
  have been marketed to in the first place.
• 45:27
  I was thinking about this with just in terms of the time,
• 45:32
  trying to transport myself back to 2009 to remember what it was
• 45:35
  like. But so I noticed that when this
• 45:38
  story got written up in the publication Deadline, which is
• 45:43
  like Hollywood industry publication, basically the
• 45:47
  headline was Michael Bay's crew bitch slaps Megan Fox, and they
• 45:52
  quoted generously from it. And we're very happy to kind of
• 45:56
  of fuel it basically as industry gossip without really thinking
• 46:00
  about the, the, the fallout for anyone.
• 46:03
  And then it seemed as if then later, Michael Bay kind of
• 46:06
  stepped in to try to distance himself from, from the open
• 46:09
  letter and said something that was more positive about Megan.
• 46:13
  And oh, she's so fun and crazy to work with.
• 46:15
  That's why I like working with her, ha, ha.
• 46:18
  But of course, then she didn't get invited back to do
• 46:20
  Transformers 3, which who knows, maybe that's a good thing in the
• 46:24
  end. But it, it made me think that so
• 46:29
  Britney shaved her head in 2006 and actually those years from
• 46:35
  say 2000 and like 3 to 9, the way that tabloid gossip was just
• 46:43
  this like world whirlwind around celebrity women in that era is
• 46:49
  actually, I think really almost like impossible to imagine now
• 46:53
  or not impossible to imagine because I, I do remember, But
• 46:55
  like the, the tone of how famous women were talked about was
• 47:00
  actually, I think really, really, really different.
• 47:02
  And the carelessness, the callousness with which famous
• 47:08
  women were discussed and dissected and criticized openly,
• 47:13
  especially when they were like 19 years old or 21 years old was
• 47:17
  totally off the course at the time.
• 47:19
  And it just it, it was, it was a weird moment where there didn't
• 47:23
  seem to be a way of like intervening in that discourse.
• 47:26
  And it was just, it just happened.
• 47:28
  They were just like wobbly bodies on the front of Heat
• 47:31
  magazine with like circles around them pointing at people's
• 47:34
  Cellulite and whatever. And people just kind of ate that
• 47:37
  up for a good five years. And what occurred to me was a
• 47:40
  little bit different only a few years later.
• 47:43
  Actually. I don't know how much difference
• 47:45
  this necessarily made, but Twitter and I guess Tumblr and
• 47:50
  other things like that. But I do think that there was a
• 47:52
  moment when Twitter was reaching its sort of early peaks in like
• 47:57
  2000 and 1112. But there was this real sense of
• 48:00
  there being a kind of public forum again, where people,
• 48:05
  normal people could say things, start conversations and kind of
• 48:08
  steer the discourse in different ways.
• 48:10
  And like, you know, on one hand, you'd have the kind of
• 48:15
  especially large presence of black people on Twitter, like
• 48:18
  black hashtag, black Twitter. There was just a lot of like a
• 48:22
  really big user base among black Americans, which really helped
• 48:26
  to sort of steer discourse in different directions, I think.
• 48:28
  And yeah, just maybe more women and more like bloggers and fans
• 48:35
  becoming critics or or fandoms becoming more powerful.
• 48:39
  I just wonder if a few years later already there was a shift
• 48:43
  in how people even, Yeah, would have discussed a famous woman
• 48:47
  and this was maybe the very end of of that culture.
• 48:50
  That's kind of how I remember it, anyway.
• 48:53
  Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, a lot of people credit
• 48:56
  Twitter for rehabilitating this movie as well.
• 49:00
  That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 49:02
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 49:03
  I mean, it, it can't be rehabilitated unless you have a,
• 49:05
  a kind of fan culture around it of people talking about it and
• 49:10
  and sharing quotes and I mean, you know what Tumblr gifts, I
• 49:13
  bet, I bet the GIF of her with the little.
• 49:16
  With the lighter. Hot Yeah.
• 49:17
  The lighter. Oh yeah, definitely.
• 49:19
  God yeah. And the little zippy uppy hot
• 49:22
  hoodie. It's just really good raw
• 49:25
  material for a little gift with a quote on.
• 49:28
  It I, I also think the film hasn't really aged actually very
• 49:32
  much. And I know it's sort of very
• 49:33
  like 2000, but you see so many films, especially like, you
• 49:38
  know, teen horror films that are like, there's that one on
• 49:41
  Netflix, which is like the kind of Fear St.
• 49:44
  RL Stein one. And they're all set in the kind
• 49:46
  of like 90s or naughties as well.
• 49:48
  There's like a real like common aesthetic to kind of go back to
• 49:52
  those times. And so I just when I watched
• 49:54
  this the other day, I was literally like, this still holds
• 49:58
  up. It doesn't really.
• 50:01
  Yeah. I just, I think there's
• 50:02
  something about it. I can understand why like
• 50:05
  younger people would discover it and would enjoy it.
• 50:08
  Yeah. Being a younger person, no.
• 50:10
  But do you know what I mean? I just feel like it doesn't feel
• 50:12
  like, yeah, it's kind of like, I don't know, the whip feels kind
• 50:16
  of still punchy to me. It's still.
• 50:18
  I agree. Yeah, I think a lot of the
• 50:19
  dialogue is really, still really funny.
• 50:23
  Some of it hasn't aged that well, but like a lot of it, it's
• 50:26
  still is like surprising, shocking funny.
• 50:31
  Let's all start using Weddy. It's so good.
• 50:36
  But do you know what else was kind of going on?
• 50:38
  And I do, I do remember this because I remember watching Juno
• 50:41
  and thinking, oh, that's quite fun, but it's a bit twee and
• 50:46
  annoying as well. And the general response to Juno
• 50:49
  was a little bit of that too. Like people acknowledge that it
• 50:52
  was quite powerful and and unique, but also a little bit
• 50:57
  twee and annoying. And it was a lot to do with that
• 51:00
  dialogue and the kind of made-up slang and the slightly surreal
• 51:08
  twist on how teenagers speak almost maybe like that film
• 51:11
  Brick, although I haven't seen that in a long time.
• 51:13
  Like something like that where you're trying to kind of invent,
• 51:17
  yeah, a little bit like teenagers talking way too much
• 51:19
  like adults. But then also with these weird
• 51:22
  slangy jokes that, yeah, some of it's funny and some of it feels
• 51:26
  a bit a bit try hard maybe. But like Diablo Cody was first
• 51:31
  time screenwriter, right? Like Juno is the first thing she
• 51:34
  wrote. So this is like the second thing
• 51:37
  that she ever wrote, which is kind of crazy even even just
• 51:40
  that. But I I wonder if at the time
• 51:42
  there was just also a bit of a rejection of the style, like
• 51:48
  people were a bit, I don't know, a bit icked out by some of the
• 51:53
  twee flavor of Juno. And I do think some of the humor
• 51:57
  in this is a bit like labored, you know, some of the kind of
• 52:03
  word play, whatever it's it's it's a lot.
• 52:06
  Or maybe maybe it's like not enough.
• 52:08
  There's like a lot of jokes, but maybe there could be more jokes.
• 52:10
  Maybe it's not like as heightened.
• 52:12
  See, This is why I do side with some of the reviewers who are
• 52:14
  like, it's not scary enough or funny enough, because I do think
• 52:17
  it could have been a little bit more chaotic and funny, possibly
• 52:23
  like more characters. One thing I just thought was I
• 52:26
  wish there was like one other friend to balance their.
• 52:30
  Or is that just two teen girl movie?
• 52:32
  There have to be like at least three or four girls.
• 52:35
  Yeah, I guess it's Chip kind of filling that role.
• 52:38
  Oh yeah, I guess he is. Yeah, Poor Chip.
• 52:41
  Poor. Chip.
• 52:41
  Oh, he deserved to die. Yeah.
• 52:44
  Kill him. I mean, we're just, we're in,
• 52:47
  we're watching a movie where Megan Fox is eating men.
• 52:53
  I mean, I'm just sorry. I'm just like, that is just.
• 52:56
  That has so much joy to me and the fact that they have to be
• 53:00
  terrified is one of the conditions that's the they have.
• 53:02
  She has to scare the shit out of them to eat them.
• 53:05
  I'm sorry. That to me is just a big huge
• 53:07
  tick from the get go. It's like I wouldn't see her
• 53:11
  kill more people. I know, I think it's so great.
• 53:15
  If anything, I also wish she'd been a little bit more like
• 53:18
  explicitly vengeful. I think that would have been an
• 53:21
  interesting layer to her character.
• 53:23
  Like because she would have so much righteous anger.
• 53:25
  All these men fucking murdered her.
• 53:27
  Like I wish we kind of she was almost like an anti hero.
• 53:31
  Like she's doing this because like she's going to make men
• 53:33
  fucking pay. I wish there was a bit of that.
• 53:37
  Yeah, well, she was doing it so that her hair would be shiny.
• 53:41
  Which is also, you know, valid. I I had a question for baby
• 53:47
  actually, because I was. Thinking.
• 53:52
  Because I'm thinking about your your rules for Camp Classic.
• 53:56
  And I guess my question, because I mean, I did mention this to
• 53:59
  Crystal when we watched it too. But I guess my question is that
• 54:02
  I very much see it as a film about the horrors of teen girl
• 54:08
  friendship and the intensity and sort of almost irrational
• 54:12
  violence that's like bubbling underneath your supposed like
• 54:16
  BFF heart necklaces. And I guess even though
• 54:22
  apparently critics didn't understand this at the time,
• 54:24
  clearly this is a film that is very much for for women and
• 54:28
  teenage girls like it. To me, that's the target market.
• 54:30
  That's like who it's about and who it's for.
• 54:34
  And I, I suppose what I'm curious about is how, how you
• 54:38
  would sort of describe like the impact of a film like this in
• 54:46
  terms of its queer joy, Like what is the actual, I mean,
• 54:49
  obviously Megan Fox eating men. I I sort of get that bit.
• 54:52
  But I'd I'd really like to hear from you more about what makes
• 54:55
  that a set up like a a channel for quiz.
• 54:58
  I also, but I also related a lot to the friendships and that kind
• 55:02
  of levels of like sort of you're so obsessed with each other, but
• 55:05
  there's that one thing that's kind of preventing you from.
• 55:10
  I like that obsession and that closeness and that kind of hurt
• 55:13
  when like a friend is with someone else or they, they get a
• 55:17
  partner and stuff. And so that to me, I really,
• 55:20
  really related to and like and that kind of how unhealthy it
• 55:23
  can get and how you can and actually, and it's that thing.
• 55:26
  It's like, I think it's like obviously like the line about my
• 55:30
  tit. I just think is genius at the
• 55:32
  end, but like you can really hurt like and it break.
• 55:36
  It can really RIP you apart when you have these kind of fallouts
• 55:38
  with your friends. And I just as like a teen, I
• 55:41
  think I kind of went through a very sort of similar emotional
• 55:46
  sort of journey. So that's how I related to that.
• 55:47
  But then I think just generally I just, I enjoy seeing rage on
• 55:52
  screen when it's in, when it's in a kind of a fun, a fun
• 55:58
  framework that you can kind of lose yourself in.
• 56:01
  And it's a bit dreamlike. So obviously if this was someone
• 56:04
  who was actually a cannibal eating people, it would be
• 56:09
  problematic. But the fact is, is this is a
• 56:11
  fantasy film. And ultimately someone has had
• 56:14
  something awful happen to her, but she's managed to get power
• 56:17
  and within that power is now rampaging and kind of destroying
• 56:23
  that culture that kind of did this to her.
• 56:25
  So I think for me, that's, that's what the queer joy is
• 56:27
  because it's it's kind of, you know, straight Hetchenormativity
• 56:31
  does this to people. But then, you know, if you're
• 56:34
  pushed far enough, you come back and you're going to just
• 56:37
  dismantle it and destroy it. So I think so basically anything
• 56:41
  where like straight men are being killed, I sort of tend to
• 56:44
  kind of be on board with really. Yeah, I totally agree.
• 56:49
  And I would also add to that I was thinking about this too as
• 56:52
  well to the child, Like what? What?
• 56:54
  Where does the queer joy come from in this movie?
• 56:56
  And beyond what everything baby just said, which I completely
• 56:59
  agree with, I think there's also something about the subversion
• 57:03
  in this movie as well, where the damsel is is swapped.
• 57:09
  The damsel in this movie is a man.
• 57:11
  There's a his girlfriend's gonna try and save him, like fringing,
• 57:16
  which is this thing. If people listening don't know,
• 57:18
  it's just where like a a male hero's girlfriend gets killed to
• 57:22
  further the plot that's subverted, that's flipped.
• 57:25
  So I think there's so much that feels like it's turning kind of
• 57:30
  normative culture on its head in this movie, which I think where
• 57:34
  people always really respond to. That makes loads of sense.
• 57:39
  And maybe it's an example where the the any boundary between a
• 57:44
  sort of queer joy and feminist joy is is dissolved.
• 57:48
  Yeah, because I'm enjoying it for all the same reasons, I
• 57:50
  suppose. But.
• 57:51
  But I haven't, I hadn't put it together in that way.
• 57:53
  And I think what you were saying about rage and violence being
• 57:58
  presented in like a surreal way is really crucial somehow.
• 58:03
  Because obviously there are lots of like, you know, macho
• 58:09
  heteronormative, like action movies where rage and violence
• 58:11
  just happens and it's dark and thrilling and, you know,
• 58:16
  fulfills a lot of familiar, like societal norms about who gets to
• 58:20
  be a hero and all this stuff. But when it's surreal and and
• 58:26
  subverting the norms, but also subverting like the laws of
• 58:30
  physics, maybe that's maybe that's what's partly so
• 58:35
  thrilling or or like, I don't know, engaging because it's it's
• 58:38
  this, yeah, alternative. World I think what you're saying
• 58:40
  about like the surreal that's definitely and I think that's
• 58:42
  something I enjoy like that kind of dark humour of like like
• 58:46
  we're talking about like she doesn't really have much
• 58:49
  motivation, but I kind of like that sweet spot that we're still
• 58:52
  in a teen movie and at the end of the day, she is still just
• 58:55
  like a vacuous teenager and actually being hot is the most
• 58:58
  important thing right now because she's she's not thought
• 59:00
  about like, oh, OK, so now I'm this demon like what's what does
• 59:04
  that look like on a bigger worldwide thing?
• 59:06
  Are we going to start, you know, farming these men?
• 59:08
  And how are we going to kind of like, it's like, no, I, I, I
• 59:12
  look shit and it's even like, and again, like I love how like
• 59:15
  needy sort of references, you know, if she doesn't feed for
• 59:18
  long enough, she looks really awful.
• 59:20
  Well, by her standards, she's still hot.
• 59:22
  So I kind of love that sort of stupid sweet stuff that again,
• 59:25
  it's they're still just teenagers and actually they
• 59:28
  can't really see beyond. And also as well needy saying
• 59:31
  when Chip is dying and they're sort of saying they love each
• 59:34
  other. I'm sorry, I did not get that
• 59:37
  those two were in a loving relationship.
• 59:38
  Like when he is having sex with her and she's kind of having the
• 59:42
  flashback connection with Megan Fox's character and she's like
• 59:46
  screaming and like he's literally just like, am I too
• 59:49
  big for you? Am I too big for you?
• 59:51
  Just like, oh, this is not the person she needs to be with.
• 59:54
  And so that that to me again, felt like just this performative
• 59:58
  thing that people that are teenagers say to each other,
• 1:00:01
  like, I love you just because it's kind of like you feel you
• 1:00:03
  have to. She doesn't love.
• 1:00:05
  She loved. She loved it.
• 1:00:07
  They could have had a beautiful relationship together, her.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah, I want to talk about the the lesbian kind of undertones
• 1:00:17
  or not of this movie a bit. Like, do you think I couldn't
• 1:00:20
  quite decide what the movie wanted to say about that, like
• 1:00:22
  whether or not Needy was in the closet and or if it was just
• 1:00:27
  like she wasn't quite sure it what her feelings were for
• 1:00:31
  Jennifer because she's like obsessed with her and she's
• 1:00:35
  like, not sure if that's going to a sexual place or not.
• 1:00:38
  That lesbian kiss was really hot, but it didn't quite feel
• 1:00:43
  like the movie had like prepped it in enough.
• 1:00:46
  It's almost like it needed a little bit more lesbianism or a
• 1:00:48
  little bit less. I don't know.
• 1:00:51
  Like I think if it made if it was made now, they would just
• 1:00:53
  make Needy gay. That would.
• 1:00:56
  The thing is that would change the dynamic because it would be
• 1:00:58
  about it would make it seem as if the reason she was obsessed
• 1:01:02
  with Jennifer is because she's a lesbian Jennifer's heart and
• 1:01:06
  she's got this obsession, you know, like in like in that film
• 1:01:09
  bottoms, you know, where it's like they start the Fight Club
• 1:01:11
  so that they can like latch on the cheerleaders genius premise.
• 1:01:15
  But but no, it's not that. It's that it's that when you're
• 1:01:18
  that age and you're in a really tight friendship with your
• 1:01:22
  tight, tight girlfriends who you've known since you were
• 1:01:24
  children and you're also becoming, you know, sexually
• 1:01:28
  like alive in the world, you don't even know if you fancy
• 1:01:33
  your friends a lot. Maybe.
• 1:01:34
  I think it's, I think it's, I think it's to do with the weird
• 1:01:38
  lack of boundaries with such intense friendships and how
• 1:01:42
  maybe a lot of teenage girls feel those feelings.
• 1:01:48
  I mean, I, I definitely feel looking back that my closest
• 1:01:53
  group of teenage girlfriends would just all kind of like very
• 1:01:59
  aware of each other's like, like low level bisexuality.
• 1:02:03
  Even though we, we, we fancied boys and we dated boys, but we
• 1:02:07
  talked about hot women all the time and we looked at famous hot
• 1:02:10
  women all the time. You know, we'd be like, wow,
• 1:02:12
  Britney Spears so hot, Angelina Jolie so hot.
• 1:02:15
  And, you know, and we really, I felt like our friendship was so
• 1:02:18
  close and we were so wrapped up in what it was to be a woman and
• 1:02:24
  of what it is to, like, look like a woman as well and become
• 1:02:27
  a woman, that all of that becomes a sort of yeah, like
• 1:02:32
  psychosexual sort of yeah. Whirlwind that you're in at that
• 1:02:35
  time. So yeah, you end up kissing your
• 1:02:37
  friend. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:39
  I just think it was like it just happens.
• 1:02:40
  That's cool that. Was my read.
• 1:02:42
  I think I felt a bit like when they kiss, it kind of did a
• 1:02:44
  disservice to the the plot line about their friendship being so
• 1:02:48
  fraught because it almost, it kind of changed it.
• 1:02:51
  But I think hearing you explain that, it makes a lot of sense.
• 1:02:54
  It's just very nuanced and kind of true to true to life.
• 1:02:59
  It's complicated, basically. And the movie.
• 1:03:01
  And she. Throws away and she's like wow,
• 1:03:02
  why am I doing? This.
• 1:03:03
  Yeah, Yeah. Cool.
• 1:03:07
  I don't know. What did you think, baby?
• 1:03:09
  Well, I kind of I did because there were a couple of other
• 1:03:11
  sort of things that signify there's that kind of potential
• 1:03:15
  for crossover in the film, like the holding the hands.
• 1:03:18
  I know that you've got a slightly different reading of
• 1:03:20
  that book. I kind of got that as like needy
• 1:03:24
  sort of showing some affection in the moment and then it kind
• 1:03:28
  of being cut off from her. And then obviously when also
• 1:03:33
  this is a camp clue for me. I love any representation of a
• 1:03:36
  cheerleader where the head cheerleader literally cannot
• 1:03:39
  dance or do any fucking cheer moves.
• 1:03:41
  I think that is a sensational thing.
• 1:03:43
  And it's always like it's literally and she cannot do
• 1:03:47
  anything. She's barely holding the pom
• 1:03:49
  poms. But no, she's the head
• 1:03:51
  cheerleader and it's she's not doing any flips, not doing the
• 1:03:53
  cheers or anything. And it happens so many times in
• 1:03:56
  these films. But even with that, because that
• 1:03:58
  that girl goes to her like, what are you too like by Lesbie by or
• 1:04:02
  something? Doesn't she?
• 1:04:03
  So I don't know. I I do kind of see that there
• 1:04:06
  was. I don't.
• 1:04:08
  Yeah. Lesbian.
• 1:04:09
  Yeah. It was hinted, and I think that
• 1:04:11
  a lot of people have said that that sex scene like when they're
• 1:04:15
  both having sex kind of or like Jennifer's eating the boy and
• 1:04:19
  Deedee's having sex. And the one reading of the fact
• 1:04:23
  that Needy's not having a good time isn't because she's having
• 1:04:27
  a vision of Jennifer killing someone, but it's because she's
• 1:04:29
  gay. And she's like.
• 1:04:30
  Because she's thinking of a woman instead.
• 1:04:33
  But then also, you know, when you're a teenager, teenage girl
• 1:04:36
  or teenage boy, teenage them you your early sexual experiences
• 1:04:42
  slightly happened through a lens of talking to your friends about
• 1:04:45
  them. You know, you are you are often,
• 1:04:48
  I think, quite aware of your friends hooking up with other
• 1:04:51
  people and you're going to think about that and talk about it and
• 1:04:53
  compare it to your own experiences.
• 1:04:55
  And I feel like that kind of 6th sense, sorry, 6th sense
• 1:05:00
  friendship thing that they both have, or at least that needy has
• 1:05:04
  also just feels quite accurate to me of this sense of like it's
• 1:05:09
  more than gossip. It's it's like needing to know
• 1:05:11
  what your friends are doing because you're trying to work
• 1:05:13
  out how to do anything. That's kind of, yeah, maybe 1
• 1:05:17
  angle. But ultimately, I think it's the
• 1:05:18
  necklaces. I guess what are overall
• 1:05:24
  feelings about it? I think I had a really fun time
• 1:05:27
  watching this movie. It felt like a romp.
• 1:05:29
  It felt easy, it went down smooth, and then I've also
• 1:05:32
  really enjoyed thinking about it after the fact.
• 1:05:35
  It's kind of like paid off, thinking about the culture at
• 1:05:38
  the time and the way it was received and what that said
• 1:05:41
  about society and it. It all feels really meta.
• 1:05:45
  But it was also just a really fun movie to watch again.
• 1:05:50
  Do you think if it came out now, because you're saying it kind of
• 1:05:55
  feels like it could, it feels very current still.
• 1:05:59
  I wonder what people would think are the themes, because when I
• 1:06:03
  was looking through these sort of recuperating Jennifer's Body
• 1:06:09
  blogs, so many of them talked about me too.
• 1:06:13
  And I'm not sure that I still even now was thinking about
• 1:06:17
  that. But obviously the plot point is,
• 1:06:23
  OK, it's a satanic ritual, but it is like a a kind of sexual
• 1:06:26
  assault or it's coded as it's going to be a sexual assault.
• 1:06:29
  Yeah, it's it's. And then it's about her what
• 1:06:32
  happens afterwards. But like you were saying, it's
• 1:06:34
  not really a revenge on the people who did it.
• 1:06:38
  So it's kind of curious what they're like, if there is any
• 1:06:41
  sort of moral hair, what we're meant to think about, how she
• 1:06:44
  responds to that assault. Yeah, I think if it were made
• 1:06:51
  now, it would have much more of a promising young woman sort of
• 1:06:56
  twist. Did you see that movie?
• 1:06:58
  No, but isn't that more straight up events?
• 1:07:00
  Yeah, exactly. And I think that I think that
• 1:07:02
  would be more explicitly included, but it.
• 1:07:05
  Would be too obvious then, wouldn't it?
• 1:07:06
  Maybe somehow? It would lose.
• 1:07:08
  It would lose the high school term.
• 1:07:10
  Yeah. Yeah, I read something and I,
• 1:07:12
  I've been trying to sort of get my head around it.
• 1:07:16
  Like someone wrote that they said that she survived because
• 1:07:19
  of because of her sexual nature and that that's actually a
• 1:07:22
  really important theme and the whole movie because obviously
• 1:07:25
  these stories happen all the time.
• 1:07:27
  Rape, revenge stories happen all the time.
• 1:07:29
  But often it's that the detriment to to someone being
• 1:07:34
  sexual, whereas she survives and thrives because of her sexual
• 1:07:37
  nature. So that's kind of a reading that
• 1:07:39
  I've read that I found quite interesting.
• 1:07:41
  I don't know if I fully understand that but.
• 1:07:43
  Well, as in because she because when they did the ritual they
• 1:07:47
  thought she was a virgin but she wasn't, so it backfires.
• 1:07:50
  And she doesn't. And then and then actually it's
• 1:07:52
  her sexuality that is, is pushing her forward in in the
• 1:07:56
  film. And again, and I find it very
• 1:07:58
  interesting, something else I read is like, if we are looking
• 1:08:01
  at this like as a horror film, then Needy essentially is the
• 1:08:05
  final girl. She's the person that survives
• 1:08:07
  the the movie. But again, even the way that
• 1:08:10
  they've treated the final girl is that it's, she hasn't just
• 1:08:13
  survived the movie. She's kind of evolved and she's
• 1:08:17
  taken that kind of energy from and Jennifer and you know, and
• 1:08:23
  escapes. And because that's that's the
• 1:08:25
  part of the film that I found quite interesting how you see
• 1:08:28
  her, you know, in the institution at the beginning and
• 1:08:31
  how she's really aggressive and violent and and escaping at the
• 1:08:35
  end. She's like really wild and sort
• 1:08:36
  of feral and that kind of we've seen that in other films,
• 1:08:39
  obviously, you know, where you know, the craft where it
• 1:08:42
  happens. But again, it's kind of like
• 1:08:43
  she's been punished for that, whereas it's it's now she's like
• 1:08:46
  kind of this like uncaged person that's, I don't know, I just
• 1:08:50
  found it. I found that sort of idea that
• 1:08:52
  she's she's a final girl, but a different version of a final
• 1:08:55
  girl. Interesting.
• 1:08:56
  Yeah, yeah. And also, and she has sex, which
• 1:08:59
  is like what you're not supposed to do in the movie.
• 1:09:02
  And yeah, yeah, as you say, it's it's not a it's not a punish.
• 1:09:07
  I think she's punished for. Although it's not like a happy
• 1:09:10
  ending, broadly speaking, it's quite bad for both of them.
• 1:09:13
  Yeah, it's bad for everyone. It's bad for the town.
• 1:09:17
  We haven't talked to SO about the the portrayal of the the
• 1:09:21
  kind of small town and how they deal with tragedy, which I think
• 1:09:25
  is quite a nice note from the thoughts and prayers kind of
• 1:09:30
  small town. Totally.
• 1:09:32
  Expression And maybe also, I mean, you mentioned obviously
• 1:09:34
  there's these 9/11, 911 shooters, but there is an
• 1:09:38
  element of like, how, yeah, how people deal with tragedies and
• 1:09:43
  and trauma. And maybe that is a bit more of
• 1:09:46
  an undercurrent in some ways. And it really was throughout the
• 1:09:48
  2000s, wasn't it? I mean, America spent 10 years
• 1:09:53
  really going over that event. And in this small town,
• 1:09:57
  something terrible happens. And they choose exactly the
• 1:10:00
  wrong people to be the kind of heroes who, like, lift them out
• 1:10:06
  of it by looking to the band with their, like, dreadful,
• 1:10:09
  dreadful anthem. And they start like singing it,
• 1:10:13
  the vigils and stuff. What, what does she call it?
• 1:10:16
  A tragedy boner? A tragedy boner?
• 1:10:19
  Yeah. It's like such a specifically,
• 1:10:22
  well, Western thing, I guess. But I love that this movie
• 1:10:25
  skewers that. And I mean, I can remember
• 1:10:29
  Denver, like, only Time being such a huge song after 911.
• 1:10:36
  And like there were all of these songs that became like theme
• 1:10:39
  songs and. Oh yeah.
• 1:10:41
  Yeah. And then it quickly becomes
• 1:10:42
  commodified and then it's sold to you as AT shirt and then it's
• 1:10:45
  sold to you as a a novelty shooter.
• 1:10:47
  I love that the movie is skewering that at the same time
• 1:10:49
  as it's skewering indie rockers. And it's kind of, it's pointing
• 1:10:53
  out lots of flawed hero worship, which is really is really fun.
• 1:10:59
  And and a kind of flawed authenticity maybe.
• 1:11:01
  Like the band is like I say, they're posing as an indie rock
• 1:11:06
  band, but really they just want to get as famous as Maroon 5.
• 1:11:09
  They don't care about that type of authenticity.
• 1:11:13
  And in the same way, the song is just deeply inauthentic and
• 1:11:18
  horrible and becomes this very commodified hit.
• 1:11:21
  And the people of the town kind of latch onto that as a way to
• 1:11:25
  express their shared grief when it isn't really.
• 1:11:28
  It's the wrong thing, obviously, and it's not really doing the
• 1:11:32
  work of them working through the trauma and it's definitely not
• 1:11:35
  solving the crime. Also, they seem to have
• 1:11:37
  forgotten about like working out who did it.
• 1:11:39
  They're just sad. So yeah, but there's something
• 1:11:42
  in there isn't that which kind of fits with maybe Diablo Cody's
• 1:11:45
  like broader, you know, obviously indie cred where she's
• 1:11:50
  kind of attacking, yes, phonies in quite in quite a basic like
• 1:11:58
  way, but but. It's quite like a Simpsons
• 1:12:02
  mentality. Like you can imagine that sort
• 1:12:05
  of thing happening in The Simpsons too, of like, someone's
• 1:12:07
  been murdered in it, but then the town gets completely
• 1:12:09
  distracted by something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:12
  And the mob, Yeah. Town gathers as a mob, and mob
• 1:12:15
  mentality rules. And like only Lisa can
• 1:12:18
  understand what's really going. Yeah, Dad, women won't like
• 1:12:20
  being shot in the face. I do love all the like side
• 1:12:23
  characters in this movie though. Like JK Simmons I think is
• 1:12:26
  really fun. I think I wish Amy Sedaris had
• 1:12:30
  had a bit more to do as her mom, but like, she's fab.
• 1:12:33
  There's like the characters around all feel quite lived in
• 1:12:36
  and thought through and kind of quirky in a really fun way.
• 1:12:39
  I think it adds a lot to the movie.
• 1:12:42
  Yeah, I'd have had a bit more of any of them actually.
• 1:12:44
  Yeah, like that bit where he says he hears that boy being
• 1:12:48
  eaten and he's like, just let it all out.
• 1:12:50
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that is great.
• 1:12:52
  Yeah, really good. Should we rate this movie?
• 1:12:59
  OK, well, let's start with Merrill's.
• 1:13:01
  I'm Julia Child. So out of 10, what are we
• 1:13:04
  thinking about the quality of this movie?
• 1:13:07
  I'm going to jump in straight away because I think both of you
• 1:13:09
  are going to go lower. I'm going to give it an 8.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah, it's an 8 for me. I think within the genre of teen
• 1:13:15
  horror comedies, this is pretty, pretty up there for me.
• 1:13:19
  It sort of ticked a lot of boxes.
• 1:13:21
  I see that, yeah. I think it's aged really well.
• 1:13:24
  I think it's got really great performances.
• 1:13:27
  I think it's, it's funny, I think it doesn't 100% hit the
• 1:13:35
  mark all the time, but like, yeah, I was kind of in the seven
• 1:13:39
  sort of range. I think I'll go 7.5.
• 1:13:45
  Oh, it is a well made film. It is well acted and I don't
• 1:13:54
  think it quite achieves maybe what it was trying to achieve.
• 1:13:58
  And maybe that's just partly because there were so many kind
• 1:14:04
  of extenuating circumstances around making it and what it was
• 1:14:07
  meant to be. And you know, Diablo Cody having
• 1:14:10
  free rein, which, you know, even the very best scriptwriter
• 1:14:12
  doesn't always want free rein. Sometimes that's not good.
• 1:14:15
  I don't know. But it is well made.
• 1:14:17
  So maybe I will also go 7. Great, why not?
• 1:14:23
  Love it. Yeah.
• 1:14:24
  OK. And what about Lisas?
• 1:14:28
  How camp is this movie? Is it flop?
• 1:14:31
  Core Baby. I really regret saying that.
• 1:14:35
  I cringe out. Whatever.
• 1:14:37
  It's text bird. No, no.
• 1:14:38
  Yeah. But it's just the word, that
• 1:14:39
  flop core word. I feel like it's just not
• 1:14:41
  something I would ever say. And now I'm locked in with it.
• 1:14:44
  I love limes. I love them.
• 1:14:46
  They're great. I mean it, I mean it, it has, it
• 1:14:50
  was rejected by the mainstream in the way that it was missed
• 1:14:54
  marketed, wasn't it? But I don't maybe it would have
• 1:14:57
  had a bigger audience if it was marketed to the right people.
• 1:14:59
  But I mean, listen, I'm going to say it.
• 1:15:04
  I'm going to go. I'm just going to go.
• 1:15:06
  I'm going A10. Wow. 10 for this, for me
• 1:15:13
  personally, it unlocks so much joy.
• 1:15:16
  It is so quotable. It is so I think it plays on so
• 1:15:21
  many well known tropes, but doesn't kind of do the standard
• 1:15:25
  thing with it. It kind of subverts a lot of
• 1:15:27
  them. I just think Megan Fox, as much
• 1:15:30
  as we've been kind of talking about how unfortunate this this
• 1:15:33
  sort of time was for her, I think she's just so fucking
• 1:15:38
  great in it. And I just think I'm really here
• 1:15:41
  for it all. I just, yeah, I want, I want the
• 1:15:44
  sequel and I want it now, basically.
• 1:15:47
  So yeah, I'm going to go 10. I mean, in terms of like,
• 1:15:49
  ongoing legacy slash informs pop culture, Can you imagine how
• 1:15:53
  many people probably have a tattoo of Megan Fox holding a
• 1:15:57
  lighter under her tongue? Like, you just know.
• 1:16:01
  I'm surprised you don't have one to be honest.
• 1:16:02
  Maybe. I know, I'm surprised as well
• 1:16:04
  actually. Yeah, underdog flop vibes.
• 1:16:08
  Yeah, flop core. I feel it.
• 1:16:11
  Queer joy, I feel it. Stupid fun.
• 1:16:15
  I feel it. I think I'm missing like a
• 1:16:17
  couple drops of queer joy and stupid fun for my bucket to be
• 1:16:23
  overflowing, but I'm like, I'm close.
• 1:16:28
  That's such a horrible image. Buckets of queer joy.
• 1:16:33
  I'm close. Yeah.
• 1:16:35
  Oh Jesus. Disgusting.
• 1:16:39
  I'm going to give it a nine. Wow.
• 1:16:42
  Yeah. Well, I'm actually really
• 1:16:44
  surprised. I'm really surprised I'm not.
• 1:16:48
  You know, far be it from me to come on to your podcast Camp
• 1:16:53
  Classics and say I don't find it as camp classic as you do.
• 1:16:56
  But I guess I just, I suppose just knowing some of the other
• 1:17:01
  films that you've chosen and thinking about the kind of
• 1:17:03
  broader Canon, it just isn't going to be my favorite.
• 1:17:08
  So it would be weird for me to say 10 or even 9 or maybe even
• 1:17:12
  8, but I live. In your truth, stand in your
• 1:17:17
  truth. I just see, I see that it
• 1:17:20
  definitely meets all the requirements, but it's not my
• 1:17:24
  favorite. Sometimes it's just a feeling.
• 1:17:26
  That Yeah, it's just a feeling. Listen, this is a guide to help
• 1:17:29
  us. You know, I I'm just thinking
• 1:17:31
  about other ones that got attacked, For instance, Lindsay
• 1:17:33
  Lohan and I know who killed me. There are lots of things wrong
• 1:17:36
  with that film, but there was a feeling where we just launched
• 1:17:41
  ourselves into it and it just had to be a 10 out of a 10 count
• 1:17:44
  classic. There's a feeling there.
• 1:17:47
  For my for my money or for my personal preference, I think I
• 1:17:52
  would end up awarding a 9 or 10 to something that was a little
• 1:17:55
  bit accidentally a camp classic and maybe it wasn't entirely in
• 1:17:58
  control of what was going on. Whereas this is a film that is
• 1:18:01
  very in control and I think it looks and feels exactly how they
• 1:18:04
  they imagined it. Despite the trailer.
• 1:18:06
  I think it's the film they wanted to make.
• 1:18:07
  That's great. I'm, I'm going to say 7 there.
• 1:18:12
  Oh, a tidy 7. But two sevens.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah, I'm from a professional critic.
• 1:18:17
  Yeah, that's no, I mean, I mean. Two very high.
• 1:18:20
  Marks I mean, I, you know, it's just another blow to the film.
• 1:18:23
  That is Jennifer's body, isn't it?
• 1:18:24
  You know, any any glimpse of hope, more home.
• 1:18:28
  You know, once again we have a glimpse of like, success and
• 1:18:30
  then it's been dragged down. Let me guess.
• 1:18:34
  You need more boobs, Do you boobs?
• 1:18:37
  Yeah, yeah, a boob. One boob.
• 1:18:40
  Give me give. Me Denise Richards one tit.
• 1:18:43
  Exactly. But you see, Yeah, yeah, give me
• 1:18:48
  the mono tit is is that not one of the highest?
• 1:18:52
  Ratings. No, not, but no.
• 1:18:53
  Because of you, you've dragged it down to the gutters.
• 1:18:56
  No, no, no. We've done.
• 1:18:58
  Maybe you've given it a double? Ten, yeah.
• 1:19:00
  We've had full 10s though. This is, this is.
• 1:19:02
  Yeah, yeah. I feel bad but not that bad.
• 1:19:06
  It's as I said. No, it, it, it's, it scored
• 1:19:10
  well, It's going to be in in a good place on the grid.
• 1:19:14
  It's got nothing to be ashamed of.
• 1:19:16
  To be honest though, I kind of, this is the second Megan Fox
• 1:19:19
  film that we've done and I, I scored Subservience.
• 1:19:22
  I can't remember what I scored it as a camp classic, but I went
• 1:19:24
  really, really high and other people dragged it down.
• 1:19:28
  So I think what I'm trying to say is Megan Fox is up there for
• 1:19:34
  me with Lindsay Lohan at the moment.
• 1:19:38
  I think Megan is well overdue her renaissance moment.
• 1:19:42
  Now she needs to have a renaissance and I think she's
• 1:19:45
  got it in her. Imagine I getting her back to
• 1:19:48
  doing like 1 like a really juicy film role.
• 1:19:52
  And I think after watching Subservience, I doubted her
• 1:19:56
  acting ability. But she was just playing a robot
• 1:19:59
  really well. Yeah, and she was doing a good
• 1:20:01
  job. Horny robot.
• 1:20:03
  I'm sorry. Justice for subservience.
• 1:20:12
  Charles, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:20:14
  Thank you so much for having me, I really enjoy doing this.
• 1:20:17
  And and we're going to be sending Jennifer check after
• 1:20:20
  you. To leave me looking like.
• 1:20:27
  Also, can I just. I just like an additional plot
• 1:20:29
  point really quickly? Sure.
• 1:20:31
  Why the fuck was Needy's prom dress like that?
• 1:20:34
  That just felt like the most ridiculous thing for me.
• 1:20:38
  Kind of camp. Yeah, but like.
• 1:20:40
  Apparently Diablo Cody wrote in the script she's wearing an
• 1:20:43
  after birth of a dress. I guess she was just trying to
• 1:20:49
  pay tribute to like horror eighties 80s slashers and stuff,
• 1:20:54
  but it didn't make any sense for her character.
• 1:20:56
  No, no, not at all. Well, there you go.
• 1:20:58
  That was that was an afterbirth of a comment.
• 1:21:00
  But. Cool, that was Jennifer's Body.
• 1:21:03
  We'll be back in two more weeks with some more camp classics.
• 1:21:06
  Bye. Get away from her, you bitch.
• 1:21:12
  Classic. He was in the Amazon with my mom
• 1:21:15
  when she was researching spiders right before she died.
• 1:21:19
  No.