Latest / This Film is Lit / Rosemary's Baby

Transcript

Rosemary's Baby · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don't argue or make a scene, because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we're gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital. It's Rosemary's Baby, and this film is Lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We have every single one of our segments and so much to dive into on this Halloween episode of this Film Is lit, where we're discussing Rosemary's Baby. If you have not read or watched the book or the film, we're going to give you a brief summary of the film in Let me sum up. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. As I said, this is a summary of the film sourced directly from Wikipedia. In 1965, Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband, stage actor Guy, tour the Bramford, a large Renaissance Revival apartment building in Manhattan. They noticed a previous tenant, an elderly woman who recently died, displayed odd behaviors. For example, she moved heavy furniture in front of a linen closet that she had still been using. Despite warnings from their current landlord and friend Hutch about the Branford's dark past, Rosemary and Guy move in. In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets a young woman, Terry Ginafrio, a recovering drug addict, whom Minnie and Roman Castevet, the Woodhouse's elderly neighbors, have taken in. The Woodhouses first meet the Castavets when they return home to find Terry dead of an apparent suicide, having jumped from the Castavets seventh floor apartment. They have dinner with the couple, but Rosemary finds them meddlesome. She is bothered when Minnie gives her Terry's pendant as a good luck charm, saying it contains tannis root. Unexpectedly, Guy, initially reluctant to socialize with the cast of ets, becomes seemingly fascinated with Roman, Roman visiting him repeatedly. Guy is cast in a prominent play after the lead actor inexplicably goes blind. With his career flourishing, Guy wants him and Rosemary to have a baby. On the night they plan to conceive, Minnie brings over individual cups of chocolate mousse for their dessert. When Rosemary complains that it has a chalky undertaste, Guy criticizes her as being ungrateful. Rosemary consumes a bit more to mollify Guy, then discreetly discards the rest. Soon after, she grows dizzy and passes out in a dream state. Rosemary hallucinates being raped by a demonic presence. The next morning, Guy explains the scratches covering her body by claiming that he did not want to miss baby night and that he had raped her while she was unconscious. He says he has since cut his nails. Rosemary becomes pregnant with the baby due on June 28. The elated cast of ETS insist that Rosemary go to their closest friend, Dr. Abraham Saperstein, a prominent obstetrician, rather than her own physician, Dr. Hill. During her first trimester, Rosemary suffers severe abdominal pains and loses weight by Christmas. Her gaunt appearance alarms her friends as well as Hutch, who has been researching the Branford's history. Before he can share his findings with Rosemary, he falls into a mysterious coma. Rosemary, unable to withstand the pain, insists on seeing Hill, while Guy argues against it, saying Saperstein would be offended. As they argue, the pain suddenly stops and Rosemary feels the baby move. Three months later, Hutch's friend Grace Cardiff informs Rosemary that Hutch is dead. Before dying, he briefly regained consciousness and said to give Rosemary a book on witchcraft called all of Them Witches. Along with the cryptic message, the name is an anagram. Using Scrabble tiles, Rosemary works out that Roman Castavet is an anagram for Stephen Mercado, the son of a former Brantford resident and a reputed Satanist. She suspects that Castovets and Saperstein belong to a coven and want her baby. Guy discounts this and later throws the book away, making Rosemary suspicious. Terrified, she goes to Hill for help, but Hill assumes that she is delusional and calls Saperstein. He arrives with Guy to take her home, and they threaten to commit her to a psychiatric hospital if she does not comply. Rosemary locks herself in the apartment, but somehow the other coven members get in and Saperstein sedates Rosemary, who goes into labor and gives birth. When she awakens, she is told that the baby was stillborn. As she recovers, she notices that her pumped breast milk is being saved rather than discarded. She stops taking her prescribed pills and becomes less groggy when Rosemary hears an infant crying. Guy claims that tenants that have just moved in upstairs have a newborn. Believing her baby is alive, Rosemary discovers a Hidden door in the linen closet leading directly into the Castelvet's apartment. The same closet that the previous tenant had blown locked and the same hidden door that the coven members had used to access the Woodhouse's apartment. Guy, the cast of ETS, Dr. Saperstein and other coven members are gathered around a bassinet draped in black with an upside down cross hanging over it, appearing inside. Rosemary is horrified and demands to know what is wrong with her baby's eyes. Roman proclaims that the child Adrian is Satan's son and the supposed Antichrist and that he has his father's eyes. He urges Rosemary to mother her child, promising that she does not have to join the covenant. When Guy attempts to calm her, saying that they will be rewarded and that they can conceive their own children in the future, she spits in his face. After hearing the infant's cries, however, Rosemary gives in to her maternal instincts and gently rocks the cradle. The end. Katie, that is a summary of Rosemary's baby. We have a guess who this week. So let's do it. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must know. Get used to disappointment. Okay.
• 6:04
  Speaker B: He had a broad, shiny face, blue eyes that darted enthusiastically and a few strands of wetted down black hair combed crossways over his scalp.
• 6:15
  Speaker A: That is so little to go on, I couldn't even begin. I'll just make a random guess because I really, I don't. I don't know. It doesn't feel like Dude Guy, but he's dark hair, so I'll say it's Guy.
• 6:30
  Speaker B: It's Hutch.
• 6:31
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 6:33
  Speaker B: A dark haired, cameo faced girl who looked like Anna Maria Alberghetti. She was wearing white sandals, black shorts and an apricot silk blouse and carrying a yellow plastic laundry basket.
• 6:49
  Speaker A: Okay, well, that gave it away at the end. But also in the movie, I believe that she compares this actress to or this character to an actress. So that would also track that this is Terry G'Onofrio. Yes, yes. The woman who was staying with the cast. Events.
• 7:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, they changed the name of the actress. I don't remember who it is. They say in the movie, but it's not the same as it is in the book.
• 7:14
  Speaker A: The Jane Fonda. I can't remember.
• 7:16
  Speaker B: I don't think so. I think it was somebody like not super well known. This is actually a description of two people.
• 7:26
  Speaker A: Okay, okay.
• 7:28
  Speaker B: She was wrapped in a light. In light blue with snow white dabs of gloves, purse, shoes and hat. He was dazzling in an every color seersucker. Jacket, red slacks, a pink bow tie and a gray fedora with a pink band. His wide, thin lipped smile was rosy pink as if lipsticked. His cheeks were chalky, his eyes small and bright in deep sockets. She was big nosed with a sullen, fleshy underlip. She wore pink rimmed eyeglasses on a neck chain that dipped down from behind plain pearl earrings.
• 8:06
  Speaker A: Well, the fact that it's a couple, and more importantly, the first time we meet the cast of ETS in the film, when they're walking down the sidewalk, at least Roman's outfit is similar to that. It's very colorful, like it's like lots of different things. So I would say that that is Minnie and Roman Castevet.
• 8:25
  Speaker B: Yes, you would be correct.
• 8:26
  Speaker A: Seem again fairly obvious based on the introduction as a couple, but also the outfit. Like I said, the first time we see him in the movie does kind of match, or at least his. From my memory.
• 8:36
  Speaker B: He was wonderful. A tall, sunburned man with white hair and a shaggy white mustache.
• 8:44
  Speaker A: Doesn't really match anybody that I can think of. But I believe that Dr. Saperstein has a white mustache. So I'm going to say that's Dr. Saperstein.
• 8:52
  Speaker B: It is Dr. Saperstein. Look at you go.
• 8:55
  Speaker A: Do you think he had a mustache in the movie? I can't remember, but I have a vague mustache.
• 8:59
  Speaker B: He had like facial hair. He might have had a beard too. But he did have facial hair and.
• 9:03
  Speaker A: I believe it was white. So that was all that was going on there. So. All right. Yeah. So three out of four, right? I missed the first one. Yeah, not too bad. I have a bunch of questions. Let's get into it. In. Was that in the book?
• 9:17
  Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please?
• 9:19
  Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures.
• 9:22
  Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: So we open up, introduced to our couple, Minnie and. Or not Minnie, Guy. Minnie is the cast of it. Guy and Rosemary, literally the titular character. Rosemary and Guy. And they're looking at this apartment because they want to move into this apartment in this building. And as they're being shown the building by the, I guess the building owner, whatever real estate agent, whatever it is, this guy's showing them around. And one of the things they notice, kind of as he's showing them around, because all of her stuff is still there. She just recently died. They haven't cleared everything out yet. And one of the things they notice is that this big. I think they say it's a secretary, but a big armoire kind of shelving unit thing it's not an armoire. It's got a bunch of little shelves or drawers, but big shelving unit. Secretary thing has been moved and drug and moved in front of a closet door. And they're like, well, that's strange. We see it and then they do move it and he opens it and there's nothing in the closet that appears normal. But I wanted to know if that detail came from the book because I enjoyed that a lot as like a very creepy setup with no explanation, just like, what's going on there.
• 10:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that is from the book. As Rosemary and Guy are touring the apartment, they discover that Mrs. Gardenia has pushed a secretary, which is like a big giant desk unit thing basically in front of the linen closet. The book, I just want to mention this real quick, also tells us they rent this apartment, right? And the book tells us how much money they give for two months rent to get this apartment in 1965 in New York. Do you want to guess?
• 11:21
  Speaker A: Like a giant. It's like a two bedroom, gigantic apartment, like in a really nice building probably.
• 11:25
  Speaker B: And like a cool old building.
• 11:27
  Speaker A: Cool old building, probably today, two months rent today, I'm guessing that apartment, if you were renting it, which I don't even know if you could, it'd probably like a purchase kind of thing. But if you were renting it today, I'd say that apartments probably. And this is a pure guess because obviously I don't know New York real estate a lot, but I could probably put at least $4,000 a month, if not more.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: Thousands of dollars a month at least.
• 11:50
  Speaker A: Essentially for the time period 1965, I'm going to say two months rent is $400.
• 12:03
  Speaker B: 583.
• 12:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:06
  Speaker B: I wrote it in my notes with a little crying face.
• 12:08
  Speaker A: I would have to look at the inflation rate and stuff and see what that would translate to. I would bet that it's not $6,000 or whatever.
• 12:16
  Speaker B: No, you know, assuredly not.
• 12:19
  Speaker A: I would bet it's not equivalent to the inflate, like the current rental rates for something like that in New York City. But anyways, so they decide to rent this apartment. They really like it, but they go back and they're having dinner with their current landlord, Hutch, who is also a good friend of theirs. They become friends with him as they've lived in his building or whatever, and he's. And they're telling him that they're going to get this apartment in the Bramford building, but he's like, I don't Know the Brantford Building. A lot of stories about that. And he kind of gives them this. The history of the building's dark past, including that there was some sisters or something that ate. Supposedly eight children. And this guy named Adrian Marcado. Adrian Marcado, who supposedly summoned Satan back in, like the 20s or so. I don't remember what year it was. Turn of the century. Ish. Summoned Satan in the building, supposedly. And I wanted to know if that backstory of the building having this strange, occultish, dark history being relayed by Hutch came from the book.
• 13:26
  Speaker B: I totally missed that. The movie rebranded Hutch as their previous landlord. In the book, he was Rosemary's next door neighbor when she first moved to New York and then became like a friend, father figure to her and the other girls that she was living with. And they had continued being friends. I think that change makes total sense. Much easier and quicker to explain.
• 13:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:49
  Speaker B: Why they are friends with them.
• 13:50
  Speaker A: It's still a little strange. Unless you, like, know. I think for most people in modern audiences, it would still be. The idea of being friends with your landlord is insane because it doesn't like.
• 14:02
  Speaker B: Not really what a thing people do in the.
• 14:04
  Speaker A: In the back then it's very different. Where often I think the landlord would even like, live. He probably lived like next door to them in the same building. Like, maybe he owned the building or he might. And it might. Might not even be landlord in the sense of. And I don't know this, but New York buildings often have, like, tenement managers who are kind of equivalent to a landlord. Like, they collect the rent and stuff, but they're not like the landlord in a sense that they don't own the building. And so he may even be more of that kind of potentially in this where he. They moved into the building he was like the manager of and lived next door and became friends with them. But yeah. Cause you tell a modern audience, like, oh, they're friends with their landlord, you'd be like, what? I mean, not that that's impossible these days. It's just very rare. Cause for most people, their landlord is some conglomerated company or whatever.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:51
  Speaker A: But, yeah, it's like, point being, it still makes. I think it makes sense to kind of shortcut that.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: But to answer your question, yes, Hutch does tell them about all of these weird, awful things that had happened at the Bramford in its dark history, including Trench sisters, who supposedly eight children, and Adrian Mercado, who supposedly summoned the devil.
• 15:14
  Speaker A: Yes. Okay. So they have now. They didn't move in. They move into the building. And on their first night there, they do the classic sit on the floor in the middle of dining room and eat fast food or whatever. And then they have sex in their new living room or whatever on the hard floor. But then they finally move in and everything. And we're kind of seeing them get settled in. And one of the. Within the first few days, weeks, whatever, they're laying in their bedroom and one night or morning, they hear this strange chanting music through the wall. And they haven't met their neighbors yet, they don't know anything about them, but they hear this very strange chanting and they just kind of like hand wave it away. Like, oh, that's weird. But I wanted to know if that subtle foreshadow. Say, subtle. It's not super subtle in the movie. But that foreshadowing of something strange with the neighbors comes from the book.
• 16:06
  Speaker B: Yes, it does. Although I did get the impression when I was reading the book that it was a lot fainter than it seemed in the movie. And the idea that they couldn't quite tell if it was coming from right next door or from maybe a different nearby apartment. Although my assessment of that could be wrong.
• 16:24
  Speaker A: I honestly think that's probably accurate because that feels like a thing you would be less weirded out or concerned about as it is presented in the movie. You would think they would have a little more of a reaction to what is going, like, what are they doing? Because it sounds like demonic chanting.
• 16:41
  Speaker B: Or at least more of a reaction of like, oh, great, yes, now we have to listen to those.
• 16:46
  Speaker A: But I think that's more of a result of the movie. Just making sure it's very obvious to the audience. Especially at the time, sound design was not nearly as nuanced and layered as we weren't dealing with Dolby 7.1 surround. So you can't really be as subtle with some of the sound design as you maybe would in a modern movie. So they just had to make sure. Like, yeah, you can hear some chanting coming through the wall. So we talked about in the summary, Annan, guess who? The neighbor that she meets, she goes, rosemary goes down to the basement to do laundry in the laundry room. And while she's down there, she bumps into this woman named Terry, who explains her backstory. She's a former drug addict who's getting clean and was taken in by the cast of Etsy. The couple that live next to Rose, again, who they still have not met, but who lives next to Rosemary and Guy. And she's like, oh, they're so nice. They took me in when I was out on the street and they've given me a place to stay and they're helping me get clean, that kind of thing. So we're introduced to her while she's doing laundry. She seems very happy, very upbeat. And Rosemary's like, oh. And they kind of make plans to do laundry together in the future. And then seemingly the next day, I think. It's hard to tell in the movie, but I think the next day, as they're coming home from dinner or something, there's a big crowd and a commotion outside their apartment building. And we see the body of Terry on the sidewalk. And the cops are there investigating. And they ask her. Ask Rosemary a bunch of questions. And it turns out they found a suicide note. And they're like, yeah, she jumped from the Castevette's apartment. Jumped out of the window, basically. And Rosemary's like, that seems crazy. She did not remotely seem like a person who was suicidal when I talked to her last night or whatever. But, you know, she's just kind of in shock. And I wanted to know if that whole plot element of this girl we meet briefly and then who supposedly kills herself right after it comes from the book.
• 18:43
  Speaker B: Yes. All of this is accurate to the book with only, like, a couple small changes. I mentioned that the movie changes the name of the actress that Rosemary thinks Terry looks like. I consider that to be a pretty inconsequential change, especially because I didn't recognize either name in the book or the movie. The movie also confirms that Terry was wearing her tanis root necklace.
• 19:08
  Speaker A: We do see it. Yeah.
• 19:09
  Speaker B: When she died. We see it, like, laying in the pool of blood, which. And that's a thing that's left unknown in the book whether or not she was actually wearing it at the moment.
• 19:19
  Speaker A: Which we forgot to set that up. She showed that in the scene where they met in the laundry room. She showed.
• 19:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. She shows Rosemary the necklace and, like, tells her about it.
• 19:27
  Speaker A: That the cast of Edscape.
• 19:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a lucky charm. Yeah. And that was actually a change that I liked. I thought that it made Minnie gifting it to Rosemary, like, even weirder and more uncomfortable.
• 19:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. That it was, like, definitely on her when she died. Yeah.
• 19:44
  Speaker B: Also, fun fact in the book, when Rosemary tells Terry that she looks like a famous actress, Terry tells Rosemary that she looks like Piper Laurie who played Margaret White in Carrie.
• 19:56
  Speaker A: Hmm. Okay. So then I believe it's that night. We get this dream sequence, and it's the first of, I think, two or three.
• 20:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:05
  Speaker A: But it's the first dream sequence, and Rosemary is sleeping. And as she's sleeping, she starts having this dream. And it starts out primarily about seemingly. It's like these little kids, girls in, like, some sort of religious school or something like that, where there's a nun there and there's something to do with a window. And I think it's one of those things where it's related to potentially Terry having jumped out of the window and the window. She's like, oh, who left the window open? I think, or something like that. And I couldn't remember what was going. I don't remember all the details of it. But I wanted to know if that came from the book because it's almost a Lost in Adaptation. Because I was hoping at the time, I was like, I wonder if we're gonna get more of that, if this is some sort of backstory with Rosemary. I keep wanting to call her Carrie. With Rosemary about, like, her childhood and growing up in, like, a Catholic school or something. Like, I was wondering if we're gonna get more of that, and we don't, really. Which I think is fine. I don't actually think we need it. With where the movie goes, it's enough to let us know she has, like, this Catholic upbringing and backstory, which kind of plays a big role thematically and aesthetically in the film. But does that come from the book? And can you expand on that at all?
• 21:17
  Speaker B: Yes. So this scene is mostly book accurate. And it's kind of presented as, like. Like, the vibe that I got was that she was having this dream that was kind of mixed with, like, a memory of something that happened.
• 21:33
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:33
  Speaker B: When she was in this Catholic school as a kid. And then at the same time, she's also overhearing Minnie and Roman talking in their apartment.
• 21:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:46
  Speaker B: So it's kind of all, like, mixed together. The biggest change made was that in the book, Rosemary also overhears Minnie saying that they need someone young, healthy and not a virgin. And the specificity of being not a virgin caught my attention since it's obviously like, the opposite of what's usually required for some kind of, like, satanic sacrifice, as well as the opposite of Rosemary's religious mirror, the Virgin Mary.
• 22:19
  Speaker A: Her name being Rosemary is not an accident, obviously.
• 22:22
  Speaker B: No, not at all.
• 22:23
  Speaker A: Very specifically a reference to Mary because she is birthing the Antichrist, whereas Mary birthed the Christ.
• 22:29
  Speaker B: And it's used pretty similarly in the book. Honestly, we're really just kind of learning that Rosemary has this. We already knew she had a Catholic upbringing, but that she had this specifically very Catholic upbringing. And we don't really find out much more about it in the book either. It's just kind of existing as part of her backstory as well as a weird way to overhear Minnie and Roman without maybe clocking right away that we're overhearing.
• 23:00
  Speaker A: And that's clear because I did not realize. Now that you say that I didn't realize that was what was going on. It more clear later with the rape scene where that the language, like, stuff she's hearing is blending with the stuff in her dreams. It's less apparent in this scene because it's the first time it's happened and you don't really know what's happening. So it's like I didn't clock that that was what was going on. But that makes perfect sense going back to rewatch that, which I actually probably will rewatch the dream sequences for film study purposes, but because of. I agree with the note you have here.
• 23:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. I really enjoyed the way that both the book and the movie depicted dreams. I thought it was very interesting.
• 23:41
  Speaker A: I completely agree.
• 23:42
  Speaker B: And it's something that I often feel media doesn't get quite right, at least, like, in my experience of how I experience dreams. And I thought that the way Rosemary's dreams kind of slipped in and out of consciousness and mingled the two together was really fascinating.
• 23:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, No, I completely agree. I thought the way that. And obviously, I can only talk about the film, but the way the movie depicted her dreams and the way the camera moves through them and we transition between, like, locations and reality and the dream world. And it was super fascinating and super well done and felt it was one of the most accurate depictions of what dreaming is like that I've ever seen on film. I think I've seen others because I think we've even. I can't remember what. But I have a vague memory.
• 24:35
  Speaker B: One of my most favorite depictions of a dream in media ever is that one episode of Buffy.
• 24:43
  Speaker A: I think there is an episode of Buffy. Yes. I would have to remember what that.
• 24:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's the one where they keep saying, wait till dawn.
• 24:50
  Speaker A: Yes. Is it during, obviously, the dawn season.
• 24:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like the. Right before the dawn season. But the way that it changes location is kind of similar to what this movie does. That feels like very accurate to how.
• 25:04
  Speaker A: Opera, almost assuredly, Joss Whedon was aping, oh, yeah, this. Which applies in more ways than one that we'll get to later. But, yeah, I thought that. But no, I thought there was something on this show, I feel like I have a vague memory of us discussing and I just don't remember. But I have this memory of us having a conversation about a really well done dream sequence on an episode we've done before. But I, for the life of me couldn't tell you what it was. But other than maybe that. And, yeah, the buff. And that was funny. You said Buffy. I was like. I feel like. I was almost gonna say, like, I feel like a Buffy episode or something. Which, again, I don't think is what I was thinking of. But I also had that bounce back.
• 25:41
  Speaker B: I have not watched that episode since that last first time.
• 25:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, we've only watched the show once.
• 25:47
  Speaker B: Through the show, and it just like, stuck out to me so much because I felt like it was so weirdly accurate to how dreams know.
• 25:54
  Speaker A: Buffy does that a lot. I mean, it's why Buffy's such a great show. But Buffy does that a lot. Cause that's my same experience with the episode the Body is that it's the most accurate depiction of, like, dealing with the immediate aftermath of a loved one dying that I've ever seen. Like, it's. It. Yeah, it's just some of those, yes, Buffy's a great show. Everybody knows Buffy's a great show. But anyways, yeah, very, very good and interesting dream sequences in this movie. And like I said, I. Something I will probably rewatch just for the sake of kind of dissecting and adding stuff to my director's toolkit. But speaking of the cast of ets, they are the villains of this movie, kind of. I mean, ostensibly the villains of the movie.
• 26:43
  Speaker B: Pretty much everybody except Rosemary.
• 26:46
  Speaker A: That's fair, basically. And Hutch.
• 26:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:50
  Speaker A: And her friends. But of the main characters, by far, they're the most direct villains of the film. Although we don't know that yet. But we're introduced to the castanets and. Or the cast of ads. And as we're introduced to them, I just thought they were such uniquely strange characters. Especially because I assumed, and I had no idea the plot of this movie, like, at all. I've talked about that before.
• 27:13
  Speaker B: Oh, really? I didn't know anything about it.
• 27:14
  Speaker A: I knew nothing about this movie. I assumed she was going to have a baby at some point, but that was it.
• 27:20
  Speaker B: I wish I could have experienced this. Like you. I knew what happened.
• 27:23
  Speaker A: Well. Oh, you mean even before reading the book?
• 27:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, Like, I KN how it ended.
• 27:27
  Speaker A: I knew nothing. I knew nothing about it other than. Yeah, I knew that I assumed she would have a baby at some point, but I knew nothing about what was going to happen in the movie at all. I just managed to avoid all spoilers. But I got the impression that, like, these people were going to end up being.
• 27:45
  Speaker B: They've got a weird vibe.
• 27:46
  Speaker A: Well, and sorry. I also knew that there was something related to Satanism and witchcraft. Like, I knew that just from the prequel episode, but, like, I didn't know in what capacity or whatever. But when these people were introduced, I was like, okay, there's gonna be something going on with these people. They're too important of characters and they just seem gotta be what's going on. But they're so strange and their performances are so interesting. And I wanted to know if their characters in the movie, their kind of very quirky nature, felt like it came from the book. Because I thought there were such unique types of characters for who was ostensibly. I assumed at this point I was like, maybe this literally is Satan. Like, I thought maybe Roman was Satan basically either that and I wrote either who are ostensibly either Satanists or Satan himself and like his bride or something. And I wanted to know if their characters in the movie felt similar to the book.
• 28:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, they are very unique characters. Yeah. Kind of outside of the mold of what you might guess for like a pair of Satanists.
• 28:47
  Speaker A: For like. For like evils plotting, like, witchcraft.
• 28:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because they feel they're. They're more like nosy, doddering old people. Like, they're gaudy and they're tasteless and loud and obnoxious and the movie nails them. They're very book accurate.
• 29:03
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. I thought that was really fascinating because. Yeah, they're just not at all what you would expect for the. What the type of characters they end up being. And they maintain that even through the reveal. Like, they say, those characters.
• 29:15
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's just who they are.
• 29:17
  Speaker A: That's just who they are.
• 29:18
  Speaker B: It's not an act.
• 29:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. They just also happen to be evil Satanists, Satan worshippers who want to bring about the Antichrist or whatever. Yeah. Which again, I just thought was very interesting. So Guy is an actor, a stage actor. He's trying to get more roles and struggling. He's a struggling actor, mostly doing commercial work and stuff. But at some point after they've now, at this point, they have become friends with the cast of ets, They've gone over there for dinner. And Guy, who was initially, as I said in the summary, very kind of not sure about the cast of vets and didn't really want to become friends with them, is now, like, going over and hanging out with Roman. All the time. Because he thinks Roman is just very interesting Guy. And shortly after that development in their relationship, Guy gets a phone call that he is getting a big part in a play or something because the lead actor who had the part went blind. And when he gets this. So that's the first thing I'm asking is if Guy gets a big part, gets his big break, because the actor he was competing with ends up going blind. And second, when this happens in the film, Guy is, like, working on furniture or something, and he's, like, stripping paint off furniture, and it's like red paint. So as he. After he gets the call and he's standing there, he's, like, wiping his hands and he has red paint all over his hands. It's not so subtle symbolism here of the. He literally has blood on his hands. At this point, we have no idea, obviously.
• 30:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker A: But, you know, I noticed that. I was like, he's got a bunch of red paint all over his hands. I wonder if that's relevant. And we will find out that it is. But I wanted to know if those two things came from the book.
• 30:59
  Speaker B: So, yes, Guy does get his big break because Donald Baumgart is suddenly struck blind. I don't recall the red paint detail from the book, but I think it's a nice visual touch.
• 31:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, Yeah, I thought it worked.
• 31:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, very definitely. I think more in the realm of, like, filmic language.
• 31:17
  Speaker A: Yes. It's also a thing I think you really. Most people wouldn't notice on a first watch. It would be one of those things that if you're watching.
• 31:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, especially if you don't know anything. That's what I.
• 31:28
  Speaker A: You have no idea. I only noticed it because I. If I had. If we weren't watching it more critically and, like, I wasn't keyed into that kind of thing, which I miss stuff like that all the time. I just happened to notice it. Even though I didn't know that he was going to end up being evil. I had a guess. I was like, I don't know. It seems like he might. I don't know. He seemed kind of weird. But at this point. Oh, we still haven't gotten to hit, like, really, like, some of his worst character traits at this point. So we're still not so sure about Guy and how messed up he is.
• 32:02
  Speaker B: I hated Guy from the jump.
• 32:03
  Speaker A: Well, yes. And that's what I said. He's obnoxious from the beginning, but he hasn't displayed any, like.
• 32:10
  Speaker B: Right. He hasn't displayed any, like, really terrible character traits.
• 32:15
  Speaker A: Yet he's just kind of annoying.
• 32:18
  Speaker B: He's just one of those guys.
• 32:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. So then. But he's very excited about his role. So they're going to have. They decide to move forward with having a baby. And they plan it for when, you know, she's ovulating or whatever. And so they have a specific night ready. They're going to have, like a fancy dinner. But during the dinner, Minnie shows up at the door with these special chocolate mousse desserts that she made. She brings them in and Rosemary's like, this tastes weird. It tastes chalky. And then after she eats it more, or she eats a little bit, but tries to get rid of most of it, but it ate enough, apparently she ends up being seemingly drugged and like, passes out. And I wanted to know if that came from the book, if Minnie brings her drugged chocolate mousses that she calls mouses.
• 33:04
  Speaker B: Yes. So Minnie does bring over some chocolate mousse. The movie leaves out that guy was supposed to pick up a pie for dessert and forgot. We've learned, we realize later on purpose. And then Minnie just happens to send over dessert right when they need one. And I liked the bit about the pie. I would call this better in the book. I liked realizing later on that he meant did he intentionally. Intentionally forgot. Bringing a whole new layer to Weaponized and competition.
• 33:40
  Speaker A: That is another. Yeah, we'll get to that. In the Lost adaptation we do have. We're going to discuss thematic stuff in that segment. We'll get to that. But yeah, we have a whole discussion about kind of thematically what the movie is doing, whether it means to or not.
• 33:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. The chocolate moose is essentially a roofie in the book as well. And the movie. I felt like, kind of amped it up, though. I don't believe we see Rosemary, like literally stumbling and falling in the book. She just feels, like, dizzy and kind of unwell and then goes to bed and passes out.
• 34:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. So then we get our second dream sequence. And this is the rape scene where she is, we will find out, inseminated by the devil. But within this dream, she dreams she's on a boat. On a boat that is a Catholic only boat, captained, I believe, by jfk.
• 34:34
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 34:35
  Speaker A: Which at first I was like, that guy kind of looks like jfk. And then later when she's like, they're sitting like a little bit later in the dream, she's like talking to him and she's like, oh, can't Guy or somebody else Hutch get on the boat? Yeah, can't Hutch get on the boat. And we hear the captain, Guy, be like, no, it's for Catholics only. But it's like very clearly like a mediocre JFK impersonation. And I was dying because I was like, oh, it is jfk. But then it transitions from that. And she goes down into the. Beneath the deck of the boat, and there's a bed, and she lays on the bed. And this is where, like, the whole cult comes in and surrounding her, or the coven, I guess. And again, it kind of keeps going back and forth between what's seemingly reality versus this dream. And then this figure starts having sex with her. And it's Sometimes it's Guy, and sometimes it's this demony thing. And I wanted to know if that all happened, because then when she wakes up, she's like, I remember. She doesn't remember anything really, but she has these scratches on her back and on her side. And Guy says, oh, yeah, that was me. I had sex with you after you passed out. Because I wanted to. I didn't want to miss the opportunity for the pregnancy thing or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker B: Okay. So her dream, slash the demonic rape scene was so book accurate. Basically translated word for word. Very hard to read. The only little detail that I don't think was in the book was Guy taking off Rosemary's wedding ring. There's like, a brief shot of him pulling her wedding ring off, which I thought was interesting. To me, that communicated that, like, he does care about her, but he cares about himself so, so much more.
• 36:31
  Speaker A: Oh, well, I completely agree with that. On a read for his character. I think it's one of the reasons the movie is so effective and kind of haunting is that I don't think he's not cartoonishly evil. And I don't think he, like, despises her. No. Or, like, doesn't care about her.
• 36:44
  Speaker B: I would even go so far as to say he loves her.
• 36:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, I agree.
• 36:48
  Speaker B: But not as much as he loves himself.
• 36:50
  Speaker A: Yes. And his career aspirations. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
• 36:55
  Speaker B: And she does wake up with scratches, and Guy tells her that he went ahead and had sex with her even though she was unconscious. Which, by the way, is rape.
• 37:04
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. As we said in the summary. Yeah.
• 37:08
  Speaker B: The movie nails this right down to the line. It was fun in a necrophile sort of way, which is a thought you should keep to yourself.
• 37:17
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: Not a thing you should say.
• 37:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, It's. It's interesting to hear that that is so accurate, because it is so. It's very. Like, again, it's it's in the same way the first dream sequence is. It's so well done and so that it's so trippy and. But it also manages. It is like a. An upsetting and scary scene, but.
• 37:38
  Speaker B: Or.
• 37:39
  Speaker A: And like, obviously it's like fucked up, but it's so strange that it keeps it. It kind of, I think, puts you in this similar headspace as Rosemary where it doesn't, like, she doesn't react horrified.
• 37:54
  Speaker B: Necessarily, because it's so weird that it's almost fascinating. Yes, that was exactly how I felt reading it.
• 38:02
  Speaker A: And she kind of reacts similarly. She does protest at times, but she's not like freaking out necessarily. At one point she does. At one point she realizes. She says to herself, oh, this is all real. And then she kind of freaks out then. But up until that point, she kind of is just going along because again, she just thinks she's dreaming. And yeah, I agree, it was a super fascinating scene while also being deeply just upsetting and dark. But yeah, it was incredibly well done. So she ends up getting pregnant. She realizes now or after that happens, blah, blah, they move on. We move forward in time a little bit. And she's pregnant. She talks to her doctor and they're like, yep, you're pregnant. And just gonna jump forward here a bit because I don't think anything super relevant happens that I wanted to talk about until this. But then one of the. A big kind of interesting moment is one day Rosemary comes home and she has chopped all of her hair off. Yeah, she's gone and she's chopped all of her hair off. And she has this very short.
• 39:04
  Speaker B: This pixie cut.
• 39:05
  Speaker A: Pixie cut.
• 39:06
  Speaker B: Very 60s.
• 39:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker B: Like late 60s.
• 39:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 39:08
  Speaker B: It felt to me like a very like Audrey Hepburn, like. Cause she at one point had like a super close cropped pixie like that.
• 39:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. But she gets her hair cut off. I want to know if that came from the book because. And I thought it was interesting because to me, it read at this point too. We're moving through time. And after she gets pregnant, she very quickly gets kind of caught up in the cast of ets. They go and tell the cast of ETS and they like, make her go to this specific doctor and they start telling her, oh, don't, you know, like, you gotta go. And like, they give her, like Minnie gives her this special drink to make every day. And so, like, very quickly her life kind of becomes something out of her control. And so I read this haircut as her, like, trying to exercise any sort of agency in this thing. Where she is losing more and more of it as she becomes more and more pregnant and these other people kind of take more control of her anyways. Does that come from the book?
• 40:04
  Speaker B: So she does get her hair cut and it is a Vidal Sassoon.
• 40:10
  Speaker A: Yes. Which we mentioned. I had an odds and ends note about that. In the opening credits for the movie, it says that Mia Farrow's hair was done by some person and Vidal Sassoon. So literally, they got.
• 40:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The man himself. And now in the book, I didn't read this haircut the same way that you did, although I really like that interpretation, and I think it fits thematically really well. We're in Rosemary's perspective in the book. It's third person limited, and to me, it seemed more like she just wanted to do something nice for herself while she still could.
• 40:48
  Speaker A: Those things seem very similar.
• 40:50
  Speaker B: Very related. Yeah.
• 40:51
  Speaker A: This is a similar, ish kind. Yeah. Maybe not as defiant as I was interpreting it, but still a similar idea of. Yeah. Wanting to do something for herself and execute some agency, but. Yeah. So then as we move forward in time, we see that she starts. She's. She's. She's like. We see a scene where she's cooking a steak. It's kind of a funny reveal where I think we're supposed to think it's Guy initially, because we only see hands, like, cooking the steak. And it puts a steak in a frying pan, like, each side for, like, three seconds. Literally the classic, like, put it on the grill, flip it over, serve it to me as black and blue as you could order a steak. And she's like. And then the camera pulls back and reveals that it's Rosemary and she's eating these raw steaks. And I wanted to know if she eats raw steak or essentially raw steak in the.
• 41:41
  Speaker B: She does. As her pregnancy progresses, she finds herself craving increasingly raw meat, which I totally called. I totally called that. When she first goes to Dr. Saperstein, he's like. He tells her, like, oh, you're gonna have some really strange pregnancy cravings. Be sure to just give into them. Don't try to deny yourself. And I was like, she's gonna eat raw meat. She's totally gonna eat raw meat.
• 42:07
  Speaker A: Yep. I mean, you gotta feed that demon. So then Hutch shows back up, and he sees her for the first time in a while since she's been pregnant and notes how sickly she looks at this point. She's lost weight, as opposed to gaining weight. She's still in the first trimester. They say but she has lost weight. She looks really gaunt. She has kind of a sickly pallor to her face. And Hutch is like, something's. I don't know about this. This seems wrong. And she tells him about, like, oh, the thing that Minnie's making me. That she drinks every day. And he asks what's in it, and she says, tannis root. And he's like, what the hell is. I've never heard of tannis root. So he's gonna go and research on this. But he goes, and he's gonna go do your research. And then he calls her and is like, hey, can you meet me? I gotta talk to you. But before, when she goes to meet him the next day, before she can meet him, she gets a call, or he doesn't show up for the meeting. And then she gets a call from his friend that, oh, he fell into a coma mysteriously, and he's never able to give her the information that he had. And I want to know if that came from the book, if she almost is. It's almost discovered in time. But then Hutch is, I guess, poisoned by the coven or something.
• 43:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Everything that happens with Hutch is very book accurate.
• 43:22
  Speaker A: I think the answer to every question so far has been yes, by the way. I think literally it, which we talked about in the prequel, that this is supposedly one of the more faithful adaptations.
• 43:30
  Speaker B: It might be one of the most faithful adaptations we've covered ever.
• 43:34
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 43:35
  Speaker B: Like, somebody just propped the book up against the camera.
• 43:40
  Speaker A: Roman Polanski did, apparently, because he wrote the script, supposedly. So. Yeah. Or adapted the script. I say wrote the script, which apparently. Yeah. It's all just identical. Okay. Does. So then she's continuing to deal with these issues with the pregnancy, including. She gets very. She's dealing with this abdominal pain.
• 44:02
  Speaker B: She's basically, like, constantly and near crippling pain.
• 44:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. And nothing they're doing is helping. And Dr. Saperstein's like, Ah, it's fine. Blah, blah, blah. And at this point, she. And they had a party, and her friends have talked to her and are like, you should go get a second opinion. Like, this is not normal. Something's wrong. And she decides she wants to go back to Dr. Hill to get a second opinion. Who was her original doctor, who basically, like, told her she was pregnant when they. When she got pregnant. But then they quickly switched over to Dr. Saperstein, and she wants to go back to him and get a second opinion on all this. But then her and Guy get into this big fight because Guy doesn't want her to get a second opinion. He's like, no, this is. Blah, blah, blah. It'll be. It's an offense to Dr. Saperstein. Like, do you have the best doctor? There's no reason to get a second opinion. Blah, blah, blah. Very controlling. And it's becoming more and more clear that something is going on at this point, that he is. There's. It's not just like a normal reaction. He is like, no, you can't go to another. It's just insane. And I wanted to know if that big argument came from the book. But then, like, in the middle of that argument or right towards the end of it, all of a sudden, her pain just stops and she feels the baby moving, and she's like, oh, I guess things are fine.
• 45:16
  Speaker B: This is also accurate to the book. They're arguing. The pain just suddenly stops. And then the baby starts kicking and moving. This is something that I was hoping to find out more about. And I was disappointed by both the book and the movie on this count. Why did it suddenly stop?
• 45:38
  Speaker A: I was kind of interested in this, too.
• 45:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. Was it a coincidence? Was it actually always going to stop at that point? Did the coven decide to cast some kind of spell so that Rosemary didn't do something drastic? Did the baby realize that he was hurting his mother and stop in Breaking Dawn? I need answers. I didn't get them.
• 46:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was wondering the same thing, because it is just kind of happen, and you're like, oh. And then especially once you. Once everything plays out and you kind of figure out what was going on the whole time, you're like, well, what? What?
• 46:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, like, what happened there? I don't know.
• 46:12
  Speaker A: I would assume. I mean, Dr. Saperstein had been telling her that it would stop. He's like, you'll be fine. And so I. Yeah. I don't know what we're meant. If we're meant to believe him, that he was, like, telling the truth, or if they did, I'd be inclined to believe that they did something.
• 46:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, like some kind of charm to.
• 46:29
  Speaker A: Make the pain sound like they knew it was getting. Maybe they heard, like they knew it was getting. She was getting more and more like, you know, like, concerned about it. And so, yeah, they did something. I don't know. That would be my guess. But, yeah, the movie never confirms it doesn't really matter. But it. I was kind of expecting some sort of something, which is, again, I'm going.
• 46:51
  Speaker B: To choose to believe that actually the baby was like, oh, shit.
• 46:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, well. And then. So the thing that's interesting is that she's like, oh, it's better. And she says like, oh. And she says she had stopped drinking Minnie's health potion thing.
• 47:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker A: And she goes, actually, I made my own. And he's like, whoa, you're drinking your own one? Or whatever. And then as soon as she says, oh, I stopped making, or I. As soon as it stops hurting, they're like, oh, it must be the health thing, the health potion you made. He's like, what did you put in it? And she's, like, going through the ingredients, and she's like, milk and sugar and eggs. I don't know. But then I think in literally the next scene, she seemingly goes right back to drinking Minnie's health potion thing.
• 47:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 47:42
  Speaker A: Which is. I was unsure what was going on there because I was like. But wasn't it the thing that you did? Seemingly, like you were just having a discussion that the new health potion that Rosemary made, they seem to imply they think that's what helped her. But then the next scene, all of a sudden, they're like, oh, just go back to drinking Rosemary's or Minnie's potion thing.
• 48:07
  Speaker B: Okay, so this plays out the same way in the book. So I'll attempt to provide some. To shed some light. Initially, when the pain just stops, she starts freaking out because she thinks that means that she's, like, miscarried.
• 48:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:23
  Speaker B: And the baby has died.
• 48:24
  Speaker A: Right.
• 48:25
  Speaker B: And then she. It starts, like, moving and kicking, and she is so, like, elated, and it doesn't really make sense, but it's kind of a gimme. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to, like, pregnancy brain or whatever. Once she's, like, kind of back on track and she's no longer in this agonizing pain and she's, like, happy to be pregnant again, she decides that she's gonna, like, do everything right, and she's gonna, like, drink the drink that the doctor wants her to drink and, like, do everything that the doctor wants her to do. So she kind of gets, like, pulled back in.
• 49:05
  Speaker A: Okay. I thought the movie didn't effectively communicate. That was, like, the only issue I had in the whole movie in terms of, like, wait, what's just.
• 49:15
  Speaker B: I would agree with that.
• 49:15
  Speaker A: Because again, it's just they so specifically have a conversation. He's like, what did you put in your drink? Oh, you did? Because they're like, oh, it worked. Like, they have a conversation about how what she made must have worked.
• 49:25
  Speaker B: Well, no, when she thinks that the. That she might have miscarried, when the pain stops, she thinks that her drink might have caused that because she was putting sherry in it.
• 49:36
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. I did not interpret it that way at all. I thought, okay, that makes sense. I did not get that from the movie. I would have to watch it again. And maybe I just completely. It's very clear, and I just misinterpreted it. But I interpreted it as, oh, the pain stopped. And then he starts asking her what? Like, oh, that fixed it, or whatever. And then she feels it kicking. Because they didn't seem to be panicking to me. They seemed more excited. I don't know. I would have to watch that again. And it's very possible I just completely misinterpreted what was going on there. But I had an issue with what was happening there. But assuming that tracks. And I can see what you're saying now that initially she's like, oh, my God, I'm having a miscarriage or the baby's dead or whatever. It must have been that thing I drank today. And then. And once the baby starts kicking, they're like, oh, no, it's fine. And then she goes back to what they were doing. I can buy all that. I just. I did not follow that happening in the movie. It was the only issue I had with the movie where I was like, wait, what? But, yeah, okay. Then we find out that Hutch passed away. He had been in a coma for months or weeks or something at this point. They get a call one day and. From one of Hutch's friends, and she's like. Tells Rosemary Hutch died. And Rosemary goes to the funeral. And at the funeral, she meets the friend who called her on the phone. And her friend is like, oh, Hutch wanted to leave this for you. He regained consciousness right at the end, wanted you to have this. And it's a wrapped something. We find out it's a book later, and he had a final message for you, which is. The name is an anagram. We don't know what that means either. And she assumes it's related to the name of the book. And we'll see the book later. And it is the. It's called all.
• 51:26
  Speaker B: All of Them Witches.
• 51:27
  Speaker A: All of Them Witches. And I wanted to know if Hutch cracked the case and left her that book right before he died.
• 51:35
  Speaker B: Yes. And, yes, I was devastated when Hutch died.
• 51:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 51:41
  Speaker B: Yeah. He felt like the last person who could have possibly saved her.
• 51:45
  Speaker A: Oh, for sure.
• 51:46
  Speaker B: I was very devastated when Hutch passed.
• 51:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So then she gets home, and she's trying to figure out the anagram thing. So she Grabs a Scrabble board and she pulls a bunch of tiles out so that she can rearrange them. And she puts out the name of the book. All of them witches and like. And rearranges it into a bunch of stuff. Can't figure it out. It's like, ah, none of this makes sense. But then on a wild hair, she looks at the book again and looks at one of the pages and it has the name Stephen, who is the. Steven Marcado, who is the son of Adrian. Adrian Marcado, who was the guy.
• 52:18
  Speaker B: And Hutch has like double undermined Steven.
• 52:21
  Speaker A: And dog eared the page. And so she sees that name and she goes, oh, maybe that name. And so she puts those out and then she rearranges those and it spells Roman, Cass Castibet.
• 52:31
  Speaker B: Castabet. Yeah.
• 52:33
  Speaker A: And she realizes that Roman is Steven Marcado. And I wanted to know if the Scrabble anagramming came from the book because, man, that's. I had never seen that. But it's such a quintessential horror movie thing now that I imagine this movie kind of is what everybody else is trading on when they do that sort of rearranging the letters of revealing the villain kind of thing. Maybe not. Maybe it could happen before this. But does that come from the book?
• 53:02
  Speaker B: Yes, it does. I was actually a little amused during the movie watching her literally move, because watching her literally move the tiles around made me realize that, like, it's not even that tricky of a anagram.
• 53:17
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, no, it's not.
• 53:18
  Speaker B: It's really not.
• 53:19
  Speaker A: No, that's the thing that's really interesting is that. Yeah. When she moves them around, you see.
• 53:23
  Speaker B: That there's like whole chunks of letters in the same order.
• 53:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Basically just like. It's like the words are just kind of slightly rearranged. It's not like the letters are all mixed around. Yeah, she's just like. But she. I also thought it was a little funny that she just like, just like.
• 53:38
  Speaker B: Immediately, immediately solves it.
• 53:40
  Speaker A: I was like, okay, sure, whatever. Who cares? But yeah, so that Scrabble tiles and everything from the book.
• 53:46
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 53:46
  Speaker A: Wow. All right. So now she knows that Roman is evil and she has told Guy about this. And Guy's like, you're. No, you're just crazy. This book is not, you know, you're just. You're being pregnant and crazy and he puts the book away and blah, blah, blah, and she's like, ah, whatever. And she keeps moving along in the pregnancy. But then at some point, and I don't remember exactly what prompts this. Oh, I think it's after he gets rid of the book. He hides it, and then he, like, throws it away, or he doesn't hide it, but he, like, puts it on a shelf, and then eventually he gets rid of it. And I think this is what spurs her additional suspicion of Guy. And she calls the actor who went blind and is like. And she's been doing more reading on witches at this point. And one of the things she saw is a sentence that said, like, a witch's coven can come together to cast a spell to blind. To, like, deafen, blah, blah, blah. Or blind their enemies or something.
• 54:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker A: And so she's like, hmm, that's suspicious. So she calls the actor who went blind and she's like, oh, that day you met up with my husband for this? Or whatever, because they had lunch together, like, the day before he went blind or within a few days of him going blind. And she's, like, talking about it, and she's apologizing about what happened and all this, and it's so sad and blah, blah. And then she says, oh, and I'm sorry. Did you ever get that thing of yours back from my husband? And she's just throwing that out there.
• 55:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, she's just fishing.
• 55:14
  Speaker A: Fishing. And he goes, oh, you mean my tie? And she's like, oh, shit. And we'll realize it's because they need some item of which we also find out is how they got Hutch. He was missing a glove when he was at their apartment, and Roman came in and introduced himself to Hutch. When Roman left, he went in the closet and stole one of Hutch's. Guy took Hutch's glove in the movie. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be Roman.
• 55:43
  Speaker B: It's definitely Guy in the book.
• 55:45
  Speaker A: But anyway, so she now realizes that Guy stole or they traded ties or something weird. Which is like, why would you ever. It's very strange. But she realizes that Guy got his tie and when. That's how they were able to curse the actor and turn him and blind him. And I wanted to know if. And this confirms her suspicions that Guy is in league. This is where she realizes that Guy is in league with the cast of ETS and the coven. And I wanted to know if that plays out the same in the book.
• 56:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, it does. I think one of her first suspicions. There's the thing with the book, and I can't remember exactly which thing happens first. There's the thing with the book. And then he also. Gaia mentions that Dr. Shand just happens to play the recorder, and that's, like, the weird flute music that they hear. But then she doesn't know why he knows that.
• 56:38
  Speaker A: Oh, I don't remember that. I mean, I remember him saying that about the recorder, but I don't remember her being suspicious of that at all.
• 56:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, so that's the thing that makes her suspicious. And everything is confirmed when she calls Donald Baumgart and finds out about the tie, just like in the movie. There's one other thing that makes her suspicious that the movie leaves out. Early on in the book, Guy gets tickets to a musical and says that he got them from his vocal coach. And Rosemary ends up going to this musical without Guy. I can't remember what his excuse was. Probably, like, an audition or something. And then much later in the book, Rosemary bumps into this vocal coach, and he's confused when she thanks him for the free tickets. He's like, I didn't give anybody tickets. Leading Rosemary to deduce that Guy wanted her out of the apartment for some reason and bought the tickets to accomplish that. I'm totally fine with the movie. Leaving this out. I just wanted to mention it.
• 57:34
  Speaker A: Yep. So at this point, Rosemary is very, like, concerned, and so she goes to Dr. Saperstein because she's like, I need help. And Guy's in on this. Blah, blah, blah. She gets to Dr. Saperstein, and while she's there, she got rid of her locket with the tannis root in it. And the receptionist in Dr. Saperstein's office remarks, like, oh, I don't remember. There's something about. Basically, the nurse at the reception confirms that. She's like, oh, you got rid of that smelly necklace thing you had. That's great. I wish Dr. Saperstein would change his cologne because it smells the same or something like that.
• 58:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 58:19
  Speaker A: And this makes it dawn on Rosemary that Saperstein is in cahoots because he also has this. It's called, like, devil's mold or something.
• 58:29
  Speaker B: Like, isn't it devil's pepper, I think, is what it was in the book.
• 58:34
  Speaker A: Yes, devil's pepper. And because we see that in the. Yeah, in the little book when they're researching it. Yeah. And so she realizes Dr. Saperstein's on it, so she leaves, and she immediately goes to Dr. Hill. Her initial, her first doctor. She gets there and she explains everything. She just info dumps on him. Like, by the way, I am being gaslit by a demonic cult who wants to take my baby for a blood sacrifice. And my husband and my old doctor. Dr. Saperstein. All these people are in on it. And when she says Dr. Saperstein is in on it, he's like. You mean like Abe Saperstein? Cause he knows him. He's like, a very prominent doctor. And I think that's the thing that makes him, like, question it more than anything. He's already. Which. He's seemingly listening to her and, like, believing her. And he's like, all right, just hang out. We'll take you to the hospital so you can. Cause she's, like, very close to delivery at this point to her due date. And he's like, we'll take you to the hospital. Just go lay down in this room. But then when he comes back to get her, he has Dr. Saperstein and Guy with her. He has called them to come get her because he assumes that she. Crazy. That she has, like, lost her mind. And I wanted to know if, similarly in the book, she rushes to Dr. Hill for help, only for him to not believe her and call the villains.
• 59:54
  Speaker B: Yes. And one of the most devastating betrayals in the entire book. I never trusted Guy, so I wasn't surprised by his betrayal, but Dr. Hill devastated me a little.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, no, Same in the movie. He very clearly seems like a good guy who's trying to do his best. And. And it's somewhat understandable in the movie, like, at least to some extent, this woman comes in and is like, there's a satanic cult who is trying to steal my baby for a blood. You'd be like, okay, well, that's clearly nonsense. You know what I mean? It's not that he's doing this maliciously. He just.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker B: I don't think he's doing it maliciously. No. I do think it's. You know, obviously, it's heightened because of the story that we're telling, but I do think it is commentary on how.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. I have a note about that. Later. 100. I agree.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker B: You know, we defer to another man.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker B: Before we believe what the woman is saying.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. No. Yeah. 100. I. I think within the. Yes. Because as I said, I have that same note. Later, we're gonna talk about it in Lost Adaptation, where we're talking kind of like what the movie's doing thematically. That being said, I still think that it's. I think both can be true. I think it can be true. That is a commentary on. Yes. A doctor not taking a woman seriously and deferring to another man. But also, she comes in and is saying crazy shit to him. So it's like, yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. Point being, it's clear, I think you. What you can't get out of this is that Dr. Hill is not in on it. Like, I think you could read that. Like, maybe he's in on the line.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker B: That was my. Like, when I was reading it. That was my initial thought that I was like, oh, no, he's in on it.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker A: I don't think that's the case.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker B: No, I don't think that's the case.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker A: He's not in on it at all. He's just. He just doesn't believe that she's being hunted by a demonic Satan cult. He thinks she's just kind of losing her mind.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker B: He's not in on the Satanism. No, but he is in on the patriarchy.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker A: Yes, yes, absolutely. So they take her home, but as she gets home, she's able to distract them and rush up to the apartment, and she locks herself in the apartment and they can't get in. And she's trying to call. I think she calls somebody. I don't even remember who, but she's trying to call somebody for help. And as she's on the phone, some other people get into the house. And I'm going to skip forward quite a bit, but they get into the house, they get her, they drug her. The coven gets in, they drug her. And we don't know how they get in, but they get in somehow. There's a great shot where they sneak through the background, but my favorite thing is because it's kind of like a classic horror movie jump scare, where she turns away and something moves through the background. But the way they're moving, they're sneaking.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker B: Like they're in a cartoon.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker A: They look like Scooby Doo, the Scooby Doo gang sneaking through the back background. It's very funny, but it's also very creepy. And it works. It's effective, but it just. The way their arms and legs are moving looks like a cartoon. But they get her. They drug her, and she has. She has her baby. She delivers the baby while she's, like, on drugs and unconscious. And then she comes to. They tell her the baby's dead. They're like, yeah, baby died. Stillborn. And they start. They're like, okay, well, you can recover now. Blah, blah, blah. Move forward in time. They're drugging her throughout this, but she stops taking the drugs. And she kind of becomes more and more suspicious as she hears babies cry and all kinds of stuff. She's like, she's hearing a baby cry somewhere. She realizes that she's still pumping breast milk, and she assumes they're just getting rid of it. But then one day, she goes to put her dirty spoon in the breast milk, and the woman's like, no, don't do that. And she becomes like, oh, wait a second. Okay. So she's like, clearly they're using the breast milk for something. She realizes something is going on. And I don't know what prompts her necessarily, but she goes and investigates the linen closet from the beginning, the linen closet that had the secretary in front of it and that she put a bunch of shelves in earlier. And she realizes there's a secret door in the back of it and a secret passage that leads to the Cassavete's apartment. And I wanted to know if there's a secret passage in the back of a closet that leads to the satanic cult's apartment. Cause that's great, great stuff.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker B: Worst Narnia ever.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. That is from the book. So she knows that guy and Dr. Saperstein must have been able to get into the apartment somehow, even though she had, like, locked and chained the door.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker B: And then she remembers that Mrs. Gardenia had the linen closet blocked when they first toured the apartment. So she was like, I think I'm gonna start there.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's a great setup and payoff. Like that big reveal of, like, oh, shit, there's this hu. Secret pet. Yeah. It makes perfect sense because as you set it up in the beginning and it's creepy and off putting, and you're like, oh, maybe there was like, she tried to trap a demon in the. You don't know. Like, you're like, what is it? And then it's like, oh, no, this is literally just a secret door. It, like, leads to their apartment.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker B: Yeah. Real quick. I just wanted to mention another thing about the breast milk, because another thing that makes her suspicious is that she, after a couple times, deduces that she. Whenever she hears this baby crying, she. They come in with, like, the pump, and then shortly after they leave with the breast milk, the crying stops.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker A: And I was like, the movie does not do that.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker B: No, I was like, damn, y'all aren't even being slick about it. Like, that's not even slick. Come on.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker A: They do try to cover it with the air conditioning. They try to cover the sound of the baby. They're like, you gotta leave this air conditioner on because it's really hot outside. And they try to cover the sound of the baby with that. But yeah, it doesn't work out, so she decides to go investigate. She grabs a giant knife and goes to investigate and she sneaks in. And as she walks in, the entire. Everybody is assembled in like the foy, like the ballroom or whatever, I don't even know what the large, the great room of the Castelvette's apartment. And there's a giant. She walks in, there is a giant black bassinet draped in black cloth and everybody's sitting around it. And she walks over and looks in and screams. And the baby. And again, this is all I ever talked about. In the summary, she's like, what's wrong with the baby? What's wrong with its eyes? And they explain, it's your baby, but it's not a guy's baby. It is the baby. It is Satan's child.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker B: Satan is his father.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, Satan is his father. He has his father's eyes. There's some great little subtle filmmaking. Then when she says that or when during that conversation, she looks at guy and he like looks down and has his hands over his eyes so we can't see his eyes in that moment. But I just. That scene where she walks in and the camera just follows her into this room full of people and they all just kind of stare at her. It's so, ah, it's so creepy. This movie has like one jump scare in the entire thing. And it's scarier than like every movie I've seen. Like it's. You know what I mean? Like, I think there's one jump, there's like a loud sound. Like kind of early in the movie there was like one weird like loud bang or something that like came out of nowhere. But other than that, there's not a single jump scare in the movie. I guess them walking behind her is kind of a.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker B: Kind of a jump scare. Not really.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker A: Not in comparison to modern movies. And it's still like scarier and more upsetting than. Yeah, the vast majority of like modern horror films. Does that ending play out the same? Does she walk in as a giant black bassinet and everybody just kind of watches her walk in?
• 1:07:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. The movie nails everything down to the upside down cross hanging over the basement. Yeah, there's an upside down cross and guy getting up and sitting right back down when he sees her. Yeah, I was rooting for her so hard in this scene. She like gets the knife and goes through the closet.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker B: I was like, yes, girl. Stab them and get your baby. Stab them all. Take your baby.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. So they explain to her everything and she kind of just doesn't know what to do. So I think she ends. They end up getting the knife from her. She drops a knife or something. Yeah, that's right. She drops the knife. This is a great scene. She drops a knife and Minnie walks over and it's, like, stuck in the floor. And Minnie pulls it up and rubs the floor, like, put a hole in my floor. Again, the character does not change from. Even after everything has been revealed. But then she's sitting, and Guy comes in and talks to her, and he sits down next to her and he's like, look, we can have more children. They promised us. Like, this helped my career, blah, blah, blah. We can have more children. And he said, they promised me you wouldn't be hurt. And you haven't been. Not really. And I wanted to know if that exact line came from the book, because it is. God, it's such a brutal and just the worst and the best.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker B: But it is directly from the book. And it's almost like. It's a great thesis of how the people in this book view the protagonist and the pain that they have put her through. Yeah, but she hasn't been hurt. Not really.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker A: Not real. Not really. And that's the thing. And you haven't been. Not really. Like, it's not. No, it hasn't even really.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker B: The minimizing and the gaslighting and all of it. So, yeah, Guy says that to her, and then Rosemary spits on him. And I cheered.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker A: But then she walks back over to the bassinet and the baby's crying because one of the other ladies who's been taking care of the baby is, like, rocking the bassinet, but she's, like, shaking it.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker B: I know. I was like, of course that baby's crying. She's going to town on that day.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker A: And that's what Rosemary says. She's like, you're rocking it too fast. And Roman is like. And the lady's like, shut up.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker B: You're gonna give him shaking baby syndrome.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker A: And Roman's like, no, let her do it. And Rosemary walks over and looks down at the baby and kind of sits there for a second and then starts rocking the cradle, basically. And that's the end of the movie, with the insinuation being that she kind of has resigned herself to care for the baby. That she is, like, despite all of this, she's going to love and care for this child. And I wanted to know if the book ended the same way.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker B: This is really the only part of the movie where it differs greatly from the book, everything else has very faithful, very faithful adaptation. There's small changes here and there. There's a huge difference at the end here. So the movie, as you said, cuts off with Rosemary, like, looking down into the bassinet and kind of rocking it. And it's implied that she's going to be a real mother to this baby.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker B: In the book, she really starts to warm up to the baby. She's, like, talking to him. She's adjusting his swaddle so that it isn't so tight. She's like, talking to him about, like, oh, you have a room of your own back at our apartment. And, yeah, you. We're gonna. You're get your. Your milk. And I know you think it comes from a bottle, but it actually comes from me. Yeah, she's, like, talking to this baby, and the whole coven starts shouting, hail, Rosemary. And then somebody says, hail, Rosemary, mother of Adrian. And Rosemary's like, no, his name is Andrew. And Roman kind of balks at that. But then Minnie starts shouting, hail, Rosemary, mother of Andrew. And everyone else joins in. And while I respect finding the movie's ending better for its ambiguity, I really liked the way the book ended. It felt like the closest Rosemary got to agency in the entire novel.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker B: Like, she stands up to them and says, point blank, this is how it's gonna be. And they all just, like, kowtow to her.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker A: I think the movie does that, just not as overtly and, like, not as, like, not as much of an exclamation point, because her walking over and the lady being. And she's like, let me do it. And the lady's like, no. And then Roman's like, no, let her. They do kind of defer to her in the movie, even, but it's not nearly as dramatic as what you've stated in the book, for sure.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker B: I don't know. The ending of the book kind of made me feel like maybe it would all end up okay and Andrew Adrian would grow up to be, like, kind of normal instead of evil, like in Good Omens.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. I will say I thought the same in the end of the movie.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker B: Did you?
• 1:12:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. I actually kind of felt similarly, like.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker B: I felt like the movie ended with a little bit of a note of dread. Still. There is a note of it. I didn't feel that way so much in the book.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker A: Okay. I'm not saying it's the exact same, because I don't. I obviously have no idea, but I do. And I agree. There's definitely a note of dread with the way the Movie ends. But I could also see, like, that. I agree with the way you said the book made you feel. I could also see that ending in the movie. Maybe not as, like, maybe it's not as explicitly implied that that's likely to happen as maybe you got from the book, but I think it's still there in the film. It's just. Yeah, there's still. It leaves it a little more nebulous, a little more ambiguous, so that there's a little bit more of a horror ending, you know? Anyways.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, I also just, like, really liked that they were like, oh, his name's Adrien. And she's like, yes. No, it's not.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker A: I think that would be really great in the film. I wish they had kept that in. Like I said, I think they keep some of the spirit of that with the way they handle her at the end. But I think that specific exchange would have been really powerful in the movie. So it is disappointing that that wasn't there. And I think it was kind of interesting. And we're going to get to the thematic stuff later, but I had a note here that I wanted to talk about with this specific ending that this whole thing kind of. Do you feel like that this whole movie. So obviously the whole. You know what? Let's just get into Lost in Adaptation. I'm just going to kick it to Lost in Adaptation and then we'll jump right back to what I was saying. Let's get to Lost in Adaptation.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker B: Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker A: Yes. Yes. And I want to get un. Lost as soon as possible. So Lost Adaptation. This time, again, we're just going to talk about stuff thematically and we're going to get into. And I'll save this for after we get into all this, what I was about to say, because it kind of makes more sense probably to come after talking about this. So what did you think the book was about thematically? And then we're going to talk about what we think the movie was about thematically.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker B: Okay. So I'm just going to briefly state what I thought the book was about, because I want to discuss in more detail, kind of like following your thoughts on the movie. But in short, I felt that the book was about the horror of being a woman.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. And I would agree that's what I got the movie about specifically. And more like, more specifically, it felt to me like the movie was about the horrors of pregnancy and abusive relationships. Being a woman, but dealing with the medical World. And I have this note here. I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but it is kind of wild to me that somebody like Roman Polanski, which we talked about in the prequel, convicted literally of doing the thing in this movie.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker B: Yes, yes.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker A: Somebody said in a comment in, like, Patreon, somebody was, like, deeply ironic Roman Polanski.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker B: Deeply ironic. Ironic, too, to the Marianas Trench. Ironic.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. He convicted of drugging and raping an underage girl. Or wasn't, I guess, convicted. Whatever. Essentially. Convicted. Was going to plead or something.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker B: No. Yeah, I think he was. He was convicted.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker A: He was convicted and then he wouldn't let him plead. I can't remember.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker B: He's gonna plead guilty, but then found out that they weren't gonna accept it and, like, led the country.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. So he's been a.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker B: You know, like, innocent people do.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker A: Been a fugitive in France for decades at this point. But. And again, it shouldn't surprise me at this point, but it is kind of wild to me because as we. As we finished this movie, I was like, this is such a. Fascinatingly, to me, it came across as such a deeply sympathetic movie to Rosemary and a deeply, like, feminist movie.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker A: And again, I shouldn't be surprised that a person seemingly as horrible as Roman Polanski, a guy seemingly as horrible as Roman Polanski is, can both write and direct a story like that. Again, it shouldn't be a surprise at this point. We talked about earlier, Joss Whedon, obviously, his transgressions. Not on the level of. At least not that I've heard, on the level of what Roman Polanski did.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker B: Not that we're aware.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker A: Not that we're aware of more just being a bully and a shithead and, like, misogynist and stuff on set and I think. And some other stuff like that. But Buffy is one of the best, like. Like, most progressive, especially for 19, you know, that time period. And again, it wasn't Joss Whedon alone. There was women writers on this. There was all kinds of people that worked on that. So I want to be very clear, I'm not attributing that all to Joss Whedon, but another person who. Another guy who was revealed to be this shitty guy, but was able to kind of create this deeply, seemingly understanding of the plight of women piece of media. And I thought that was fascinating because. So, to me, what I thought was really interesting about the movie is that, again, I agree with you that it's about the whores of being a woman, but specifically about pregnancy. But Translating it into, like, doing it through the narrative device of being like a demon baby. The pregnancy completely wrecks her body. She gets, like, in the first trimester at least, like, she's in constant pain. She's, you know, it's basically feeding on her soul or whatever you want to. Then you have the cast of ETS and the people around her, like, forcing, like, health supplements onto her and, like, telling her how she should, like, eat and do all this sort of stuff. And, like, the doctor telling her not to, like, read books and not to trust other things that she sees and all that sort of stuff. And then later in the movie, at the party, her friends come. Like, she's had all these, like, men, and not just men, there's other women involved, but all these other people telling her what to do. But then at this party, all of a sudden, these three friends of her, old friends, these women friends of hers show up and they, like, lock her in the kitchen. And Guy tries to barge, I think in a very important moment, Guy tries to barge into the kitchen and they shove him out and, like, lock the door and don't let him in. And they come and they tell her, like, no, what are you talking about? This is not normal. What you're going through is not, you know, they like, actually help her or, like, you know, are trying to help her. Then, like, the elements of Guy keeping her from trusting her friends, like, he tells her after that they're crazy bitches, they don't know what they're talking about. And, like, he's like, trying to get her to not trust her own feelings and her own body and that sort of thing, and to keep her from getting a second opinion. Then, as you talked about earlier, she rushes to two different male doctors. First Dr. Saperstein, but then Dr. Hill. And she realizes the first doctor can't be trusted because he's literally in the friggin evil coven. And then she rushes to another male doctor who doesn't take her concerns seriously and just delivers her right back into the hands of her abusers. And then the whole ending of the movie is just her trying to. It's so horrifying because it's her trying to be taken seriously by anybody and everybody she calls, everybody she tries to talk to. Nobody will believe her. Nobody will take her seriously. Then after they tell her that she had the baby and it was stillborn, Dr. Saperstein tells her it's her fault. Like, he blames her for it. And these are all things that obviously I've never experienced, but when you hear women talk about their experience with the medical system, their experience with the patriarchy, this is indicative of everything you've ever heard women talk about in relation to those things. And I was just blown away by how clear it seemed that this movie was about the horrors of being a woman, specifically in relation to how the patriarchy interacts with them and specifically the medical industry. And the thing that I also thought was super interesting, we get to the end, the way the ending happens where she goes in and she decides to keep the baby or not keep the baby, but to, like, you know, care for the baby or whatever. I was like, I kind of think ultimately the thesis of this movie ends up being that. So despite everything that happened and how insane all of this was, it's not. It is just the act of giving, having a child for a woman in the 1960s. Like, that's like, yes. At the end, like, we find out there's this evil satanic cult, but they're actually, like. Like, kind of supportive of her and they, like, allow her to be involved as much as, like, how to say this? The end of the movie, I was like, this all played out, basically. This could have played out the exact same if there was no satanic cult involved. Kind of. Barring some very specific details, like, there. There are elements of, like, the, you know, elements of it that are. That don't translate directly to the actual experience of women that don't have a demon baby inside of them. But I think apart from that, a lot of the rest of the way, everything plays out, it's not even like it's an allegory. It just is the experience of being pregnant and having a group of people who are essentially don't care about you as a person, but care about you as a child producer.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker A: And that's what ultimately all of these people are. And like, yes, they're a satanic cult, but they're also just. And I think that's also important. Why the fact that many and Roman don't seem like stereotypical villainous. Like. Cause they're not. They're just normal people. Yes. They're normal people who, like, want to bring about the Antichrist, but, like, this is just the experience that a woman can have. I don't know.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker B: It's nosy old busybody.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker A: Yes. And it's just. And again, viewing her as a means to an end and not as an actual person with agency herself. And I just. I thought it was so fascinating. Again, I don't know how much of that is intended by the film. It's muddied to me by the fact I would have to go and listen to, like, Polanski talk about it. And I will not do that because I don't care to. But I would be interested to know how much of that was intended by, you know, the filmmaker. Like this. This sort of feminist critique, essentially, of, like, the medical system and the patriarchy. And anyways, all that said, what are your thoughts on the movie and what it's saying?
• 1:23:11
  Speaker B: So I would be maybe a little more hesitant to, like, pigeonhole it directly to being about pregnancy. I think it is, yeah. But I also think that pregnancy is a lens used to depict more general horrors about being a woman in a world run by men. Like not owning your own body, having your fears and concerns dismissed and ridiculed. The bl, the gaslighting, the minimizing, never being believed, even about pain that you're experiencing, being blamed for your own pain, men deferring to other men instead of believing you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But while those are all things that can be related to being pregnant.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker B: They don't necessarily have to be about being pregnant. I have experienced all those things, and I've never been pregnant. Now, you said that you aren't sure how much of any of this is intended by the film, but the film, as I've said, is a very accurate adaptation of the book with only, like, small details really being the only changes. And all of the things that you listed in your examples directly from the book.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. I only say I don't know how much is intended by the film, only because of who we know Romanski to be. But that being said, I think it is probably is intended by the film. As I said with Buffy, we know that fucked up evil men can tell very compassionate stories about women. Like, it's not impossible. So I think it is possible, and not only possible probable, that the movie does, in fact, intend these things.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker B: Right. I think it could intend them, but the movie also, and Roman Polanski did not invent these things. Whole cloth out of his own mind.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker A: No. Yes.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker B: So that brings the conversation around Tyra Levin. Now, I do think that Rosemary's Baby could be considered an example of a phenomenon that is pretty common among male artists, which is that like. Like the worst, scariest thing they can think of is just being treated like a woman. I think sometimes they do that obliviously, sometimes knowingly.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker B: However, having read now both this and the Stepford Wives, I am kind of inclined to think that Ira Levin may have been tapped into something that his fellow men often aren't able to suss out. Like, maybe the scariest thing he could think of is being treated like a woman. But I don't think he was oblivious to the fact that he understood that.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, and that's where I would go with it, because I agree that can be a thing, like, 100% that. Yes. Like, sometimes there. It can be a thing where male writers can be, like, what's the scary thing? Like being feminized, being not seen as a man, living in the world as a woman. But in this instance, that doesn't feel like what's going on to me. It feels like just a sympathetic understanding. Like. Like this is what women deal with. Isn't that horrifying? Not. Wouldn't it, like, oh, can you imagine being a woman? Wouldn't that be horrifying? I don't think that, to me, those feel like slightly different things. Do you get what I'm saying?
• 1:26:27
  Speaker B: Right. And now when I say that often, or sometimes we get art made by men where, like, the scariest thing they can imagine is. Is being treated like a woman or being a woman, I think often that's always not, like, maybe as on the nose as you might think. Like, an example off the top of my head is like, the Alien franchise.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker A: Oh, yes.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker B: Where, like, the scary thing is having something growing inside of you and bursting out. Right, babe? That's pregnancy.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker A: Like, but that's. Yes, no, I agree. I agree with what you're saying. But. Yeah, but to me, that's. And I think even an alien. Does that not come across to you as a sympathetic, pathetic viewpoint? To me, it feels like you're implying that that is somehow rooted in misogyny. But to me, that re. Especially in this movie and even in Alien, to some extent, to me, that feels like that's. That's. That's a. It's. It's an attempt to highlight that misogyny. It's an attempt to expose the inherent misogyny in the world and, like, peel it back and show the. Like, like, show other men, show people in general the inherent cruelty that. That, like, like, look at what. And I think that's what's so effective, this movie, at least to me. And again, obviously, I'm approaching this as a man, but to me, like, it feels like what the movie is doing is going, like, look at. Look at. This is really scary. Can you imagine being Rosemary in this situation? You don't have to imagine it. That's what women deal with. Every single day, it. To me, it feels very sympathetic. And like, it's. It's. It's not rooted in a fear of being a woman. It's rooted in a sympathy for the plight of women. And to me, that feels different. I don't know.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker B: I think both things can be true at the same time. That, like, something like Alien can be sympathetic and can be drawing attention to that while also, you know, viewing it as a woman. It kind of feels like. But, like, that's just reality. Yeah, for a bunch of us.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so I guess maybe that does make it more effective for a male audience than it does for a female. I don't know. That is interesting, though, because, yeah, to me, those feels, like slightly different, but again, I'm obviously coming to it from being a CIS dude, so, like, I. Yeah, I can't view it from outside that bubble. That's. Yeah, no, it's fascinating. Again, it's just. I thought the movie was fascinating because it was not what I was expecting. I was not expecting sort of what feels to me like a very deeply sympathetic kind of feminist treatise on pregnancy and dealing with medical patriarchy from Roman Polanski. But. And again, it's more from Ira Levin, potentially.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would be inclined to say that maybe more from Ira Levin. I don't think that Roman Polanski didn't understand that he was making a deeply feminist work. I think he probably did understand that. But I would also maybe be willing to put down a lot of money that if you asked Roman Polanski why it was scary, he would say because of a. It was. She was pregnant with a demon baby.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker A: I agree with that because that's where my unsureness comes. And again, the answer to this probably exists. Like, I'm sure Polanski has talked about.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker B: This, but I'm not seeking that guy out.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker A: Exactly. And that was the. I was like, I'm sure the answer to this exists. I just don't care to go find it. Which is fine. Death of the author. Unfortunately, not this one. But anyways, Katie, it's time to find out what you thought was better in the book you like to read.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 1:30:20
  Speaker B: Everything. So, first off, I thought Mia Farrow was a great choice for Rosemary. Very fragile, appearing.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker A: Similar kind of feeling to Duvall in the Shining. Kind of. And what's her name. And Carrie, just that. Very waifish, fragile, like, right on the edge. It seems like she's struggling even before. Not struggling, I guess, but, like, seems like she's you know, a strong wind could blow her away, and she's gotta go through some real shit here, so. Yeah.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker B: So great choice for Rosemary. I did imagine Guy as, like, way more, like, classically handsome as I was reading the book. Like, more of, like, a chiseled jaw, like, Clark Kent type of handsome, which is not really what he seemed like to me in the movie. Yeah. But I always do appreciate when movies understand that they need a man with a punchable face. And that man had a punchable face.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker B: Just want to pop. Pop. The movie leaves out, I think. I don't think the movie ever really mentions this, that Rosemary is estranged from basically her entire family because she married outside of the Catholic Church.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think the movie does.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker B: So she's lacking that support net. Whereas if she had not been lacking that, perhaps she could have. You know, she could have fled to, like, her parents or.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker A: I will say I was very frustrated at the end of the movie when she called the doctor and didn't call her friends from the party from earlier. The only people who had helped her in the entire movie, like, other than Hutch. It's like, why didn't you call them?
• 1:32:09
  Speaker B: What I would have done.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker A: But again, I think there's even some commentary there that even. That she has this kind of. She is so ingrained in this patriarchal system. Her first thought isn't to her women friends, it is to rush to a male doctor for help. Like, I think there's. Yeah.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker B: I thought that the laundry room could have been creepier in the movie. It sounded just like the way it was described in the book. It sounded like a damp, dank hole.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker B: And in the movie, they say that it's creepy, but it kind of. Just a little. It's a little. Yeah. It's kind of just looks like a normal, like, basement laundry facility to me. The movie skipped a scene where Terry comes over and has dinner with Guy and Rosemary, like, between meeting her and then her committing suicide. That was how Guy knew her. It doesn't really matter, but, you know, whatever. Similar note to my first note. I thought that Minnie was incredibly cast. Roman wasn't giving to me what he gave. In the book, they're always describing his eyes as piercing. And I just was not getting that from this actor. There's a scene in the book where Rosemary's sister Margaret calls her out of the blue. And this is before she even gets pregnant, I think, and says she has such a strong feeling that Rosemary was hurt or, like, in the hospital or Something that she just like had to call her and, and see if she was okay. And this is a sister that she's estranged from. Right. That she doesn't normally talk to. I. We talked about the, the rape scene and I did think that it was very, very good and very book accurate. However, I also thought that the giant monster devil hands were kind of goofy.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker B: I mean, I mean, you know, it's the 60s, so we can forgive it, but they were like kind of hokey looking.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker B: Another little detail in the book that I don't think made it into the movie was that when Rosemary's pregnant, she can't eat salt. Like she can't tolerate it.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. That does not.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker B: Which I thought was like a really great little detail because salt, as we all know, protects you from evil.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker B: I wish that the movie would have done more with guy acting weird about her wanting him to like put his hands on her stomach and like feel the baby kicking and moving. Cause he's like super weird and cagey about it in the book.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker A: I did notice in the movie his reaction is weird. It's subtle.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker A: But when he does, does touch her, he like he pulls his hand back and he does a weird.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker A: Like in a way beyond even like being kind of weirded out by feeling that to me I was like, that feels.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker A: But. Yeah.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. I wish they would have done a little bit more with it. Another little detail that I don't think the movie could have communicated in a non weird way. But there is a little detail that as she, when she's pumping her breast milk, she says that it's kind of green colored and it smells like the tannis root. Something that I was pretty upset actually that the movie left out was that when Rosemary goes to get the kitchen knife and confront them all, there's another woman, like an old woman from the coven, like sitting there with her.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker B: That lady who's been Leah and. But when she goes, she puts all of the pills that she hasn't been taking into Leah's drink. Like all of them. Them and just drugs the shit out of this old woman. I was like, she's probably dead. Yeah, probably. And my last note here, I totally get why the movie doesn't show the baby.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. We get a flash of eyes at one point. They're just kind of like demony looking eyes, but that's it. We don't see. We just see her reaction to the baby.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. But I don't know, he sounded kind of cute. Like I'm just Okay. Asleep and sweet. So small and rosy face. Andy lay wrapped in a snug black blanket with little black mitts, ribbon tied around his wrists. Orange, red hair. He had a surprising amount of it. Silky clean and brushed. She reached out to him, her knife. Turning away. His lips pouted and he opened his eyes and looked at her. His eyes were golden yellow, all golden yellow with neither whites nor irises. All golden yellow with vertical black, black slit pupils.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker A: Like a cat.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. And like. And they describe later, he's. They say he has, like, little buds of horns on his head. And they say he has little claws, but they're teeny tiny and pearly. And he has a teeny tiny little tail. And I was like, I don't. That sounds cute.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker B: Am I wrong? He sounds like a cute demon baby.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I could see it, but. Yeah. Yeah. As you said, I get why the movie was crazy.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like, there was no way to do that without it looking.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker A: You probably could have. You could have pulled it off. But you're. You're really, like, you gotta nail it.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker B: Like, you gotta nail it.
• 1:37:44
  Speaker A: It's a risk. So you might as well just, like, it's not really important either. Like, her reaction is what matters more than, like, seeing it. So I get like, we don't need to see it. But I can see what you're saying. Yeah. Does it would have been kind of it if they could have done it? Well, that being said, I don't know. Even then, it just. It feels like leaving it up to your imagination, I can sometimes just be way better because there is a remake of this movie from, like, a few years ago.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker A: And I bet they show it in that one. And I bet it's bad. I bet the movie's bad.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker B: But I also bet, seeing it, the movie was bad. I think. I think it got panned. I'm sure.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker A: I just don't understand why you would ever remake this. This is one of the. It's just like. Other than to, like, try to keep Roman Polanski from making money from it.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker B: But I say the same thing that I said about Carrie, which. And I think the remake of Carrie was directed by a woman. But I imagine the remake. Neither here nor there.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker A: I would be astonished.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker B: Well, I think I looked it up and it was, I think, directed by a woman. But I have not seen the remake. I don't know. And as I understand it, I think the remake is, yeah, a TV series.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker A: And I think Saldana plays Rosemary.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker B: An adaptation of, like, this book and the sequel, maybe.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker A: Yes. That's what it says on IMDb. Yeah. Son of Rosemary.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker B: But what I just really want. I want this exact movie, but written, directed, produced by all women.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, I could see that.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker B: That's what I want. And I don't feel like it's too much to ask for.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it was a woman that directed the TV series or the tv. It's not a series. It's like a.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker B: It's like a limited.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker A: Like it's like a two episode, like a special or something. But. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that would be the thing you could do that would definitely. You could potentially add to it. But that being said, I. You know, at least to me, the movie does a really good job of.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker B: I think it does. Yeah.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker A: But I think that doesn't mean that you couldn't find some interesting angles if you gave it to different people. For sure. All right, time to find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movie.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker B: So you mentioned early on the scene when they first moved into the apartment and they have a picnic in the empty living room, and then they have sex in the living room. And that does happen in the book. But I kind of enjoyed that. The movie gave us just like a solid minute of them awkwardly taking their clothes off while they're sitting. Just stand up.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker A: Just sitting.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker B: What are you doing?
• 1:40:32
  Speaker A: Sitting on the hard floor, trying.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker B: Just wiggling their clothes off.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. It was like, why don't you stand up? Stand up.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker B: I really liked. There was a little detail early on in the movie where we see Rosemary, like, run over to the TV to watch Guy in a Yamaha.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker A: I got confused because I thought she was excited about the motorcycle race. I was like, she just into motorcycle racing.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker B: Not in the book. And I was like, why is she so into this? And then I realized it was. It was Guy in a commercial.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker B: But I thought that was cute.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker A: Them.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker B: There's a whole scene in the book where Rosemary goes to stay. Like, Hutch has, like, a cabin in the mountains or something, and she goes and stays at his cabin because she's mad at Guy. I don't even remember, like, at what point in the book this was. And I. Fine, sure. But it ended up being kind of pointless. Like, it didn't really go anywhere. So I thought the movie was right to skip that tiny little detail when she's out when she was going to meet Hutch. And it's like around Christmas time She's looking at the display in a window and there's like a nativity scene and there's a little like evil looking goat in the nativity scene. I thought that was a great little.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker A: I do remember that scene, but I don't remember the goat.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker A: Because that's when Minnie walks up, right?
• 1:41:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It is a white goat. It's not like Black Philip or anything, but I thought that was great. You don't always see goats in nativity scenes. Usually it's like, you know, sheep and camels and a donkey. Thought that was a great little detail. There's a concentration camp joke in the book that I thought the movie was right to leave out. One of Rosemary's friends when she's like, all sickly and everything tells her that she looks like Miss Concentration Camp of 1966. And I was like, woof.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker B: So we were right to not do that. This isn't necessarily something that's different.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker A: I will say just for the clarification in the book, not that it. I think it's good for the movie to leave it out. Ira Levin is Jewish, born to a Jewish family. So that's a joke. He's.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker B: He's allowed to make that kill. The flippancy of it caught me very off guard.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker A: I think it makes sense to leave it out. I'm just. Yeah. I just wanted to clarify for the sake of. Yeah.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker B: That my next thing is it's not necessarily something that's like, different from the book versus the movie, but the visual of seeing it, I thought made an impact after the party when Rosemary is wanting to get the. Like go back to Dr. Hill and get the second opinion. And Guy is just like full on yelling at her about it. The way that she, like, sits and like, shrinks. Like a child being yelled at by an angry parent. Man. Yeah, the old man waiting right outside the pay phone when she's calling Dr. Hill. This is mentioned in the book that there's like an old man nearby that she thinks might be Dr. Saperstein. But I thought it was way creepier in the movie. Like the way he's just like leaning against the payphone booth.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker A: I don't think he's leaning against it, but he's standing right against.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker B: He's like right there.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker A: And then he like, walks back and forth. Yeah. It's super, super creepy.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I last thing, as she's about to go through the secret door in the linen closet, we see Guy, like, come into the apartment, like right behind her.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker A: Oh, I miss that.
• 1:44:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. She's, like, going towards it, and the door opens and she, like, ducks.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker B: And we see him, like, come through and get, like, an ice bucket or something and go back out.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker A: My favorite detail in that that I thought was really funny or really clever was that when she's in the other room, she, like, bumps the. In the nursery. She's hiding in the nursery that they had made. And she, like, bumps the cradle in there, and it's rocking, and we just see she stops it. She reaches over with the knife and uses the knife to stop it from rocking, which I just thought was really. I don't know, just great. Little visual.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker B: Those are all my notes.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker A: All right, go ahead. And it's time to find out what the movie. What else the movie nailed. As I expected.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker B: Practically perfect in every way. This list was much longer. I pared it down quite a bit. So here are some highlights. Like, all of the dialogue as they're coming in to tour the apartment is ripped straight from the book. The elevator guy running the elevator, having to adjust it manually to be level. I didn't know that was a thing that you had to do with old elevators, which makes sense. Mrs. Gardenia's demise. Dying in a coma. The writing that Mrs. Gardenia left on her desk that Rosemary, like, snoops on. It's like a little note that's. Yeah. Like, I can no longer associate with. And then it, like, cuts off.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker B: They. Over. They can hear Minnie yelling at Roman to bring her a root beer through their bedroom wall. Gaia specifically says, if we get friendly with an old couple like that, we'll never get rid of them.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:45:41
  Speaker B: And then he acts like he didn't like having dinner with them and then is immediately like, oh, but I'm going back tomorrow.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker B: Okay, man. A guy does cover the apartment in roses before proposing that they have a baby. They do steamroll Rosemary into switching doctors in an extremely steamrolling scene.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker B: To 1966, the year one. The toast at the New Year's party that the cast of ETS have. Rosemary eats a raw chicken heart standing in her kitchen.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do. Yeah.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker B: And then, like, realizes what she's doing and throws up in the sink. The line she says when she's planning the party. It's a very special party. You have to be under 60 to get in.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker A: I burst out laughing at that scene. It was a great line.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. Rosemary's friends because she's tired of hanging.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker A: Out with, like, the cast members.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. They've been hanging out, like, exclusively with all of the geriatric people in their apartment.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker A: So she wants to have a part. A special party for people their age. Yeah.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker B: Rosemary's friends encourage her to see another doctor. Specifically the exchange. I won't have an abortion. Nobody's telling you to have an abortion.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker B: A thing that I could scream from the rooftops. Nobody's telling you to have an abortion.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker B: Dr. Saperstein tells Rosemary that Roman isn't well and that the cast of ETS are actually leaving to travel, which was a lie. The Is God Dead? Issue of Time magazine that she looks at in the doctor's office waiting room. Rosemary spilling her entire purse and then commandeering the elevator while everyone is dist. Is distracted. Very smart. Moo move. They tell her that her baby is dead while blaming her and also dismissing her pain. Why would you be upset about your dead baby when we can simply make another.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's simple.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker B: We can just make another one. Who cares? And then at the. At the very end, when she goes in to, like, confront them all, there's a random Japanese man there taking photographs. And I was so annoyed reading this scene because Ira Levin keeps referring to this guy as the Japanese. That was like, stop.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, there's people in the coven from, like, around the world. Because there's also another guy from Europe somewhere that I can't remember his name, but he's. I don't know if he's Russian or something, but, yeah, there's some other guy.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker B: And in the book, I swear, I think there's a. Like, a guy from Africa there as well, too.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. I can't remember. In the movie, I think there might be. Or a black person, at least. I don't know for sure. Yeah. But the idea is that there.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's people gathering from around the world to see the Antichrist.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker A: Yep. Yep. All right, let's get to a few odds and ends before the final verdict.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker B: I say this a lot with movies that we watch, so it'll probably come as no surprise to longtime listeners that I thought the costumes were great. Yeah, they really are a fantastic time capsule. I realize it was just the modern clothes of the era, but I thought they were great.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, there's this great shot that I really liked, and this movie has some good shots, but not as many as I was hoping for. Like, there's some really. It's a beautiful movie, and there's some really memorable shot. Like, the shot of Minnie through the keyhole in the door is, like, a very famous shot. And there's a handful of other Ones that are really good. I like the dolly shot as she's walking towards the secret room with the knife and the camera's pulling back with her in front of it. And there's a bunch of other stuff that's good looking but there's one shot in particular that I really like the subtlety of. I don't even remember the exact context of it, but guy walks into their bedroom and the camera is outside the bedroom and it does this very slow dolly to the right. He walked into their bedroom and walked off camera to the left, like to the left of the doorway. And the camera is like slowly dollying right, slowly revealing more of the room. And I kept thinking we were gonna get to see him doing something. I just. It just. It just loved those slow movements. And it slowly revealed more and more of their bedroom. And I kept thinking we were going to either see something or something was going to happen. Just a deliciously tension filled shot. Doesn't really go anywhere. And in that moment. But I really liked the idea of it and I was like, I got to remember. I really like that. So anyways, I thought that shot was great. And again, there's lots of other good ones. But that was one that stuck out to me.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker B: This drove me crazy throughout the entire movie. Me, Minnie's voice was so familiar to me. But I scoured her IMDb page and I have not seen anything else she's been in. You had seen Harold and Maud?
• 1:50:52
  Speaker A: She's in Harold and Maud. She's Maud in Harold and Maud.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker B: But I had never. I have never seen it. So I don't know if maybe she was doing a voice that I recognized.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker A: What we pause. What we guessed maybe after was that other people in subsequent films, tv, have.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker B: Mimicked what she's doing here. And that's why it sounded familiar to me. But I have no idea what.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker A: I don't know either. But I agree she looked familiar and sounded familiar to me. And then I was like, well, I have seen Harold. And once we saw Harold Lamont, I was like, well, I have seen Harold Lamont. I saw once 20 years ago. So I remember very little about it. But that might be where I remember from. But I had a similar experience of like, man, she seems familiar. Like there's something about her that seems really familiar. So this movie's full of symbolism all over the place, Catholic and otherwise. But one of the things I thought was really interesting is that it's also very much about gender. Like obviously gender roles and gender politics are a huge part. And I thought it was very. So obviously Rosemary is named Rosemary because after Mary, as we discussed earlier. But Guy's name is literally Guy. And I thought there was this. There's. They play with that throughout the film. Specifically, like, he is kind of the archetypal man.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker B: He's Guy.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's the man in this. And some movies just do that now, you know, where they're like, the character won't have a name. They'll literally just be like the husband, the wife or whatever, if they want to be like archetypes. But his name is Guy. And I thought there were some little moments throughout here and there that I thought were kind of interesting. One of them was that he has a book on his headboard on their bed. At one point, we see them laying in bed and it's looking at his. On her side of the bed, looking to his side. And on the headboard above his thing, there's a book literally just titled the man right above him. And then later, when he goes. And he puts. When he hides or when he puts her book up on the shelf, the witchcraft book, he sets it on top of two other books. And the two other books he sets it on are the Sexual. The sexual. It's like the sexual organism of man and the sexual organism of woman. Or something male.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker B: Something like that.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker A: Something like that. It's like. It's like biology textbooks or something like that. About. About, like, men and women. But it was specifically about, like, sex and men and women. And it was like, again, there's like a lot of the various on the nose specific, like, this is what we're doing here kind of stuff.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker B: Fun fact. It is revealed in the book that Guy changed his name to Guy to be an actor. His birth name is Sherman.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker B: So he made himself the man.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, he made himself the archetypal man.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker B: This is one. One moment in this where she's, like, packing her little suitcase that she wants to take with her when she goes to the hospital to give birth. And Guy's like, honey, you've got three weeks. And I was like, sir, first of all, mind your own business. Secondly, I feel like that's pretty within the. She could go into labor at any time window. Like, wouldn't be ideal if she went into labor three weeks early. But, like, that could happen.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, I. You could also. I hadn't thought about this until just now, but you could also read that as another little hint that he knows she's not going to need it.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. He knows she's not going to. There's not going to be any hospital.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker A: And you could even take it to me, mean that maybe he knows that, like. Like, maybe this babe, they know that this baby's not going to come premature. They. You know what I mean? Like, this demon baby they're doing, it's going to be born exactly on this specific date because of some magic. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's like, oh, you've got three weeks. Like, it's not. Yeah.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker B: Another little moment when she goes into the pay phone booth. She, like, she puts the phone up to her ear and then she's holding the cord and she puts the cord up against her mouth. And I was like, no, don't do that. Yeah, don't put the payphone cord on your mouth.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker A: So gross. Yeah. I'm really interested now to watch this. This is my last note. And I'll just say I loved this movie. I thought it was incredible, which I was kind of expecting to think it would be really good, but it was very good. It lived up kind of like the Godfather. It's one of those ones where it's like, It. Yeah. And Carrie, to some extent, this lived up to the expectations that people had set for it. And I'm very interested now to read and watch some analysis of this film after this, because I never do before we do these episodes to have for us not to color.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker B: Like, so you can be pure.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. And actually just say what I think about it instead of what other people have said. Because one of the things that I thought was really interesting and I mentioned it, there's a lot of, like, Catholic symbolism in this.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker A: But I was like, I'm not sure I'm getting all of this. And like, the stuff with the nun in the beginning and some of the. Like, she's looking at the roof of, like, some chapel or something. And it's like all this.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker B: I think that was supposed to be the Sistine Chapel.
• 1:56:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was for sure or not, but. Because there are lots of chapel. But point being there, you know, she's looking at. There's a lot of Catholic imagery throughout this, and I was kind of interested to see if there's more because a lot of this all feels rolled up in, like, Catholic guilt and symbology and stuff like that. And I have very little knowledge and background. Background on that. I have a little, like. I know a little bit of stuff, but, like, not enough to, like, really parse with all that. Like, there was a lot of other stuff that I was Getting from the movie. But I'm very interested to see more kind of breakdowns and stuff about this film because I think there's. It's. It's such a. And it's another thing. I understand why so many directors. You know, a lot we talked about in the prequel. I think it's like Stanley Kubrick said, it's like his favorite movie because there's just so many little middle. So many layers. There's so many illusions, so many symbols, so many. So much. It's so dense with stuff and symbolism that it feels like you could pry into it forever and never really reach the bottom. And. Yeah. So, again, I thought it was a fantastic film.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker B: Kind of mentioned this earlier, but I really sincerely wish that I could erase any knowledge of this property from my mind and then read and watch it. And I, unfortunately, knew how it ended. I didn't know, like, every detail about it, but, like, I knew that she gave birth to the Antichrist.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker A: I don't know how I missed that.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker B: But because of cultural osmosis, like, I knew that that was where this ended up. And I just think that it would be super interesting to get to experience both the book and the movie not knowing that Rosemary is actually 100% correct in her suspicions. Like, if you could read this. Not knowing that it actually is about Satanists. Wild.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, that was my experience watching the movie. Like. Well, I guess. I guess I did kind of know that Satanists were involved. So that was kind of spoiled. But. But, like, I had no idea how it ended or that she gave birth to or any of that.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker B: Because, like, I. Like, I have to imagine that, like, the whole time you would be like, like, this bitch can't be. Right.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker B: But she is.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, you would be.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker B: She's just correct.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker A: You would be in the Dr. Hill kind of role. Which. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I will say that. And again, maybe it's because I knew that there was Satanism stuff involved or witchcraft involved at some point. Like, again, I didn't know to what extent or in what way whatsoever, but I knew that. So I guess that kind of spoils it because I pretty quickly was like, no, she's on to something here. Like, I don't think the movie. Like, at least just in the movie. Like, it's. I think the movie is pretty straightforwardly. Like, she's not crazy.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker A: Like. But again, that it's hard for me to know. Even though I didn't know any of the details, I still did know there was some element of something to do with Satanism and witchcraft stuff.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker B: Also. Also. Also, I made this note somewhere as I was reading the book. Somewhere in my reading notes. But what she thinks, like, the thing that she thinks is going on is that this satanic cult wants to take her baby to use as like a blood sacrifice. And. And when she tells Guy this and then like later Dr. Hill and that, they're like, that's ridiculous. That's so silly. Of course that's not what's happening. But that is, like, when you think about it, a way more reasonable guess than what's actually going on.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker A: It is. That's true.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker B: That's way more.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker A: Way less crazy. Because people, they could just be crazy people.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. They could just be crazy people. People who think that they can summon Satan.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. But when in fact, you actually have the child of Satan in you. Yeah. It's a little. It's another step removed from that even. Yeah.
• 2:00:22
  Speaker B: Which brings me to my last note here, that I really enjoyed this story, but it is, in fact, witch slander and that I cannot abide.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker A: That is true. You're not wrong.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker B: We don't even worship Satan. Satan, no, that's Satanists.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker A: And please get it right.
• 2:00:42
  Speaker B: And Satanists and Satanists.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker A: Modern Satan. Worship a real Satan and don't believe Satan actually exists.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker B: It's more of a political movement, really.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker A: Yes. If anything, it's like a philosophical.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker A: That identifies with the. Again, depending on what type of Satanists. But like modern. Most modern Satanists, Church of Satan people.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker B: And now not. Not that there aren't people who consider themselves witches who do, like, work with Satan.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker B: But I would not say that that is the majority of modern witchcraft practitioners.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker A: And even then. Not in the same way.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker B: No, not in the same way that.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker A: This movie is portraying. Yeah, obviously. Which again, what I was talking about when he's like, I kind of regret, you know.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker B: Right. No, it's. It's. It's. Honestly, you mentioned, like, the Catholic symbolism and all that. The idea of a group of witches that, like, worship Satan is a deeply Christian idea. It's. It's very. Christians making themselves the center of the universe.
• 2:01:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker B: We don't care about you.
• 2:01:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. Not even literal Satanists care about actual Satan.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker B: No.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker A: It's all a metaphor. Yeah. All right. Before we wrap up, we want. Or before we get to the final verdict, we want to remind you you can do us a favor by heading over to Patreon or. Well, let's start with that. Heading over to patreon.com. this film is. Let's support us there get access to bonus content. We just released our October bonus episode where we covered both the Addams Family and Addams family values. The 91 and 93 films discussed that, talked about them, watched them for the first time. That's at the five dollar and up level. And at the $15 and up level, you get access to priority recommendations where if there's something you'd really like for us to talk about, you can just, you know, pay 15 bucks a month and request something and we will do it real quick.
• 2:02:27
  Speaker B: I just want to mention too on Patreon because I feel like we always forget about this, is that at the lowest subscription level, the $2 a month level, you get our schedule every month.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker A: The beginning of every month, you put out what we're doing for that month.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, right. More like at the end of the. We release what we're covering the next month. So if you are someone who likes to read and. Or watch along with us.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker A: Especially read.
• 2:02:58
  Speaker B: Yes, especially read. Yes. You can have that, like insider information.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker A: Of warning of what's coming up. Yeah. So you have more time to read. Yep, absolutely. You can also help us out by heading over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads or threads, any of those platforms. Let us know what you thought about Rosemary's Baby. You know, what did you think? What is your opinion on it? What do you think it's about? What you think about what we said about it. We would love to hear all of that and we will discuss it all on our next prequel episode and you can give us five star ratings or review and, you know, write nice little reviews on all the platforms you listen to us would all be greatly appreciated. Katie, it's time for the final verdict. No sentence.
• 2:03:41
  Speaker B: Fast verdict after. That's stupid. Rosemary's Baby is such an incredibly faithful adaptation that you could almost call it biblically accurate or perhaps satanic. Biblically accurate. But in all seriousness, I really enjoyed this property, both the book and the movie. Similar to when we covered Carrie, I found myself deeply wishing that I could reach into this media and snatch the heroine right out of it and protect her. Rosemary in no way deserved what happened to her. But that's the point, isn't it? In the year of our Lord 2024, when we as Missourians are days away from heading to the polls, hoping that our neighbors will help, will help us vote to overturn one of the most restrictive draconian abortion bans in the country. Country Rosemary's Baby isn't frightening because of the evil witches and satanic rituals but because of the way it explicitly addresses and depicts a woman's right to bodily autonomy and the ways that the men and women around her casually violate that right because they feel entitled to it. They don't view her as human, but as a vessel for their own agenda. Earlier in this episode, you expressed surprise that a convicted rapist like Roman Polanski could create a piece of media that feels so sympathetic to its female lead. I have to agree with you that I'm not sure how much of that was intended by the film. But as I said, Rosemary's Baby is an incredibly faithful adaptation. I'm not sure that Roman Polanski could have created what he did without Ira Levin's novel. And for that reason, I'm giving this one to the book.
• 2:05:50
  Speaker A: Very fair. I think that's very fair. Katie, what's next?
• 2:05:54
  Speaker B: Up next, we are going to continue covering extremely terrifyingly relevant pieces of media, and we're going to be talking about V for Vendetta.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker B: So that'll be fun.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker A: It's. We really just. It's like we planned it even. I mean, we. You do plan these, but you didn't plan.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker B: I do plan these, but I wasn't really thinking about it.
• 2:06:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. Just right from abortion to fascism. Just back to pits. Let's do it. Let's do it.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker B: Hey, we're already steeped in it.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker A: Yep. Yep. The tone of that episode will be vastly different depending on how things go down in a few days.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, we'll find out how the tone of that episode's gonna go.
• 2:06:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. And that will be a switch. I don't know if you meant. Did you mention that was gonna be.
• 2:06:47
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Brian's gonna.
• 2:06:48
  Speaker A: I'm gonna read that one.
• 2:06:48
  Speaker B: I'm gonna be reading that one since.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker A: I've done an Alan Moore before with Watchmen. So, yeah, I will be doing V for Vendetta and then we'll be talking about it in two weeks time. But in one week's time, come back and we're talking about what all you all had to say about Rosemary's Baby, getting your feedback and discussing it. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker B: Pals and everybody else, keep reading books.
• 2:07:11
  Speaker A: Keep watching movies and keep being awesome.